So seems to be the case with al-Shabaab and the long-fabled rift that’s been playing out since mid-2011. The scenario was likely born out of the colorful imaginings of self-titled Somali analysts, and it’s been sold further downstream to an eager band of incompetent Western policymakers who have embraced the myth as a means to project a ray of hope amid the dismal failure known as the War on Terror. For about two years now, dubious elements of the Somali blogosphere have been calling our attention to the split widening in the al-Shabaab movement, sometimes even citing supposed clashes. Strangely, these trumped-up events are almost entirely absent from the Somali-language press, and the situation on the ground has never shown itself to reflect these cleavages. And yet, this tall tale has found embrace in bizarre places.

The obscure and wholly baseless story of al-Shabaab’s internal feud may have been rightfully ignored by reputable journalists and news services, but it has been played to death by one particular multilingual news service; SabahiOnline.com, though we aren’t surprised. Sabahi is an web-based publication sponsored by United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) a year and some months ago.  It’s aim, as stated on its website, is to “offer accurate, balanced and forward-looking coverage of developments in the Horn of Africa region.” Regular readers of the site would opine that perhaps Sabahi is too forward-looking, and bordering on delusional; just see here, and here, and here too. Those are just the al-Shabaab feud articles I found embedded in other al-Shabaab feud articles, and each article has its own collection of links to further parts of this grand fairytale.

Before Sabahi embraced the story of al-Shabaab’s fabled split, it was already an established subject in Somali cafe discourse, yet no one really knows how or why the idea ever took held amid a total vacuum of evidence. The first time anyone had heard of a split among al-Shabaab’s leading ranks was during the crippling famine of 2011. Supposedly, longtime former spokesman Mukhtar Robow was unhappy with the restrictions that Mukhtar Abu Zubayr had placed on Western NGOs based in his clan’s devastated home provinces. This Somali blogosphere, in all of its conflicting delusions, went the extra step of creating an ahistorical “nationalist-Islamist” image for Robow to fit with the ongoing false narative. The blogosphere dreamers even outfitted Robow with a new faction called Milatu Ibrahim during the famine schism, and claimed that this make-believe militia led al-Shabaab’s withdrawal from Mogadishu in August that year. These farfetched political un-realities were soon forgotten, but the broader narrative of the nonexistent al-Shabaab rift still remained a popular belief.

The rift presumably exists between several leading figures in the al-Shabaab leadership; Robow and Zubayr, as well as Fuad Shangole, and Ibrahim al-Afghani. This presumption rests on a fictional document supposedly discussing the organization’s internal discord, which is claimed by Sabahi to have appeared on jihadist message boards. Other than the fact that the supposed writer of the document, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, is a completely nonexistent entity, the reality of the situation inside Somalia does not reflect any sort of division at all. The main themes of the al-Shabaab discord myth are the isolation of foreign fighters and the division amid al-Shabaab’s foremost leaders, but the reality on the ground shows that al-Shabaab has become even more international the past few years than it has ever been. More importantly, the movement’s top leaders have shown in the past two years that they could capably operate in isolated war theaters despite gaps in terrain and direct communication while staying completely within the organizational standard.

Let’s start with Shangole, whom al-Shabaab is said to have entrusted to oversee the operations in Puntland. Since 2010, a tiny outpost of local militiamen has mushroomed into Somalia’s most precarious al-Shabaab theater. The transformation of the Galgala hills into Puntland’s own Tora Bora was made possible by a reliable stream of weapons entering Somalia from Yemen. It was during the early Arab Spring months when Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch and al-Shabaab created a stronger merger of their two organizations’ than they were able in previous years. If al-Shabaab had been hunting down its own foreign members during the time, as the myth posits, this Abyan-Puntland connection would not be possible.

Onto al-Afghani, who is based in Kismayo and whom served as the city’s first overseer during the first al-Shabaab-run administration. Kismayo, let’s remember, is also the main quarters of the movement’s foreign fighters. Since withdrawing from the city in September of last year, al-Shabaab has returned to the outskirts of Kismayo, initiating a surprise guerrilla campaign against Kenya’s vulnerable security and infrastructure installations outside the city, while also placing plain-clothes operatives inside the city. If this was an organization hunting down its foreign fighters, there’s little chance that they’d have any energy remaining to carry out their latest campaign in Kismayo.

In Robow’s clan base of Bay and Bakol province, al-Shabaab has had its biggest military successes since the Mogadishu withdrawal nearly two years prior. A sustained insurgency against Ethiopian troops stationed in the province of Bakol has forced Addis Ababa to call it quits just a few weeks ago, vacating the seat of power in Hudur town. Two years ago, political gossip led people to believe that Robow had a falling out with Abu Zubayr because supposedly Robow felt that too many of his clansmen were dying in war, yet today the reality on the ground is that Robow’s clan base is hosting al-Shabaab’s fiercest resistance operations against foreign troops in Somalia.

It’s difficult to imagine that an actual rift ever took place within the al-Shabaab leadership or at any level when assessing the actual activities taking shape on the ground. The only real evidence to support the case of a rift are testimonials of Abu Mansur Al-Amriki, plastered all over the web in the past year and a half. In Abu Mansur’s videos, he is only accompanied by other Somali men, which debases his primary message that foreign fighters are being persecuted within al-Shabaab. Whatever the truth may be in the latter scenario, there still stands an unequivocal fact that al-Shabaab and its global allies have been coalescing into a larger form, not splintering into smaller ones.

