USAID/OFDA Assistance to Somalia - $47,077,637
USAID/FFP(2) Assistance to Somalia - $197,415,500
State/PRM(3) Assistance to Somalia - $20,100,000
Total USAID & State Humanitarian Assistance to Somalia:
$264,593,137
Click here to retreive the full report by the USAID, et, alt.
Source:......
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PRESS RELEASE 0020/2008
Nairobi, 13 August 2008 – The United Nations Special Representative for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, said he was very pleased that the two main Committees in the Djibouti Agreement are being convened this weekend. After consultations with the Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, it was agreed that the Joint Security Committee (Article 8.) and the High Level Committee (Article 9) will meet in Djibouti from 16 – 18 August.
The two sides will have delegations attending each meeting. The Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein as well as the leaders of the ARS, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan plan to attend.
The international community, including diplomats from several countries and regional...
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Following is the latest news dispatch from the Somali besieged capital:
A former Somali commander and five other ministers, who had resigned after criticizing President Yusuf’s policies, have been killed. Colonel Ibrahim Hassan Isse, the ex-commander of Bali-Doogle Air Base and five other members of the cabinet who resigned four days ago, have been killed by masked gunmen in Afgoye town on Friday, Press TV Correspondent reported. Hassan Isse refused to work with the government on the grounds that the President was a puppet of the Ethiopians.
Source: Press......
According to a Press Pelease by the European Commision:
The European Commission has allocated a further €21 million in humanitarian aid for the Horn of Africa: Assistance is being provided to vulnerable populations in Somalia (€13m), Eritrea (€4m) and Ethiopia (€4m). So far in 2008, the Commission has provided nearly €120 million in humanitarian aid, including food aid, to needy people in the Horn of Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda). The funds are channelled through the Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO), under the responsibility of Commissioner Louis Michel.
The Press Release went on by saying:
The Commission’s assistance will focus on rural populations and internally displaced people (IDPs). It addresses core humanitarian needs, with emergency relief...
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The London based Iranian Press TV reports:
Four Ethiopian soldiers were killed in heavy clashes with the Union of Islamic Court (UIC) fighters north of the Somali capital Mogadishu. A Press TV correspondent, reporting from Mogadishu, says the fighting between the Ethiopian troops and the UIC fighters is ongoing in the Industrial Street. According to an eye-witness at least six mortars landed in the Pasta Base in north Mogadishu killing 4 Ethiopian soldiers and injuring several others. In a telephone interview with Press TV the UIC spokesman, Abdirahim Isse Addow, confirmed that the UIC has launched two strong attacks on Somali government troops backed by Ethiopian soldiers. Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. In 2006,...
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According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
Acute malnutrition is a chronic emergency all over the country. Families who have been displaced for years due to the political conflict require urgent assistance. Pastoralists in some areas have lost half of their herds. In southern Somalia, historically the country’s breadbasket, production of staple foods (such as sorghum and maize) has fallen by up to 50 percent because of the protracted drought.
With a $3 million CERF allocation, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is treating acute malnutrition in displaced children under five and vulnerable host Populations by handing out Plumpy’doz (a compound of vegetable fat, peanut paste, sugar, skimmed milk powder, malto-dextrine, and complex vitamins and...
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TFG troops supporting the continuation of the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia came under heavy fire in north Mogadishu as the country is thrown more into anarchy at the cost of more civilian lives.
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According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ “Situation Reports” (No. 30, 01 Aug 2008):
More than 150 children have been killed or injured through indiscriminate shelling, bombings and crossfire in the past year. In a press statement issued on 31 July, Christian Balslev-Olesen, UNICEF Representative to Somalia, said, ‘the current environment of conflict, displacement and insecurity in Southern and Central Somalia has a serious negative impact on children’s and young people’s long-term psychosocial welfare and health development.’ During the reporting week alone, seven children died in the ongoing battles in Mogadishu - five as they were fleeing from school and two while they were playing football on a public pitch....
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The Missionary International Service News Agency reports:
At least 10 civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed after an Ethiopian attack in a northeastern quarter of Mogadishu. Witnesses said that 12 other people were wounded after a mortar shell exploded near a group of 40 civilians that were looking for refuge behind the home. Last night the nearby military base in Hurwa quarter was attacked. Today’s victims add to the nine from night in Mogadishu as fighting continued between armed militias and Ethiopian troops, backing the Somali transition government, which has been often denounced by human rights groups and by Somalis themselves of carrying out veritable reprisals against the population.
I think it is time to file war crimes case at the International Criminal...
According to the United Nations:
High levels of malnutrition and the difficulties of delivering aid make Somalia the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative there said on Tuesday. More than 1 million people have fled their homes in Somalia, which is convulsed by fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces, Islamist insurgents and an assortment of warlords. “I’ve never seen anything like Somalia before,” Guillermo Bettocchi, representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said during a visit to London. “The situation is very severe. It is the most pressing humanitarian emergency in the world today — even worse than Darfur,” he told reporters, referring to the war in western...
Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times sent a dispatch from the Somali caiptal and says:
The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began to help themselves to sacks of grain last week. Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops took heavy casualties and retreated all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire. Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a comfortable life as a development consultant in Springfield, Va. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“I feel this slipping away,” he said.
By its own...
Galal Nassar of the Egyptian Al Ahram Weekly writes:
US bombers began pounding away at Somali positions as battles escalated between the Somali resistance and the combined forces of the invading Ethiopian army and the Somali interim government. Hardly a day passes without a bombing or assassination in Baidoa, capital of the interim government. The Americans are using their usual excuse: they are trying to kill Al-Qaeda leaders. Somalia’s Islamic resistance seems to have mastered the art of guerrilla warfare, taking control of small towns then abandoning them and disappearing into the population. It is a tactic designed to baffle and frustrate a regular army trying to fight a symmetric war. Where exactly is the enemy? Meanwhile, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) and the...
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Edith M. Lederer of the Associated Press writes:
Somalia’s transitional government urged the Security Council on Friday to speed up its planning for the possible deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force to replace African Union troops in the war-wracked nation. Somalia’s U.N. Ambassador Elmi Ahmed Duale endorsed a recent appeal by African heads of state to the council “to urgently take steps for the early deployment of United Nations peacekeeping operations to further enhance peace in Somalia.”
Ms. Lederer went on by saying:
Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the poverty-stricken nation of 7 million into chaos. Its weak transitional government,...
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Xan Rice, East Africa correspondent of the Guardian News paper writes:
The Islamist-led resistance in Somalia is growing in scale and aggression, with insurgents openly taking on Ethiopian troops and African Union peacekeepers in the capital Mogadishu, in fighting that has killed dozens, possibly hundreds, in the past three weeks.
Mr. Rice went on saying:
Few people believe that the situation is about to get better. Several experts interviewed by the Guardian say that the insurgents are becoming more powerful. A military analyst and a western diplomat to Somalia, neither of whom wished to be named, warned that the angry mood and conditions that allowed an Islamist movement to defeat a gang of warlords and take power in Mogadishu last year were returning. “We are on a merry-go-round...
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Anna Husarska of the International Rescue Committee says:
Somalia’s internal conflict is propelled by a combustible mix of religion, politics and clan rivalry. Civilians are killed daily in Mogadishu, there are roadside bombs and mortar attacks, and politicians and journalists are targeted. Making matters worse, the country has suffered this year from both floods and drought. This combination of insecurity and natural disasters has displaced huge numbers of people and caused suffering on a scale painful to behold. According to the most recent UN figures, 400,000 people, or roughly one-third of Mogadishu’s population, have fled the city.
She continued by saying:
Yet Somalia still rarely gets into the headlines. This partly reflects the near impossibility of gathering news. Few...
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Ramzy Baroud writing for the Pan Arab Al Jazeera Television Netwotes says:
The people of Somalia are enduring yet another round of suffering as Ethiopian forces wreck havoc in the capital, Mogadishu. Apparently in response to an attack on one of its units, and the dragging of a soldier’s mutilated body through the city’s streets, an Ethiopian mortar reportedly exploded in Mogadishu’s Bakara market on Nov. 9, killing eight civilians. A number of Somalis were also found dead the following day, some believed to have been rounded up by Ethiopian forces the night before.
Ramzy Baroud went on by saying:
Of course, one cannot realistically expect the international community to take on a constructive involvement in the conflict. Various members of this community have already played a most...
Peter Heinlein of VOA writes:
Washington’s top diplomat on African issues says regional leaders must do more to ease simmering tensions in the Horn of Africa. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer made the comment after leading a team of senior U.S. officials on a tour of Ethiopia’s tense Ogaden region bordering Somalia.
I think the US Government is asking the wrong group of countries to get involved in tragic Somali political conflict. Neither Kenya nor Ethiopia is an honest peace broker. These countries have strategic and security interests that can only be achieved by keeping Somalia weak and fragmented for many years to come. Hence, it is not only illogical but counter-productive to expect those countries to pull Somalia from the current...
The Guardian newspaper reports:
Rising tensions in the Ogaden region of eastern Ethiopia, combined with chronic instability in neighbouring Somalia, Eritrean enmity, and human rights concerns, are testing US support for the Addis Ababa government led by Clinton-era good governance pin-up Meles Zenawi.
The paper continued by saying:
Keeping a firm hand on ethnically Somali, Muslim Ogaden, the scene of a cold war-era proxy conflict, is a long-standing US objective.
The paper continued by saying:
Eritrea, its bitter border dispute with Ethiopia still simmering, is shipping “huge quantities of arms” to insurgents in Somalia, according to a UN report. Concerns about a spreading humanitarian and refugee emergency grow, even as international aid targets undershoot. And now, far from...
