Friday 27 Sep, 2024 {HMC} Halima Hassan Ali and her husband are struggling to provide even a single meal a day for their three children, among the hundreds of families displaced by ongoing conflicts in parts of Lower and Middle Shabelle regions.

Halima, 39, and her family arrived at Gurbaan camp in Mogadishu’s Kahda district on 20 August, seeking refuge from the violence. However, they now have no food or proper shelter.

“We have nothing! For the last two days, our neighbours have been helping us get meals,” said Halima. “We didn’t carry anything with us. We don’t even have clothes to wear. If the rains come, it just pours down on us and we also have to sit out in the sun.”

Her husband had to look for menial jobs like digging waste-pits to provide a living for the family, although it’s hard for him to find work as many men are seeking the same and the pay is poor. These days there are more companies using trucks to collect garbage in city neighborhoods.

“When he comes home, sometimes he brings us one dollar. It’s not enough. If we get food at night, we skip breakfast the next morning. Then we eat a quarter of rice or a small amount of dried maize for dinner. Hunger grips us, along with every other hardship,” Halima told Radio Ergo’s local reporter.

Halima and her family fled from the Yaaq Bari-weyne area in Lower Shabelle, escaping fighting between armed groups. Like many others, they fled the conflicts in a hurry and had to leave their belongings in a desperate bid to save their lives.

She mentioned that other families who fled with them helped cover their transport costs.

Halima’s family left behind their five-hectare farm where they grew maize, beans, and sesame. They were preparing to harvest in mid-September.

In a similar situation, Ibrahim Osman Ali, a 52-year-old father of four, recently arrived at Harawe camp in Kahda district on 19 August.

“You can’t live in the midst of gunfire. We were scared for our children and fled. We don’t have food, and we are new in the city. We have no water, no latrines. I woke up this morning and we haven’t had food. We have nothing,” he exclaimed.

Ibrahim described walking from their village to Afgooye, where they asked drivers heading to Mogadishu for a ride.

Due to the violence, he wasn’t able to cultivate his two-hectare farm this year. Instead, he used to support his family by pushing a handcart earning about $5 a day in Wanlaweyn.

Qadro Abdi Ali, a 36-year-old widow, arrived in Bursalid camp in Garasbaley district with her three children at the beginning of August and has yet to receive any aid.

As the sole provider for her children, Qadro is now forced to look for unfamiliar jobs in the city to make ends meet.

“We’ve tried, but there’s no place to work. We go around washing clothes but end up wandering with few jobs. We have no source of income. I’m feeling a lot of anxiety. Back home, I used to farm, and we ate from our harvest. We didn’t lack anything. It’s the conflict that pushed us to flee, she told Radio Ergo.

Like many others, Qadro’s family relied on their farm for a living before being displaced. Their lives were upended by the conflict, and now they face a daily battle to secure even one meal. She fled from Jamee’o village, near Hawadley in Middle Shabelle, due to fighting between government forces and Al-Shabaab.

Displaced people continue to arrive daily in the IDP camps in Mogadishu, visibly exhausted and struggling with their circumstances.

According to Mohamed Osman Mumin, who is responsible for registering new arrivals in the camps, over 3,340 families have arrived in camps in Garasbaley and Kahda districts since July.

“Some of these people have been here for about 20 days, others for just three days. They have no shelter, no food. We bought them sticks to build shelters. We asked people to donate old clothing. In the first few days, we went around collecting rice and other supplies from local stores and residents. For the first two days, cooked food was prepared for them,” he said.

As conflict continues to drive displacement, many families are left to rely on the kindness of neighbours and the limited resources available in the camps. Their daily lives have become a constant struggle for survival, with no immediate end in sight to the violence or their hardship.

SOURCE 

Friday 27 Sep, 2024 {HMC}  Montreal (AFP) – Somali-Canadian rapper K’naan, whose megahit “Wavin’ Flag” became an anthem for the 2010 soccer World Cup, was charged Thursday with sexual assault in Quebec City, according to local media.

The 47-year-old rapper, whose real name is Keinan Abdi Warsame, is accused of having sexually assaulted a woman in her 20s in a hotel room in July 2010 when he was in the Canadian city for a music festival.

The alleged victim had filed a complaint with police in May 2022.

A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for April 2025.

Born in 1978 in Mogadishu, the rapper who fled the war-wracked Horn of Africa country at the age of 13 grew up in Toronto, turning to rap to learn English, but now lives in the US city of New York.

His criticism of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 1999 brought him to the attention of Senegalese star Youssou N’Dour, who invited him to contribute to an album, effectively launching his musical career.

An anthem about Somalia overcoming its struggles, “Wavin’ Flag” was released in 2009 on K’naan’s album “Troubadour.”

It was remade as a charity single following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, featuring a variety of Canadian singers, including Justin Bieber and Drake.

Coca-Cola used a more celebratory version of the song throughout the 2010 World Cup, hosted by South Africa.

K’naan took an extended break after his album “Troubadour,” but returned in 2023 with new music that earned him a special merit award for best song for social change from the Recording Academy.