{DN Staff Writers}

DissidentNation.com

The sectarian war has long moved out of its sparse pockets of action in the Levant and Mesopotamia. It has traveled to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and even beyond the Arab world into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and as far west as Nigeria. The Sunni-Shia civil war is very real, and very intense today. Most startling is that the conflict has moved beyond identity and entered the realm of religious contention. The Shia wonder if the Sunnis are to be trusted, and the Sunnis wonder if the Shia are even Muslims in the first place.

Africa’s Muslims are entirely Sunni, except for pockets of Tanzania and Nigeria, with the latter community potentially numbering in the millions, already having entered into intense warfare with the long-established Sunni majority. But despite a near-complete absence of Shia presence, Africa’s Muslims have taken sides in the wars brewing in the Middle East and Southern Asia. Thousands of Tunisians and Libyans have already took up arms for Syria’s Jabhat Al-Nusra, which has close ties with Al-Qaeda. Algerians have assumed the lead role in Al-Qaeda’s “Maghreb” division, which has nourished sub-factions further afield in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Nigeria. And Al-Qaeda’s own seeds were laid by Egyptians decades ago, and they continue to form the modern organization’s ideological base.

Where do Somalis stand, and how did they march into this war? Somalia is entirely Sunni Muslim, and it is shielded from its nearest Shia neighbors, the Zaydis of northern Yemen, by the conservative Sunnis of southern Yemen. Somalis came to know of the Shia world in the 1980s, during the height of what is known as the Islamic Awakening, which as a period of renewed Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Sunni Muslim world. Many Somalis volunteered as mujahideen alongside Afghans, Arabs, and other Muslims during the Soviet invasion of the same period. The Somalis who returned from this war formed the earliest mobilized faction of Islamic fundamentalists anywhere in the world; Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiyah, also known as the Somali Islamic Union or simply Al-Itihaad.

This group began raising funds and training recruits from 1988 to 1991, and upon the collapse of the socialist regime of Siad Barre, the militants seized control in Somalia’s largest province – Bari. After a year of Shariah-compliant rule, Al-Itihaad was violently purged from their capital in the port city of Bosaso by a local clan faction known as the Somali Salvation Democratic Front. Al-Itihaad withdrew to their rear base in Yemen, where they were welcomed by other veterans of the Afghan-Soviet war. They were rearmed and sent back into the Horn, but this time in Ethiopia, where they hoped to rally both Somali and Oromo Muslims under the banner of one religion. Again they were defeated, only to appear again in 1996 in the southwestern Somali province of Gedo, to be defeated once again by joint Somali clan militia backed by Ethiopian armor. This time, Al-Itihaad was out of Africa for good.

The remaining Al-Itihaad members traveled all the way back to Afghanistan, where they were hosted by the Taliban and early members of Al-Qaeda in the newly-seized Emirate of Afghanistan. These Somalis returned home a decade later to form the Mujahideen Youth Movement, known also as Al-Shabaab, and among the returnees were Mukhtar Robow, Ibrahim Afghani, and the founding Al-Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Eyrow. In Somalia they hoped to recreate the success of the Taliban, and they continue to maintain a rear base in southern Yemen to become their own Pakistan.

Because of these extensive ties to sectarian flashpoints in Afghanistan and Yemen, Somalia has voted with experience that it is a staunch Sunni Muslim base of support, it can not rescind its vote to partake in the ongoing hostilities.

{DN Staff Writers}

DissidentNation.com

While all of this is playing out, the Somali federal government based in Mogadishu has thumbed its nose at what it sees as vain attempts at self-determination by politically toothless regional administrations. While oil splits Somalia one way, it unites the country in other ways. This week, the Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is in the Puntland capital of Garowe, which is the center of Somalia’s controversial oil debate. With funds from Qatar and promises of reconstruction from Turkey, the Somali president hopes to smooth relations with his counterpart in Puntland.

The government in Mogadishu has also serves as a peacemaker between the northern administrations, which had been continuously warring since 2003. For the first time in a decade, there is a Somali leader who sits with both parties as both a reconciliatory agent and an overseer.

Somalia’s peace is very crucial for the Arab league, especially rising star Qatar which is a major shareholder in Royal Dutch Shell plc. Former beneficiaries of Gulf investment, like Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Egypt — are all reeling from intense political disruptions and all-out warfare, and states like Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait are looking south now. As North Africa and the Levant continue to burn, there is a surge of optimism in the troubled Horn of Africa.

At the center of all this commotion is Somalia’s controversial oil deals, which garnered massive traction following Puntland’s first exploration wells in over twenty years in January 2012. For months, there has been an uneasy tension between Mogadishu and Garowe, and now the unease is joined by the administrations of Somaliland, Galmudug, and Jubbaland as all parties race to secure bargaining chips in the future Somalia. Amid these hairsplitting confrontations may be space for compromise come the May 7 Conference on Somalia being held in London.

It is without any doubt that the only reason Somali parties speak to each other today wrests entirely on the energy bargaining chips held by the respective parties involved in the ongoing reconciliation process.

{DN Staff Writers}

DissidentNation.com

In just the first two weeks, Salil al-Sawarim 2 garnered 170,000 downloads just within the United States and other Western countries. The activities of the ISI, not different at all from the Taliban in Afghanistan, are focused more heavily on dynamic asymmetrical warfare as opposed to traditional guerrilla tactics like field ambushes and other direct engagements against conventional forces like NATO.

In Salil al-Sawarim 2, which you can view on Liveleak (NSFW), Al-Qaeda fighters disguised in Iraqi SWAT uniforms sneak into the Sunni Muslim town of Haditha in the middle of the night to carry out executions against officers they accuse of detaining and torturing Sunni civilians. The fighters enter the SWAT facilities with fake arrest warrants against local captains, and when the fighters are taken to the sleeping quarters of the officers, they proceed to execute dozens of soldiers with silenced pistols. They end the night by killing the captains of the SWAT unit and leaving town after a brief firefight with regime officers.

