Category Archives: Somalia

Rift Valley Institute Courses

Conferences and Talks, Development, Ethiopia, Immigration Issues, Somalia, Travel


2012 Rift Valley Institute Field courses: applications open

The Institute’s annual field courses offer an intensive, graduate-level approach to the history, culture and political economy of three subregions: Sudan and South Sudan; the Horn of Africa; and the Great Lakes. The courses consist of a six-day dawn-to-dusk programme of lectures, seminars and panel discussions, led by international specialists and scholars and activists from the region. Dates and locations are as follows:

– Sudan and South Sudan Course, Rumbek, S. Sudan, 26 May-1 June

– Horn of Africa Course, near Mombasa, Kenya, 16-22 June

– Great Lakes Course, Bujumbura, Burundi, 7-13 July

Download the prospectus at the site and/or apply online here. For further information (or to request the application form as a Microsoft Word document), email courses@riftvalley.net. Applications will be considered in order of receipt.

Somalia’s Famine

Development, Somalia, Teaching Resources


Severely malnourished child from southern Somalia sits in Banadir hospital… (Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP)

A Diplomatic Surge to Stop Somalia’s Famine

By Ken Menkhaus, Enough Project, September 21, 2011

[Ken Menkhaus is a professor of political science at Davidson College and a specialist on
Somalia and the Horn of Africa. He worked on famine response policy in Somalia in 1991
and served as a political advisor in the U.N. Operation in Somalia in 1993-94. He is author of
over 50 monographs, chapters, and articles on Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and has testified
five times before congressional committees on aspects of the Somali crisis.]

Somalia is dying. Three-quarters of a million people are at immediate risk of famine;
another 750,000 are refugees in neighboring countries, and 4 million – half the total
population – is in need of emergency aid. It is a calamity that could join the ranks of the
Rwanda genocide and the Darfur crisis in terms of scale and human suffering. And for
Somalia it is a terrible repeat of the 1991-92 famine that claimed 240,000 lives.

The international response to date has been shockingly inadequate – not just because
funds for humanitarian aid have fallen short, but because of the absence of political will
to take bold diplomatic action to remove impediments to the delivery of aid.

Unless this changes, the 2011 Somali famine will be to the Obama administration what
the 1994 Rwandan genocide was to the Clinton administration – a terrible stain, an
unforgiveable instance of lack of political will to push policy beyond incrementalism.
And for the Islamic world, al-Shabaab’s role in the Somali famine will be remembered as
the Islamic Khmer Rouge, in which an armed group with a deeply twisted interpretation
of the faith presides over the mass deaths of its own people. Continue reading Somalia’s Famine →

Sailing to Yemen with human traffickers

Ethiopia, Immigration Issues, Somalia, Yemen


Journalist who took the human smuggling voyage from Djibouti to Yemen gives a first-hand account of migrant beatings.

by Glen Johnson, Al Jazeera, July 18, 2011

There were more than 30 people crammed on the back of the truck as the vehicle bumped through the desert in eastern Djibouti.

The passengers were men, women and children from Ethiopia and Somalia and myself. And all would be smuggled in boats from Djibouti to Yemen, as part of wider trafficking operations involving six countries – Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea – that apparently trafficks tens of thousands of people from the Horn of Africa to Arabian nations each year.

I had arrived in Djibouti on June 7 to research human trafficking. Having lived in Yemen for part of 2010, I was aware that the Africa-Arabia smuggling trade was one of the myriad challenges facing Yemen, yet one of the troubled nation’s least discussed. In Djibouti, I quickly established links with smugglers, some of whom agreed to let me accompany migrants from Ethiopia and refugees from Somalia by boat to Yemen.

The truck drove slowly through the desert. No one talked. A distant beam from a lighthouse swept across the night sky. The silhouettes of coarse thorn scrubs, bent back from the wind, stood under a yellow moon that was ill-defined from the dust and sand that swept up into the night.

Occasionally the truck would grind to a halt and men would get out swinging sticks wildly, telling the passengers to keep still. A woman spoke to a child – his hair a mass of coarse, black curls; his spindly legs sticking out the bottom of his trousers. Continue reading Sailing to Yemen with human traffickers →

No food for thought

Development, Environment, Somalia


Politics trumps virtually every other kind of news until a natural disaster breaks through. For those of us watching the daily reports of protests in the Middle East and North Africa, it is easy to be absorbed by the sheer amount of coverage and websites available. This morning I noticed two “front page” stories that stopped me in my tracks, one in the New York Times and the other a special report on the website of al Jazeera. Freedom from dictatorial rule is a dream shared across a spectrum of people, and not only in this part of the world, but there is no ultimate freedom from Nature.

Drought is as much a killer as any ruthless dictator, which is not to diminish the negative impact of even the worst of the lot. But Saddam met his fate, as will Qaddafi. With all our technological savy, however, Nature still calls the shots, whether it is a tsunami, hurricane or prolonged drought. There is a cruel irony that some places have far too much water, especially at the wrong time, and others have no water all. No place is more miserable both politically and from drought than Somalia, a land that has been racked with civil war creating one of the worst humanitarian crises around (and there are quite a few). The camp of Daabab just across the Kenyan border already has hundreds of thousands fleeing the turmoil in Somalia. The UN estimates that 10 million people in the Horn of Africa are suffering directly from this crisis. Picture what this number means. If these people were lined up so that each one took only one foot of space the line would stretch over 630 miles. This means that if a bread line started in Boston and stretched south to Washington, D.C. it would still have almost two hundred more miles to go before it would end. A car driving the distance would take at least ten hours. And this is just for the crisis in the Horn.

