Yusuf Al Azhari eaten live by a Novice at WND

[GacanSareeye]

Could Somalia be auctioned to the Highest Criminal Bidder?
By Dr. Yusuf O. Al-Azhari
Feb. 14, 2010

ROUND ONE

Every government has the prerogative to safe guard its territorial integrity against unwelcome intruders and crack down on illegal immigrants and potential threats to security on its soil. The presence of fugitives in any country is a threat to the sovereignty and security. Not all who have fled Somalia are genuine refugees but criminal gangs associated with Terrorists. Terror gangs masquerading as innocent refugees are in the habit of sneaking into other countries without being noticed by security and immigration authorities.
What we witnessed after the resent Friday prayers recently, in Nairobi, was as a living testimony to the aims of the Al Shabab and its supporters to smuggle into the neighbouring countries rogues whose mission is to incite tension and hatred between Kenyans and the peace loving Somali community. There is also fear of fermenting dissent and possible rouse by these renegades in the host country.

It is hard to detect the hideout of such dangerous elements ones they assimilate with the public and start enjoying the peaceful co-existence of the host country. Governments require enormous vigilance to exposing illegal terrorist infiltration as immigrants in its territory before they contaminate the public with vicious extremist ideology imported from Al Qaeda. Somalis are grateful to all those countries that provided the innocent sanctuary and safety and will never forget this noble gesture.

The leaders entrusted with restoring peace in Somalia abandon the process giving insecurity as an excuse. They took oath while coming to office aware of the risks in the country that has not known peace for two decades. As demonstrated, the inability of the Somali leadership in Mogadishu, once again exposes its failure to live up to the expectations of uniting the Nation and protecting the innocent and vulnerable under their care. The dreams of the citizens and development partners seem fading away fast due to frustration.

Notwithstanding the warnings and ultimatum given by the many Somalis who are yearning for peace and stability in their country the Authorities have failed to account for the actions of elected leaders who fled to safety in world capitals and in particular to IGAD member States. It defeats reason and common sense to witness the abuse by infiltrators, the kindness and brotherly hospitality extended by the Regional Governments and its people to those innocent Somali people fleeing their war torn country.

The Somali Transitional Government owe its citizens and Nations hosting genuine Somali refugees an explanation as to why those charged with steering the peace process abdicate their responsibility and sneak out of the country?
These endless clan feuds gave way to religious fundamentalism that has since elicited support from foreign terror gangs and pockets of outlaws fleeing justice. The country is now also home to
Sea pirates, extremists and draconian foreign trawlers fishing mercenaries along the 3,600 coastline let alone other international fugitives

The unfolding situation in Somalia is a case of serious concern not only to the nationals but also to the region notably countries that host people fleeing the clan wars. One government after
another failed in the last two decade due to a number of reasons some so complex to comprehend.
One of the main missing factors was to reach out to the masses and cooperate with the various civil society groups. Over stepping the divers groups of the society and not involving them in decision making would always backlash any government’s policy. Deep seated clan rivalries and inability to comprehend to unite the Nation by the leaders were a problem at the beginning but that has been relegated to a kindergarten play.

Somalia is crying for help and the blood of innocent souls caught in the routine crossfire between the trigger happy clans and religious extremists are daily incident. Children, mothers and the elderly, too weak to move are on the brink of death because relief shipments and other humanitarian aid cannot reach them due to insurgence of religious extremists and pirates occupying the Southern Regions and the Somali coastline respectively. Foreign enemies with concealed advantage of theirs inflame decent among Somali clans in order the country not to see the light of stability. Somalis of good conscience must unite to steer the country from this dilemma and above all for peace to return.

My take on this, is that leaders who have emerged after the collapse of the government in 1991, regardless of their genuine intentions neglected pursuance of the principles of good governance which would have allowed major prominent personalities in the society to participate in the decision making. Thus lacking viable strategic Political vision that would have rallied the Nation behind them to expunge terrorists mercenaries and foreign merchants of death.