The ISI attacks, which occurred in the spring of 2012, killed 27 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, and wounded another three. Only two Al-Qaeda fighters fell in the attack. These tactics, called green-on-blue in Afghanistan, have been used to devastating effect by the Taliban. Thirty-five green-on-blue attacks were recorded in just the first three quarters of of 2012.

These green-on-blue tactics and the attacks of the ISI on Iraqi regime forces, are now taking a front seat in the strategies of Al-Shabaab in Somalia. The attack on April 14 on the courthouse in Mogadishu was inspired by the ISI’s astounding display of guile and efficiency in their Iraq operations. Al-Shabaab attacked Mogadishu that Sunday with nine highly trained operatives disguised in special forces uniforms. The carefully planned attacks killed up to thirty Somali policemen and military personnel, including over a dozen members of the CIA-trained Alpha Group. The assault managed to unfurl the entire security plan of Mogadishu, exposing government ineptitude by effect. The April 14 attack drew minimal civilian casualties and pierced the heart of the state’s institutional power to the extent that the head of the supreme court is rumored to have hidden in a drawer to stay alive.

Just two days ago, the deputy chief prosecutor of Somalia was assassinated in the capital city Mogadishu. Ahmed Sheikh Nur Maalim is the highest-ranking government official to be assassinated since the Somali transition ended last September. It shows the renewed efforts of Al-Shabaab, and the change of tactics toward a more dynamic and efficient insurgency in the manner of the new Taliban and ISI tactics.

{DN Staff Writers}

DissidentNation.com

Women’s Rights, Children’s Rights, even Gay Rights are probably ideas you’re familiar with and possibly even support. Democracy, Economic Freedom, and Environmentalism are also familiar to you as well. Little did you know that these ideas are now the weapons of choice for global imperialism in the twenty-first century.

These ideas and others like them are an outgrowth of the post-UN model best exemplified by the father of Keynesian economic theory, John Maynard Keynes, a homosexual economist. This model of soft colonialism became a necessity in light of the fact that the former colonies of Europe and the United States had begun to pose formidable armed resistance by the 1950s and 60s. After multiple attempts at colonizing and recolonizing Vietnam, and the current debacle in Afghanistan, it is becoming increasingly obvious that force can no longer be applied sustainably in situations of conquest.

When there is a juicy target for colonization, it is made into a target for the human rights assault. Oil-rich Sudan has been the most obvious target of this crusade in recent years. It’s been the target of Hollywood blockbusters, documentaries, and countless ICC indictments. The latest victim has been Uganda. The failure of the Kony2012 campaign was not the end of Uganda’s image assault. The UK threatened to cut aid to Uganda over the country’s anti-gay policies, but only a month later, the British media cited that misappropriation of funds was the reason for London’s aid threats when their bullying became a case of worry. To this day, every single case by the International Criminal Courts has been directed at African leaders.

While Africa has been a site of incredible success for the neocolonialists, there are other targets. Afghanistan is still being pursued for this agenda, and it has been targeted by the same methods of black propaganda. This is exemplified by the case of an 18-year-old Afghan woman disfigured by her husband which was spun into a story of systematic Taliban abuse in order to boost US support for the botched NATO war in Afghanistan. The gruesome image went on to win awards for the photographer and even landed on the cover of Time magazine.

This liberal neocolonialism is emotional, populist, and very difficult to disagree with on the surface, which is why it’s so successful, and without any suspicions. Masses of third-world citizens are now duped into believing that the same people who had their grandfathers at gunpoint are now going to save them. Only a half-century after independence, Malians are buying French flags in record numbers. It’s not a simple case of collective amnesia, it’s the result of a vigorous yet subtle conquest of hearts and minds.

The entire package of neocolonialism is aimed at conquest. Even when it sounds good, like the environmental ploy, it is all about imperialism and dollar figures. It took decades in some cases for resistance to pick up against military colonialism, and it will also take time before the masses wake up to the latest form of occupation.

{DN Staff Writers}

DissidentNation.com

The optimism toward a new federal Somalia was expressed in sync by Somali politicians, foreign media giants and think-tanks, and government-controlled media outlets (Jowhar.com run by former regime insiders, RadioMuqdisho.net run by former and current regime insiders). With much to lose, none of the aforementioned parties were interested in the objective truth, but the reality of Somalia’s condition is now becoming impossible to ignore.

A desperate start

We can trace the current saga back to the summer of 2011. After a crippling famine had gripped the country and weakened the financial base of Al-Shabaab, the international community mobilized a two-pronged offensive. One part of the offensive was a rapid Ethiopian invasion, followed by indiscriminate NATO air and sea assaults, and capped off with a Kenyan invasion and a widened AMISOM mandate. While this was happening, Turkey was prompted to enter Somalia on a mission to restore public optimism by way of social services and economic investment. It’s difficult to believe that Turkey, then a minor global player with little experience in Somalia, could waltz into the country so confidently and brazenly without some tacit guidance from the GCC or NATO.

In the rush to cement the new plan for Somalia, there was a hasty campaign to build conclusions and new narratives in the long Somali conflict. To achieve this, a number of unique tools were dispatched. A Somali and Swahili-language media site was launched by AFRICOM, called SabahiOnline.com, whose primary aim is to present biased news coverage aimed at Muslim audiences in East Africa, particularly in areas prone to militant Islamic sympathies. Another tool is a GCC-backed think-tank called the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, a neocolonialist outfit set up by a former employee of the Al Jazeera network. All of these tools are meant to create the illusion of success with regard to the doomed Somali democratization project.

