Improving Science and Technology Education policies and programmes and attracting young people - notably girls - to scientific studies: these are among the challenges discussed in an interview with Orlando Hall Rose, Chief of UNESCO’s Science and Technology Section.

Reporters Without Borders has said it was stunned by the Burkina Faso public prosecutor's refusal to reopen the investigation into the 1998 murder of journalist Norbert Zongo and three companions on the grounds that the document the organisation gave him on 20 October 2006 did not constitute new evidence as defined by article 189 of the code of criminal procedure.

A leading land expert this week warned that expropriation should not be seen as the sole saviour of land reform in South Africa. Edward Lahiff, a researcher at the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape, says that, given the active condition of the land market in South Africa, there is no reason why the majority of land reform needs cannot be met through negotiated purchases.

Leeds is host to thousands of African people who have been forced to flee war, persecution and poverty in their mother continent and come to Britain in search of refuge and a better life. Yet most are living in day to day destitution, fear of arbitrary detention and brutal deportations.

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Rising violence in eastern Chad and Darfur highlights the immediate need for the United Nations Security Council to strengthen civilian protection by the UN mission in Sudan following Khartoum's expulsion of the UN secretary-general's special representative in Sudan, Jan Pronk, Human Rights Watch said today.

An upswing in cross-border attacks on Chadian civilians since early October has coincided with new bouts of fighting between the Chadian army and rebels. Aid agency and government officials said Goz Beida, 160 km west of the Sudan border, and 200 km south of the regional aid-hub Abeche was briefly occupied by armed rebels on Sunday (22 October 2006) afternoon.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo slapped emergency rule on southwestern Ekiti state on Thursday (19 October 2006) as tensions mount in two other Nigerian states over the controversial impeachment of state governors. In a special broadcast on state radio and television, Obasanjo said he took the measure because the situation “clearly presents danger of possible breakdown of public order and public safety.”

There are over a million orphans in Malawi, half of whom have lost one or both parents to AIDS, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), but only 15 out of almost a thousand orphanages are registered with the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Authorities in Zanzibar have incinerated another consignment of chicken eggs smuggled from mainland Tanzania, in the hope of keeping their islands free of avian flu. "We seized the egg consignment of about 11 boxes imported from the Tanzanian mainland commercial capital of Dar es Salaam," said Kassim Gharib, the head of a task force formed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Natural Resources and Environment.

Since last year, the Namibian education system has lost an alarming number of teachers to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and indications are that more deaths are expected within the next few years from the illness. This shocking revelation was made by the Namibia National Teachers Organization (Nantu) yesterday at a meeting to discuss the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education system in the country. A number of selected teachers attended the crucial meeting in the capital.

Every October 24, the world joins together to commemorate the United Nations day. The UN Charter was drawn up by representatives of countries at the UN Conference on International Organisation, which met at San Francisco from April 25 - June26, 1945. The Charter was signed on June 26, 1945. The UN officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, when the Charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, the US and a majority of others.

A government spokesman's remark that he has no regrets over the masscare of about 20,000 people by Zimbabwean security forces nearly 20 years ago is reopening old wounds and pitting the country's deputy president against President Robert Mugabe. ZANU-PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira made the comments during a recent workshop in Manicaland Province, bordering Mozambique, almost two decades after a five-year reign of terror in the southern provinces of Midlands and Matabeleland by Zimbabwean soldiers of Five Brigade, who were trained by North Korea.

Liberia’s chief justice on Thursday (19 October 2006) rejected calls for the establishment of a special court to try rape cases following a United Nations report criticising the country’s high incidence of sexual violence and its weak judicial system. "There is no need for such a court right now as our court systems can handle those cases," Chief Justice Johnnie Lewis told reporters.

The Islamic University in Uganda (IUIU) has expelled 18 pregnant students. The university coordinator, Hajji Abbas Samaali, said the students, many of them in their first year, were expelled after an impromptu medical examination.

An international forum trying to reconcile rival political groups in Somalia has urged the Islamic movement to refrain from further expanding its authority by military means and instead engage the transitional government in dialogue.

Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who faces Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba in a second-round presidential poll, has agreed to include one of the sons of late President Mobutu Sese Seko in his government should he win the 29 October contest.

Swaziland's decade-long economic malaise took a sharp downward turn with the central bank's disclosure this week that growth had slowed to its lowest level in 40 years. The Central Bank of Swaziland's governor, Martin Dlamini, said in a candid admission, "This year's unimpressive economic growth implies a deterioration of the standard of living as measured by per capita income," in the bank's annual report to the government, covering the period March 2005 to February 2006.

Over a decade ago, the western town of Poura reveled in a boom from a government-run industrial gold mine and became known as Petit Paris. The town quickly lost that reputation after the mine closed in 1999. Now it is known for something else: the hazards of small-scale mining. A cave-in killed at least three miners and injured several others in August.

It seems SABC's AM Live presenter John Perlman is headed for a disciplinary inquiry -- which should, at the very least, trigger alarm over a corporate culture that must be rippling with eggshell trepidation of arbitrary victimisation. After all, how is it that Perlman can be comprehensively vindicated by a commission of inquiry, yet still be up on disciplinary charges?

The idea of saving money for an education is a universal concept. Ami and Alice are no exception. They head to the Adjame market in Cote d’Ivoire’s main city, Abidjan, most days to earn cash for school by selling little bags of water from bowls they balance on their heads. What is different about them is their age: Ami is six and Alice is seven.

The UNHCR convoys arriving in Burundi in the past four years have carried refugees returning home from Tanzania, but now more and more of the singing, clapping returnees are coming back from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The use of political assassination against liberation movements has changed the course of history in a number of countries in Africa and continues to devastate the Middle East, writes Victoria Brittain. The current power relations between the Third World and the dominant Western and imperialist powers, are a product of the war of attrition which the West has waged, particularly by political assassinations, which have robbed Africa and the Middle East of some of their great leaders, and weakened their important political organisations.

Selective and systematic political assassination against liberation movements has changed the course of history in a number of countries in Africa, and the Middle East, and profoundly affected regional politics. And with those changes have come even more significant ones on the wider canvas of Third World history.

More important still, the current power relations between the Third World in general, and the dominant Western and imperialist powers, are to a considerable extent a product of the war of attrition which the West has waged, particularly by political assassinations, which have robbed Africa and the Middle East of some of their great leaders, and weakened their important political organisations.

And there may be another legacy of these political assassinations and the loss of leaders over the preceding two generations. Today, opposition to the new colonialism has become so fragmented, sectarian, de-politicised, marginalized, leaderless, as to give birth to the suicide bomber as a widespread phenomenon –most strikingly in opposition to the US occupation of Iraq, as well as in Palestine.

For anyone who did not live the hopeful, febrile, political life in and around the African liberation movements of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, it may be hard to imagine their power over imaginations and political and social aspirations far beyond their own continent – including in Europe and in the US – and the magic of a handful of their leaders.

Two key liberation movements to consider in particular are South Africa’s African National Congress, and the Palestinians’ Fatah movement and various Palestinian splinter groups.

The different trajectory of the two mainly reflects the difference in their fundamental strategic position in the world: the Palestinians have the great disadvantage of being players in the key area of attempted US dominance of world oil supplies, and of being pitted against the US’s most important world ally. Additionally, the Middle East has been the most deeply penetrated area of the world by Western imperialist interests – well before the creation of the state of Israel.

But before going into those two cases in some detail: some reminders of the immense scope of the use of political assassination against the struggle of liberation movements to end colonialism in Africa, by giving just a very few examples.

Take first, as the context, four related highly professional assassinations, spread over nearly 30 years, mainly unsolved, but all presumed linked to the extreme right and former intelligence services in France. The last gasps of neo-colonialist violence played out here: Ben Barka; Felix Moumie of Cameroon, poisoned in Geneva in 1960 by a French secret service agent; Henri Curiel, the militant anti-imperialist, shot in his apartment building in Paris in May 1978, and Dulcie September, the ANC’s representative in Paris - shot in the back ten years later by a 22 calibre rifle with a silencer – the latter two, soft targets, with no protection, despite numerous death threats.

