Sudanese born billionaire entrepreneur Dr Mo Ibrahim, named as Britain's most powerful black man, shows interest in investing in Ethiopia

From Nazret.com, Wednesday October 08 2008 - Mo Ibrahim shows interest to invest in Ethiopia:

Dr. Mohamed "Mo" Ibrahim, the Sudanese-born British mobile communications entrepreneur, and founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation is interested to invest in Ethiopia, according to a report by African Press Agency (APA).

According to APA, Mr. Ibrahim spoke with Addisu Legesse, Ethiopia's deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. Legesse in turn briefed Ibrahim about the investment opportunities in Ethiopia, mainly in the agricultural sector, which he said is full of human resources and services, APA wrote.

Ibrahim earned a Bachelor of Science from University of Alexandria and a master's degree from the University of Bradford, both in electrical engineering, and a PhD from the University of Birmingham in mobile communications, according to his profile on Wikipedia. Ibrahim was employed by Sudan Telecom for a time, and later worked as the technical director for Cellnet, a subsidiary of British Telecom. In 1989 he founded MSI, a consultancy and software company, which was bought by Marconi in 2000. MSI had 800 employees, who owned approximately 30% of the stock at the point of its sale; Ibrahim says he gave employees stock as a form of bonus.

In 1998, MSI spun off MSI-Cellular Investments, later renamed Celtel, as a mobile phone operator in Africa.

According to the Forbes 2008 Rich List, Mo Ibrahim is worth $5 billion.

See this site's parent blog Sudan Watch - Sunday, October 05, 2008: Sudanese born billionaire entrepreneur Dr Mo Ibrahim is named as Britain's most powerful black man

Note, Nazret.com appears to be an Ethiopian Website and its Merkato Blog, a marketplace of ideas on nazret.com, welcomes participants.

Ethiopian Famine Averted - “That might be what they say, but is it true?”

'Ethiopian Famine Averted' is another gem of a blog post by freelance foreign correspondent Rob Crilly. I am copying it here for future reference for reasons listed below.

From The Frontline - Ethiopian Famine Averted
By Rob Crilly, 04 October 2008

Among many of the titbits of useful advice I picked up as I worked my way through Britain’s regional newspapers was one that has caused me no end of trouble. “Rob,” one of the old hands at The Herald (I should point out this is a Scottish national paper - not a British regional paper) said, “The stories that you don’t write are just as important as the stories you do write.”

The job of a journalist, he went on to explain, is to sift through the assorted rubbish that arrives each day and work out what is true, what is important and what is news. Everything else could be passed over with a dismissive, “The Scotsman might do this tomorrow but frankly it’s bullshit,” to the news editor.

Sound advice. But it has been causing me problems as a freelancer sitting several thousand miles away from the foreign desk. The issue is that a quiet word in the ear of my foreign editor that such and such a story is rubbish, doesn’t stop some hotshot writer from London bigfooting me or another freelancer offering said story to the desk. Often the first I’ll know about it is reading my own paper online.

I raise this now because I deliberately haven’t written about the “impending famine” in Ethiopia. Charities have been taking journalists on junkets to view stick-thin children and talking up the crisis in terms of global warming and natural disasters. This was not enough for me. If I was going to write about an Ethiopian hunger I wanted to discuss the country’s expensive wars in Somalia, Ogaden and Eritrea, its abuse of human rights in Ogaden and its denial of drought. That was the way the to do the story properly.

Meanwhile a steady stream of wannabe Michael Buerkes was filing stories such as this, in my own paper:

Surprisingly, when The Times visited the region, the fields were alive with maize and most afternoons a warm rain fell. “Here the problem is acute,” said Jean de Cambry, the emergency co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in southern Ethiopia. “It is very surprising and very strange, because everything is so green. But food stocks at household level are empty or close to empty.”

Or this imaginative way of producing a famine story in the LA Times:

They call it the green hunger. Four-foot cornstalks sprout from rain-soaked earth, and wind billows fields of teff, the staple Ethiopian grain. Goats and cattle are getting fat on lush grasses – but the children are still dying.

Each time these stories appeared I would call colleagues to ask whether it was time to go to Ethiopia. Each time they said not yet - including one TV reporter who had just filed a harrowing account of children starving, but had to admit it wasn’t really as bad as all that. A day’s filming was canned because the area was too green.

So it wasn’t a massive surprise when I received the following press release from the Irish aid agency Goal:

Ann Bourke, one of the most experienced of GOAL’s field personnel, reported with optimistic news from Ethiopia today. Ann stated that the interventions of aid agencies such as GOAL, and fact that it has started to rain have had very beneficial effects on the famine in Ethiopia. Although it is too early to be sure, indications are that a major famine may have been adverted.

This is clearly great news for the people of Ethiopia. And it is still early days. And maybe it was the reporting and PR work by charities that averted a crisis. But at a time when fundraisers complain about compassion fatigue could it be another example of journalists putting their critical faculties to one side in favour of reporting a worst-case scenario peddled by NGOs with an interest in collecting cash? Did we jump when they cried wolf? I wasn’t the only Nairobi-based reporter who decided not to go to Ethiopia, only to see a colleague based on another continent file an “Ethiopia Starves” piece.

It all reminds me of another piece of advice I picked up at The Herald, where the editor was fond of shooting down stories in conference with a terse:"That might be what they say, but is it true?"

- - -

Note the following comment from Simon [Visitor] at Rob Crilly's post:

Of course it was true, it was only averted because United States has to arm twist every western nation to pump a lot of money to prop the murderous regime they are backing. You have only to see how much Australia, Austria, Canada, EU, Uk, US etc have to donate just in this year. What amazes me is why is no one reporting on where the funding, so far given to Ethiopia (more than $25Billion) since the current government came into power is ending.Not to mention the $12 Billion ear marked to be given for the year 2008-2011 How come more arid places like Sudan and Eritrea are coping much better with out hardly any Aid ?

According to HRH Ethiopia gets at least $2billion with no accountability
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/06/12/ethiop19029.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/08/news/arms.php
http:/www.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&article=112524&d=7&m=8&y=2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5016834.stm

- - -

Postscript from author of Ethiopia Watch

The above commentary is copied here because one of the reasons I have a series of blogs on Africa is to track and chronicle various news reports on alleged genocide and famine in Africa in order for me to study and learn about how and why such things occur and how they are reported by mainstream media.

Check out the following copy of my post at Niger Watch (sister site of this blog, Ethiopia Watch) dated April 06, 2006:

Niger to block foreign press reporting food crisis - What's up with Mr Tandja?

Today, Reuters says Niger's government denied it had stripped the journalists of their accreditation, saying it had summoned them to explain that their coverage was one-sided and did not present the country's efforts to solve its problems:

"We did not expel the BBC. We summoned the team to say their report had caused shock and Niger is more than just recurring food shortages," said Fogue Aboubacar, secretary-general at the Culture, Arts and Communication Ministry.

"Niger is also about the authorities attempts to solve these problems and one must stop focusing on the negative side," he added. "That is what happened in 2005 and we are not going to tolerate it, especially as harvests have been good."

"Be it the BBC, CNN or any other media, we will not hand out more accreditation on the food situation," he said.

And this copy of a post at Niger Watch dated August 06, 2005:

Now we know part of the answer to: Why starving in Niger?

Huge thanks to Tim Worstall for pointing out the following post by Aunty Marianne in Brussels, Belgium who, in her blog Tomato And Basil Sandwiches describes her occupation in 'government' as 'spending your money on humanitarian aid'.

Here is the post, copied in full, just incase Aunty Marianne decides for one reason or another to delete it, as it helps answer my question Why starving in Niger?

August 06, 2005 - OK, I'm fed up and others aren't

I am fed up to the back teeth with this whingeing about donors not reacting on the Niger famine. The EU have been actively looking for aid partners to spend 4.6 million euros since April. The reason why people are starving in Niger now, in August, is because some of those who asked for it to be made available for their feeding projects didn't get their proposals for actual projects in before early July. I also know for a fact that one of the organisations has a massive "emergency reserve" lying in wait for the famine almost certainly about to happen in a certain southern African country, a reserve that could have easily been tapped and replenished. They did not need to wait for donor funds to react.

We've had to release another 1.7m euros now that IMHO we wouldn't have had to, had they taken the first lot in time, because now, for example, therapeutic milk has to be airfreighted in instead of sea/road-shipped, and that's more expensive than the milk itself.

I am disgusted with the blamestorming around this famine, especially when the primary culprits are the ones pointing the finger, I'm disgusted at the waste of time and therefore money and all the additional suffering that it has caused to should-be-beneficiaries, and I wish the reputable media would check their facts better before blindly repeating press releases.

As always, this is just my personal view of things, and in no way necessarily represents the position of my employers.
posted by Aunty Marianne @ 10:59 AM

[My first reaction to Aunty Marianne's post was disgust but not surprise because of what happened in Darfur last year when the UN and its World Food Programme admitted they acted too slowly and had to resort to costly air drops despite the long predicted rainy season. There is something terribly wrong with emergency aid responses and the way they are funded and reported.

A week or so ago I saw a top British politician (Hilary Benn I think) interviewed on UK television news. It may have been a Channel 4 News interview by Jon Snow who asked point blank why the long predicted food crisis in Niger was not responded to. The politician concluded by saying the "system" was not perfect and needed overhauling.

I say, once again, there is no accountability. Whoever is responsible for this scandal, not to mention the outrageous waste of precious public funds, is getting away with murder. Sorry for putting it so strongly but it is sickening to know the money for emergency food aid is there but the people entrusted by the public don't respond in time and then blame donors for not paying up. Of course, it then creates more publicity and an outcry which generates more funds before the food aid has even been delivered. Meanwhile, people starve to death and suffer unimagineable pain, grief and misery and the excuse all because the "system" needs overhauling. If heads rolled over this, the nameless "system" might get overhauled sooner.]

