Attack Continuing on Shabelle Media, Somalia

On September 17 or 18--

I will admit this right now: the "second row seat to history" does not see as well as the front row--

Somali national army forces attacked and layed siege, of a sort, to the office building housing Shabelle Media in Mogadishu. [1]

Yesterday, Reuters reported 18 staff "briefly arrested" at that point.

On the 26th, journalist or deputy director (or both, one's inferred, the other title I've seen on Google's report for his name) Mohamed Amiin published a diatribe on the matter at http://www.shabelle.net/news/ne3760.htm: "Somalia's media is diminishing under the blazing guns of mad soldiers." [2]

It has been common in dissident tactics to draw on a melange of American sentiments--about Native Americans, about "how America does business", about autocracy, especially Orwell's disutopian version of it, etc.--to build support for other causes that may be equally ham handed and ruthless.  Here, with Somalia, the states-of-affairs are so clouded that I hesitate to ascribe integrity to either the President Ahmed's Administration or Shabelle Media's ". . . simple journalists with microphones, book notes, pens, and the desire to lead freedom of speech in a country of nowhere to go."

I've queried the U.S. State Department for cause (what is a proto-democratic state doing attacking a radio station -- and by the way, according to Amiin, the state's weapons fire has been sufficient enough to damage its broadcasting hardware and related capability) and if I don't find his e-mail address online first, I certainly invite Mohamed Amiin to explain how or why Shabelle Media produced so much interest on the part of President Ahmed's government.

The way through cant and propaganda is to obtain a complete, coherent, and verifiable (seven ways to Sunday) story that plain makes cultural, emotional, political, and psychological sense.

I don't have that story.

What I have are Dutch writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali's accounts of growing up in Somalia (popular books now: The Caged Virgin and Infidel); various and common histories of warfare, including Walter Laqueur's classic Guerrilla; and apart from that a couple of Masters' degrees (one in English, the other in "outdoor recreation resources management" aka the social psychology of the wilderness experience). 

:-)

"The prepartors are still at the main gate of Shabelle Media Network," Amiin stated in his Shabelle.Net post on the 26th.

I'll take the report of the fact at face value: but come on, world--give me information that makes that kind of fact make sense!

# # #

---

1. "Press group deplores attack on Somali media boss."  Reuters, September 27, 2007.

2. Amiin, Mohamed.  "Somalia's media is diminishing under the blazing guns of mad soldiers."  Shabelle.Net, September 26, 2007.

---

Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

---

Comments

[Mahdi]

The Crocodile Tears of Somalia’s Insurgency-owned FM Radios in Mogadishu...

Shabelle FM Radio staffers, who, by their choice, have decided to close it down, after their hidden agendas of being part and parcel of the current insurgency attacks in the capital Mogadishu had been exposed by the Somalia’ police force, still continue to shed crocodile tears to confuse the international community. They are publishing false new reports posing themselves as if they are victims of government anti-press freedom campaign. (http://allafrica.com/stories/200709260629.html)

Both Radio Shabelle and Radio Horn Afrik, two FM Radios in Mogadishu are owned by Ayr sub-clan of Habargidir clan, not by those individuals claiming to be indeprendent jounalists. Ayr sub-clan, as publicly known, is the source of the isurgencies in Mogadishu. Not only that but they have always been the rejectionist clan to any efforts to restore law and order in Somalia. This clan has in the past appropiated both public and privately owned properties in Mogadishu, and they believes the only way they can keep them is to reject for Somalia to have a governmet of its own. Both these two radio stations were created by diaspora members of this clan with the intent of contributing to their clan’s all-agreed rejectionist principal.

Radio Shabelle has its offices in the middle of Bakaaraha, the largest open-air market in Somalia, which is an stronghold where both the Islamist and the clan loyalist insurgencies use as lauching base of their daily atacks on the innocent people in Mogaishu. It was not until recently that the govenrment came to know that radio Shabelle was another base of the insurgents. The hard facts, however, came to the light only recently when twice in four days bomb grenades were thrown at a police patrols passing near the Radio station. The police later confirmed that the bombs were thrown from inside Radio Shabelle offices.

The international community knows all about this. Leonard Vincent, head of the Africa desk with the group Reporters Without Borders, who recently spoke to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about the incident, confirmed that closure of radio Shabelle had nothing to do with it’s broadcasts. “we believe that the story is more of a clan hostility story..” he said.