Incessant tribalism

In all levels of government and civil society, Somalis fail to address the elephant in the room; tribalism. Clan favoritism has placed warlords in charge of the strategic Lower Shabelle province, which made the region’s two major cities vulnerable to predatory warlordism for the past year and a half. Just yesterday, six people were killed in the capital of Lower Shabelle province after a firefight broke out between rival government forces. Hidden from the view of the international community and the press, the towns of Merca and Afgoye have been subjected to brutal campaigns of rape and extortion at the hands of government troops since Al-Shabaab’s withdrawal. The situation has gotten so out of hand that African Union troops have been known to protect civilians from their own native security forces.

A similar story of government predation and incompetence in Kismayo is threatening to bring this government down in exactly the same fashion that capitulated the regime of Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in 2008. The same clans who’ve been fighting over the town since 2006 have returned to their rivalry in the port city of Kismayo, with up to 500 soldiers from one camp mobilizing yesterday toward the contested seaport. Aside from the two local clan factions, the Somali government has for a long time been preparing its own commanders for Kismayo, also based on the clan preferences of the president’s advisers. For now, all sides are bracing for a war over Kismayo’s lucrative seaport.

The grim clan rivalries in Somalia have not been addressed properly, and will simmer soon toward full-blown wars. The incompetence of the government’s predatory administrators has been so inescapable that Al-Shabaab has managed to return to full power in the capital of the Bakol province. The capture of Hudur town in Bakol was largely due to an Ethiopian withdrawal, and other such seizures are only made impossible by the massive and unchecked deployment of Ethiopian troops in the provinces of Gedo, Bay, Bakol, and Hiran.

Unless the tendency for extreme incompetence in the Somali government is checked, it’s highly unlikely that real progress is in sight. The regime of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has passed the half-year mark and has nothing to show for it except lavish trips that became the bane of the previous administration.

{DN Staff Writers}

DissidentNation.com

Earlier this week, a lauded trip to the Qatari capital of Doha by Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud prompted intrigue and worry across Somalia. The agenda of the meetings was kept quiet enough to require even further inquiry by Somalis, leaving a trail of money, oil, and more mystery.

Qatar was a primary financial supporter of former Somali president Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and Qatar is also suspected to have bought the September 2012 election for Mohamud, who comes from the same clan as his predecessor and purports to hold an Islamist orientation similar to Sharif Ahmed. Many Somalis are wondering what Qatar is gets in return from these backdoor deals, because it can’t simply be about them favoring a particular clan of Somali Islamists over other Somali Islamists. The Qatari involvement in Mogadishu goes far beyond local clan politics. Qatar, and its allies, are trying to create profitable outcomes.

Ex-president Sharif Ahmed set up an oil team during his term, and the current administration has kept it in place. It includes Abdullahi Haider serving as senior adviser to the regime. In October last year, Haider stated to Reuters that all energy contracts setup by regional administrations “are null and void,” even though the Somali Constitution grants regions full rights to negotiate resource contracts as they wish. Sharif Ahmed also appointed a British-based legal advisory team called Norton Rose LLP to handle natural resources acquisitions. Norton Rose is also the advisory team of Qatar Shipping and Qatar Navigation companies, which are owned in part by the Qatari royal family, as well as the state-owned Qatar Investment Authority, which holds over $60 billion in assets.

Qatar is the bridge that connects Norton Rose’s role in the governments of Mohamud and Sharif, and that Norton Rose played a key role in preparing Somalia’s petroleum policy and establishing a state oil company for the fledgling regime. But why? The Qatar Investment Authority is a stakeholder in Royal Dutch Shell, and the Qataris went on a major spending spree on 2012 (just before the historic Somali elections) and bought millions of more shares, making them the biggest shareholders in the company.

To make things easier for himself, Mohamud appointed his half-brother’s nephew as the natural resources minister, and since then Shell has gotten more aggressive, even going as far as to enforce a quiet monopoly on the nation’s oil and gas, virtually shutting new exploration firms out of the country. This was evidenced when a British exploration company LGE Monsoon was locked out of a deal in the small federal state of Galmudug. Only a month later, Shell sent a warning to the US-based exploration company American Liberty Petroleum Corporation about its attempts to acquire the same acreage in Galmudug. The day after the Shell threats in Galmudug, neighboring Puntland State made a press release on the fragility of the Somali Constitution and the threats it faces from the regime of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

Some of Shell’s energy licenses in Somalia are located in areas disputed by the federal subject of Puntland and the separatist state of Somaliland. This leads us to inquire if Conoco-Phillips, which is a major player in Qatari exploration, is pushing Qatar to involve itself in the political developments in Somalia. Earlier this week, a Somaliland-based Somali-language website stated that Qatar would be mediating talks between Somalia and its separatist enclave of Somaliland.

Qatar’s recently-groomed allies in Turkey have been engaged in an open [and distastefully boastful] intervention in Somalia for the past year, which has allowed Qatar to work diligently behind the scenes. This also explains why the Qataris haven’t been complaining at all about Turkey’s growing influence in Somalia, as opposed to the dismayed Saudis who have become so concerned about losing their share in Somalia’s potential riches that they’ve even studied and narrowed down the places they were eager to exploit and which they may now sit out on.

Is energy-starved Turkey eyeing [sic] opportunities offered by the prospective find of 10 billion barrels of crude oil in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland province? -Jamal Khashoggi via Al-Arabiya

It’s been rumored that during President Mohamud’s recent 3-day trip to Doha, he was given $135 million to push the Qatari-hatched agenda, which seems reasonable considering that Qatar pledged $400 million to Gaza, a region beseiged by Israel and thus unable to exploit its own resources with which it can repay the Qataris and their corporate allies.