- - -

Lastly, this copy of a post at Niger Watch dated September 01, 2005:

Can aid do more harm than good? Who is spinning lies?

As noted here in previous posts, Niger's President Mamadou Tandja recently said his country was experiencing food shortages but not a famine. He accused aid agencies of exaggerating the food crisis for their own gain, raising serious issues about the way aid emergencies are handled.

American blogger Ethan Zuckerman points out that Henri Astier, a BBC correspondent, after talking to aid workers and experts on African aid, concluded, on balance, that President Tanja was probably right and quoted Professor William Easterly of NYU, as saying: "There were localised food shortages this year - but they were not particularly acute, and are now easing. What Niger is experiencing is not a sudden catastrophe, but chronic malnutrition that makes people vulnerable to rises in food prices."

Note, the report also quotes Professor Easterly as saying "I think NGOs and rich country media do have an incentive to paint too simplistic and bleak a picture, as was the case in Niger's food crisis."

So, going by the above [which does not appear to touch on issues of African politics, land ownership rights, corruption, looting, violence and arms dealing] they seem to be saying:

food aid can distort 'functioning' markets, causing increased food insecurity in the long term;

regional solutions are needed to solve shortages that are not regional famine - so long as participating governments allow that trade to happen and international donors are able to help subsidise food to poorer areas when neccesary.

Note, Ethan praises the BBC saying it provides a terrific space where people from outside Africa can discover, if they listen, that their proposed solutions are often - strongly and validly - opposed by the people they're trying to help.

Unless I have missed something, there still seems to be no proper explanation of who was behind the surge in alarming media reports falsely accusing the world of turning its back on the starving people of Niger.

Who is doing the spin? And why are they getting away with such misleading news? My guess is we are left to believe aid agencies are the culprits. Propaganda is everywhere in the media. It's hard to believe much of what is published. There is so little investigative reporting, the media treats us like simpletons, feeding us by the minute with nuggets of junk.

- - -

Type the word FAMINE into the search box in top left corner of Niger Watch (or click here) and scroll through reports on famine in Niger.

PS Note to Rob Crilly: Sorry I've cribbed yet another of your blog posts but I fear that any links to great posts may, within a few years, end up leading to a blank 'not found' page.

"In Ethiopia alone, more than 6 million people need emergency food aid" (UN) - "4 million Ethiopians are now estimated to need food assistance" (UN)

UN health agency calls for extra $8 million to help aid operations in Ethiopia:

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) is appealing for an additional $8 million to fund its humanitarian preparedness and response operations in Ethiopia, where prolonged drought has left hundreds of thousands of the Horn of Africa country's poorest people at serious risk of malnutrition or disease.

UN aid agencies have sounded the alarm about the humanitarian situation across the Horn of Africa, and as many as 4 million Ethiopians are now estimated to need food assistance.

Source: UN News Centre report - UN health agency calls for extra $8 million to help aid operations in Ethiopia - 03 October 2008
- - -

New ‘Green Revolution' needed to combat hunger in Africa, UN relief chief says:

A new Green Revolution is urgently needed in Africa to curb the suffering of the most vulnerable people, according to the top United Nations relief official, who recently saw first-hand how the current dire food crisis is affecting Ethiopia.

Unlike the “epic, largely man-made famine” the country faced over two decades ago, the current situation in the Horn of Africa affecting 16 million people offers “a glimpse of what much of our world might be like if we do not deal effectively with the huge challenges of rising food and fuel prices, climate change, environmental stress and population pressures,” John Holmes wrote in an op-ed column [HOLMES: Food crisis in Africa] published in yesterday’s Washington Times.

“Great swathes of the developing world could be pushed to the margins of survival,” he cautioned.

Both short- and long-term strategies are needed to address the problem, wrote Mr. Holmes, who serves both as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and as Emergency Relief Coordinator.

“Africa, and Ethiopia, need a new Green Revolution – one that is agriculturally productive, economically profitable and environmentally sustainable,” the column noted.

“The time to do it is now, before the effects of rising population, more erratic weather, commodity price shocks and depleting fossil fuel resources cause further massive suffering for the world’s poorest.”

In Ethiopia alone, more than 6 million people need emergency food aid due to the failure of this year’s harvest, triggered by yet another drought. The situation has been exacerbated by both skyrocketing food prices, which have shot up 500 per cent in some parts of the country since last year, and conflict, which has thwarted the largely pastoralist population from selling their animals and purchasing food.

Short-run measures to alleviate the crisis in Ethiopia must include cooperation between the Government and relief organizations and increased donor support, the Coordinator said.

“But we must not stop there,” he wrote. “Beyond food aid for today, we above all need to help people feed themselves tomorrow.”

To this end, Mr. Holmes said that greater emphasis must be placed on reducing the impact of climate-induced crises.

He also urged greater investments in developing countries’ agricultural sectors “to reverse the neglect” of the past three decades.

“Well-targeted investments can make a life-changing difference,” he said, pointing to examples such as better drought management techniques, crop adaptation and improved access to credit.

Source: UN News Centre report - New ‘Green Revolution' needed to combat hunger in Africa, UN relief chief says - 01 October 2008

US warships surround Ukrainian ship hijacked nr Somalia: Cargo for Sudan - Somali Islamic rebel group bans operations of aid agencies CARE & IMS

A Somali Islamist rebel group said on Friday that it has banned two international aid agencies which they accused of anti-Islam activities from operating in areas controlled by their militias in south Somalia.

It also has given warnings to others.

Spokesman for the Islamist Al-shabaab movement said that Care International and International Medical Corps (IMS) have been involved in "immoral and bad activities" that are against the teaching of Islam. He did not elaborate.

Source: MOGADISHU, October 03 2008 Xinhua report - Somali insurgent group bans operations of two aid agencies. Excerpt:

 "We cannot accept such activities by these two organizations to continue under our rule. We have also given warning to other international NGOs," Sheik Muqtar Robow, Al-Shabaab spokesman told Xinhua.

The Al-shabaab is one of the hard-line insurgency groups that have been waging deadly attacks on Ethiopian troops backing Somali government forces since the allied forces ousted an Islamist administration in South and central Somalia in December 2006.

The group's fighters are in control of a number of regions in south Somalia including Kismayu, the third largest city in Somalia, where they have been ruling according to the Koran ever since they took over the port city in August.

Related reports

Sudan Watch Thursday, October 02, 2008 : US warships surround Ukrainian ship hijacked nr Somalia: Cargo for Sudan - Moscow sends warship - Germany joins EU forces - Kenyan official arrested


Sudan Watch Friday, October 03, 2008 : Three killed in pirates' shoot-out aboard Russian arms ship - UK to attack al-Qaeda pirates

Two Medecins du Monde aid workers kidnapped in Ogaden, Ethiopia and taken to Somalia's central region of Galguduud by well-armed gunmen

Two aid workers working for Medecins du Monde in Ethiopia have been abducted from the Ogaden region that borders Somalia, the French aid agency says.

Eyewitnesses say the man and woman, whose nationalities are not known, have been taken to Somalia's central region of Galguduud by well-armed gunmen.

The aid workers in Ogaden, Ethiopia's Somali region which is suffering from a severe drought, were kidnapped on Monday.

"The organisation is in permanent contact with the authorities, its team on the ground as well as other actors on the field," AFP news agency quotes Medecins du Monde as saying in a statement.

Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991 and ethnic Somali rebels have been fighting an insurgency for years in Ogaden.

Full story by BBC News Tuesday, 23 September 2008 14:21 UK: Aid workers kidnapped in Ethiopia.

MBEKI IN CRISIS - Jonathan Rugman's film from Ethiopia: 'Nomads blame Ethiopian military for starvation'

Excerpt from today's Channel 4 News Snowmail, authored by Britain's top investigative news reporter and presenter Jon Snow, Friday 19 September 2008:

In South Africa the bell has been tolled for Thabo Mbeki. The ANC have told him to resign as president and if he doesn’t they have said they will pass a vote of no confidence. It’s a moment that has all the hallmarks of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Mbeki, the exile, has always fought both his own conscience and his foes, many of whom are people who slogged through the battle against Apartheid inside the country.

He’s an intellectual and for a president, an honest man, but he made a catastrophic and alienating mistake over the origins of AIDS and has never recovered. Now after years of building difficulties he stands accused of conspiring to get his anticipated successor, Jacob Zuma, prosecuted for corruption and so barred from succeeding him.

More snippets from the Snowmail:

If you want to reply to Snowmail please email news@channel4.com and put Snowmail in the subject header.

If you missed Jonathan Rugman's film from Ethiopia last night, catch it here:
http://tinyurl.com/4gr4ak

Catch Tony Blair on the Daily show
http://tinyurl.com/4ev46m

McCain v Obama: ad wars
http://tinyurl.com/52v3jl

Note, Tony Blair makes a rare television appearance across the pond. He is about to start his teaching career at Yale, marking the occasion with an appearance on satirical US news programme The Daily Show (see above link) which will be shown on More 4 at 8.30 tonight.
- - -

UPDATE: SATURDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 2008

SA's Mbeki says he will step down (BBC)

BBC report Saturday 20 September 2008 - excerpt:

South African President Thabo Mbeki will accept a call to resign by the governing African National Congress (ANC), his spokesman has said.

Mukoni Ratshitanga said Mr Mbeki would leave his post once "all constitutional requirements have been met".

It comes days after a High Court judge suggested that Mr Mbeki may have interfered in a corruption case against his rival, ANC leader Jacob Zuma.

Mr Zuma was expected to succeed Mr Mbeki in scheduled elections next year.

