by Prof. Hussein Warsame
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Ladies and gentlemen,
|
Prof. Hussein A Warsame speaking at appreciation dinner held Sunday for Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout by the Canadian Somali Community in Alberta
|
The main objective of this reception is to welcome back journalist Amanda Lindhout after her 15-month kidnapping ordeal in Somalia. We, the 10,000-strong Somali Canadians of Alberta, are grateful that Amanda would honour us with her first public appearance after her release. But given that the main reason why Amanda was in Somalia in the first case was to publicize the humanitarian situation of the forgotten people of Somalia, we interpret this gesture as a continuation of her humanitarian service to the Somali people. Thank you, Amanda
But the fact is, the humanitarian situation of the Somali people that Amanda was trying to document is still largely unattended to and has not improved at all. On the day that Amanda Lindhout and photojournalist Nigel Brennan were kidnapped, they were going to a refugee camp where hundreds of thousands of Somalis displaced from their homes in Mogadishu by violence had set up makeshift shelters. There were no shelters, sanitary facilities, food, or water ready for these people. Nor was there an effective government to help them cope with the adversity. Local humanitarian organizations were either non-existent or they lacked the financial and organizational capacities to help these people. To add to their woes, the fighting between the Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government and the anti-government forces followed them to the camps. Some of the insurgents would launch raids from the camps. The government forces, and especially their Ethiopians backers, would then indiscriminately shell the camps with little regard for civilian casualties.
Amanda’s arrival in Somalia
freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout |
By August 2008, when Amanda Lindhout arrived in Somalia, the fighting has been described by the UN as Africa’s worst humanitarian crisis and one of the worst in Somalia over the last 17 years since the collapse of the Somali government of Mohamed Siad Barre. Amanda’s reports just before she arrived in Somalia indicated that she was knowledgeable about the humanitarian situation in Somalia. In a report she sent to Global National she said "Next week I am going to Somalia to report on the deteriorating security situation as well as the food crisis, which has affected 2.6 million there." According to a UN report, by the end of August 2008, the number of Somali people in need of food aid jumped to 3.2 million or about 40% of Somali’s population. The Transitional Federal Government of President Abdillahi Yusuf and Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein was losing both the war and the support of its Ethiopian backers. On August 22, just a day before Amanda was kidnapped, Kismayo, the largest city south of Mogadishu was captured by Al-Shabaab, an off-shoot of the then Islamic Courts Union. New groups of people were being displaced and food was becoming scarcer. I believe that had Amanda succeeded in her efforts to document the humanitarian situation, the crisis would not have been as serious as it was allowed to become. Unfortunately, Amanda’s arrival coincided with the intensification of another type of war: the war on truth tellers, especially the media.
War on media
By the time Amanda arrived, the authorities, the religious fundamentalists, and criminal gangs all had something to hide. The government did not want the world to see the fast pace at which it was losing both control and credibility. The fundamentalists did not want the international community to see the kind of twisted justice, including beheadings that they were administering to bring about a regime of fear and intimidation. And the gangs wanted to hide their criminal activities from anybody with the capacity to stop them. The result was that, while the authorities, the fundamentalists, and the gangs hated one another, they had the media as their common enemy. However, to their credit, the local media never gave up on reporting the atrocities of those groups. In addition, few brave and kind foreign journalists, including Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan, refused to be intimidated and came in to report.
But, despite the absence of law and order, the highest number of journalist killings did not occur in Somalia in that year. Two of the 42 journalist killings in 2008 took place in Somalia. Countries like Iraq, Pakistan, India, Thailand, and Georgia all had more journalist killings than Somalia. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 801 journalists worldwide were killed since 1992, 87% being local and 13% being foreign. Of those 801 killings, 32 were committed in Somalia. Worse than Somalia were Iraq (141), Philippines (68), Algeria (60), Russia (52), and Columbia (42). Yet, while none of these countries report worse humanitarian troubles than Somalia, they all enjoy more international news attention. Therefore, statistically speaking, Amanda’s decision to go from Iraq, where she was based before, to Somalia was neither a reckless nor a foolish decision. It was both prudent and moral. What happened to Amanda was 0% her fault and 100% the fault of criminal gangs. We are grateful to Amanda for what she tried to do in Somalia, and we despise her kidnappers as much as humanly possible.
Amanda’s abduction and the Canadian Somali community
When we learned of Amanda’s abduction, we knew that she and her family were going to suffer tremendously even if she were eventually released. But we also knew that her initiative to highlight the humanitarian crisis in Somalia would suffer. The already small in-flow of foreign journalists to Somalia would dry up; and it did.