Zainab Guleed, DN Contributor/Staff
DissidentNation.com

When I first heard it that China was planning to move hundreds of millions of its people into Africa, I refused to believe it, and my natural instinct told me to call it off as a conspiracy theory of the highest order. But a quick Google search combining the terms “Africa, China,” and “300 million” brought forth some very reputable sources which corroborate the story, including articles by Cedric Muhammad for Forbes and Asia Times.

It’s also fair to add that 300 million is just the low estimate–a very low estimate in fact. China may have to relocate as many as many as 700 million people, close to half its current population, to Africa [most probably]. In China Safari, written by Serge Michel and Michel Beuret, the large Asian country can only sustain half of its current population, leaving just under or over 700 million people (depending on your timeline) in search of a new homeland. It’s no longer a matter of economic figures, it’s a matter of life and death at the most basic level for the Chinese people and a device to alleviate any political pressures which can arise from a desperate population.

China meets Africa

The Chinese have been trading in Africa for as long as parties on each side were able to put a simple boat together. There are 1,000-year-old Chinese coins buried beneath cities as distant as Kilwa and Mogadishu. To say the least, the history between the old Orient and Africa is a romantic one. It’s a bond which has today allowed China to gain easier and less guarded access into the lives of Africans than did the colonialists of Europe who shared no such history with any Africans, at least not a positive one.

In all of the centuries, and perhaps even millennia, that Chinese civilizations have been trading across Africa, at no time did they think to establish the kind of permanence that defines their current trade regimen with the Africans. China has outstripped the United States and all of the nations of Europe to become Africa’s top trading partner. Commerce between China and Africa stood at $166 billion in 2011, doubling the paltry $82 billion exchanged between Africa and the US that same year. A decade earlier, Sino-African trade was only worth around $7 billion, and it was only three years ago that China unseated the US to become Africa’s top commercial partner. The resolve of the Chinese in pushing the West off of Africa’s resources speaks not of an exotic shopper, but of a desperate hunter looking to alleviate the hunger of his tribe. Something in the mainland must be forcing the Chinese to look outward for solutions to their societal problems. Instead of reforms, the Chinese now look for outlets and escapes from their poisoned homeland.

Inhospitable country

When we think of unpleasant or otherwise inhospitable places in the world, our minds instinctively fill with images of overcrowded Indian side streets or dangerous Brazilian slums. But India, for all of its seemingly crippling urban woes, suffers primarily because of social backwardness and institutional inefficiency–the country itself still has a lot to give to its inhabitants in terms of nourishment and wealth. The Brazilians, for all of their institutional corruption and social planning catastrophes, have even less to worry about, if at all. They still have their prized Amazon duo to live off–the duo which consists of the world’s largest rainforest and the world’s greatest river, rendering starvation and sustained pollution a distant if not wholly impossible concern.

For all that human civilization has done to disfigure its native soils in search of riches, the worst effects have been reversible to the point of rendering them non-issues. That is, except for China. For the first time in history, a nation of people have rendered their own homeland unlivable as a direct consequence of their own conscious and deliberate decision-making, and now they’re in search of greener pastures. It’s a rare instance when greener pastures literally and figuratively means what it says, because it can’t get any worse than in China; their water is doomed, their soil is doomed, and even their skies provide no escape from this environmental death sentence.

A little over a decade ago, when the economic ascent of China and India became popular news fads, I wondered how it would be possible to motorize hundreds of millions of new drivers and fully industrialize the lives of two billion new people to the level of the United States or Germany without severely taxing their own livelihoods. The Indians ended up taking a services-based route to material bliss, but the Chinese scrapped all warnings and plunged right into an industrial nightmare reminiscent of the worst Western propaganda against the Soviets.

Pollution is no longer a mere inconvenience in China, it’s an outright plague. 70% of lake and river water and 90% of urban groundwater in China is unfit for even the sturdiest animals to consume. Over 12 million hectares of once-productive farmland have been deemed polluted beyond repair in a 2006 report published by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, rendering an area the size of England to become a Chinese Chernobyl by the err of poor planning and an unhealthy obsession with big numbers.

The plan for China’s billion-man colony

Relocating half to three quarters of a billion Chinese people to the most distant continent from its shores will obviously be difficult, but it won’t be impossible, and that’s because the ground work has been in motion for many years. One curious case is the New City of Kilamba, an urban housing project in Luanda that was meant to alleviate the living conditions of the capital city’s poorest residents. The project, funded and built by China, was completed in 2011, but after two years the Angolan government has sold only 10% of the housing units and not necessarily to Angolans.

Some may assert that the poor sales of the Kilamba apartments is an unexpected tragedy, but it doesn’t take an economist to figure out that the Kilamba project was destined to fail as a viable solution to Luanda’s slum crisis. The first obvious problem is the project’s resemblance to upscale expatriate communities dotting the oil-rich Persian Gulf states – but this project is meant to house the poorest people in a country that’s barely a decade removed from a devastating civil war. The cheapest units cost $120,000, which is impossible for current slum-dwelling Luandans to afford, especially without the possibility of a mortgage. Africa has a notorious void of formal credit channels. In Kenya, only 20,000 of its 43 million people have access to mortgages. If ordinary Angolans can’t afford it, and expatriates aren’t biting either, then it leaves only the Chinese to truly know what this project services if we consider their total dominance in the creation and planning process.