Photo: Mr Mbeki has denied interfering in the case against Jacob Zuma (AFP/BBC)
- - -

MBEKI AGREES TO STEP DOWN

South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki has agreed to step down. The metaphorical pistol having been put to his temple by his own party the ANC. His position, it seems, untenable after a long-running battle in and out of the law courts with his arch-rival Jacob Zuma. - Channel 4 News Tomomail, Saturday 20 September 2008.

Ethiopian needy 'not getting aid' (BBC)

Food aid is not getting to the people in Ethiopia's troubled Somali region quick enough, a top US official says.

Full story: BBC September 19, 2008 Ethiopian needy 'not getting aid'.

UN says Ethiopian food shortage now alarming

The UN humanitarian office said Monday that food shortages in Ethiopia have reached alarming levels following widespread drought in the country. - September 9, 2008 (Topix.net)
- - -

UN humanitarian chief visits Ethiopia



Photo: John Holmes, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (UN News Centre)

Source: September 3, 2008 UN News Centre report entitled Ethiopia’s food crisis tops agenda on final day of UN humanitarian chief’s visit
- - -

Food security in drought-stricken Ethiopia at alarming levels, warns UN

The food security situation in Ethiopia has deteriorated to alarming levels in the wake of drought conditions throughout much of the Horn of Africa country, and relief agencies are grappling with shortages of supplies, the United Nations warned today.

Some 4.6 million people in Ethiopia are need of food aid due to a combination of drought and high food prices, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes, who just returned from a visit to Ethiopia, told reporters last week that it was clear that “the crisis remains very severe, and the numbers of people affected are continuing to rise.”

Source: September 8, 2008 UN News Centre report entitled Ethiopia’s food crisis tops agenda on final day of UN humanitarian chief’s visit

Missing Somalia journalists named: Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi, Nigel Brenan, Amanda Lindhout (and driver Mahad)

Missing since Saturday August 23, 2008:

Somalia journalists Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi, Nigel Brenan (pictured here below), Amanda Lindhout and their driver Mahad.

Are they being held by a militia near Mogadishu?

See August 24, 2008 BBC report 'Missing Somalia journalists named' - edited excerpt:



Photo: Australian photographer Nigel Brenan went missing near Mogadishu (AFP/BBC)

An Australian journalist and his Canadian colleague are missing, feared kidnapped, in Somalia.

Somalia's National Union of Journalists said they had been abducted along with a Somali reporter [Abdifatah Elmi] and their driver [named as Mahad].

In a statement released on its website, The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) says it "has been investigating the case of the abduction since it emerged", and is trying to discover the whereabouts of the journalists and their driver.

The NUSOJ said it received information on Sunday morning that the two Westerners and their Somali colleagues were being held by a militia in a north-eastern district of Mogadishu.

"We demand that those holding Abdifatah Mohammed Elmi, Nigel Brenan and Amanda Lindhout free them unconditionally and immediately," he [Omar Faruk Osman NUSOJ Secretary General] said, adding "we are worried about their safety as we have had no contact with anybody saying they are holding three journalists and their driver."

Full story 'Missing Somalia journalists named'
Page last updated at 15:39 GMT, Sunday, 24 August 2008 16:39 UK
news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/world/africa/7580021.stm

Donors give $847 mln to cut poverty in Ethiopia

July 4, 2008 Reuters report (via Sudan Tribune online July 6, 2008 'Donors give $847 mln to cut poverty in Ethiopia'):

(ADDIS ABABA) - Donors funding Ethiopia’s programmes to cut poverty said on Friday they would provide $847 million in 2008/09 for projects such as free education and distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets.

The World Bank and the UK Department of International Development (DFID) jointly gave the money to Ethiopia’s Protection of Basic Services (PBS) programme. Last year, they gave $573 million.

"After reviewing the results of PBS implementation since 2006, both the government and development partners are of the view that the programme has been successful and will be crucial in supporting Ethiopia’s plan towards poverty alleviation," said Paul Ackroyd, head of DFID in Ethiopia.

Keniche Ohashi, the World Bank head said the PBS was the largest single development assistance in Ethiopia and that it would help the poor country achieve universal goals to halve poverty by 2015.

Under the PBS programme, an extra three million children and 65,000 teachers were now in school since 2006, Ackroyd said.

A total of 24,000 insecticide-treated bed nets have been distributed so far in 2008 compared with 2,700 in 2006 and as a result, new malaria cases have dramatically dropped to 370,315 in 2007 from 780,019 in 2006, he said.

Donors had also raised an extra $200 million out of the $420 million that the government says it requires for humanitarian needs. Efforts were also underway to raise a further $150 million, Ackroyd added.

The fund will distributed to the U.N. World Food Programme and other agencies and will be used to purchase food, fertilizers and for other humanitarian purposes, he said.

World Bank’s Ohashi said his organisation was considering helping Ethiopia with additional resources to mitigate against the external shocks of rising oil prices.

(Reuters)

Sudan Tribune's related reports :
Ethiopia :
- Ethiopia, Somali forces kill 71 militants
- Opposition holds "Forum for Democratic Dialogue in Ethiopia"
- Ethiopia’s Zenawi endorses Mugabe at African summit

Source: http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article27756

Eritrea: Security Council calls for UN fact-finding team to visit Djibouti border

June 29, 2008 - The UN Security Council has called for a fact finding mission to investigate the border disputes between Eritrea and Djibouti. There has been recent fighting on the border. The Council has requested Eritrea to withdraw its forces from the border. DH

Source: AfricaFiles InfoServ - Eastern Region 29/6/08 18:04

The number of Eritrean soldiers who fled to Ethiopia tops 10,000

June 28, 2008 news report by Tesfa-alem Tekle, published at Sudan Tribune Saturday June 28, 2008:

June 27, 2008 (MEKELLE, Ethiopia) - The number of Eritrean soldiers who crossed the borders to Ethiopia and currently being sheltered in Ethiopian camps reach 10,500.Admnstration for Refugees and Returnees Affairs (ARRA) said

“Currently a total of 31,500 Eritreans are being sheltered in Ethiopian camps among whom 10,500 of them are Eritrean soldiers” statement said.

Every day a number of Eritrean soldiers flee to Ethiopian borders in protest to killings, detention and harsh treatment they face back at home.

“The flee soldiers who include higher military officials are under necessary treatment” it said.

Meanwhile three new camps which are built to accommodate increasing influx of Eritreans have gone operational.

Accordingly the new camps built at Tigray and Afar regions have sheltered 5514 Eritreans in a start move.

According to ARRA, the influx of Eritreans to Ethiopia has seen a 25% Increase to that of last year’s and the Eritreans now in camps belong to eight of the the total 9 ethnic groups the nation embraces.

Over the past few years, thousands of Eritreans have been resettled to different western nations with the help of Ethiopian government and international organizations.

Eritrea, a young nation in Africa, with only 4.5 million population is believed to have 250 thousand soldiers, a relative top military build-up in Africa.

(ST)
Related reports :
Eritrea :
- Opposition alliance urges Egypt to stop deporting Eritreans
- Egypt crackdown on African migrants hits Eritreans
- UN looks at disbanding Eritrea/Ethiopia force

Source: http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article27672

Britain pledges 20 million dlrs in Ethiopia food aid

June 9, 2008 (AFP) LONDON - Britain pledged at least 10 million pounds (12.6 million euros, 19.7 million dollars) for Ethiopia on Monday after the east African nation said 4.5 million people were in need of emergency food aid.

A team of officials were due in Ethiopia Tuesday to assess the situation in the drought-stricken country, a spokeswoman for the Department for International Development (DFID) told AFP.

The money will "be going to partners, for example UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) or the World Food Programme, or various other NGOs who can support supplementary and therapeutic feeding programmes," she said.

"It's still to be decided how it's (the money) to be allocated, but at the moment, those are the most urgent needs ... We're taking advice on where our assistance is best placed," she added.

An Ethiopian government body said last week that the number of Ethiopians in need of emergency food aid had risen to 4.5 million after one of the country's worst droughts in years.

Monday's pledge of aid was in addition to the five million pounds Britain promised for Ethiopia last month.

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP) 09 Jun 2008 via
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/KKAA-7FG2XL?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P

Somali BBC contributor shot dead

June 7, 2008 BBC News (Saturday 22:26 UK) report:

Gunmen in the southern Somali city of Kismayo have killed a local journalist.

Nasteh Dahir, who worked for both the BBC and Associated Press news agency, was shot in the chest and stomach outside his home.

The National Union of Somali Journalists said it was a "targeted assassination" and that the 26-year-old had received death threats.

Somalia, mired in chaos and violence since 1991, is among the world's most dangerous countries for journalists.

At least nine other journalists have been killed in Somalia since February 2007, according to the human-rights group Amnesty International.

Islamist insurgents are suspected in the attack on Mr Dahir, correspondents say.

At least 13 people, mainly civilians, die in an attack by insurgents on the African Union base in the Somali capital

May 27, 2008 BBC News World Africa report 'Deadly Somali raid on peace force':

Only Uganda and Burundi have sent peacekeepers to Somalia

At least 13 people, mainly civilians, have died in an attack by Islamist insurgents on an African Union (AU) base in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

AU mission spokesman Baridgye Bahuko said two insurgents were among those killed during the fierce battle.

The UN and aid agencies say some 6,000 civilians have died during clashes in Mogadishu in the past year.

So far only 2,400 AU peacekeepers have been sent to Somalia, of a planned 8,000-strong force.

Ethiopian troops are also in Somalia supporting the transitional government.

Since the Ethiopians helped oust the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in December 2006, Islamist fighters have used guerrilla warfare to target government installations, Ethiopian and AU troops in the capital.

Al-Shabab, the militant wing of the UIC, has claimed responsibility for Monday's daring attack on the AU base.

Correspondents say at least 11 civilians died during the battle most of them were hit by stray bullets and mortars that landed on their homes.

A alliance of opposition groups based in Eritrea - which includes the Islamists - has refused to have face-to-face talks with the government until there is an agreed timetable for Ethiopian troops to leave Somalia.

