Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN

A de-mining official uses a metal detector to check for landmines in Somaliland (file photo)

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ABUDA, – Mohamed Olhaye Nour, 60, last cultivated his farm in Abuda, 24km southwest of Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, more than two decades ago.

“Before the war, our life was good; we did not worry about making ends meet,” he said. “In an average year, our crop production was about 40-50 `jawan’ (one `jawan’ = 100kg sack of maize and sorghum mixed together).

“We kept 15-20 `jawan’ in reserve. We used the remainder in different ways, such as for bread, ‘African cake’ [maize meal] eaten with milk, or sorghum with milk.”

Nour, who has two wives and 17 children, stopped cultivating his land because it “is full of mines”. Two people who ventured onto the land got injured – one losing both arms. Nour has also lost 36 livestock to the mines.

Most of the unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Abuda was planted during the 1977-78 war between Somalia and Ethiopia, according to local residents. Some is from the 1981-91 war between the Somali National Movement and the Somali National Army.

According to Nour, many residents of Abuda were agro-pastoralists before these wars. Most fled to Ethiopia when clashes first broke out. When they returned in 1991, they found their farmland had been mined. Now they mostly survive as livestock keepers.

Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN

An anti-tank mine: Experts say more than 250,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance, including anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, are buried in Somaliland (file photo)

Experts in the self-declared republic say more than 250,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance, including anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, are buried in Somaliland.

UXO is scattered across northwestern Somalia, from Elayo to Loyada and from Bihen to Gestir.

Demining

Over the years, farmers wrote many letters to the Somaliland government requesting that the Abuda area be demined, Nour said. In 2009, the UK-based organization HALO Trust started demining farmland in this area.

Hargeisa, according to HALO, was heavily mined around military bases, refugee camps, private houses and the airport. The war between Ethiopia and Somalia also left behind large amounts of unexploded ordnance.

Some explosives have, unfortunately, been harvested from mines for illegal reuse. This is particularly the case with anti-vehicle mines and explosive ordnance. Another problem is that most mines in Somaliland are plastic-bodied, making them difficult to locate using conventional demining equipment, according to HALO.

“We started demining operations in this area [Abuda] in early November 2009 after we received complaints from residents,” said Hassan Kosar, operations officer for HALO in Hargeisa. “We hope to finish in early May 2010, if we have adequate manpower capacity.”

Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN

Mohamed Olhaye Nour points at his farm, which he says is heavily mined

Two other mine clearance institutions now exist in Somaliland – the Mine Action Center and the National Demining Agency.

HALO is currently supporting the National Demining Agency to expand mine-clearing operations, because the Somaliland government’s budget for demining institutions is limited.

“This is the first time a local institution is going to engage in mine clearance operations in Somaliland after HALO Trust trains 40 deminers for us,” said Mohamed Were, operations officer for the Somaliland National Demining Agency. “[But] our problem is lack of funds.”

At least eight hectares owned by 95 families in the Abuda area were mined, as well as several hectares further to the north.

“I have not cultivated my farm since 1988 but now that demining is going on, I hope the clearing of our farms will be completed before the rains come,” Nour told IRIN.

maj/js/eo/cb source.irinnews

Photo: Sagar Shrestha/IRIN

t

More than 12,000 people lost their lives in the decade-long conflic

—————–

KATHMANDU,  – Nepalese political parties and the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) need to work harder on the ongoing peace process, experts say.

“The political parties and UNMIN have a very tight deadline,” Rhoderick Chalmers, senior analyst and South Asia deputy project director of the International Crisis Group, told IRIN in Kathmandu.

“They need to work more pro-actively… The peace process is being delayed,” Mohan Manandhar, a local analyst and senior adviser to the independent Kathmandu-based Organization Development Centre (ODC), said.

Established as a special political mission in 2007 to support the peace process in Nepal, UNMIN’s mandate includes the monitoring of the management of arms and armed personnel of the Nepal Army and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN-M), which is now the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) and currently the main opposition party.

On 22 January, the UN Security Council extended UNMIN’s mandate for another four months, but it will conclude in May, at the same time as the interim constitution expires, leaving political parties little time to draft a new constitution.

More than three years have passed since the Maoists signed a peace deal with Nepal’s multiparty government in 2006, ending a bloody decade-long conflict which claimed the lives of more than 12,000.