It’s a good policy to keep an eye on China’s most promising partners in Africa, all located in the southernmost quarter of the continent; Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, Zambia, and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. One obvious theme you’ll notice is that all five of these countries are ruled by Marxist “revolutionary” parties directly controlled from the top down by their Moscow and now-Beijing based communist directors. The price for bankrolling and intervening in their independence movements had to be paid back at some point, and China is the lucky beneficiary of Soviet and Cuban efforts.

In Zimbabwe, Mugabe has engaged in a massive confiscation of land that once belonged to the rich White minority, and presumably to be given to landless Black Zimbabweans. But that doesn’t add up. Mugabe hasn’t undertaken any serious efforts to educate the Black majority on agricultural production, and an enterprising class of Black landowners free of government handouts would only be a threat to Mugabe’s monopoly on power and wealth. The real reason that the land is being cleared is to make adequate settlement space for Zimbabwe’s incoming Chinese cohabitants.

In their own words

If it’s still not sold on you that China has earmarked Africa as a future settler colony, then you will have to hear it directly from the Chinese themselves. For a few years now, Chinese leaders have been broadcasting their short-term projection of 300 million rural inhabitants moving into the big cities from 2010 to 2025. It’s also been noted that currently half of China’s 1.3 billion citizens are city-dwellers, leaving us with a long-term estimate of around 600-700 million extra Chinese people ultimately settling in big cities.

With China’s big cities already slipping beyond livability, it can only be considered a national suicide to double the number of consumers and polluters in the equation, especially in such a short period of time. The only way it makes sense to urbanize 300+ million new Chinese without turning the country into a clay oven is if those rural inhabitants are moved to cities that are far away from the Chinese mainland.

The only lingering thought is if the Africans can take this influx. Most likely, they can. It’s a continent with a smaller population than India yet it is twice the size of India and China combined. 500 million Chinese newcomers can easily be absorbed sufficiently into Africa’s virgin ecosystem.

{DN Staff Writers}

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Background

On January 6, 2013 Al- Jazeera and Universal TV, a UK-based Somali television station, simultaneously reported on the vulnerability of women in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Mogadishu. The camps, which are primarily settled by families with young children, are poorly protected temporary shacks where women are regularly susceptible to random acts of sexual violence perpetrated by armed men. The Al-Jazeera story, in particular, detailed the experience of Nura Hirsi, an IDP woman, who was gang-raped by 7 government soldiers in late December 2012.

It was 1am, my children were sleeping when these men entered my house. Some of them were armed with AK47s. They slapped me, ordered me outside and raped me. They did all kind of things to me. I couldn’t fight them or defend myself. How could I against seven armed men?

I went to the police but they were not really interested. People get killed in Mogadishu; I didn’t die. To them rape isn’t so serious. Nobody is ever arrested. Even the person in charge of the IDP camp was not interested. He didn’t say anything when I told him. I would even like to speak to the radio stations – but who will give me that chance? -Nura Hirsi via Al-Jazeera

The report and the increasing media attention given to the high level of acts of sexual violence committed by the western-funded security forces in southern Somalia prompted a local journalist to do a follow-up to the story for a Mogadishu-based radio station. On January 8, 2013 the journalist, Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim (Koronto) interviewed a 27 year-old woman, Lul Ali Isman, who had claimed to have been gang-raped by government soldiers. It’s important to note that Koronto’s interview with Mrs. Isman had not yet been published and that Al-Jazeera, to this day, has denied any link to the journalist or alleged rape victim. That is to say, neither of Koronto nor Mrs. Isman had committed an illegal act or crime yet, despite all of this, on January 10, 2013, Mrs. Isman was arrested by police and taken to the Central Investigations Department (C.I.D.) where she was interrogated and forced to retract her allegations against the security forces, undergo medical ‘testing’ at the police hospital, and hand over the names and telephone numbers of the journalists who interviewed her.

The medical testing the alleged victim was subjected to include an outdated practice known as a ‘finger test’ which, according to Human Rights Watch, is “an unscientific and degrading practice that has long been discredited because it is not a credible test of whether a woman has been raped.” The test, which is routinely used in India, is also known as the virginity test and involves the inspection of a female’s hymen to determine sexual activity (or lackthereof). The alleged rape victim, however, is a, pregnant, married mother who is currently nursing a child which begs the question of how the midwife who conducted the test could conclude otherwise. This, however, did not stop the Attorney General from moving forward with the case and using the ‘finger test’ as the primary medical evidence presented by the government to conclude that Mrs. Isman had ‘fabricated a rape case’ and ‘damaged state security’.

Prior to getting interviewed by Abdiaziz Koronto, Mrs. Isman had sought the assistance of a local NGO, Somali Family and Child Care (SFCC), which was founded and is currently chaired by Nuurto Sheikh Mohamud, the sister of Somalia’s current President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Muniro Jeylaani Mohamed, an employee of SFCC, took Mrs. Isman to a local hospital for medical help as hospitals in Somalia are privatized and women in IDP camps cannot afford the fees.

On January 10, 2013 Abdiaziz Koronto was contacted by the police and summoned to the C.I.D. for questioning where he too was detained without charge and would remain in custody, without charge, for 3 weeks.

A Broken System

On January 16, 2013 Police Commissioner General Sharif Shekuna Maye held a press conference where he named & shamed the alleged victim and exposed her to public stigmatization. Maye dismissed the allegations as propaganda, claimed the alleged victim had never been raped. He went on to also accuse the journalist and several Somali women’s rights group leaders and organizations of bribing Mrs. Isman with promises of financial compensation and pointed out the journalist, Abdiaziz Koronto, in particular for trying to “tarnish the dignity of the police force and the dignity of the Somali nation.”