He also made his directorial debut with “Mother Mother” at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month.

This week, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada gave K’naan an award for the lasting cultural impact of “Wavin’ Flag” around the world.

Friday 27, Sep 2024 {HMC} With a cargo of heavy weaponry and ammunition destined for Somalia in the increasingly restive Horn of Africa region, the Al Hurreya 2 faced several potential dangers in the Red Sea’s treacherous southern reaches. The stakes were considerably high.

If the mission of the Al Hurreya 2 was aborted or disrupted, the embarrassment would be significant for a country that had the region’s largest army and had purchased billions of dollars’ worth of modern weapons in the last decade alone.

Two days after the Egyptian-flagged vessel unloaded its cargo in Mogadishu, Somalia on Monday, sources recounted to The National some of the precautionary measures put in place to ensure the cargo vessel reached its destination safely.

Yemen’s Houthis had to be briefed in advance to prevent the Al Hurreya 2 from meeting the fate of the scores of vessels the Iranian-backed rebels have attacked in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. There was also the danger posed by Somali pirates in the southern part of the Red and Arabia seas.

Warships, including the locally made Gowind-class frigate in service since 2021, escorted the Al Hurreya 2 during its nearly 24-hour journey, which began in southern Egypt, the sources said. Helicopter gunships off one of the two French-made Mistral troop carriers Egypt has in its fleet took turns patrolling the skies above, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Al Hurreya 2 offloaded its cargo in Somalia’s capital which, according to the sources and media reports, included mortars, anti-aircraft guns, armoured personnel carriers, rocket launchers, ammunition and fuel.

The sources said this week’s military shipment to Somalia had long been in the planning, with Egypt discreetly and closely co-ordinating with authorities in Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti, three countries on the Red Sea which have good relations with Egypt.

“Zero hour was a closely guarded secret,” said one of the sources. “The nature of the cargo was also a secret except to those who absolutely needed to know and could be fully trusted,” they added, citing prevailing tension in the Red Sea following the deployment of various warships to deal with Houthi attacks on shipping.

The Egyptian military also deployed special forces with counterterrorism training at the docks alongside Somali troops as the cargo was offloaded, the sources said. Somalia’s Defence Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur was also present.

Second shipment

The shipment, the second in less than a month, was provided under the terms of a joint military co-operation accord signed by Egypt and Somalia last month. The provisions of the deal also stipulate for Egyptian military advisers to train Somali troops, conduct joint war drills and protect top government leaders and key installations.

As the case was with the first shipment, the second angered Ethiopia, whose relations with both Egypt and Somalia are fraught. News of the shipments also shook the established order in a Horn of Africa region scarred by civil wars, deeply rooted ethnic rivalries and terrorism.

Ethiopia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Taye Atske Selassie said he was concerned that arms from “external forces would further exacerbate the fragile security [in Somalia] and would end up in the hands of terrorists”, according to the Ethiopia News Agency. He was referring to the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group Al Shabab.

In response, Somalia’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi said: “Ethiopia’s motivation behind these defamatory statements is its attempt to conceal the illegal smuggling of weapons across the Somali borders, which are falling into the hands of civilians and terrorists.” He did not elaborate.

The two shipments and the deployment of troops and advisers constitute the farthest-from-home military deployment by the most populous Arab nation since the Kuwait crisis in 1990-91, when Egyptian troops were part of a US-led, multinational coalition that threw the Iraqi army out of the oil-rich Gulf state.

They also underline Egypt’s growing resolve to pressure Ethiopia into entering a legally binding agreement on the operation and filling of a massive hydro dam Addis Ababa is building on the Nile that Cairo fears will reduce its vital share of the river’s water on which it depends for almost all its freshwater needs.

Unlike the case when the first arms delivery was airlifted to Mogadishu, the Egyptian government formally announced the arrival of the weapons on Monday, without giving further details.

Historic relations

Egypt and Somalia are members of the Cairo-based Arab League and are bound by ties that date back to Pharaonic times. Somalia was one of only three Arab League members that did not sever diplomatic relations with Egypt when Cairo signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

Somalia accuses landlocked Ethiopia of breaching its sovereignty when in January it agreed to lease 20km of coastline from Somaliland – a part of Somalia that claims independence and has operated with effective autonomy since 1991 – in exchange for possible recognition. In response, Somalia threatened to expel Ethiopia’s troops by the end of the year, who are there as part of a peacekeeping mission. Egypt says it will send a contingent of peacekeepers to replace the Ethiopians and that Somalia has already agreed.

In more than a decade of negotiations, Ethiopia has rejected proposals to resolve the dam dispute with downstream Egypt and Sudan, claiming at times that the construction and running of the dam is an internal matter or insisting that the dam will not hurt their interests.

What Cairo sees as Addis Ababa’s intransigence has prompted it to pursue stronger ties with Ethiopia’s neighbours and Nile basin countries. It provided them with technical assistance in various sectors, delivered humanitarian aid when necessary and concluded various levels of military co-operation accords with them.

SOURCE