Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, and Sudan

Fighting Terror Through Justice: Implementing the IGAD Framework for Legal Cooperation Against Terrorism

by Matthew Schwartz

Co-authored with the Task Force on Legal Cooperation against Terrorism in the IGAD Subregion.

East Africa and the Horn face a number of transnational security threats, including terrorism, transnational crime,... more East Africa and the Horn face a number of transnational security threats, including terrorism, transnational crime, and piracy. In recent years, particularly following the July 2010 attacks in Kampala, al-Shabaab has been increasingly viewed as a threat not only to Somalia, but to the greater subregion. Tourism has declined and shipping costs have risen due to the threat of piracy from Somalia. Lawless pockets where government reach is weak, together with rampant corruption, have turned the region into a major transit point for black market financial flows and various forms of illicit trafficking.

Terrorism and transnational crime increasingly threaten security in the subregion of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development [IGAD]. Because of their transnational nature, no individual IGAD member state will single-handedly be able to deal effectively with these threats. As the IGAD Security Strategy adopted in December 2010 makes clear, effective cooperation will be crucial to winning the struggle against terrorism and to ensuring that other forms of transnational crime do not similarly jeopardize the IGAD subregion’s growth, prosperity, and stability.

Šumgädäl : peintures rupestres et histoires de vaches dans le Sud-Gondär

by Bertrand Poissonnier

co-authored with Anaïs Wion, published in 'Annales d'Ethiopie' 25, 2010.

Šumgädäl : rock paintings and cow stories in South-Gondär. The discovery of a series of rock paintings showing... more Šumgädäl : rock paintings and cow stories in South-Gondär. The discovery of a series of rock paintings showing schematic bucrania from a cave from the upper Blue Nile Valley, likely belonging to historical times, is studied alongside with local legends involving bovines.
Keywords: Ethiopia, Bägemder, Rock Art, Bovids, Comb Style, Oral Tradition.

Defining the Problem in Somalia: Perspectives from the Southern Minorities

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authored with Omar A. Eno and Dan van Lehman. The Journal of Anglo-Somali Society, London 2010 (For citation purpose: Issue No. 47 Spring 2010 ISSN 1361 – 4320, pp. 19-30.

Understanding Somalia through the Prism of Bantu Jareer Literature

by Mohamed Eno

In Ali J. Ahmed and Taddesse Adera, eds., The Road Less Traveled:
Reflections on the Literatures of the Horn of Africa.

This essay intends to touch briefly on the comparative cultures between Somalia and some of the communities in the... more This essay intends to touch briefly on the comparative cultures between Somalia and some of the communities in the neighboring countries. Second, the essay discusses the culture and literature of the Bantu Jareer, and their "thought and knowledge," which Sorokin calls "the very essence of civilization." To embark on this journey, we must unlearn much of what has been said of the Jareer, in particular, and of Somali culture in general. This is important if we are to discover what constitutes the aesthetics of Jareer history, literary art, social culture and thought. This act of unlearning what is committed to the official collective memory of the Somali demythologizes what I call "monoculturality of the camel complex" so pervasive in discussions of Somali culture. It is an act also that will help us uncover the Jarrer's "...tool of self-definition in relation to others."-Wa Thiong'o.

Migration in the Horn: Colonial and Post-Colonial Perspectives

by Uoldelul Chelati Dirar

in E. Abiri & H. Thörn (eds.): Horizons. Perspectives on a Global Africa. Lund, Goteborg University: Studentlitteratur, 2004, pp. 151-197

Inclusive but Unequal: The Enigma of the 14th SNRC and the Four-Point-Five (4.5) Factor

by Mohamed Eno

in Abdulahi A. Osman & Issaka K. Souare (Eds.) Somalia at the Crossroads: Challenges and Perspectives on Reconstituting a Failed State. London: Adonis & Abbey Publishers

Identity Crisis and Ethnic Marginalization in Somalia: The Case of the Bantu Jareer Community

by Mohamed Eno

VERITAS: The Academic Journal of St Clements University Vol. 1, No. 1, September 2009

The Journey Back to the Ancestral Homeland: The Return of the Somali Bantu Wazigua to Modern Tanzania

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authhored with Omar A. Eno;  In Abdi M. Kusow & Stephanie R.  Bjork (Eds.) From Mogadishu to Dixon: The Somali Diaspora in a Global Context. Trenton NJ: The Red Sea Press Inc.