Although some level of dialogue and communication between the major parties has been maintained, to date there has been no agreement on critical issues, including the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist army personnel, the democratization of the Nepal Army and the scope of presidential authority, says the latest report of the UN Secretary General.

UNMIN was given a limited mandate – a focused mission of limited duration. `Go in, do a particular task and leave’ was the idea. It didn’t turn out to be as simple a task as that.

“The tensions, deep differences and mistrust among the parties… have persisted,” the report said.

Blame game

But while civilians and analysts blame politicians for the delays, politicians prefer to point the finger at UNMIN.

“Although UNMIN’s role is still very important in the current peace process, unfortunately, it has failed to play its part as we had expected,” Prakash Jwala, politburo member and senior leader of the United Marxist Leninist (UML), the largest party in the country’s 22-party coalition government, said.

“We’ve seen the Maoists walking out of the cantonments with their guns. The soldiers were also involved in criminal activities, but UNMIN seemed less critical about this,” said Ramesh Lekhak, a senior leader and central member of the Nepali Congress (NC), another major party.

Meanwhile, Maoist leaders say the most critical issue – the integration and future of the former Maoist army – remains unresolved.

“UNMIN has very little time. Who will mediate if it leaves without resolving this most important part of the peace process?” Lekhraj Bhatt, a senior UCPN-M leader, warned.

Photo: Naresh Newar/IRIN

There are misunderstandings about the limits of UNMIN’s monitoring role, says UNMIN chief Karin Landgren

Bhatt is concerned that the Nepal Army and the Ministry of Defence are already opposing the Security Sector Reform (SSR), which was supposed to reform and democratize the current Nepal Army, formerly known as Royal Nepal Army (RNA).

According to the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA), the SSR is the core element of the CPA and Maoists want the two armies to be united to form a new national army.

“Unless this happens, the peace process would remain incomplete and UNMIN’s role will also be half accomplished,” Bhatt said.

UNMIN responds

But despite the criticism, UNMIN says much of the process lies in the hands of the Nepalese themselves.

“We constantly face expectations that we should do more to support the process overall but this is a Nepali-driven peace process. We support that process and encourage it,” Karin Landgren, representative of the UN Secretary-General to Nepal and head of UNMIN, told IRIN.

“UNMIN was given a limited mandate – a focused mission of limited duration. `Go in, do a particular task and leave’ was the idea. It didn’t turn out to be as simple a task as that,” she said.

“There is a tendency, whenever someone is outside a cantonment to say: How did UNMIN let that happen? But UNMIN is not enforcing the movement of the Maoists or controlling them. All these arrangements depend on a high degree of trust between the parties,” she said, pointing out that UNMIN had a limited monitoring role.

In the absence of a final plan for the rehabilitation and reintegration of Maoist soldiers, it is very hard for UNMIN to work out how it is going to have an orderly exit, she explained.

“What is most urgent for us is that parties get on with the plan, share it with us, and then we look at where are the points – where are the benchmarks – that really enable us to say that we can now draw down.”

nn/ds/cb source.irinnews

Nairobi (Kenya) — In the year since Mehmoud Hassan arrived in Nairobi from Baidoa in southern Somalia, he says he has been arrested more than 10 times by the Kenyan police and paid more than US$300 in fines to secure his release. His crime, says the 29-year-old former civil society activist, was being a Somali national in a city increasingly hostile to the flood of refugees from the battered Horn of Africa state.

Even this cycle of arrest and release failed to prepare Hassan for his latest encounter with the police. He and his 80-year-old grandmother were among more than 2,000 people – including Somali members of parliament in Nairobi for a meeting – who were rounded up in a week of raids and arrests following a 15 January protest against the detention and subsequent deportation of a radical Islamist cleric by the Kenyan government. Muslim human rights activists claimed five people were killed in the demonstration while the government has limited the official death toll to one.

A spokeswoman for the Internal Security Ministry, who declined to be identified, told IRIN the raids were a direct result of the “threat posed by the foreigners. The riots were not caused by citizens of this country, but by the foreign extremists.”

Despite holding identification papers issued by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Hassan and his grandmother were held for two days as illegal migrants, and released only after paying a substantial sum to the police.