The country has been devastated by conflict since 1991 when the former President Mohammed Siad Barre was ousted.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7421357.stm

Ethiopia in Somalia: One year on (Martin Plaut, BBC)

Copy of BBC News report Friday, 28 December 2007, 00:25 GMT

By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa analyst

The Ethiopian decision to invade Somalia in December 2006 altered the balance of power in the Horn of Africa.

The Ethiopian army is now fighting on several fronts

On 28 December 2006, they helped government forces capture Islamists from the capital, Mogadishu, which they had controlled for six months.

Ethiopian forces, which had been facing Eritrea along their 1,000km border, but were otherwise confronting few security threats, are now engaged on three fronts.

The forces in Somalia are now bogged down and cannot withdraw, as Prime Minister Meles Zenawi recently acknowledged.

In addition to the conflict in Somalia they now also confront a growing rebellion in the Somali region of Ethiopia from the Ogaden National Liberation Front.

Knox Chitiyo, head of the Africa programme at the Royal United Services Institute in London, believes the Ethiopian military position is increasingly difficult.

"The government now has daggers pointing at it from all directions," he says.

"It is facing a multi-front war with no prospect of a military victory."

The invasion has:

- Left Ethiopia bogged down in Somalia
- Forced around 600,000 Somalis to flee their homes, in what the UN has described as one of the worst humanitarian situations in Africa
- Brought the United States into the conflict, allied to Ethiopia
- Left Eritrea even more isolated from the international community and threatened with being declared a terrorist state by Washington.

The US says it opposed the Ethiopian invasion, although it certainly supplied assistance to the Ethiopian military once the invasion had happened, and used its AC-130 gunships to try to kill senior Islamists on at least one occasion in January 2007.

Many Somalis are opposed to the Ethiopian presence

The US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer said: "We urged the Ethiopian military not to go into Somalia."

This is acknowledged by Ethiopian officials, who say the then head of US Central Command, General John Abizaid told them the invasion would be a mistake, and warned that Somalia would become "Ethiopia's Iraq."

Others analysts are not so apocalyptic. Ethiopia argued it had no alternative but to confront the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) after it took power in Mogadishu in mid-2006, because of the Islamists' alleged links with al-Qaeda.

The declaration of a jihad against Addis Ababa by UIC leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys was seen as the last straw.

Human cost

But even if the UIC was routed, it has now re-formed and has banded together with other forces in the Eritrean-based Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia.

Sally Healy of the Royal Institute of International Affairs argues that even if Ethiopia has made some security gains, the suffering of ordinary Somalis has been disproportionately high.

"The cost for the people of Mogadishu has been unacceptable," she says.

This reflects the view of the United Nations, which now considers Somalia the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa.

The conflict is taking a heavy toll on Somali civilians

Peter Smerdon of the World Food Programme says it will have to try to feed at least 1.2 million Somalis during 2008.

"More than 600,000 people were forced from their homes in Mogadishu in 2007 by fighting and the worst cereals harvest in 13 years in Middle and Lower Shabelle, traditionally the most agriculturally productive regions of the whole country," Mr Smerdon says.

He warns the numbers needing food aid could well rise if there is continued insecurity and any kind of repeat of the floods and bad harvests seen in recent years.

New initiative

So how might the Somali crisis be resolved?

Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced this year

Ethiopia has said it would consider withdrawing its troops if an international peacekeeping force were put in place, but UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said the situation in the country makes such a deployment "neither realistic nor viable".

The UN believes a new initiative is required, bringing together Somalia's Transitional Federal Government and the opposition.

This proposal was put forward by the UN's senior Somali official, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, when he addressed the UN Security Council earlier this month.

"These discussions should preferably be held in a location close to Somalia or in one where most observers following the situation in the country are based," he said.

"I am preparing the agenda, identifying a possible list of participants, and the timing for this process."

Ms Healy says this is really the only way forward.

Until an exit strategy can be achieved for Ethiopia, its troops will remain in occupation of the country - providing a cause around which the Islamists can rally.

"The Somali people must create a situation that would allow the Ethiopians to leave," she says.

But 16 years after the country last had a functioning national government, there seems little prospect of President Abdullahi Yusuf asserting control of the whole country in 2008.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7155868.stm

Rebel attack won’t discourage Chinese investment in Ethiopia-PM

May 16, 2007 Reuters report in full (via Sudan Tribune Thursday 17 May, 2007, entitled 'Rebel attack won’t discourage Chinese investment in Ethiopia-PM'):

May 16, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA) - A rebel attack on an oil facility in Ethiopia that killed nine Chinese workers and 64 locals has not dented Beijing’s investment in the Horn of Africa nation, the Ethiopian leader said on Wednesday.

"The Chinese have made it abundantly clear that they are not going to be scared away," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told Reuters. "On the contrary, they are increasing their investment in our country."

Chinese personnel returned quickly to the exploration project they run in the remote south-eastern Ogaden area after the attack, he said. "We have immediately after the incident taken effective measures to ensure it does not happen again."

The pre-dawn raid in late April was one of the Ogaden National Liberation Front’s (ONLF) highest profile operations.

The attack highlighted the perils of Beijing’s growing investment push in Africa, which it regards as a crucial source of raw materials for its booming economy. In Ethiopia, the Chinese are mainly involved in the construction business.

Meles’s government wants more foreign investment and he said the attack should not have a lasting impact.

"I would understand that some foreign investors might be a bit worried about going to the place where the massacre took place," he said.

"But I do not think it will have any long-term impact. There have been no such incidents in the main economic centres of the country. And here in Addis, I would argue that it is probably one of the safest cities on earth."

WORLD TRADE CLUB

Meles confirmed Ethiopia was seeking membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and was "reasonably optimistic" of acceptance.

"I hope it will be a speedy process. It can take many years, but I very much hope that this will not be one of those very protracted processes. They tell me that two to three years would be a reasonably expeditious process," he said.

Economists say Ethiopia may come under pressure first to open its financial sector to foreign investors and relinquish state control of telecommunications.

Meles said: "I do not think they should be obstacles. As you know, we are a least developed country, and least developed countries benefit from what is called a special and differential treatment (in the WTO)."

Africa’s top coffee producer and sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation, Ethiopia was on track for its projected economic growth rate of near 10 percent this 2006-07 year, compared with 9 percent last year, Meles said.

"We expect to maintain the momentum next year too. Our hope and expectation is that it will be a double-digit growth rate. It is still agriculture leading the growth. But industry and services are also picking up."

Inflation — a big problem for Ethiopia’s 79 million people — was "unfortunately still too high for our taste", said Meles, with an expected 10-12 percent rate this year, after 12 percent in 2005-06.

"But I hope it will be lower next year," he said.

The most vulnerable group, the urban poor, were being helped by measures including food subsidies, said Meles, who receives generally high marks from analysts and diplomats for his pro-poor policies.

(Reuters)

AU peacekeepers killed in Somalia while on patrol in the north of Mogadishu

May 16, 2007 BBC News report 'AU peacekeepers killed in Somalia' published online Wednesday, 16 May 2007:

Four African Union soldiers have been killed after a roadside bomb struck their convoy while on patrol at the north of Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.

AU spokesman Paddy Ankunda said five other soldiers were injured in the explosion targeted at the peacekeepers.

The attack is the deadliest on the peacekeepers since 1,600 Uganda soldiers deployed to the city in March.

A proposed force of 8,000 AU soldiers is due to take over security duties from the Ethiopian army.

Ethiopia's troops have been in Mogadishu since December at the invitation of Somalia's transitional government fighting Islamist insurgents and clan militiamen.

The attack comes only a day after Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf held talks with his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni in Kampala over the mission.

"We lost four and five were wounded. It was a roadside bomb and its intention was to hit the peacekeepers," Mr Ankunda told Reuters news agency.

He told the BBC that the wounded would be evacuated to Uganda for treatment.

The interim President's spokesman Hussein Mohamed Mohamud blamed the attack on Al-Qaeda elements still residing in Mogadishu and said they were hunting for them.

Cinema attack

Earlier, four people were killed in the Gedo region, south of the capital, Mogadishu, when an unknown man threw an explosive at a cinema hall.

Baardheere Police chief Mohammed Yare said 20 others were seriously injured during the attack which took place while they were watching an Indian film.

"We do not know who is responsible for the attack but are investigating," Mr Yare told the Associated Press news agency.

On Monday, a similar blast occurred at a different cinema hall but there were no casualties during the incident.

Health officials in Gedo are battling to treat the victims of the attack and lack resources.

"Most have serious wounds and we are trying to help though we do not have enough medicine," Dr Bashir Ali of Shifo Hospital where most of the casualties were taken said. During the six-month rule in Mogadishu and southern parts of Somalia, the Union of Islamic Courts banned cinemas, television viewing and music.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Warning

On Tuesday, the US and the AU warned Ethiopia not to withdraw its troops from Somalia before peacekeepers are deployed to replace them.

AU commission chief Alpha Oumar Konare said it would be a "catastrophe" if Ethiopia pulled out too soon.

US Africa envoy Jendayi Frazer said it would probably be several months before the full peacekeeping force arrived.

Ethiopia's prime minister says he wants to withdraw all his troops, after they helped oust the Union of Islamic Courts.

Somalia has been without an effective national government for 16 years, controlled by rival militias and awash with guns.

Releases

Two foreign aid workers kidnapped last week in northern Somalia have been released.

Reports from the semi-autonomous region of Puntland say the pair - one Kenyan and one British - were being flown to Nairobi after their kidnappers handed them over to local elders.

Both men are employees of the London-based charity, Care International.

Its director in Somalia, David Gilmour, said they were relieved that the issue was resolved with nobody being harmed.