Charismatic leaders from countries as different as Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cameroon, and Congo, who each had an influence that went far beyond their own countries, were assassinated in the interests of the colonial powers, even if the assassins themselves were sometimes recruited in local groups funded from the West. Amilcar Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, Felix Moumie, and Patrice Lumumba, (though the latter was not leading a liberation movement, but was elected head of the post-colonial government less than a year before) were all murdered by the forces or allies of their current or former colonial power, because they threatened its future influence, not to say continuing control, over the economy and ideology in the country in question. Their brutal disappearances from the African political scene had a much bigger impact than their countries’ mainly modest weight would have intimated.

Amilcar Cabral was the leader of the PAIGC, (Partido Africano da Independencia da Guiné e Cabo Verde) the liberation movement fighting for independence from Portugal of the two small West African overseas territories. Cabral was, by far, the best-known and most revered intellectual influence on all African liberation movements. He was shot in his car arriving at his house in Conakry –PAIGC’s headquarters - on 20 january 1973, by a dissident of his own movement, manipulated by the Portuguese.

Cabral’s famous speech at the TriContinental conference in Havana in 1966 had revealed him to the world as a key theoretician among Third World revolutionaries at that exhilarating, hopeful, moment of history. He was also exceptional in action. It was in Guinea-Bissau that the Portuguese colonial army suffered its most crushing defeats, which later sparked the military revolt and the “Carnation Revolution” in Lisbon. Cabral was the living example of an exemplary revolutionary, whose movement was based as deeply among the peasants and future beneficiaries of the transformation of his society, as the Chinese leaders of the long march. He also reached urban cadres with the example of identifying with the peasants and giving up class privileges. Cabral’s charisma, intellectual brilliance, and influence within Africa, have never been even nearly matched on the continent in the 33 years since his death.

Eduardo Mondlane, leader of the Frelimo liberation movement, was killed, by a parcel bomb in Dar es Salaam – Frelimo’s headquarters - on February 3 1969, by agents of the PIDE – the hated and feared Portuguese political police struck here too. Mondlane was a US-educated, highly sophisticated leader who took on the leadership of Frelimo at its founding in 1964. Frelimo had the real possibility of being a liberation movement, and then a government, which could transform its backward strip of southeast Africa economically and socially far beyond the dreams and ambitions of most others in the post-colonial moment.

Would Mondlane, if he had been leading the country through the years of unrelenting South African destabilisation, have got to the point where Mozambique had to agree to Nkomati? This was the 1984 agreement that expelled the ANC from Mozambique - one of the strands of history that led the South African liberation movement to negotiate with the apartheid regime from a position of military weakness.

The subsequent histories of the other two countries who lost their key leaders so prematurely in the 1960s – Cameroon and Congo/Zaire –show more dramatic effects. In both, divided, factional, weak governments came to power, open to extreme manipulation by external forces, notably, the US and France in the Cold War period. Though because of the very complex ethnic structures of both Cameroon and Congo, and the size and wealth of the latter, it cannot be certain that either Moumie or Lumumba would necessarily have been successful in holding their countries together, or maintaining the independent anti-imperialist policies they espoused.

But since their violent deaths both have carried mythic status in Africa, and the evocation of their names brings nostalgia for a dream of real independence, of hopes, of justice, which never came.

In Cameroon, Felix Moumie was the successor to Reuben Um Nyobe as leader of the radical nationalist UPC, which had 10 000 peasant fighters in the bush and a movement strong enough to continue fighting for some years against the first independent government, the pro-French neo-colonialist regime of Ahmadou Ahidjo.

Moumie was murdered by thallium poisoning in Geneva on October 15 1960. His killer was a French agent, William Bechtel, who posed as a journalist to meet Moumie in a restaurant.

In Congo, Patrice Lumumba the radical nationalist leader, elected Prime Minister just before Congo’s independence from Belgium, was killed on January 17 1961. Lumumba’s assassination had been attempted on several previous occasions by the CIA, and it was finally carried out by agents of the Belgian government, including senior serving Belgian officials, acting with his Congolese political rivals, with the support of the Americans.