The Nile as a Gateway for the Missionary Activity in Abyssinia

by Uoldelul Chelati Dirar

in H. Erlich, I. Gershoni (eds.), The Nile : Histories, Cultures, Myths. Boulder : Lynne Rienner, 1999, pp 139-149.,

Colonialism and the construction of national identities: the case of Eritrea

by Uoldelul Chelati Dirar

in 'Journal of Eastern African Studies', 1, 2, (2007): 256-276.

From Warriors to Urban Dwellers. Ascari and the Military Factor in the Urban Development of Colonial Eritrea

by Uoldelul Chelati Dirar

in 'Cahiers d’Études Africaines' XLIV, 3, 175 (2004): 533-574.

Collaborazione e conflitti: Michele da Carbonara e l'organizzazione della Prefettura Apostolica dell'Eritrea (1894-1910)

by Uoldelul Chelati Dirar

in 'Quaderni storici', 109, 37,1 (2002): 149-188

Church-state relations in colonial Eritrea: missionaries and the development of colonial strategies (1869-1911)

by Uoldelul Chelati Dirar

in 'Journal of Modern Italian Studies', 8, 3 (2003): 391-410

The Conduct of an Inter-state War and Multiple Dimensions of Territory: 1998-2000 Eritrea-Ethiopia war

by Alexandra Magnolia Dias

A trajectória de um movimento islamita na Somália (2006-2010)

by Alexandra Magnolia Dias

Charlatans Chicanery

by Mohamed Eno

Thr poem is an excerpt from my forthcoming volume Guilt of Otherness

The volume is under review with a subject area expert and a literary critic. The volume is under review with a subject area expert and a literary critic.

A Tale of Two Minorities: The State of the Gaboye and Bantu Communities of Somalia

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authored with Omar A. Eno; In Michael Mbanaso and Chima Korieh (Eds.) Minorities and the State in Africa, Cambria Press Inc., (2010)

Intellectualism amid Ethnocentrism: Mukthar and the 4.5 Factor

by Mohamed Eno

Co-authored with Omar A. Eno; Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies Vol.9, 2009, pp. 137-145.

Le port de Zeyla et son arrière-pays au Moyen Âge: Investigations archéologiques et retour aux sources écrites

by François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar

Co-authored with B. Hirsch, R. Bernard and F. Champagne.
Published in F.-X. Fauvelle-Aymar and B. Hirsch (eds.), "Espaces musulmans de la Corne de l'Afrique au Moyen Âge", Paris, De Boccard, 2011: 27-74..

Somali women basketball team defeat The Jihadists: 1:0

by James M. Dorsey

By James Dorsey

The Somali national women’s basketball team hard fought defeat last week of Qatar in the... more By James Dorsey

The Somali national women’s basketball team hard fought defeat last week of Qatar in the Arab Games constituted more than just a badly needed morale boost for the country wracked by an Islamist insurgency: it put Somali women on par with soccer in standing up to the Islamists’ brutal suppression of sports for both men and women.

"Words can't describe how I felt. We were all jumping up and down, there were tears in the girls' eyes -- history was made right there," CNN.com quoted Canadian-born Somali team member Khatra Mahdi as saying after her team’s 67:57 victory/

The sky blue-clad team’s triumph in the tournament came three months after Al Shabab, an Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group that controls significant chunks of Somalia, threatened much like they did with soccer officials and players, women basketball players with death if they failed to give up the sport.