One of the kidnappers told Reuters news agency by satellite telephone that they had released the aid workers following successful negotiations with the Puntland authorities; but he did not elaborate.

Ethiopian rebels kill 70 at Chinese-run oil field

By Jeffrey Gettleman
International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Ethiopian rebels kill 70 at Chinese-run oil field

NAIROBI, Kenya: Separatist rebels stormed a Chinese-run oil field in eastern Ethiopia on Tuesday, killing more than 70 people, including nine Chinese workers, in one of Ethiopia's worst rebel attacks in years.

Dozens of gunmen crept up to the oil field at dawn and unleashed a barrage of machine-gun fire at Ethiopian soldiers posted outside, Chinese and Ethiopian officials said. After a fierce hourlong battle, the rebels rushed away, taking at least six Chinese hostages with them.

Ethiopia, a close ally of the United States, has been racked by separatist movements for years. But the severity of this attack seemed to unnerve Ethiopian officials, who usually minimize any threats to their control.

"It was a massacre," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in a televised address on Tuesday night. "It was cold-blooded murder."

The Ogaden National Liberation Front, a militant group fighting for control of eastern Ethiopia, immediately claimed responsibility, circulating an e-mail message that said, "We will not allow the mineral resources of our people to be exploited by this regime or any firm that it enters into an illegal contract."

The front said that its primary target was the Ethiopian soldiers guarding the oil field and that the Chinese workers had been killed by explosions during the fighting.

Given China's drive to extract oil wherever it can be found, Chinese workers are often dispatched to conflict zones, and several have been kidnapped in the volatile Niger Delta region of Nigeria. In other parts of Africa, like Zambia, China's investments have brought resentment from local politicians and residents.

As for the workers kidnapped on Tuesday, the rebel group's statement said: "ONLF forces rounding up Ethiopian military prisoners following the battle came across six Chinese workers. They have been removed from the battlefield for their own safety and are being treated well." But the group did not say anything about releasing them.

Ethiopian officials, who confirmed that 65 government soldiers had been killed, said they were rushing reinforcements to the area and vowed to crush the rebels. But the country's military is stretched thin.

Thousands of Ethiopian troops are bogged down in Somalia, where they face increasingly intense resistance. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber attacking Ethiopian troops killed seven civilians in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, the second time in a week that suicide attacks were used. More than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the past month in heavy shelling between Somali insurgents and Ethiopian-led troops.

Ethiopia, with covert American help, intervened in Somalia in December to prop up Somalia's weak transitional government and defeat Islamist forces that had controlled much of Somalia and were widely suspected of sheltering anti-Ethiopian rebel groups like the Ogaden National Liberation Front.

Ethiopian troops in Somalia recently rounded up dozens of suspected rebels, and human rights observers say the Ethiopians have also imprisoned — and tortured — innocent civilians.

Such tactics, analysts say, may now be coming back to haunt the Ethiopians.

"This is the rebels' response," said Ted Dagne, a specialist in African affairs for the Congressional Research Service. "They are fighting a classic guerrilla war against the government, and those widespread detentions became another one of their grievances."

The Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia is a hot and inhospitable place, home to Somali-speaking nomads who have always identified more with neighboring Somalia than with Ethiopia. Part of the reason is religion. Ethiopia's leaders have traditionally been Christian, while Ogadenis are almost all Muslims.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front, formed 23 years ago, was briefly aligned with the current Ethiopian government but broke away in the mid-1990s after it was clear that the Ogaden region would not be given autonomy.

Western military analysts say the front has a few thousand lightly armed fighters, who get their weapons and training from Eritrea, Ethiopia's neighbor and bitter enemy. In the galaxy of rebel groups roaming nearly every corner of Ethiopia, these fighters have been considered a midlevel threat to the government.

Oil, though, seems to be its new focus. In August, the Web-savvy front issued an electronic threat against a Malaysian oil company that was contemplating drilling in Ethiopia.

The oil field that the rebels raided Tuesday was run by a division of China's government-owned energy giant, the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation. According to Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, the Ethiopian rebels briefly seized control of the oil field before kidnapping seven Chinese workers, who were among the 37 Chinese and 120 Ethiopians employed there.

In Jijiga, a nearby city, residents said Ethiopian soldiers were mustering for a huge counterstrike.

"There are federal soldiers and city police everywhere on the streets," said a businessman named Biruk. "People are scared."

Last month, the Ogaden National Liberation Front accused the Ethiopian government of burning an Ogadeni village to the ground. It said that government soldiers had gone after civilians, not fighters, and that "the ONLF will respond swiftly and decisively to this barbaric act."

Nato show of strength off Somalia

Six ships from Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany and the US are on the first circumnavigation of Africa by a Nato naval group.



Sep 21, 2007 report by Nick Childs, BBC world affairs correspondent. Excerpt:

Just over a month ago the Nato force began its circumnavigation of Africa - a first for the alliance.

The ships sailed down the west coast, and conducted operations in the Gulf of Guinea - another area of concern.

They also took part in what Nato called "highly successful" exercises with the South African Navy - an emerging regional maritime power.

The Nato deployment is further evidence that the alliance is seeking to adopt a broader security mission beyond its old Cold War role, and that the major Western powers are taking a new and increasing interest in the security issues in and around Africa.

Humanitarian situation in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region worsens - UN

AP report in full - via Sudan Tribune 20 Sep 2007:

September 19, 2007 (ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia) — The United Nations said Wednesday that the situation in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region has "deteriorated rapidly," and called for an independent investigation into the humanitarian issues there.

The U.N. sent a fact-finding mission to the Ogaden in the country’s volatile east from Aug. 30 to Sept. 6.

"The mission observed the recent fighting has led to a worsening humanitarian situation, in which the price of food has nearly doubled," the U.N. said in a statement released late Wednesday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

The mission also called for a substantial increase in emergency food aid to the impoverished region where rebels have been fighting for increased autonomy for more than a decade.

The U.N. mission was sent after months of fighting that followed a crackdown ordered by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The government says the rebels, who killed 74 members of a Chinese-run oil exploration team, are terrorists, funded by its archenemy Eritrea.

The rebels have accused the Ethiopian government of genocide - a charge the government denies. In a statement on Sept. 13, the front said the government was punishing civilians for the rebel activities and that the fact-finding mission had not visited areas where war crimes were being committed.

"The Ethiopian regime’s policy in Ogaden continues to be a campaign of state-sponsored terror that largely avoids engagements with ONLF forces and instead focuses on collectively punishing our civilian population," the statement said. "Victims of the regime’s war crimes include victims of rape, torture, gunshot wounds and those fleeing burnt villages," it said.

The front called on the international community to stop "yet another preventable African genocide," and urged the U.N. to investigate further in the region, saying the recent trip had been too tightly controlled by the government.

Bereket Simon, the special adviser to the prime minister, dismissed the rebels’ claims after the statement was issued last week.

"They said it is good that the U.N. has sent the fact-finding mission. And now when the facts from the ground are found to be not supporting their claims, they are fighting the fact-finding mission," he said.

The group is fighting for greater political rights for the region, which is ethnically Somali.

G9 and the People's Republic of Bono

G8 should be renamed G9, writes Brendan O'Neill at spiked-online.com June 13, 2007. Heh, power to the people, bring it on.

Here is a copy in full incase weblink to article "Welcome to the People's Republic of Bono" becomes broken:

The G8 should change its name to the G9. Because if this year’s summit in Heiligendamm, Germany was anything to go by, there’s a new member of the pack.

Alongside the eight most industrialised nations on Earth who make up the ‘Group of Eight’ – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US, who between them represent around 65 per cent of the world economy – there was a ninth stately presence at Heiligendamm. It didn’t actually sit at the summit itself, but it did have ‘numerous sources at the negotiating table’, to such an extent that it felt like ‘we have the place bugged, because everybody tells us [what is going on]’, said the ninth power (1). It also held meetings with most of the world leaders, and severely chastised those who refused to meet it. When Canadian PM Stephen Harper said he was too busy to meet with the ninth power he was accused of ‘blocking progress’. ‘Canada has become a laggard’, the ninth power declared (2). It also passed judgement on the proceedings: its ‘satisfaction’, ‘relief’, ‘fury’ or ‘disappointment’ with the G8’s decisions hogged the newspaper headlines during the three-day summit (3). It effectively played the role of a second chamber to the G8, keeping a Lord-like watchful eye on what the Group of Eight Commoners came up with.

Who or what was this stately presence at Heiligendamm? It wasn’t a state at all, or even a pseudo-state like the Vatican. It was one Paul Hewson, better known as Bono, the sanctimonious wraparounds-wearing lead singer of a wrinkling Irish rock band that hasn’t made a decent album since 1987 (though I suppose 2000’s All That You Can Leave Behind was okay). He has gone from being the singer of really serious songs for Africa, who gyrated and screamed on the world stages provided by Live Aid in 1985 and Live 8 in 2005 to ‘raise awareness’ about African poverty, to the semi-official representative of the African poor, the widely recognised ‘conscience of Africa’ who is invited to put pressure on world leaders and hold them to account. As one report says, ‘it can only be a matter of time before [Bono] is granted official status along the lines of the Outreach Five group of developing countries that take part in some G8 meetings’ (4). The rockers are no longer warbling at the gates of the G8 – they’re inside them.

Bono had an extraordinary amount of influence at the summit. And it wasn’t simply a case of greying world leaders wanting to be photographed with ‘rock royalty’ in an attempt to make themselves look with it and cool, as some reports claimed (not realising that Bono is as uncool as it gets) (5). In fact, Bono held serious meetings with US president George W Bush, German chancellor Angela Merkel, new French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian PM Romano Prodi. According to reports, these were ‘tough meetings’ at which Bono and his people ‘rowed’ with world leaders over strategy, aid and their commitment to Africa (6). Apparently the meeting with Merkel was particularly tense. One report says Bono, joined by his fellow singer-turned-spokesman-for-Africa Bob Geldof, was stern with Chancellor Merkel and got into a ‘row with the chancellor’s office about their aid numbers’. Merkel, chair of this year’s G8, and Bono, the ninth power, apparently reached an agreement that ‘aid needed to be increased by 2010’ but they disagreed over the ‘plan for making it happen’ (7).

