by Laurent Thomet
Thursday, February 01, 2007
The Somali-language service returns to the airwaves on February 12. Its last broadcast was in 1994 after the pullout of US troops whose mission in lawless Somalia was marked by the death of 18 soldiers in Mogadishu.
Washington's concerns in the Horn of Africa were highlighted in recent weeks by two US air strikes targeting Al-Qaeda suspects in Somalia, where transitional government forces recently ousted Islamists from the capital Mogadishu.
The US military has been active in the region for more than four years, operating from a former French Foreign Legion base in Djibouti to check the spread of Al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants.
VOA officials said the daily Somali service aims to bring comprehensive news and analyses to a region straddling the Islamic and Christian worlds whose stability is considered vital to US interests.
"The region is just as important, if not more so, to the strategic interests of this country as it has ever been," VOA director Dan Austin told AFP.
"And the need for honest, straight reporting has never been greater," Austin said. "The opportunities for misinformation and disinformation out there are much greater today than they were in the early 1990s."
VOA already broadcasts in three regional languages -- Amharic, Afan Oromo and Tigrigna -- for Ethiopia and Eritrea in addition to programs in English in Sudan, Swahili in Kenya and English and French in Djibouti.
"We have really expanded our service to the Horn of Africa," said Gwen Dillard, VOA's Africa Division director.
"I think what prompted all this is just that the Horn clearly has a number of issues and a number of challenges in finding stable government, and there's just a need for the kind of information that VOA provides," Dillard said.
Somalia has not had an effective government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Interim President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Tuesday called for a national reconciliation conference in a bid to rally support behind his government.
Seven Somalis and an American service chief working in VOA's Washington headquarters will broadcast news gathered by a network of freelance journalists in Somalia and the region as well as cultural, sports and music programs.
The 30-minute program will air seven days a week on AM, FM and shortwave radio. It will also be available on the Internet.
The African continent is an important market for VOA, comprising 40 percent of its worldwide audience of more than 115 million people, Austin said.
VOA's Somali service will compete with the BBC's Somali broadcast in addition to private and Koranic broadcasters.
"There is a lot of competition but we are going in based on the belief that you can't have too much free and open media or free and open information," Dillard said.
"We will join the marketplace of ideas and they'll make up their own minds based on the information we put in front of them," she said.
Despite being US government-funded, VOA officials insist the broadcasts provide fair, accurate reporting.
"While people certainly understand that we are funded by the United States government, we have also proven that we are objective, comprehensive, that you can get unbiased news from us," Austin said.
Source: AFP, Feb 01, 2007