“They said I was Al-Shabab [insurgents fighting the Somali government]. But I was not even at the demonstration! What happened was wrong; we are hosted here by this government and yet the government of Kenya targeted us,” said Hassan. “There is a rank hostility towards the Somali people and we are feeling hunted here.”

Many of those arrested were in fact ethnic Somali citizens of Kenya, which shares a long border with Somalia.

“I am a Kenyan but that did not matter because I am a Somali; it is very unfair to be treated like that in your own country,” said a tea-seller, who asked to be identified only as Halimo. “Why don’t they arrest others who look like Somalis? We are being singled out. I can understand the police arresting people who break the law but I am only a single mother trying to make a living yet I was treated like a criminal.”

Another Kenyan Somali said: “It is a fact that Eastleigh has become a huge business conglomerate, with Kenyan Somalis being the majority owners of the buildings in the area. This has prompted jealousy and business rivalry from non-Somali business operators and they would like nothing else than to see the Somalis’ expansion curtailed.”

In response to such widespread and well-publicised accusations of malfeasance by his men, Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere insisted that “any officer who engages in unethical or unprofessional behaviour during these operations will face stern disciplinary action”.

He said more than 1,000 illegal immigrants had been detained and would now “be dealt with according to the law”, insisting that “no community, race, faith or nationality had been targeted”.

He conceded, however, that “some innocent people have been inconvenienced”.

Although the violence that swept Nairobi after disputed 2007 presidential polls was largely confined to long-standing animosity between ethnic groups, there is a growing sense – corroborated by security analysts – that the government is fomenting hostility against the comparatively well-to-do migrants to deflect attention from its own failings in the run-up to 2012 elections.

“Most Kenyans are really quite frustrated that nothing has changed [since the 2007 elections]; the government is still engaging in the same repressive action, the security machinery is unchanged, and people are fundamentally worse off financially,” said Deborah Osiro, a Kenyan researcher with the Institute for Security Studies.

“So the government is using [Kenyan] frustration to possibly take advantage, to cultivate resentment against a population that is perceived as doing well, to deflect responsibility for their failures to really change the status quo.”

That open hostility manifests itself both overtly, in police harassment, and covertly, in the disregard for maintaining public infrastructure and utilities in the predominantly Somali neighbourhood of Eastleigh in eastern Nairobi.

“Eastleigh is the fastest growing and one of the most thriving neighbourhoods in Nairobi and that is annoying Kenyans, who are trying to maintain their commercial and economic footholds but are unable to do so,” said Osiro. “And they see the Somalis pricing them out of the lower or middle-income real estate market and wonder how refugees can be doing better financially than their hosts. Of course there are deeper influences at play here, but it’s easy to blame the stranger – something that seems entirely new for Kenya.”

Though far from being the only neighbourhood in the capital to suffer power outages, water shortages or irregular rubbish collection, Eastleigh has its own particular travails. The visible wealth of the commercial sector is in sharp contrast with its decrepit surroundings.

Soaring above zinc-roofed market stalls are well-constructed multi-storied buildings with sweeping staircases that connect small apartments to storefronts. The roads are virtually impassable, rutted with potholes and crowded with minibuses and gleaming SUVs emblazoned with Arabic slogans. There is no road drainage and passers-by dodge mounds of rubbish on nearly every street corner, weaving around lorries unloading merchandise from dry goods to tyres and electronics.

There are no public clinics in Eastleigh, few state-run schools and men still ply the roads with carts filled with jerry cans of water, to supplement the inconsistent municipal supplies. Such neglect is grating for Abdisak, who asked that his surname not be used. After fleeing Mogadishu in 2007, he has run a small dry goods shop in Eastleigh, supporting a family that includes a young son.

“We pay taxes, lots of taxes, to the city council and other authorities, but when we ask for simple repairs to our roads, or to the sewers, they say no,” he said. “And when the Somali business community asked to be allowed to rebuild the roads ourselves, with our own money, they said no. We are at the mercy of gangs, who extort money from us, and of the police, who collect fines.”

For Mohammed Ali Mukhtar, the raids following the mosque protest only heightened a feeling that has been brewing within him for several months: even though home is not safe, at least the danger is a known quantity. He is making plans to return to his home in Galkayo, in central Somalia, before the 2012 vote.