Reportedly, Bono and ‘his people’ even managed to swing certain states to their way of thinking. At a ‘very, very tense meeting’ with Romano Prodi and the Italian delegation, Bono accused the Italians of ‘over-promising and under-delivering’ on aid for Africa. The singer became so frustrated by Italy that he and his team got up to leave, pompously declaring ‘We’ve got to go and meet the president of France’. The Italians pleaded with Bono to wait, disappeared around the corner, and then came back with a new proposal on aid contributions. Bono was pleased, describing it as a proposal ‘which may turn Italy around’ (8). At another meeting, Bono and Bush discussed increasing American aid for building more schools and defeating AIDS in Africa. They also discussed ‘the strategic importance of [Africa] in the next US presidential race’, with Bono reportedly impressing on Bush the idea that helping Africa can be a vote-winner at home (9). Not content with self-electing himself as a spokesman for Africa, Bono now wants to influence the outcome of American elections, too.

Those who refused to meet with Bono were held up to public ridicule. Canadian PM Stephen Harper, invited to discuss Canada’s aid contributions with Bono, declared: ‘Meeting celebrities isn’t my kind of schtick. That was the schtick of the previous guy.’ (The previous guy being former Canadian PM Paul Martin, who met with Bono several times and struck up something of a friendship with the rocker.) (10) Bono was severely chastened: How dare a leader of a powerful nation refuse to meet me?! His revenge was swift and unforgiving. He declared that his ‘numerous sources’ inside the summit – apparently so many delegation members were passing insider information to Bono that ‘it’s as if we have the place bugged’, Bono said – had told him that Harper was blocking progress on aid for Africa. ‘We know who’s causing the trouble and who isn’t. And we know that Canada blocked progress. We know that Harper blocked it.’ (11)

Bono went so far as to accuse Harper of being ‘out of sync’ with the Canadian people, who ‘enjoy a prosperous economy and surplus public finances and would like to help others’ (12). Bono’s buddy Bob Geldof snottily said: ‘A man called Stephen Harper came to Heiligendamm. But Canada stayed at home.’ (13) Here we have two unelected rock stars who have taken it upon themselves to speak for Africa (Geldof has referred to himself as ‘Mr Africa’) chastising a PM who was elected by millions of Canadians for letting Canada down. Apparently Bono and Bob also know what is best for Canada as well as for Africa. Feeling publicly humiliated by Bono, Harper was forced to deny at a press conference that he had blocked progress, arguing: ‘It’s completely false and the people saying this have no proof to their allegations.’ He also relented somewhat on his anti-celebrity line and said he would be happy to arrange a meeting with Bono at a future date (14). This is what you get if you cross the ninth power that is Bono at a G8 summit: public humiliation, and accusations that you are failing in both your democratic and humanitarian duties.

In some ways, Bono held even more sway over the proceedings at Heiligendamm – or certainly over the public perception of them – than the lowly elected leaders inside the summit. Merkel may have chaired the meetings, and Bush, being the most powerful, may have put pressure on Blair, Sarkozy, Prodi, Harper, Vladimir Putin (of Russia) and Shinzo Abe (of Japan) to go along with his general outlook on aid and climate change. But it was the ninth power – sitting just outside the summit, and thus above it – that passed judgement on the summit’s proposals, ticking off those it agreed with and frowning on those it disliked. Bono’s view of G8 dominated much of the news coverage, with serious media outlets running headlines such as: ‘U2’s Bono: G8 Not Keeping Money Promises To Africa’; ‘G8 Africa Pledge Is A Smokescreen, Says Bono’; ‘G8 Reaffirms Aid To Africa; Bono, Geldof Say It’s Old Money’ (14). Not only did Bono have ‘numerous sources’ reportedly agitating at the summit table; not only did he apparently influence the position of various states during ‘very, very tense meetings’; he also set himself up as the public moral arbiter of the G8’s achievements and failings.

How has this happened? How has the pompous singer of a pompous rock act – who, let’s not forget, were considered painfully square when they first emerged in the post-punkish era of 1979, and who were looked upon as pious popsters in the early Eighties because they kept banging on about God – come to exert so much influence on the world stage? People thought it was bizarre when Queen Elizabeth II gave OBEs (Orders of the British Empire) to John, Paul, George and Ringo in 1964 for contributions to the ‘British Empire’ that mainly consisted of writing nice jangly pop songs and making American girls faint. Yet now we have a pop star who is giving the Queen a run for her money in the international influence stakes, and who effectively oversees his own Empire: poor Africa. Bono has declared: ‘I represent a lot of people [in Africa] who have no voice at all…. They haven’t asked me to represent them. It’s cheeky but I hope they’re glad I do.’ (15) Once upon a time you might have written off such a statement as the deluded rant of a deluded multi-millionaire, who is only the tousle-haired, leather trouser-wearing equivalent of those rich ladies-who-lunch, who have always filled the time in between manicures and wine-fuelled extramarital affairs by carrying out charitable deeds. Yet judging by his role at the G8 summit, Bono really has been elevated to the semi-official position of Cheeky Representative of A Lot of People in Africa.

Bono has become a one-man state; more than that, he’s a one-man cross-border supranational institution. He presumes to speak for millions, not on the basis of a democratic mandate but on the basis that he – mystically, magically, and because Africans are apparently too poor and destitute to speak for themselves – really, really knows what Africans want. Thus we have the utterly bizarre spectacle of a rock star putting pressure on leaders who were elected by millions of people to do what ‘I WANT’ in Africa. British newspaper columnist Rod Liddle refers to him as ‘the People’s Republic of Bono’, and wonders how long it will be before he is given ‘a seat on the United Nations security council’ or makes an announcement that ‘he is developing nuclear weapons’ (16). Well, at least then he could back up his demands of the G8 with some real firepower. Bono really does see himself as a state-like phenomenon: in the current issue of Vanity Fair he boasts that his (Project) Red charity initiative donated more to the Global Fund for Africa last year than ‘Australia, Switzerland and China...combined’, the implication being that he is at least the equal of, if not even more powerful than, these states in international debates about aid (17). They used to call it colonialism when a white man from over here decided that he represented the interests of the black hordes over there. Now they call it ‘passionate and serious crusading’ (18).

It is easy of course, and jolly good fun, to mock Bono, who is a monumentally self-important ass (‘There is no respite from this man’s megalomania’, says Liddle). And indeed, alongside his rise to a position of considerable international clout there has been a corresponding rise in Bono-bashing. You can now buy t-shirts that say ‘Make Bono History’ on them. There is a young indie rock band called Bono Must Die (apparently Bob Geldof was furious when he discovered that his daughter Peaches is a fan of this blasphemous outfit). The press frequently accuses Bono of being a hypocrite: one minute he is saying ‘let’s save Africa’, the next he is forking out thousands of pounds on taking a former stylist to court because she allegedly stole a pair of his trousers (19). Sometimes it’s just too easy to bop Bono. For example, he guest edits the current Vanity Fair, which is a special on African poverty, and you won’t believe this: it comes with a pull-out supplement on uber-expensive jewellery titled: ‘Fire and Ice: 72 pages of ravishing rocks, ginormous gems and fancy fripperies’ (20). The jokes write themselves.

Yet just slating Bono misses out what has changed in world politics to allow a silly singer to become a spokesperson for Africa and a major player at the G8. First, Bono’s rise shows the role that Africa plays for many people today. For politicians and celebrities alike, Africa has become a stage for moralistic posturing. Campaigning on African poverty is something that ‘gives me a sense of purpose, something to work for’, as a contributor to Bono’s Vanity Fair puts it (21). Or as Paul Theroux bitingly argues: ‘Because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth.’ (22) Indeed, we could just as easily ask what earthly right the G8 itself has to discuss and determine what should happen in Africa’s poorest countries. Like Bono, no G8 leader has ever been elected by the nations of Africa. For these leaders, the G8 summits have become a kind of moral spectacle, intended to show that they care and they have a humane and giving side; our leaders find it easier to show ‘moral courage’ on Africa than on divisive issues at home. Never mind the fact that their aid proposals for Africa are spectacularly stingy and often place Africa in a new economic straitjacket – just the act of talking about Africa on an annual basis is intended to send a powerful message about the G8 nations’ moral integrity. Bono is only the most successful of many ‘Mr Africas’ around today.

Second, Bono’s rise has been facilitated by the unholy marriage of politics and celebrity. No political campaign seems complete these days without a celebrity fronting it or even forcing it through. As Mick Hume has argued on spiked: ‘As serious public and political life has withered, so celebrity culture has expanded to fill the gap, often with the encouragement of political leaders desperate for some celebrity cover.’ (See When celebrities rule the Earth, by Mick Hume.) Bono did not smash down the gates of the G8 to gain entry. Rather, he was effectively invited in by G8 leaders who hoped that the celebrity crusader would add a touch of grit and glamour to their shallow and self-serving debates on Africa. Even Bono’s haranguing of the world leaders had its benefits, since it allowed the G8 to present itself as being nail-bitingly responsive to African demands (as represented by Bono of course) and it may have won them a new, potentially younger audience in the shape of celebrity-watchers and the MTV crowd. When even discussions of ‘ending poverty’ require a celebrity to front them, you know that celebrities truly do rule the Earth.