We wanted to approach the family, but we were not sure what their reaction would be. Piracy and abductions were taking place in Somalia more frequently than we ever imagined. We were unprepared for these phenomena. Somalis, who were known to be hospitable to foreigners, have lately produced young men who go to high seas and abduct ships and people for ransom. Others are abducting journalists who came to plead the case of their own people. These new atrocities, which were inhuman, un-Islamic, and un-Somali, made most of us feel confused and totally paralyzed. Some may try to justify the appearance of piracy partly as a result of unethical actions by international fishing companies that were looting Somali fish and dumping toxic substances in Somali waters. Peter Lehr, a Somalia piracy expert at the University of St. Andrews (UK), says "It's almost like a resource swap, Somalis collect up to $100 million a year from pirate ransoms off their coasts and the Europeans and Asians poach around $300 million a year in fish from Somali waters”. We even sometimes indulge in a little humor about the appearance of a makeshift stock market in the Somali town of Harardhere with a single listed stock (piracy), and about the divorcee who invested the hand grenade that she received as alimony from her ex-husband in piracy shares and received $25,000 in dividends. But, no one was able to understand or justify why a kind and humanitarian woman like Amanda would be kidnapped for ransom. No one could also justify the kidnapping of innocent tourists like Paul and Rachel Chandler of UK who are still being held by Somali pirates for ransom since October 5, 2009.
We, the Alberta Canadian Somalis, would like to take advantage of this occasion and add our voice to those of the hundreds of British Somalis who publicly condemned the abduction and mistreatment of Paul and Rachel Chandler. We would like to counsel these pirate kidnappers that it is not too late to do the right thing by abandoning their ransom demand and releasing the couple. We would like to tell these young abductors that no level of poverty or dispossession can justify the inhuman, un-Islamic and un-Somali atrocities that they are involved in.
Just like national governments, we, the Diaspora Somalis, are still struggling to come up with a strategy to respond to these kidnappings and piracies. Responding to these kidnappings involves delicate balances. On one hand, we want to show our abhorrence of these actions. On the other hand, we do not want to take actions that may put the hostages in more danger. That was also the situation with Amanda’s kidnapping. We did not want to agitate the kidnappers, lest they panic and then harm Amanda. We also thought the Canadian government was working with the family to secure Amanda’s release.
But by the end of 2008, many of us were really worried. Mr. Ahmed Gure, the editor of Hiiraan Online, one of the most popular Somali websites, suggested to me that, as an Albertan Somali, I should contribute an article pleading for Amanda’s release. But after consulting friends and experts on the abductions in Somalia, we ultimately decided that we might just make the situation worse and motivate the kidnappers to up their demand. Confused, many of us turned to Facebook for help. I signed up with Facebook so I could join the Free Amanda group. I sent an email to the moderator, Angie Stewart. I explained who I was and asked if there was anything that I could do. I also mentioned that I might have access to some members of the new Somali government. Angie Stewart told me that saying prayers for Amanda would be enough for the time being. But a group of us discretely asked for help from the late Mr. Omar Hashi, the then Minister of security for the new fledging Somali Transitional Government, which was installed on February 1, 2009. However, before he could do anything, he was assassinated by the insurgents. We asked the BBC Somali service and the VOA Somali service to urge their staff in Somalia to help gather information. We also gave interviews, in English and Somali, to urge governments to help free Amanda.
But in the end, Amanda, by the time you were released, we were still clueless of your whereabouts. We were getting false and mixed messages. Therefore, neither I nor any of my friends can claim any tangible contribution to your release. But our thoughts were always with you. All thanks goes to your parents, your close friends, and Canadian, Somali, and Australian government officials, who helped in your release; and we remain in debt to them forever.
Story still untold
Amanda, as we speak, in essence, that story that you wanted to tell to the world about Somalia is still untold. The hundreds of thousands of persons in those displaced people’s camps are still there. Their situation has not improved at all. The fighting is still going on in Mogadishu. Only the actors have changed a little. Instead of Islamists fighting Ethiopian and government forces, both the government and the opposition are now Islamists. The Islamist government of Sheikh Sharif Ahmed is preparing to launch a counter attack on the Al-Shabaab forces that were pushing government forces to the Indian Ocean for some time. It is unlikely that any of the groups will get full control of the whole country. But what is for certain is that the humanitarian situation will further deteriorate. There will be more civilian displacements and deaths and there will be more food shortages. According to UN reports, this month alone, 20,000 more people were displaced by violence from their homes in Mogadishu. Contributing to the potential catastrophe is the fact that many of the International Humanitarian agencies are either avoiding or were denied access to certain regions controlled by Al-Shabaab. Furthermore, the war on journalists’ freedom to report Somali’s dire circumstances is intensifying.
According to the 2009 annual report of National Union of Somali Journalists (NUJOS), nine journalists were killed, 12 were injured, 15 were arrested, four media houses were closed down, seven radio stations were directly censured and nearly 100 journalists received death threats. The report states “As a result, several media houses have taken refuge in entertainment, steering clear of airing news and current affairs programming.”
Amanda, I am sorry that I have to bombard you with all this bad news about the humanitarian situation in Somalia. We invited you here tonight to celebrate your release and return to us. But I have to also highlight how your humanitarian project in Somalia still needs the attention of brave journalists. Thank you and welcome back.
Prof. Hussein Warsame
[email protected]