Somalia

NOVANEWS Abuses by All Sides Contribute to Current Crisis Displaced people and Somali Transitional Government forces in Dhobley, Somalia, July 2011 © 2010 AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam RELATED MATERIALS: “You Don’t Know Who to Blame” MORE COVERAGE: Guardian: Somalia's humanitarian crisis worsened by violations of laws of war LA Times: Militia in Somalia bars food aid RELATED AUDIO: Somalia's crisis isn't just about drought. HRW's Ben Rawlence explains how war crimes have helped fuel the crisis in Somalia. Amy Costello reports. So Much to Fear: 2008 accounts from Somali refugees in Kenya There is no quick fix to Somalia’s tragedy, but it’s clear that impunity for serious abuses perpetuates insecurity. International pres...

NOVANEWS “A drought, not seen in 60 years, compounded with near complete lawlessness and utter disregard for human life has made it so.” Yahoo News Somalian child bathed while being treated from dehydration at Dadaab camp, Kenya American idol creator Simon Fuller, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell and The Bob Marley estate globally released a new video on Tuesday for Bob Marley & The Wailers’ 1973 song “Hide Tide Or Low Tide.” The video shows the East Africa crisis that is affecting more than 9 million people dying of starvation. Edited by Kevin Macdonald, director of “Last King Of Scotland” and the forthcoming “Marley” documentary, the “Hide Tide Or Low Tide” video includes recent footage of expressionless mothers caring for their children, oblivious toddlers playing amidst skel...

NOVANEWS By William Bowles Global Research Strategic Culture Foundation and williambowles.info BBC news coverage of the famine in Somalia has been saturating the airwaves and it's always like this whenever 'natural disasters' strike. Fundamentally it's little more than a fund-raising promo paid for with our taxes as endlessly repeated shots of emaciated babies and dying people serves no informative purpose except to tug covetously at our purse strings. And of course it has the added benefit of distracting us from our own condition – until the next crisis comes our way. The experience of Somalia shows that famine in the late 20th century is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurred on as a result of a global oversupply of grain staple...

NOVANEWS Imagine if you had to leave your home because there was no food to eat due to famine.  Imagine if you lived in an area full of violent conflict.  Imagine walking for days in hopes of finding a safe refuge and food for your children.  Imagine finding that place only to be turned away…. Kenya’s government is failing to provide a safe haven to Somalia’s refugees who are fleeing famine and conflict – even when it has the capacity to extend its refugee camps to hold an additional 40,000 people. Kenya claims the refugees are running from the drought and therefore can safely be harbored inside Somalia’s borders. However, in reality the refugees are also running from the incessant violence and abuses wreaked by the Islamist armed group, al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab’s brutal rule, co...

NOVANEWS by Michel Chossudovsky First published in 1994, Third World Resurgence and Le monde diplomatique The IMF Intervention in the Early 1980s Somalia was a pastoral economy based on "exchange" between nomadic herdsmen and small agriculturalists. Nomadic pastoralists accounted for 50 percent of the population. In the 1970s, resettlement programs led to the development of a sizeable sector of commercial pastoralism. Livestock contributed to 80 percent of export earnings until 1983. Despite recurrent droughts, Somalia remained virtually self-sufficient in food until the 1970s. The IMF-World Bank intervention in the early 1980s contributed to exacerbating the crisis of Somali agriculture. The economic reforms undermined the fragile exchange relationship between the "nomadic economy" and ...

NOVANEWS By Michel Chossudovsky Global Research For the last twenty years, Somalia has been entangled in a "civil war" amidst the destruction of both its rural and urban economies. The country is now facing widespread famine.  According to reports, tens of thousands of people have died from malnutrition in the last few months. The lives of  several million people are threatened. The mainstream media casually attributes the famine to a severe drought without examining the broader causes. An atmosphere of  "lawlessness, gang warfare and anarchy" is also upheld as one of the major causes behind the famine. But who is behind the lawlessness and armed gangs?  Somalia is categorized as a "failed state", a country without a government.   But how did it become a "failed state...

NOVANEWS Khaled Hassan In Somalia and possibly in Afghanistan and to Iraq rebels a lot, and warriors Cherson, and freedom fighters owners quite military, but their cause is greater than their abilities, and betrayed their minds, there's finally seen the road, or at least we do not know, and affect the people strongly the view of the impact and presence with flexible. Is the crisis of leadership and leadership, a crisis of mind of a great, does not think only what promotes his nation and liberate his country and the achievement of dignity and independence of will and resolution, was led by educated adults, but are abused a lot, and rare of them shown the strength and flexibility and capacity of the mind and the horizon and noble qualities, and the ability to see if the solution was less tha...

NOVANEWS John Glaser Jeremy Scahill’s excellent report at The Nation magazine exposes secret CIA prisons which confine uncharged individuals in terribly inhumane conditions without access to legal council, a Somali intelligence agency supported and trained by the CIA, and on the ground operations conducted by the Joint Special Operations Command. All of this intervention into the lawless Somali country is done unilaterally and kept largely secret from Congress and the American people. Excerpt: As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have bee...

NOVANEWS Brian Beyer   A new expose from the Nation by Jeremy Scahill detailing the CIA’s same, old dirty tricks is certainly troubling. Candidate Obama assured the American public that extrajudicial actions by the CIA and Defense Department were a thing of the past. Transparency, much like hope and change, were buzz words that were constantly used to show everybody that the era of Bush was over. A new ethical era was to take hold in the White House, and would be anchored by Nancy Pelosi’s vow to oversee a Congress of integrity. Just as Obama campaigned to make the most sweeping changes when it came to the realm of foreign policy (Guantanamo Bay, ending the war in Iraq, ending torture, etc.), it was in foreign policy that he became the most like Bush. In fact, many would argue that...