Bono is a celebrity colonialist. His patronising campaign to single-handedly ‘save Africa’ is actually damaging the continent. It is painting Africa as a pathetic place whose wide-eyed, infantile populations need a loudmouth rock star to fight their corner. His disregard for anything resembling an electoral process (‘I represent a lot of people in Africa’) lends weight to the prejudice that African leaders are peculiarly corrupt, and thus it is best to leapfrog straight over them – as does his demand for ‘anti-corruption measures’ to be attached to all forms of aid to Africa (23). Yet having a pop at his pomposity is not enough. Alongside making fun of Bono, let us challenge today’s prostitution of African problems for the purposes of Western self-aggrandisement, which has led to his being crowned King of the Africans. Bono Must Die? Well, that would be a good start - but only a start.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his personal website here.

Previously on spiked

Mick Hume explained what happens when celebrities rule the Earth and how Gordon Brown recently tried to distance himself from celebrity culture. Brendan O’Neill attacked the rise of ‘celebrity colonialism’ and asked if we should make ‘Make Poverty History’ history. The new Amex card, launched by Bono, made Daniel Ben-Ami see red. Or read more at: spiked issue Celebrity.

(1) Bono, Geldof slam Canada as a ‘laggard’ on African aid, CBC News, 9 June 2007

(2) Bono, Geldof slam Canada as a ‘laggard’ on African aid, CBC News, 9 June 2007

(3) See, for example, G8 reaffirms aid to Africa; Bono, Geldof charge it’s old money, Waterloo Record, Canada, 8 June 2007

(4) Travels through Europe with President Bush, Financial Times, 13 June 2007

(5) Travels through Europe with President Bush, Financial Times, 13 June 2007

(6) Bono, Geldof rock G8 for world’s poor, The Australian, 8 June 2007

(7) Merkel Quarrels With Bono, Geldof Over African Aid, Bloomberg, 7 June 2007

(8) U2 Meets With Bush And Italian PM At G8 Summit, Net Music Countdown, 11 June 2007

(9) Bono, Bob find signs of ‘donor fatigue’, U2 France, 8 June

(10) Harper schtick-in-the-mud on Bono meet, Calgary Sun, 8 June 2007

(11) Harper schtick-in-the-mud on Bono meet, Calgary Sun, 8 June 2007

(12) Harper schtick-in-the-mud on Bono meet, Calgary Sun, 8 June 2007

(13) Harper schtick-in-the-mud on Bono meet, Calgary Sun, 8 June 2007

(14) Harper schtick-in-the-mud on Bono meet, Calgary Sun, 8 June 2007

(15) See What do pop stars know about the world?, Brendan O’Neill, BBC News, 28 June 2005

(16) Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times, 10 June 2007

(17) Vanity Fair, July 2007

(18) Vanity Fair, July 2007

(19) U2 sue over Bono’s trousers, Guardian, 29 June 2005

(20) Vanity Fair, July 2007

(21) Vanity Fair, July 2007

(22) ‘The Rock Star’s Burden’, Paul Theroux, December 2005

(23) See Bono’s One Campaign

Heavy gunfire erupts in Mogadishu as AU peacekeepers land

Reuters report by Sahal Abdulle Mar 6 2007 6:07 PM GMT:

Insurgents unleashed two attacks against the Somali government and its foreign allies in Mogadishu on Tuesday, just hours after Ugandan peacekeepers assigned to tame the anarchic city landed.

The concerted assaults, some of the heaviest in weeks, appeared timed to coincide with the arrival of some 350 Ugandans in the vanguard of an African Union mission to help restore law to a country mired in chaos since central rule crumbled in 1991.

More than a dozen mortar strikes hit the airport, where the Ugandans were camped after landing earlier. A Ugandan army spokesman said none of the soldiers was wounded.

"The military side of the airport has been hit. We cannot cross from this side to the other side," said a witness.

The Ugandans were the first batch of peacekeepers to arrive in Mogadishu since a U.S. and U.N. operation ended in failure in 1995, after relentless street battles with local militiamen.

The proposed 8,000-strong AU force is designed to help Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf's government extend its shaky authority over the Horn of Africa country.

Yusuf, backed by Ethiopian armour and air power in a lightning war over Christmas and New Year, routed rival Islamists who held most of southern Somalia for six months.

They fled into hiding vowing to wage holy war against foreign troops and guerrilla attacks have gradually built up.

Shortly after the airport attack, scores of masked fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns at government and Ethiopian troops at a base in Mogadishu's industrial area.

At least two civilians were killed in the attack, said a local reporter trapped by the gunfire at a nearby hospital.

"SUICIDE MISSION"

Most of the Ugandans were flown in by the Algerian air force in C-130 cargo planes.

Last week, 35 Ugandan officers landed in Baidoa, the interim government's temporary capital in south-central Somalia. More are expected to arrive in the coming days to bring the Ugandan contingent to about 1,600.

The Ugandans are assigned to patrol Mogadishu, one of the world's most dangerous and gun-infested cities.

"It's a suicide mission. No one in their right mind would send 1,600 troops to Somalia now. They're sending in boys with no experience of this kind of mission," said a Western diplomat in the Ugandan capital Kampala, who declined to be named.

The insurgents are suspected of being a mix of defeated Islamists and clan militiamen resisting central rule that would end their private fiefdoms.

Two unmarked Russian-made Antonov cargo aircraft flew in white military vehicles for the Ugandans with AU markings, including armoured personnel carriers.

The AU force is needed to replace Ethiopian troops, which Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says he is eager to pull out after defeating the Islamists.

But as with its previous peacekeeping operation, in Sudan's Darfur region, the AU faces a shortage of money and equipment.

"I hope our partners will help us overcome the funding and logistical problems facing the AU," said Said Djinnit, the group's commissioner for peace and security.

Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi and Burundi are also expected to send troops to join the AU force, but pledges so far make up only about half of the required number of soldiers.

None of the previous 13 attempts at a central government since dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991 have succeeded in taming the coastal city.

"Our mission is not to fight, but if the lives of troops are endangered, they have the right to fight back," Djinnit said.

Somalia's Islamist milias may be plotting comeback

March 5, 2007 copy of report (via POTP - with thanks)

March 5, 2007
Somalia's Islamist militias may be plotting comeback
By McClatchy's Shashank Bengali...
(See also his report from last Thursday.)

Barely two months after they were toppled by a U.S.-backed military operation, militant Islamist leaders and hundreds of fighters have returned to the country's capital and are quietly preparing to make a comeback, according to militia members and Somali community leaders.

An Ethiopian invasion in late December drove the Council of Islamic Courts out of Mogadishu, but according to U.S. diplomats, Ethiopian forces captured few fighters and killed none of the top Islamist leaders. Since then, many of the senior leaders, who the Bush administration says have ties to al-Qaida, have returned to the city, militia members said.

Several hundred fighters are now living in Mogadishu, where they dress in plain clothes and work day jobs as cafeteria workers and traders, but meet regularly with superior officers and tribal elders, according to fighters from three neighborhoods in south Mogadishu. The fighters and their tribal supporters said [that] they maintain an underground arsenal of automatic rifles, grenades and other weapons.

In Washington, a U.S. official said [that] McClatchy's reporting from Mogadishu is "basically on the mark," and that although it's "hard to affix a number" to the returning fighters, the Islamists' return is "cause for concern."

"There is reason to believe that some have returned to Mogadishu and they may be trying to reconstitute themselves," said the official, who couldn't be identified because the reporting from Somalia is classified.

Civic leaders confirmed the accounts about the Islamist fighters. "They are reorganizing themselves, and no one can stop that," said Abdullahi Shirwa, a prominent secular peace activist. "They have a lot of support."

The re-emergence of the Islamists would be another setback to the Bush administration's efforts to block the creation of an Islamist regime in the Horn of Africa. Although the majority of Somalis believe that the Islamic Courts' political agenda is law and order - not terrorism - U.S. officials have charged that the movement's leaders sheltered three al-Qaida members who've carried out terrorist attacks on American and Israeli targets in East Africa in the past decade.

Somalia's transitional government blames the Islamists for a growing insurgency that's led to the deaths of dozens of civilians and forced some 10,000 residents to flee Mogadishu. Islamist fighters have denied launching the attacks, but strongly oppose the government, which rode into Mogadishu on the heels of the Ethiopians.

The Bush administration views the Ethiopian campaign as a success, because it swiftly removed the Islamist political leadership from power. But because militia commanders ordered their men to retreat rather than fight the Ethiopians, outside analysts believe [that] they suffered few losses.

U.S. forces launched two airstrikes on southern Somalia in January, the first of which killed eight militiamen. But neither claimed the lives of any of the al-Qaida targets or the top Courts leaders, U.S. officials have said.

Meanwhile, the factors that propelled the Islamist movement to power last summer - Mogadishu's all-too-familiar routine of mortar attacks, scattered gun battles and general insecurity - have returned. By imposing strict religious law during their six-month reign, the Courts provided a respite from the anarchy and clan-based violence that have shadowed the city since 1991.

"We made the city peaceful, but today you can see how everything is different," said Ahmed Ali, a 36-year-old fighter who joined the militias after his parents were killed in a shootout at a roadblock in 1999.

In interviews last week, Ali and two other fighters - members of the radical wing known as Hisb'ul Shabaab, or "Party of Youth" - said [that] they were under orders not to carry out attacks. But they said that influential elders from Mogadishu's dominant Hawiye clan, angry at government policies, have begun to reconstitute small groups of militiamen who now meet secretly across the city.

While the Islamists' political wing is in disarray, outside analysts say [that] Shabaab's core leadership remains intact, and that Mogadishu's chaos allows clandestine cells to function almost undisturbed.

"The loss of its safe haven will not necessarily spell Shabaab's end," the International Crisis Group research agency said in a recent report.

"The network is still there. We are all in contact often," Ahmed Abdullah Hassan, 29, the outspoken leader of a small group of fighters, told a visiting American reporter. "I am telling you, we could be very near to fighting government troops."