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Leoul Mekonen, Sudan Tribune
It is clear that the Somali Islamists are enemies to the US but arming and supporting a dictatorial regime with the notion of supporting the enemy’s enemy will not bring positive outcome to the US as well as Ethiopians… It is lunatic to think that the Ethiopian army will crush the Islamists. Instead it will raise the patriotic spirit of Somalis and even those who have had negative attitude towards Islamists will prefer to join them. Any Somali who hates the Islamists will not necessarily like the presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia but be compelled to join the jihadists when their airport is bombed by Ethiopian aircraft.
Samuel Makinda, Kenya’s Nation
Ethiopia’s invasion is unlikely to bring peace and order to Somalia, or to assist...
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The Australian ABC Online reports:
The Arab League and the African Union have called for Ethiopian troops to be withdrawn from Somalia immediately. Ethiopian troops are said to be only 30 kilometres north of the capital Mogadishu. Speaking after a joint consultative meeting the chair of the African Union commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, said the three organisations wanted to see Ethiopia’s troops withdrawn from neighbouring Somalia immediately. Mr Konare told journalists at the African Union headquarters that they wanted all parties to cease hostilities and return to peace talks. The Somali Ambassador to Ethiopia, Abdikarin Farah, said it was down to the governments in Baidoa and Addis Ababa to decide when the troops would leave.
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The South African News 24 reports:
Kenya plans to hold talks with Somalia’s embattled Islamic leaders in a bid to end escalating fighting with Ethiopian forces backing government, said diplomats on Wednesday. The talks in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Thursday “will seek ways to urgently end the conflict”, said a diplomat, requesting to remain anonymous. The diplomat said that the Islamic courts leadership has confirmed participation. Asked if Ethiopia and the Somali government would participate in the talks, the diplomat said: “We will deal with only those whom we can manage.”
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The Gulf News reports:
As Arab efforts to stop the war intensified, the UAE yesterday called on Ethiopia to withdraw its troops from Somalia. The appeal was made by Mohammad Hussain Al Sha’ali, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, during a meeting in Abu Dhabi with Mahmoud Ahmad Jaz, an envoy of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who delivered a message to President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Voicing the UAE’s concern over armed hostilities in Somalia, Al Sha’ali urged Addis Ababa to “halt this war” and called for “the withdrawal of foreign forces from Somalia,” WAM reported. He urged Somalia’s neighbours to “encourage reconciliation among Somali factions”.
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Click here to view the full dispatch on Xinhuanet (The Chinese News Agency).
You may also click here to view the full......
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The European Union’s Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, condemned Monday the escalating battles in Somalia. Speaking in Brussels, he was quoted as saying:
I express my deepest concern on the reported involvement of foreign forces in Somalia and urge all external players to refrain immediately from intervening militarily in Somali affairs and provoke further violence.
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The Norwegian Newspaper; Dagbladet has a long analytical report.
Click here to view the full report. Please note that the article in Norwegian only. Please also note that graphic picture on......
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Apee Ojulu editor of Gambela Today writes:
There has been a sort of unanimity among various advisors in Prime Minister Meles Zenawi government that in an all-out-war they will defeat the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) within few days. Zenawi’s Foreign Ministry warning to the UIC that his administration “will not tolerate an Islamist regime in neighboring Somalia” is an indication of that confidence (see MCT, /22, 2006). But hubris is not a military strategy to win a war. It is a risking scheme. Having mechanized forces, countless warplanes, weapons, backing of the international and capacities to destroy every house in Somalia do not prove to win the war. Recent war between Israeli mechanized army forces against a lesser tech wired Iranian and Syrian backed Hezbollah forces have...
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In an interview he gave to Al-Jezeera Television yesterday, President Isaias Afwerki reiterated that Eritrea did not send troops to Somalia.
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Stephanie McCrummen of the Washington Post Foreign Service writes:
War or no war with Somalia, Mulunesh Abebayhu wants out. Out of her teaching job, where Ethiopian security forces constantly harass her because of her political views. Out of this city, where hundreds of protesters were killed by police bullets after disputed elections last year. And, if she can manage, out of this country that she believes has plunged into the abyss of dictatorship at the hands of its prime minister, Meles Zenawi, a staunch ally of the United States in the vulnerable Horn of Africa.
“He confuses the Westerners so that he can keep ruling,” said Abebayhu, 54, an opposition member arrested along with an estimated 30,000 others in the sweeping post-election crackdown last year. “Our party...
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Xinhuanet; the Chinese news agency reports:
In a press release, the AL, of which Somalia is a member state, expressed apprehension and regret over maintaining armed clashes between the two sides at war, which has left thousands of Somalis homeless.
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The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
The aerial and ground assault was the first open admission by Ethiopia’s Christian-led government of its military operations in Somalia, where it has been supporting a weak interim government threatened by forces loyal to the Islamic clerics who control the capital, Mogadishu, and much of the rest of the country.
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