The Largest Minority

May 16th, 2009 by Allison Kilkenny

Most Americans only hear about Somalia if the country’s name precedes “is a failed state,” or “is a hotbed of pirate activity.” But what many Americans don’t know is that the US worked to undermine a Somalian charity that stepped in to provide aid to the chaotic state.

After the gross failure of the 1993 Black Hawk rescue mission which left 18 US Army Rangers and perhaps 1000 Somalians dead, the world turned its back on the impoverished country. Somalia was largely supported by a charity group, Al-Barakaat, which accounted for “about half of the country’s $500 million remittances.”

Al-Barakaat, which literally means “blessings” was “set up to address the needs of Somali immigrants who sent, on a weekly or monthly basis, a significant part of their earnings to their families,” writes Ibrahim Warde in The Price of Fear.

Following the 1991 collapse of the Somali government and banking system, Al-Barakaat “assumed a significant role in the Somali government.” Warde adds that at the time of the September 11 attacks Al-Barakaat was Somalia’s largest business group with “subsidiaries involved in banking, telecommunications, and construction.”

The charity’s model consisted of wiring money (much like Western Union) from expatriate Somalians to their families in Somalia– for means of survival — not terrorism. Warde explains that although the global money transfers understandably raised initial suspicion, accusations that Al-Barakaat was “closely associated with or controlled by the terrorist group Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya (AIAI),” which in turn gave a portion of money to Osama bin Laden “were dismissed by intelligence professionals, and attributed to political and business rivalries within the community.”

In 2001, President Bush accused Al-Barakaat of funding Al-Qaeda. He quickly announced that the Treasury Department would force the Somalian charity to close, and remarked that the termination would “[send] a clear message to global financial institutions: You are with us, or you’re with the terrorists. And if you’re with the terrorists, you will face the consequences.”

About a year later, The New York Times reported that American officials claimed they had proof that Al-Barakaat provided “as much as $25 million a year to Osama bin Laden’s terrorists in weapons, cash and other support,” but that “some United States officials now acknowledge that the evidence of Al Barakaat’s backing for terrorism is more tenuous.”

All of these accusations turned out to be false, and the US government shyly snuck away from the mess. They were able to do so with an assist from the mainstream media, which barely reported on any of this. The wild goose chase not only negatively affected Somalia, but it tarnished the image of the United States. Allies, which had followed the US’s lead on Al-Barakaat on good faith, began to doubt the accusations. Warde writes: “[A] Canadian judge, saying that he found no evidence of a link to terrorism, rejected the US request to extradite Liban Hussein, the chairman of Barakaat North America. The man was freed on a $12,000 bond.”
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April 13th, 2009 by Manila Ryce

April 13th, 2009 by Guest

by Johann Hari

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the U.S. to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth.

But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell - and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: Pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t?

In his book “Villains of All Nations,” the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the cat o’ nine tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the 18th century.”

They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.”

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

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November 11th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

Barack Obama says he’ll reshape US foreign policy with particular emphasis on the Middle East. He promises to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back on the American agenda. He blames the Bush administration for having neglected the issue. But is his position really that different? And is he free to change foreign policy?

September 10th, 2008 by evmonk

Rarely does the entire world agree, but Obama v. McCain has produced a global consensus! Okay, there were only 22 countries polled, but still…

If we can momentarily put aside our obvious preference for neither of the major party candidates, we’ll see that something important and perhaps unprecedented is happening. The world, speaking in unison, is pleading with Americans to elect Obama. The American people, like all people, are prone to manipulation by clever media campaigns, scare tactics and political chicanery. But I genuinely believe that while we were dumb enough to elect Bush…twice, 2008 is the last straw. Let’s make sure that this clear conviction from the rest of the world becomes a theme over the next two months. If Americans understand the depth and passion behind public opinion around the world, they won’t make the same mistake thrice.

Anyway…I’ve pulled out what I feel are the highlights of the poll below and after the break, and the full report (PDF) is definitely worth skimming if you’re interested in this type of thing.

All 22 countries in a BBC World Service poll would prefer Democratic nominee Barack Obama elected US president instead of his Republican rival John McCain. Obama is preferred by a four to one margin on average across the 22,000 people polled.

The margin in favour of Obama ranges from just 9 per cent in India to 82 per cent in Kenya. On average 49 per cent prefer Obama to 12 per cent preferring McCain. Nearly four in ten do not take a position.

The poll also explored the expected impact of the US election. In 17 of the 22 countries surveyed the most common view is that, if Barack Obama is elected president, America’s relations with the rest of the world are likely to get better. If John McCain is elected, the most common view in 19 countries is that relations will stay about the same as they are now.

A similar poll conducted for BBC World Service by GlobeScan ahead of the 2004 US presidential election found that, of 35 countries polled, 30 preferred to see Democratic nominee John Kerry, rather than incumbent George Bush, elected president. At the time, the Philippines, Nigeria and Poland were among the few countries to favour Bush’s re-election. All three now favour Barack Obama over John McCain….

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July 13th, 2008 by Manila Ryce

I’ve been meaning to post this video for a long time.

Emmanuel Jal was a child soldier in south Sudan before he was smuggled out of the country by a British aid worker. He is now based in London and is a respected activist. See part one and part two of AlJazeera’s interview with Jal to learn more about his story.

June 27th, 2008 by evmonk

Global Voices, a unique blogging project started by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, is holding their yearly conference in Budapest for the next two days. Today the conference panels are focused on the censorship and freedom of expression online. Tomorrow there will be a number of panels on citizen media and the use of web2.0 to improve the political process, build community, and bridge the language barrier. The entire even is being streamed and liveblogged, and archived video of every panel is available here. If you’re interested in this stuff, there are some great speakers and discussions. But remember that these are bloggers and technophiles, so their presentations aren’t always the most entertaining.

If you haven’t heard of Global Voices, check them out. They aggregate and review blogs from around the world and then organize the best posts by region and topic, in addition to having a general feed.

May 1st, 2008 by Manila Ryce

A US air raid has killed up to 30 people, including two senior leaders of al-Shabaab, Somalia’s armed opposition group.

Four aircraft bombed the town of Dusamareb, 300km north of Mogadishu, early on Thursday.

Bob Prucha, a US military spokesman, told to the Associated Press news agency that US forces had attacked a “known al-Qaeda target”.

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