Some doubt that the Islamists are ready to take up arms. For one thing, the movement's supreme leader, Hassan Dahir Aweys, who's on U.S. and international terrorist watch lists, and top Shabaab leader, Adan Hashi Ayro, an Afghanistan-trained jihadist, are believed to be in hiding outside Mogadishu. Analysts believe that Ayro was injured or possibly killed in one of the U.S. airstrikes.

Others say [that] it's too soon, with thousands of Ethiopian troops still in the country and an African Union peacekeeping force due to arrive soon.

But neither Somalia's patchwork security forces nor the African peacekeepers have the manpower or [the] will to go after the militants or their weapons.

U.S. officials want interim President Abdullahi Yusuf to make peace with moderate Islamists, and perhaps bring some of them into his administration. People in Somalia say that the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Kenya helped ensure safe passage for one leading moderate, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, to Nairobi last month, when he met privately with Ambassador Michael Ranneberger before fleeing into exile in Yemen.

So far, Yusuf refuses to negotiate with the Islamists. Some Somalis believe [that] that could hasten the Islamists' resurgence and [could] possibly draw in more fighters from Somalia and abroad.

"If the situation remains the way it is, that would bring an opportunity for the Islamic Courts to become an effective, armed opposition," said Ahmed Abdisalam Adan, a managing partner of the HornAfrik media corporation. "In the absence of more credible institutions, they can prevail."

If the Bush administration can't persuade Yusuf to negotiate, it would mark the second political setback in a year for U.S. policy in Somalia, which has been a trouble spot since the deaths of 18 U.S. servicemen in a 1993 Mogadishu street battle that was depicted in the movie "Black Hawk Down."

Last year, the CIA covertly funded a coalition of Mogadishu warlords against the Islamists, which only increased popular opposition to the warlords and failed after a few months.

Mohammed Afrah Qanyare, a leader of that coalition and formerly the city's most powerful warlord, told McClatchy Newspapers that while workaday Somalis had grown tired of the Islamists' legal strictures, the militias probably have the power to retake the country.

"The only way they can come back," Qanyare said, "is by force."

Mortars fired after AU peacekeepers land

Mar 5 2007 IOL report - Mortars fired after peacekeepers land - by Sahal Abdulle - excerpt:

Mogadishu - More than a dozen mortar bombs were fired at Mogadishu's airport on Tuesday shortly after Ugandan soldiers landed there as the vanguard of an African Union peacekeeping force.

At least 16 loud explosions from the mortar strikes went off near the airport where roughly 350 Ugandans were decamped after landing in the morning, a Reuters' witness said.

"The military side of the airport has been hit. We cannot cross from this side to the other side. We don't know if anyone has been wounded there," said the reporter for a local media outlet, who saw the mortar bombs hit and who declined to be identified.

The military wing is about a kilometre away from the civilian wing of the seaside airport.

Most of the Ugandans were flown in by the Algerian air force in American-made C-130 cargo planes, landing in a city where the interim government and its Ethiopian allies face almost daily attacks.

The Ugandans are the first peacekeepers to enter Mogadishu since a well-funded US and UN peacekeeping mission in the early 1990s failed and ended in a bloody withdrawal after battles with heavily armed militiamen.

Last week, 35 Ugandan officers landed in Baidoa, the government's temporary capital in south-central Somalia. More are expected to arrive in the coming days to bring the Ugandan contingent to about 1 600.

The Ugandans are the vanguard of an AU force designed to help Somalia's interim government secure the Horn of Africa country after routing a rival Islamist movement which held most of southern Somalia for six months.

Leaders of the ousted Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC) went into hiding vowing to wage holy war against foreign troops.

"We are ready to deploy and defend the Somali people," said Ugandan army Captain Paddy Ankunda, also a spokesperson for the AU mission.

Two unmarked Russian-made Antonov cargo aircraft also brought three white military vehicles emblazoned with AU markings and two armoured personnel carriers.

The AU force, proposed to eventually number about 8 000, is expected to replace Ethiopian troops who helped the government mount a successful December offensive the SICC.

But as with its first peacekeeping foray, in Sudan's Darfur region, the AU is facing a shortage of money and equipment.

"I hope our partners would help us overcome the funding and logistical problems facing the AU," said Said Djinnit, AU's commissioner for peace and security in Addis Ababa.

Officials from President Abdullahi Yusuf's government and warlords who had once ruled Mogadishu were at the airport, which was under heavy security.

Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi and Burundi are also expected to send troops to join the AU force.

The Ugandans are assigned to patrol Mogadishu, one of the world's most dangerous and gun-infested cities.

None of the previous 13 attempts at a central government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre have succeeded in taming the city.

The guerrillas who strike almost daily in Mogadishu are suspected to be a mix of Islamists and clan militiamen who feel the government does not represent their interests, or who stand to lose control of fiefdoms if central authority is imposed.

"Our mission is not to fight, but if the lives of troops are endangered, they have the right to fight back," Djinnit said.

(Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa)

AU peacekeeping force attacked in Somalia

Mar 6 2007 13:19 GMT BBC NEWS World Africa report excerpt:

The airport in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, has been attacked as the first African Union (AU) peacekeepers arrived in the country.

A BBC correspondent says eight mortars were fired during a ceremony to welcome the 400 Ugandan troops.

One person was wounded in the attack and three other civilians have died in heavy clashes elsewhere in the city.

Note, the report explains

The AU force is taking over from Ethiopian troops who intervened to help Somalia's transitional government oust the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

Somalia enjoyed a six-month lull in the insecurity that has dogged the country for the past 16 years while the UIC was in power last year.

But violence has escalated in the past two months.

UK prepares commando unit to free Ethiopia hostages

Mar 5 2007 AFP report (via ST) excerpt;

Britain reportedly prepared a commando unit to rescue five of its nationals kidnapped in northern Ethiopia, as Addis Ababa on Monday refused to back claims that Eritrean soldiers carried out the abduction.

The Britons, all linked to Britain’s embassy in Addis Ababa, were kidnapped last Thursday in the remote Afar desert region near the Eritrean border, according to the Ethiopian state news agency.

London has already sent a crisis team to Ethiopia in an effort to obtain the release of the five, along with their Ethiopian drivers and interpreters.

Some 60 SAS troops have already been dispatched to neighbouring Djibouti, the British Daily Mirror reported Monday, while the Times talked of a "substantial" team and the Guardian said special forces were already in Ethiopia itself.

Hunt for missing British tourists

Whitehall officials earlier told the BBC there was "a national security dimension" to the group's disappearance. - BBC Mar 3 2007.

Ugandan troops 'not peacemakers' (BBC)

Mar 1 2007 BBC news report excerpt:

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni says Ugandan soldiers being deployed to Somalia, will not disarm militias.

Mr Museveni, who bade farewell to 1,700 troops at a ceremony in Jinja, said they will train the Somali army, help the government, but not impose peace.

An advance team of African Union (AU) troops reportedly arrived in Baidoa in southern Somalia on Thursday.

First batch of AU peacekeepers lands in Somalia

Mar 1 2007 Reuters report:

By Sahal Abdulle

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The Ugandan vanguard of an African peacekeeping force intended to help Somalia's interim government tighten its tenuous grip on the anarchic nation flew into the country on Thursday, witnesses said.

Underlining the formidable task awaiting the African Union (AU) mission, gunmen shot dead three people at the house of the director of Mogadishu's port, the latest in a wave of guerrilla-style attacks in the coastal capital.

A cargo plane dropped off 35 uniformed Ugandan officers early in the morning at the government stronghold of Baidoa, customs officer Ali Mohamed Adan said. Police officer Isak Hassan Warsame also said he saw the Ugandan officers land.

But Ugandan army Capt. Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the AU mission, denied any military personnel had left yet. "There are no troops in Somalia," he said in Uganda.

Baidoa is the south-central trading town the government used as a temporary base before ousting militant Islamists from Mogadishu in a December offensive backed by Ethiopia's military.

The town is expected to be a key rear staging area for the proposed 8,000-strong AU force, designed to replace Ethiopian troops who helped President Abdullahi Yusuf's government defeat the Islamists in less than two weeks.

The Ugandan peacekeepers are due to patrol Mogadishu, one of the world's most dangerous and gun-infested cities.

In the latest attack there, unidentified gunmen struck the house of port director Abdi Jiinow on Thursday morning. A reporter at the scene, Abdullahi Addow, said three people died -- one attacker, a bodyguard and a visitor to the house.

MUSEVENI BIDS FAREWELL

Uganda has kept the exact troop deployment date secret, aware that insurgents who blast away almost daily at joint government-Ethiopian forces in Mogadishu have threatened to attack any peacekeepers or government allies.

The insurgents are suspected to be a mix of Islamist guerrillas and clan militia fighting for control of the city.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni waved off two battalions of peacekeepers at a ceremony on Thursday as they prepared to deploy. Officials said the 1,635 troops would land in Mogadishu, as soon as equipment arrives by sea, probably next week.

"This is a fully capable force to undertake any task within (its) mandate," Museveni shouted out to silent rows of soldiers in bright green AU berets at a barracks in Jinja, east of Kampala, where they underwent peacekeeping training.

Last year, Uganda denied witness accounts and a U.N. report that a handful of its personnel were inside Somalia. Ethiopia did likewise for most of 2006, denying almost daily witness sightings of thousands of its troops.

Nigeria, Ghana, Malawi and Burundi are also expected to send troops to bring the force to about half its planned strength of nine battalions.

As with its previous peacekeeping foray in Sudan's violent Darfur region, the AU is facing a shortage of money and equipment.

Somalia has been in anarchy since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. A well-funded U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping mission in the mid-1990s ended in failure and a bloody withdrawal.

Under foreign pressure to make his government more inclusive, Yusuf told parliament on Thursday a national reconciliation conference would be held in Mogadishu on April 16 with 3,000 delegates from Somalia's myriad clans and factions.