Lumumba had been crudely and erroneously tagged a communist by the US, which portrayed him as an extraordinarily dangerous individual. Lumumba’s error – in Western eyes - was his ambition of forming a unified state in which Congo’s huge riches would be used for indigenous development, rather than being exported massively to the West. In addition he had made overtures for assistance to the USSR.

In 1963 – old-style - the independent minded Togolese leader, Sylvanus Olympio, was killed in a coup lead by Colonel Etienne Eyadema, a veteran of the French army in Algeria, who took power four years later and for the next 40 years headed a neo-colonial regime strongly supported by Paris.

South Africa suffered some thousands of deaths – uncounted and often anonymous - of its commanders and cadres, assassinated in exile in ANC camps and offices in neighbouring countries, or by death squads inside the country. Dozens of individuals were targeted, mainly in the second rank of leaders. The assassination campaign by the apartheid regime aimed to take out the movement’s best brains, and to sap the will power of the rank and file to organise against apartheid. Ironically the ANC did not lose their top leaders in this dirty war, partly because many of them, like Nelson Mandela, were in prison on Robben Island. And even those top leaders in exile who were certainly frequently targeted, escaped that fate.

Those killed included men such as the young anti-apartheid activist Siphiwe Mtimkulu, poisoned by thallium in 1981, or leaders of organisations such as teacher Mathew Goniwe, the United Democratic Front regional organiser in the Eastern Cape, stabbed to death, mutilated and burned with three others, on the way to a meeting, in June 1985.

The confession of a former policeman, Butana Almond Nofemela in October 1989, that he had been part of a death squad, finally blew the lid off the secret policy, and gave some indication of its range. There were at least 50 such assassinations between august 1977 and November 1989.

A secret unit of the South African Defence Forces, the extraordinarily-named, Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB), was finally revealed as responsible for many hundreds of targeted killings inside the country, and across the region. Cassius Make of the ANC’s national executive, and Paul Dikeledi, a member of the ANC’s armed wing, for instance, were just two of those key people shot dead in Swaziland in 1987 by a squad who brazenly crossed the border for the purpose.

Such assassinations were of course also intended by South Africa to send out warnings to host governments of the liberation movements, of the high price of the alliance against continued white rule. All the frontline states suffered such assaults. Killings of ANC cadres, including women and children, went on continuously through the 1970s and 80s in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zambia, the ANC headquarters. The regime relentlessly used spies and created collaborators to facilitate these killings.

In Zimbabwe in august 1981 the ANC representative, Joe Gqabi, who had spent years on Robben Island, was assassinated. He was killed outside his house in Harare, probably by former Selous Scouts who had joined the SADF. The New Zealand born priest, and ANC member Father Michael Lapsley lost both hands in a letter bomb attack in Harare, shortly after the ANC had moved him from Lesotho because of direct threats against him.

Mozambique saw many, many such killings of ANC people. South Africa made repeated raids, including by air, into Maputo against the ANC. In January 1981 they killed 13 cadres, in 1983 they killed 6 people, though only one was ANC, and bombed the ANC office wounding 5 cadres, one ANC cadre working at the radio was poisoned. They went for high profile South African exiles too, whose individual deaths might affect the course of the movement. In August 1982, Ruth First, wife of the communist party leader and army commander, Joe Slovo, and herself an influential anti-apartheid activist voice, was killed by a letter bomb sent to her university office. In 1987, Albie Sachs, another such internationally-known voice and a lawyer, was seriously wounded though not killed in a car bombing in which he lost his right arm and one eye. Sachs went on to be an eminent member of the Constitutional Court in post-apartheid South Africa, charged with overseeing the creation of a state that respected the law.

All these political assassinations over the years were undoubtedly successful in weakening the ANC and its allies, the UDF and COSATU, so that the eventual transfer of power was on much more favourable terms to the old regime, than had been envisaged during the armed struggle.