“We came here because it was supposed to be safer than at home,” he said. “But if they are attacking us now, when there is no reason to do so, what is going to happen with the elections when they have political motivation?”

source.irinnews

Such a man should be exposed by the media. There is no need to hide his name. Instead of putting all his concentration into participating in making the constitution, he uses his time to sex around, an embarrassment to his family. May be his wife should also get someone to enjoy life with as a tit of tat!

Who is this MP? (API)

Stevens Muendo

A youthful flamboyant lawmaker who is a member is of the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) that was negotiating a new draft constitution, was recently busted by a colleague in a Naivasha hotel room where he had disappeared with his clandestine lover. The girl is a former beauty queen working with a leading organisation. The legislator and the catwalk model have been an item for the last one-year.

The mheshimiwa had left Naivasha Great Rift Hotel (where the committee has been meeting) with his colleague for Naivasha town where they wanted to have some fun before the sessions would resume the next day.

According to our source, (a waiter in the hotel where the two had drinks) the MP excused himself to go to the washroom only to disappear to the hotel room where his sidekick had been waiting all evening.

“She had arrived at around 5:00pm and went straight to the room, which mheshimiwa had booked via telephone earlier in the day,” said the source.

But his colleague became impatient when his friend took too long to return to the table. He had left his mobile phone on the table and he could not be found in the washrooms.

“We knew that the MP had dashed to the room where the girl was waiting but that was a top secret and he had requested for privacy. But his friend feared he was in danger and threatened to call the police. It was after that when we took him to the hotel room where the guy was with his sidekick. He opened the door and what a shock he had on his face,” added the source.

The cheating MP then drove off with the girl. It is not clear if he spent the rest of the night in his Great Rift Valley hotel room.

The model is a popular public figure. The MP is married and has been a lawmaker for a while.

source. standard.ke

Photo: Mohammed Amin Jibril/IRIN

A car burns during a past demonstration in Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland. A series of bombing incidents have been reported in Las-anod, an area disputed by Somaliland and Puntland (file photo)

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HAIRGEISA,  – The latest bomb explosion in Somalia’s self-declared independent republic of Somaliland raises concerns over the lack of government presence in the Las-anod area, says an analyst.

Among those injured in the blast, which killed one person and injured five on 28 January, was the governor of Sool region, Askar Farah Hussein, who was admitted to a hospital in the town of Las-anod.

Commenting on the bombings that have hit the region since October 2009, Somaliland President Dahir Rayale Kahin told reporters: “I have heard the opposition accusing the government of being behind the bombs; this is unfortunate, the government is investigating, but we need to know that the enemy wants [to stage] more attacks against Somaliland…”

The latest incident brings to five the bombings since October 2009 in Las-anod, capital of a region in contention between Somaliland and Puntland. Las-anod is part of Sool and Sanag region, to which the governments of Somaliland and Puntland both lay claim.

According to EJ Hogendoorn, the International Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa Project Director, the Somaliland government is strong enough to get the situation under control in Las-anod “but the problem is that there is minimal government presence in the area”.

“The area remains largely unadministered by both Puntland and Somaliland,” Hogendoorn said, adding that the region is inhabited mainly by the Dhulbahante clan, which has family ties to the ruling Harti clan in Puntland.

“The Sool and Sanag region is disputed by both Puntland and Somaliland for several reasons; the Dhulbahante are unhappy with both Puntland and Somaliland, and Islamist radicals have taken advantage of this to try to cause instability in the area,” Hogendoorn said. “Moreover, it is likely that there are significant oil deposits in Sool and Sanag, so both governments lay claim to the region.”

Fomenting instability

Hogendoorn said it appeared the violence was inspired by Islamist elements among the Dhulbahante that are sympathetic to Al-Shabab, the main Islamist group that has been waging war against the government in Somalia.

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

“The interest of these Islamist elements is to foment instability. What is clear is that they have links with Al-Shabab in south and central Somalia,” he said. “There is a similar dynamic going in Puntland, where the Islamist radicals have also targeted government officials in the past.”

However, Hogendoorn said analysts did not have any evidence that the bombings in Las-anod were orchestrated by Al-Shabab.

“There are a lot of Islamist groups in the whole of Somalia; it is difficult to speculate whether or not Al-Shabab is behind the latest incidents,” he said.

Police Commissioner Mohamed Saqadhi Dubad told IRIN that 23 arrests had been made in relation to the incidents and that investigations were ongoing to establish those behind the attacks.