Timely and prompt veritable assistance by allied forces in the lawless Somalia is a priority of the regional governments whose peace efforts have been abused by power greedy extremists. However continuous foreign troops intervention seems not to be the solution to extirpate the terrorists from Somalia and establish the required peace. The Regional governments and International Communities should come out and back the Somali people in their resolve to fight and rid the country of dangerous extremist elements in the African soil. Somali forces require decisive backup to fight outermost extremist and their foreign supporters. Somalis has to sacrifice their life to regain to live in peace and prosperity with or without foreign assistance. A further delay in tackling the Somali problem means condemning the helpless masses to more atrocities and slow death.

To shepherd the country out of its political mess, a strong visionary leader of high experience in governance and a non egocentric patriot is needed. A leader who is a healer with resolute strategic political solutions, acceptable to both the Nation and friendly countries which condone public support is what Somalia is yearning for to day. Notwithstanding the foregoing constraints, a need for change and a change now in Somalia is urgent before the country is placed into an auction for the highest criminal bidder. A further delay in tackling the Somali problem means a spill over of atrocities into neighbouring countries and beyond which will be devastating and costly.

[GacanSareeye]

ROUND TWO BY TKO

Could Somalia be auctioned to the Highest Criminal Bidder? A rejoinder
By Muhsin Mahad
Feb. 18, 2010

Reading the above article by former ambassador Yusuf Al Azhari in WDN, it is clear that it has been triggered by his anger with the recent demonstration in Nairobi when few individuals in the large crowd waved Al Shabab's flag in protest against the detention by the Kenya authority of an Islamist preacher of Jamaican origin. Rather than target these individuals for their provocative action, it is incredible that someone like Al Azhari, with his distinguished background, should instead tar most Somalis hailing from Somalia with the same brush as "common criminals masquerading as refugees". His Excellency's spurious assertion, clearly appreciated by his Kenyan hosts, amounts to a perversion of justice when the true victims (Somalis) are portrayed as criminals at the stroke of his pen and the guilty (Kenya authority) gets sympathy and support as the victims!
The fact of the matter is that Kenya, and particularly Nairobi, has one of the highest crime rates in Africa and perhaps the world. These crimes are committed by Kenyan Africans and Somalis play only a negligible part if at all. Those who fled Somalia's internecine conflict are not criminals but genuine refugees who are recognised as such by the UN and are mostly sheltered in camps in NE Kenya. These cannot commit crimes outside the camps. What Mr.Al Azhari has in mind therefore must be those Somalis Eastleigh. Most of the residents of this famous district consist of Somalis from Kenya, Somalia and returning Diaspora from around the world. The overwhelming majority of these people have legal documents to be in Kenya. Contrary to the false picture painted by Mr. Al Azhari, they are law-abiding, hardworking, enterprising people who, despite the daunting difficulties and daily harassment they face from the Kenyan authority at every level, are running booming businesses and turned Eastleigh into the most thriving area in Kenya.

A community that brings in so much capital - admittedly some of it ill-gotten- ,and who provide popular and affordable goods, and create badly needed employment, would have been valued in any other country. Unlike the Asian Kenyans, who milk the country and stash away their money in Europe, with little or no re-investment in the country, the Somalis bring their own money, skills and business expertise and build Kenya. That is why the people who resent the Somalis most are not the ordinary grateful Kenyans who daily benefit from the Somalis, but the Asians who have lost to the Somalis and who are often behind the on-going relentless and scurrilous media attack on the Somalis.

What Mr. Al Azhari has failed to acknowledge is that, since Kenya's independence, both Kenyan Somalis and those from Somalia or elsewhere have been defenceless prey to the discriminatory and exploitative whims of the Kenya authority at all levels for their different ends. For the ill-paid Kenya police, it has become an institutionalised, endemic and accepted practice to extort money from Somalis by stopping them and asking them for their papers; and, if no cash is immediately forthcoming, to hold them in detention and incommunicado until they do so, irrespective of whether they have proper documents or not. Kenyans are also asked for bribes and pay up but that is only when they have committed an infraction of the law. What makes the situation of the Somalis different is that they are subject as a people to this treatment, often for no other reason than that they are Somalis.