When the situation rapidly deteriorated and the improbability of the release of the unlawfully detained Mrs. Isman and Koronto came to surface, the matter provoked several Human Rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, to personally appeal to President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on their behalf. The President, however, stated that his government would not intervene and pleaded with the Somali public and international community to be patient and to ‘have faith’ in the judiciary system; a judicial system so broken it’s widely known for being routinely susceptible to the manipulations and the influence of politicians and the wealthy alike.

One such example that can be pointed to occurred less than 6 months prior when the currently presiding Supreme Court Judge Aydiid Ilka Hanaf, a remnant of the transitional period who was appointed by his close friend former President Sharif Ahmed, in a politically motivated move proceeded to bypass the Technical Selection Committee vetting process by swearing warlords into parliament thereby tainting the entire elections process. The warlords, who had strong ties to militias and had been indicated in human rights violations, were close political allies with Sharif Ahmed and were seen as increasing his chances of regaining the presidency.

“It’s going to be a qualitatively different parliament than anything you’ve seen before. It’s certainly the beginning of legitimate, representative and accountable institutions.-Augustine Mahiga via The Guardian

The guardian added: But the Somali president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has accused the selection committee members of overstepping their bounds by not including those he felt should be MPs.

Having been sentenced to a jail-term, if Abdiaziz Koronto and Mrs. Isman’s defense decide to get the case get appealed and heard by a higher court, it will be presided over by this very judge. To the world, this is information the government would much rather sweep under the rug, as their reputation with the international community appears to mean more to them than accountability, good governance, or transparency does.

On January 17, 2013, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C., President Mohamud stated:

We want [journalists] to be free and have the opportunity to tell the people what they are supposed to tell … but that does not mean that tainting negatively the image of the public, the image of the government is not something acceptable to any standard in the world…And this is propaganda. We do not detain unnecessarily, the police is handling, and it is a civil case. -Hassan Sheikh Mohamud via Committee to Protect Journalists

The president’s statement left many in anger, questioning the motivations of the government by moving forward with the case. Some believe that it was wholly political in nature and an attempt to silence anyone they see as damaging their tightly-guarded reputation with the international community. This became further highlighted when on January 28, 2013, state-run and funded media (RadioMuqdisho.net) was scrutinized for reporting that the government was seeking to arrest Hussien Yasin, the editor of a popular opposition website, for trying to tarnish the reputation of the government.

Just a day after the President’s speech in Washington, his cabinet met in capital of Mogadishu and the Minister of Interior and National Security commented to the media about the pending case. Minister Abdikarin Guled stated that his government would not “tolerate reporting that incites the public or creates a situation where the national security of the country could be undermined”. Furthermore, Minister Guled reiterated the comments of Police Commissioner Maye and insisted that the journalist, Abdiaziz Koronto had fabricating the story and paid bribes to the alleged victim, further violating Koronto’s presumption of innocence and exacting even more political pressure on the fragile judiciary.

On January 31, 2013, charges were officially laid against the journalist, the alleged rape victim, the woman who introduced the two, the alleged rape victims’ husband, the neighbor who witnessed the rape and an employee of the NGO that first helped the alleged rape victim. No charges, however, were filled against Nuurto Sheikh Mohamud, the Presidents’ sister, even though the Police Commissioner had accused her and her organization of paying bribes to the alleged victim. The charges against Muniro Jeylaani Mohamed, the employee that took Mrs. Isman to the hospital after the rape and granddaughter of the Police Commissioner, were also dropped. No one knows when these charges were dropped or why but given the political realities in Somalia, one can only assume it is for the same reason Nuurto Sheikh Mohamud was not charged, but Hawa Hassan Ali (the woman who introduced Abdiaziz Koronto and Mrs. Isman) was – through familial and clan ties. In fact, by a peculiar turn of events, Nuurto Sheikh Mohamud would become part of the governments witness list against the victim.

The verdict and the solutions

On February 6, 2013, Abdiaziz Koronto and Mrs. Isman were convicted and sentenced to one year in prison. Their defense attorney was not allowed to present witnesses or any medical evidence to make his case. While this verdict has caused world-wide condemnation, with senior officials in the U.N. and Western governments asking for an inquiry into the trial or an outright Presidential pardon, the real issues have largely been ignored.

First, in the nation’s capital, the problem of raping women with impunity still remains. The government troops, as it stands, consist primarily of unreformed criminals, with little or no training, who have been recruited pretty much right off the streets. There are also no real enforced requirements, background checks nor evaluations for joining the Somali military or police force. Most recruits happen to therefore be current or former child soldiers or ‘reformed’ Islamic militants who had thrived in a culture of anarchy and continue to prey on the defenseless members of society they are meant to be protecting. Instead of addressing the core issues, the highest ranking of the Somali government have continued to focus their attention elsewhere with the pleas for lifting the 20 year-old United Nations Arms Embargo on Somalia. If such soldiers already cannot be held accountable for their actions, why isn’t the government concerned about who will hold these soldiers accountable when they have access to heavier weaponry?

Secondly, the security forces committing these human rights violations are funded by the west, with the police force implicated in these crimes being partially funded by the United Kingdom, but instead of holding these forces to account and cutting funding until they are reformed, the UK has pledged to increase it!

Thirdly, there is a larger societal and cultural problem that needs to be addressed. The tribal dynamic and nepotism at play here simply cannot be ignored. Abdiaziz Koronto and Mrs.Isman both hail from a marginalized tribe, whereas the judge, jury, and executioner in this case all hail from the dominant tribe of Mogadishu. If the government is insistent that a crime took place here and states that all Somali persons are equal before the law, for true justice to have been served, the President’s sister and the Police Commissioners granddaughter would have been sitting beside the journalist and alleged rape victim, instead of getting off scot free.