The focus on basketball was no coincidence. Basketball is Somalia's second most popular sport after soccer and alongside soccer and handball only one of three sports played by women in Somalia.

Like the Somali national soccer team, the women’s basketball team is forced to train at home in the heavily fortified, bullet ridden, police academy in the Somali capital Mogadishu under the command of Colonel Ahmed Hassan Maalin – the city’s barrel-chested, thinly moustachioed, fatigues-clad police chief -- to escape the wrath of Al Shabab.

Inside the academy, team members sprint across the court, dressed in loose fitting tracksuits, T-shirts and headscarves, in the presence of hundreds of policemen. When they leave to return home they make sure that they are covered in a bid to remain unnoticed.

Paradoxically, the anti-basketball campaign puts Al Shabab at odds with Al Qaeda. It contrasts starkly with Al Qaeda’s efforts in recent months to project a kinder, gentler image in Somalia by distributing aid to famine victims.

The emphasis on women constitutes an expanded enforcement of the Shabab's extreme interpretation of Quranic guidelines on sports that in recent years focused primarily on efforts to ban soccer for men as well as women.

The Shabab’s focus not only contrasts with Al Qaeda's effort to project a different image after having lost much of its appeal with its attacks on Arab residential compounds and luxury hotels in the first half of the last decade and being even more sidelined by this year's Arab revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

It also highlights differing attitudes not only with Al Qaeda but also with other militant Islamist groups such as Palestine's Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah but also militant Islam’s love-hate relationship with ball games.

Soccer doesn’t fit into Al Shabab or, for that matter, the Taliban’s vision of an Islamist society. Soccer distracts the faithful from worshipping Allah, competes with the militants for recruits and lends credence to national borders at the expense of pan-Islamist aspirations for the return of the Caliph who would rule the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims as one. It also celebrates peaceful competition and undermines the narrative of an inevitable clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.

Al Shabab mentor and Taliban ally Osama Bin Laden, like many jihadists, nonetheless worshiped the game only second to Allah. He saw it as a useful bonding and recruitment tool that brought recruits into the fold, encouraged camaraderie and reinforced militancy among those who have already joined. The track record of soccer-players-turned suicide bombers proves his point.

The Al Shahab's revived effort to impose a ban on women's sports harks back to a decision in 2006 by the Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU), an Islamist group that briefly ruled Somalia that condemned it as "a heritage of old Christian cultures" and "un-Islamic."

Initially an armed wing of the courts, the Shabab emerged as a force in their own right with the US-backed Ethiopian invasion that forced the courts out of power.

Suweys Ali Jama, the captain of the Somali national women's basketball team captain is one of Al Shabab’s favourite targets. "I will only die when my life runs out – no one can kill me but Allah … I will never stop my profession while I am still alive. Now, I am a player, but even if I retire I hope to be a coach - I will stop basketball only when I perish," Ms. Jama told InterPress Service last year.

Ms. Jama's deputy, Aisha Mohammed, whose mother once played for the national team has in Al Shabab’s view two strikes against her. Not only is she a woman athlete, but she plays for the Somali military women's basketball team.

Ms. Mohammed, according to IPS, quotes the Shabab as telling her: "You are twice guilty. First, you are a woman and you are playing sports, which the Islamic rule has banned. Second, you are representing the military club who are puppets for the infidels. So we are targeting you wherever you are."

In a feisty retort, Ms. Mohammed asserts that "I am a human being and I fear, but I know that only Allah can kill me."

Somali Basketball Federation deputy secretary general Abdi Abdulle Ahmed told IPS that some women had left the national team as a result of the Al Shabab threats. Sport executives estimate that some 200 women stopped playing basketball when the initial 2006 ban was announced.

As a result, Somali Basketball Federation president Hussein Ibrahim Ali argues that his national women's team plays for much more than a trophy when it competes internationally.

"The world knows that Somalia has undergone hardships. When our women play internationally, it is great publicity for the whole country and, in particular, for the basketball federation," Mr Ali said.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.