The inhumane and degrading treatment of the Somalis in Kenya, and particularly in Nairobi, is reminiscent of the infamous South African Pass Law which fined, banished or imprisoned black Africans if found in so-called white cities after sunset or without permits to be there. In some ways, the plight of the Somalis in Kenya is worse to the extent that they are daily harassed, extorted, punished and deported even when they have proper documents. What is amazing is that these flagrant human rights abuses are accepted as something normal in Kenya. That includes the Somali community itself who are always ready with the cash to get out of a difficult situation. It also includes Somali ministers in the Kenya government or Kenya Somali MPs. Even the otherwise vociferous Farah Maalin, the deputy parliamentary speaker, who often will miss no opportunity to berate about issues in Somalia, rarely ever concerns himself with matters closer to home.

As for the Kenya government and Parliament, the Somalis serve as a handy whipping boy to divert attention away from Kenya's internal travails of the time for which they are responsible. Every now and then, when such needs for Somali-bashing arise, Kenya politicians fall over themselves in their scramble to take potshots at Somalis, hoping to win instant plaudits with their public. This time, it is the bogey of the threat from Al Shabaab, or alleged laundering of piracy money, that are behind the current demonising of Somalis.

The recent demonstration in Nairobi after the Friday prayer and the subsequent reaction of the authorities provide a typical manifestation of the way Somalis are treated. This Muslim demonstration was presented by the authority, and echoed by Mr. Al Azhari, as one organised and held by Somalis sympathetic to Al Shabab. In reality, it was one in which Muslims from different ethnic origins participated, though the Somalis might have been present in significant numbers. The demonstration was not so much a support for Al Shabab as resentment at perceived Islamophobia by the Kenya authorities.

Even if there were few elements supporting Al Shabab, does it justify the barbaric response of the Kenya authority and their blanket collective punishment of the whole Somali community in Nairobi and in particular those in Eastleigh? Kenya prides itself as a practising democracy where people are entitled to hold demonstrations in order to air their views or grievances. This right might be exercised by indigenous African Kenyans but clearly it practically excludes Muslims and more so Somalis as witnessed by the authority's reaction to the recent demonstration and its aftermath.

Mr.Al Azhari for his part assumes without proof that everyone in that demonstration, and particularly those who offended the Kenyans, were from Somalia and Al Shabab supporters. But even if they were, the arrest of countless innocent Somalis, including women (some of them pregnant), Somali TFG parliamentarians, Somalis from the Diaspora, and even Somalis from Kenya - all legally in Kenya- and their detention for days in the most degrading conditions, is a damning indictment of the Kenya government and its law enforcement organs for their unspeakable treatment. of innocent Somalis.

The government did what they did because that is what they have routinely done in the past with no questions asked - not least by the moribund Somali government (TFG) whose members are more keen to kowtow to neighbouring countries rather than come to the defence of their wronged people. After days of self-imposed silence, the foreign minister, Ali Jama Jangeli, allegedly owing his post to the diktat of a neighbouring country, was grudgingly forced in a BBC interview to express his muted uneasiness about what happened. His predecessor, Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar, would have no doubt reacted differently and been more forthright. It is no secret that he lost his job precisely because of his undivided loyalty to his country, something intolerable to Ethiopia, the real arbiter of Somali affairs behind the TFG's dummy facade.

The main question raised by Mr. Al Azhari as a heading for his article is whether Somalia could be "auctioned to the highest criminal bidder". If he has Al Shabab in mind, such a claim does not hold much water whatever else one might say about them. On the contrary, if it was not for their extremist misguided interpretation of Islam, and the crude and painful manner they practice it, they would have had a glorious chapter in Somalia's history as the group who liberated Somalia from its worst enemy when others since the departure of Mohamed Siyad Barre have opted to be Ethiopia's servile puppets for their own narrow personal interests.