“We consider the suspects [to be] coming from our enemy who don’t like our stability; of course they are external enemies,” Dubad said, declining to give any names.

On 26 January 2010, Dubad said, reports were made to police that a suspect package had been seen in Las-anod. The police collected the package but it turned out to be a remote-controlled bomb and it went off, killing two soldiers, Dubad said.

On 14 January, unknown armed men shot dead the Las-anod police commissioner minutes after he left a mosque.

Mohamed Abdi Dhimbil, the deputy governor of Sool, said: “A few days ago, unknown people threw hand grenades at a police station in the south, injuring three policemen.”

In late October 2009, an army commander and another official were killed following a bomb explosion.

Dubad said: “Most of the incidents involved remote-controlled bombs, but more than 23 suspects, including officials from Somaliland, have been arrested and they will be on trial soon.

“We captured some explosive material in Hargeisa after a woman in the area notified us that a man had placed what looked like explosive elements on the road near Hawadle Mosque,” Dubad said. “One man was arrested over the incident.”

The bombings have caused fear and alarm among the public.

“Nowadays Somaliland security is fragile because you can see everywhere there are incidents taking place; for this reason we consider the government could be losing control of national security and we are worried,” said Mohamed Farah Qabile, a member of the Lower House of Parliament from the Kulmiye opposition party.

Mohamed Hashi Elmi, a former minister of commerce, said the government should explain to people who was responsible for the explosions.

Photo: Jamal Abdi/IRIN

Somaliland President Dahir Riyalle Kahin

Security priority

On 17 January, Vice-President Ahmed Yusuf Yasin announced that national security would be given “the highest priority” in 2010.

Police commissioner Dubad said security for international aid staff would also be improved to facilitate access to many parts of Somaliland.

“We are improving security measures for international staff of aid organizations … because our enemy is targeting international aid workers as well as other foreign citizens who are helping our people in sectors such as education and health,” Dubad said.

He added that police would provide security for aid workers undertaking missions in various parts of the country, “even in their homes”.

maj/js/mw source.irinnews

LONDON, Monday

Scientists say they have solved a crucial puzzle about the Aids virus after 20 years of research and that their findings could lead to better treatments of HIV.

British and US researchers said they had grown a crystal that enabled them see the structure of an enzyme called integrase, which is found in retroviruses like HIV and is a target for some of the newest HIV medicines.

“Despite initial painstaking slow progress and very many failed attempts, we did not give up and our effort was finally rewarded,” said Peter Cherepanov of Imperial College London, who conducted the research with scientists from Harvard University.

Developing resistance

The Imperial and Harvard scientists said that having the integrase structure means researchers can begin fully to understand how integrase inhibitor drugs work, how they might be improved, and how to stop HIV developing resistance to them.

When the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infects someone, it uses the integrase enzyme to paste a copy of its genetic information into their DNA, Cherepanov explained in the study published in the Nature journal on Sunday.

Some new drugs for HIV — like Isentress from Merck & Co and elvitegravir, an experimental drug from Gilead Sciences — work by blocking integrase, but scientists are not clear exactly how they work or how to improve them.

The only way to find out was to obtain high-quality crystals — a project that had defeated scientists for many years. “When we started out, we knew the project was very difficult, and many tricks had already been tried and given up by others long ago,” said Cherepanov.

“Therefore, we went back to square one and started by looking for a better model of HIV integrase, which could be more amenable for crystallisation.”

The researchers grew a crystal using a version of integrase borrowed from another retrovirus very similar to its HIV counterpart.

It took more than 40,000 trials for them to come up with one a crystal of sufficiently high quality to allow them see the three-dimensional structure, they said.

They tested the Merck and Gilead drugs on the crystals, and were able to see, for the first time, how the medicines bind to, and block, integrase.

Almost 60 million people have been infected with HIV and 25 million people have died of HIV-related causes since the beginning of the Aids epidemic.

Drug cocktails

There is no cure and no vaccine, although drug cocktails can keep patients healthy.

United Nations data for 2008 show that 33.4 million people had HIV and two million people died of Aids-related illnesses.

The worst affected region is sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for 67 per cent of all people living with HIV. HIV is linked to the spread of Tuberculosis.

— Reuters