What if the money spent on military weapons per year were actually spent on food aid and development assistance to people who are in danger of dying? The drones sent to destroy suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan (and now in Yemen) cost about 4.5 million each. The U.S. just gave Kenya an extra 5 million dollars in aid to help cope with the influx of refugees, about one drone’s worth. As Mark Twain said in a speech in 1881, war is “a wanton waste of projectiles.”

Daniel Martin Varisco

2011 RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE FIELD COURSES

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, Development, Environment, Ethiopia, Somalia, Travel


Dhow near Lamu at sunset

2011 RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE FIELD COURSES:
SUDAN, HORN OF AFRICA AND GREAT LAKES

SUMMARY

This year’s Rift Valley Institute field courses stress the historical background to political developments in the region: the two-state future in Sudan, the effect of recent and upcoming elections in the Great Lakes, and the continuing challenges to political evolution in the countries of the Horn of Africa. The courses are seminar-based, one-week, high-intensity events to be held between May and July. Faculty includes internationally-known regional specialists, researchers and civil society activists from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC.

The application deadline for all courses is Monday 28 February. You can apply online here.

Summaries of each course are included below. Prospectuses containing further details are attached to this message and can be downloaded from www.riftvalley.net/courses. (Or write to courses@riftvalley.net.)

DATES AND GENERAL INFORMATION

Dates for this year’s courses are as follows:

The Sudan Course, Wednesday 25 May to Tuesday 31 May, in Rumbek, Southern Sudan.

The Horn of Africa Course, Saturday 4 to Friday 10 June in Lamu, Kenya.

The Great Lakes Course, Saturday 9 July to Friday 15 July in Bujumbura, Burundi.

The courses are intensive, graduate-level, residential programmes. They are designed for local and expatriate peacekeepers, aid workers, diplomats, researchers, campaigners, business people and journalists.Taught by leading regional and international specialists, the courses provide a fast-track introduction to the history, political economy and culture of a country or region, challenging assumptions and offering new perspectives on politics, development and other current issues. Continue reading 2011 RIFT VALLEY INSTITUTE FIELD COURSES →

Sailing Forbidden Coasts

Food and Drink, Photography, Somalia, Travel


Sheik Issa Embarks on the ‘Altair’ for Arabia. He is honored and respected among the Danakil as a leader and saint. Not only was he a gracious host, but he offered to accompany the Altair’s party from the Somali coast over to Arabia, in order to afford them protection from pirates.


[Webshaykh’s Note: Much attention has been given to the Somali pirates loose in the Gulf of Aden. Piracy is no stranger to this corner of the Horn of Africa, nor to seafaring anywhere in history. Here is an excerpt by an American woman visiting the French Somaliland coast in 1930. Ms. Treat indeed provides a colorful narrative treat of her journey aboard a dhow captained by a French convert to Islam. The whole article is well worth reading, as the following excerpt suggests.]

by Ida Treat, The National Geographic Magazine, 1931

Wading through the warm lagoon, breast deep, we crossed the damp sand among the mangroves, treading down the rubbery shoots among which lay quantities of black sea snails, for it was low tide. Beyond the mangroves, the beach stretched bare and white to the four huts, bleached as driftwood, and of so light a construction it seemed that a puff of wind would scatter them across the sand.

Two downy baby camels, in a narrow inclosure of mimosa thorns, darted snakelike necks through the ranches as we passed. From the largest of the huts a man came toward us. I recognized Sheik Issa, whom I had sen at Obock, his lean torso bare, the wooden prayer beads about his neck, swinging across the sand with a vigorous, youthful stride, for all his sixty-odd years.

The day before he had sent the Altair from the heights of Djebel Ghin and had walked all night to be at Angar to welcome us. Continue reading Sailing Forbidden Coasts →

Heroic, Female and Muslim

Development, Gender and Sexuality, Islamophobia, Somalia, Terrorism Issue



Dr. Hawa Abdi runs a hospital in Somalia and stands up to extremists there; photograph by Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times, December 15, 2010

What’s the ugliest side of Islam? Maybe it’s the Somali Muslim militias that engage in atrocities like the execution of a 13-year-old girl named Aisha Ibrahim. Three men raped Aisha, and when she reported the crime she was charged with illicit sex, half-buried in the ground before a crowd of 1,000 and then stoned to death.

That’s the extremist side of Islam that drives Islamophobia in the United States, including Congressional hearings on American Muslims that House Republicans are planning for next year.

But there’s another side of Islam as well, represented by an extraordinary Somali Muslim woman named Dr. Hawa Abdi who has confronted the armed militias. Amazingly, she forced them to back down — and even submit a written apology. Glamour magazine, which named Dr. Hawa a “woman of the year,” got it exactly right when it called her “equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo.”

Dr. Hawa, a 63-year-old ob-gyn who earned a law degree on the side, is visiting the United States to raise money for her health work back home. A member of Somalia’s elite, she founded a one-room clinic in 1983, but then the Somalian government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled. So today Dr. Hawa is running a 400-bed hospital. Continue reading Heroic, Female and Muslim →

Horn Talk in Lamu

Anthropology/Sociology, Conferences and Talks, Development, Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen


Dhow near Lamu at sunset

I am writing this from the exquisite Island of Lamu in Kenya. As someone who has spent over thirty years rambling around Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden, it is quite eye-opening to take a look up at the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula from an African perspective, especially a view that has been influenced in many ways by earlier generations of migrants from Yemen. It would be nice if I was here only because it is such a beautiful tourist spot with a rich cultural heritage, and indeed all this is nice, but I am actually attending an annual seminar on the Horn of Africa hosted by the Rift Valley Institute. The organizers recognized that cultural history and contemporary politics in the Horn can hardly be separated from Yemen, which lies so close across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Hence I was invited to contribute on the links between Yemen and the Horn and also to discuss the relevance of Islam and the contentious issue of “Islamism.” Continue reading Horn Talk in Lamu →