If Somalia has been auctioned to anyone, it is to Ethiopia. And Azhari should know better than anyone else that it was his former boss, Abdullahi Yusuf, who pioneered collaboration with Ethiopian at a time when it was a taboo and who since appointment as head of a state at Embaghati has handed Somalia to Ethiopia on a plate. The fact that the current government leaders are following his footsteps does not of course exonerate them but it does not change the fact that it was your former boss who masterminded Ethiopia's political and military hegemony over our country.

Finally, Al Azhari's raises alarm about the way the country is led and run and the shortcomings of its leaders. He says:

"To shepherd the country out of its political mess, a strong visionary leader of high experience in governance and a non egocentric patriot is needed. A leader who is a healer with resolute strategic political solutions, acceptable to both the Nation and friendly countries which condone public support is what Somalia is yearning for to day".

This is very good stuff, but strange that it should come from Al Azhari of all people. He was after all the right-hand man of a leader - former President Abdullahi Yusuf- who epitomised the antithesis of everything Azhari is now prescribing. Many people will recall his staunch defence of his boss whose only contribution to Somalia was to invite the occupation of Somalia by its worst enemy and whose motto was divide-and- rule along clan lines. Under him, Ethiopia's occupation of Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia, and the destruction, death and destitution it inflicted on our capital and its people, and above all the humiliation of being conquered by our historical enemy, will enter the annals of Somali history. That is his legacy. There is nothing innately wrong with Azhari's message. It is indeed relevant on paper. What is wrong is the messenger whose message will sound for many Somalis as double talk. That is why few will take it seriously.

[GacanSareeye]

CONCESSION

Deceptive Eloquent English Article Writer: A Rejoining Response
By Dr. Yusuf O. Al-Azhari
Feb 22, 2010

Recently an eloquent English prose writer Muhsin Mahad, wrote in WardheerNews a balmy article well composed whose musical melody was a well calculated dictionary selected vocabulary, yet was hollow in essence.
The eloquent English writer tried hard to repudiate previous article written by a bone fide, concerned Somali on an episode he witness and thus had full authenticity to narrate the incident as it occurred and the remedy it warranted at the time to salvage the situation. However the writer seems to base his argument of repudiation totally on hear say and most probably what he has gathered from the media and some sensationalist news papers while he was thousands of miles away from the spot.

It is a well known evil commitment for spoilers and renegade Terrorists to try to use every possible opportunity to stir up to sew dissent and friction through promoting insurgence when and wherever occasion elicit them to implement. No matter how great or trivial the result may end up. To them trying to Terrorize is more sacred than the success or failure of the consequence.

The unfortunate wretched nation of Somalia has become a hot vantage tool used by Fugitive Terrorists to disrupt public safety both inside and outside Somalia since the collapse of their government and the failure of the State Institution that have not seen the renaissance of law and order for the last two decades. It is vivid logic that disrupters would under such perfectly inviting golden random, gadget their draconian evil plan in every country they can intrude through masquerading regardless of the means they may use. Not only would they try to infiltrate to the feeble in secured countries of the developing world but they have demonstrated their ability through such tactics to destroy the most sophisticate advanced countries such as the USA and Europe. [Changing the Argument from the Kenyan riots to terrorism ]

The Eloquent illusory writer in his article totally denied the existence of any of these masquerading evil intending elements, squarely coming to their defense and tried to proof misinterpreting the affluent settlers in Eastleigh town, at the suberb of Nairobi, to be indigenous Somali citizens of Kenya from the North Eastern provinces. What a demeaning ignorance it is to portray the highly respectable affluent rich Somali asylum seekers who fled with their property, finance and any other resources they could, to safety in to Kenya and have legally invested to rebuild their life to become the backbone economy of their country, to be painted as non Somalis by the writer. It is a fact beyond any doubt that 90% of those who own all the businesses in Eastleigh as well as those recently extended their talented management to the center of Nairobi are all noble Somali citizens who abide by the laws and pay revenue to the government besides creating employment to many of their compatriot Kenyans.