Finally, this entire case and the mishandling of it sheds further light on the culture of shame and the dismissive attitude with which the topic of rape is dealt with in Somalia. The fact that numerous organization dedicated to assisting rape victims, IDP women in particular, exist in Mogadishu is a testament to existence of a rampant rape culture and the importance of this issue. When western-educated and otherwise respected members of parliament see this case and the miscarriage of justice that took place as nothing more than a ‘distraction’, one can only wonder what the average Somali thinks.

Looking Ahead

The Prime Minister of Somalia announced the establishment of an ‘Independent’ Human Rights Task Force only after international scrutiny, just as his government established a task force to investigate the murders of journalists but, months on, no action has been taken. The Human Rights Task Force will more than likely prove to be another farcical display to ease the minds of Western donors.

In the last few weeks, President Mohamud has traveled to the U.S. and Europe, trying to shore up international aid and made lofty promises of security and judicial reform. Back at home, however, Somali journalists see his government as a bigger threat to their livelihood than Al-Shabaab with 9 journalists having been killed in Mogadishu since the ushering in of his government, and several others arrested on dubious charges, forcing some to reconsider their occupation.

This government is different to other governments we have had in Somalia. When they were campaigning for office they were very friendly with journalists, but now they are in office it seems they want us as far away as possible. -Awil Abukar via Al-Jazeera

For some, this case has exposed this Somali government for what they really are – a government for the few, by the few, and in the name of many – and irrevocably broken their faith in the ‘new’ Somalia so many had been desperately hoping for.

Amina Ibrahim Abdow, DN Contributor
aminaabdow@gmail.com
DissidentNation.com

To some Muslims, the Saudi clergy are a Trojan horse eating away at the heart of Islam, but to others the clergy represent a return to pure Islam. We caution you to be sensitive when using the C word; supporters of Saudi Arabia’s religious authorities take offense to the very notion that they be labeled as clerics, because the maintenance of a clergy is prohibited in Islam.

But what is a clergy anyway? According to The Free Dictionary, it is the body of people ordained for religious service. The process of religious ordination carries with it legal and governmental collaboration. In sum, a clergy is a legally-appointed and maintained body or class of citizens whose sole institutional function is the guardianship of all religious matters. Saudi Arabia’s is a system reminiscent of the Pharisees sect who dominated the religious life of Jerusalem during the turn of the first millennium and the ascent of Jesus Christ.

It was the ancient struggle against the Pharisees which led to the Christian, and later Islamic natural opposition against priestly institutions–although the Christians quickly discarded that principle. The Pharisees came to power on the heel of Johan Girhan’s defeat of the Seleucids during the Second Temple period of Judaism, thereby establishing their priestly order as the sole trustees of the Torah of Moses. Through scriptural nitpicking, the Pharisees interpreted selective decrees from the Torah to justify and solidify their class privilege and ownership of religious edicts.

The Saudi equivalent of the Second Temple’s Pharisees are the Al-Shaikh family, descendents of the 18th-century warlord-cleric Muhammad Bin Abdul-Wahhab. In Saudi Arabia, all matters of religious study and decree are to be meted out by the Al-Shaikhs, who additionally reserve permanent authority in the Ministry of Justice and in the capacity of Grand Mufti.

During their rule, the Pharisees lived and operated as a noble class maintained by public coffers, free from common occupations. It was this mix of power and idleness that opened the Pandora’s box which came to be known in their infamous revisions of the Torah. The Pharisees’ weak knowledge of philosophical and legal traditions relegated them to discourse of the most trivial daily matters.

Overcome with their own priestly fatigue, the Al-Shaikhs and their minions have increasingly fell into the Pharisaic habit of obsessing over the minutiae of daily life. The top headline this week from the Saudi theological circus was a fatwa calling for female babies to wear burkas. As bizarre as it may be, it’s not surprising considering that another fatwa declared just two years prior to the latest one stated that non-familial men and women could override gender separation laws if the male drinks his female counterpart’s breast milk.

During the Second Temple period, the trivially-inclined priesthood of the Pharisees scrutinized every waking moment of the common Judeans’ day, reinterpreting or convoluting minor scriptural anecdotes to add to an ever-growing list of prohibitions and edicts. From sun up to sun down, ordinary Judeans had their entire day dictated by priestly decree; petty strictures on grooming, unfounded social prohibitions, and outright superstitions adopted as ritual.

Today, the Saudi clergy concerns itself primarily with frivolous topics of social conduct. They are busied with studying and elaborating the exact distance a man should maintain from a female stranger, the maximum number of days allowed between pubis trimming sessions, and providing the guidelines for an isolated women-only metropolis. In three decades of news monitoring, virtually all Saudi fatwas have originated from a disturbing obsession with the guardianship of womens’ chastity and mens’ cleanliness.

This culture of pettiness popularized by Saudi Arabia has become a mainstream fixture in Islamic communities throughout the world. Piety is now judged based on minor wardrobe and grooming details; cuffed pants represents greater piety than uncuffed pants, a goatee represents greater piety than a goatee combined with a mustache, and a buildup of callus in the forehead represents greater piety than a smooth forehead. It’s these minor, irrelevant physical attributes which have replaced action and quiet conviction.

Two thousand years ago in the ancient Levant, a fraternity of parasitic priests hijacked the Torah and created the cult of the Pharisees. Today, a similar cabal sits on a throne of vanity in Mecca and Medina, waging a war against the essence of Islam.

Zainab Guleed, DN Contributor/Staff
DissidentNation.com