Under these prevailing circumstances the writer forgets “that one bad apple spoils a box of fresh apples” Hence there could be no justification on the in frivolity of the number ones they are spoiler Terrorists.

It is unfortunately true that there are large camps under the UNHCR and the Kenyan authority allocated to regrettably Somali refugees who have been striped off, from the little possessions they had by Al Shabab and affiliated group robbers, whom the eloquent writer classified could have “glorious chapter in the Somali history,” expressing his hidden capricious sympathy in support to this criminals who inflicted on innocent Somalis untold atrocities in the history of modern world. OUT OF CONTEXT

The article of the bone fide concerned Somali was only to shed light on the facts that occurred and how he and like minded prominent Somali responsible elders tried to defuse the tarnish image of these noble Somali peace loving people who had nothing to do with the criminally hoisted black flag of curse in a sovereign country, thus violating its sacred National Constitution and Territorial Integrity. Those waving the black flag which is a known symbol of Al Shabab were young Somalis infiltrated into Kenya by Al Sahaba to rouse decent and animosity among the peaceful Somali communities and the brotherly people and Government of Kenya. It is not a hidden fact that Al Shabab vowed and threatened more than often that it will raise hell and topples the Democratically and Legally elected Institutions in the neighbouring countries and beyond.

While one can observe the hollow argument of the Elegant writer about what has happened in Kenya, he brazenly continued to try in an unethical xenophobic manner that defeats all norms of sensible self respect to bombard unwarranted abuses out of his sectarian obsession on an elderly respected Somali States man Leader. More over he disregards to justify his baseless argument, that one of the first basic principles of sound Politics is, that in Politics there are no permanent Friends as there are no permanent Enemies; “but there are permanent Interests.” A prudent Nation and Leader is the one who gives priority to the Interest of his people to duel in Unity, Peace and Prosperity and live with the neibouring countries in peace and respect and enhancing the economy through balanced trade between them and the rest of the world. In this regard the Somali Nation and those of good judgment would like to know the alternative arena the able writer intends the Somali people to move to, if they could not live in peace and prosperity with their neighbors and the rest of the World?

The good English writer had also pondered on a cheap and most demeaning probably out of impulse of Kinship and sectarianism to abuse the present Minister of Foreign Affairs of the TFG for reason that could not be relevant in the context he has used. My take on this is that the writer should when he is writing articles of this nature be composed and have clean conscience and vivid objectives The Qabil Card

[GacanSareeye]

This is very good stuff, but strange that it should come from Al Azhari of all people. He was after all the right-hand man of a leader - former President Abdullahi Yusuf- who epitomised the antithesis of everything Azhari is now prescribing. Many people will recall his staunch defence of his boss whose only contribution to Somalia was to invite the occupation of Somalia by its worst enemy and whose motto was divide-and- rule along clan lines. Under him, Ethiopia's occupation of Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia, and the destruction, death and destitution it inflicted on our capital and its people, and above all the humiliation of being conquered by our historical enemy, will enter the annals of Somali history. That is his legacy. There is nothing innately wrong with Azhari's message. It is indeed relevant on paper. What is wrong is the messenger whose message will sound for many Somalis as double talk. That is why few will take it seriously.

Azhari will think twice before he writes in the modern era. thanks to technology, this is something Voltage could have written while in his basement

[Dionysus]

I wonder if Muhsin writes on Somalinet.

voltage, were you talking about this one? u were wrong bro.

[GacanSareeye]

i dont know man, but cross out the T (emperior) and I (ladies), and it could be anyone

[SahanGalbeed]

Who is al azhari? What happened to the guy who used to champion the warsangelis against us megalomanitis or something like that .