But all of this bloodshed is eclipsed in scale by the Israeli assassinations of Palestinians – part of the massive bloodletting in the Middle East that has, since 1977 under Menachem Begin, marked the struggle for Greater Israel, and the inevitable balkanisation of the Arab world. This began from the 1956 attempt by Britain, France and Israel to destroy Nasser, the Arab champion of the day.

Political assassinations have been, and still are, the backbone of Israeli counter-terrorism policy, and, in addition, there have been systematic assassinations of the Palestinian leaders keenest to negotiate with Israel. The highest level of the Israeli political/military establishment has been personally involved in many of the most important strikes.

Of the four founding fathers of Fatah, only one, Yasser Arafat, escaped assassination. Or did he? The use of sophisticated poison by Israeli assassins was revealed in 1997 when a Hamas leader, Khalid Mash’al, was poisoned in Amman by two Mossad agents (who had travelled on false Canadian passports and who were captured).

Mash’al was only saved when a furious King Hussein demanded, and received, the poison antidote from Israel. Others had no such escape from their fate: Muhamed Yusif al Najjar was killed by Israeli commandos in Beirut in 1973 – led by Ehud Barak, later Prime Minister, disguised as a woman. Abu Jihad, the PLO’s foreign minister, was killed in his house at the PLO headquarters in Tunis by a sea-borne Israeli military squad led by General Moshe Yaalon, later chief of staff. Abu Iyad, Fatah’s intelligence chief, with one of his senior intelligence officials, Abu al Hol, was gunned down in his house in Tunis in January 1991 on the eve of the Gulf war, by Hamza Abu Zaid, a dissident Fatah member who had been recruited by Abu Nidal.

In his deeply researched book, Abu Nidal, A Gun for Hire, the British Middle East expert, Patrick Seale, explored the thesis that Abu Iyad had put to him the previous year: that Abu Nidal was working with the Israelis. Nidal himself admitted penetration of his organisation by Mossad.

If Seale is correct, and he makes a very detailed and persuasive case, the Israelis were using, with Abu Nidal’s group, a particularly ruthless version of the classic infiltration and manipulation techniques with double agents much favoured by the South Africans (see above). The Israelis over the years have penetrated every single Palestinian organisation, and the use of collaborators has been a painfully corroding theme through Palestinian society.

In southern Lebanon, Hizbollah and Amal both had leaders assassinated by Israel in an extension of the war against the Palestinians. These actions, often coordinated by the US and sometimes financed by Saudi Arabia did not always succeed but they raised the stakes, for instance, notably, with the March 1985 massive car bomb in Beirut near the apartment block of Hizbollah’s spiritual leader, Sheik Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, which missed him, but killed 80 people and wounded two hundred. Elsewhere in Lebanon thousands of Palestinians died in the war of the camps, and in the Abu Nidal killings of about 600 young men in 1987/88.

The dramatic impact on Palestinian history of political assassination comes not only from the top leadership cases cited, but from the assassinations of five leading Fatah doves between 1978 and 1983 by Abu Nidal. All five had publicly spoken in favour of dialogue with Israel, and all represented Fatah abroad: Said Hammami, PLO representative in London, Ali Yassin, ambassador in Kuwait, Nain Khudr, representative in Brussels, Izz al-Din Qalaq, representative in Paris, and Arafat’s confidant, Dr Issam Sartawi, killed in Lisbon during a conference on Palestine.

All five would certainly have held prominent positions in the Palestinian team that conducted the eventual negotiations with the Israelis. Their murders gave Israel its double goal: ending any chance of such negotiations taking place, and ensuring the continuation of the PLO’s international pariah status with the label of a terrorist organisation.

Other PLO representatives were also assassinated in Cyprus, Beirut, Rome, Paris (two more), and in Malta. And there were other attempts that failed.

Throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories’ two intifadas, scores of Palestinians in less prominent local leadership positions were targeted and killed by undercover Israeli hit squads with incalculable impact on the political coherence of the resistance to the Occupation.

With the beginning of the twenty first century Israeli assassination tactics became more violent, more reckless of the consequences for civilians, and heedless of any international censure. The leader of the PFLP was the first victim of the flamboyant style that became their new trademark. On august 27 2001 Secretary-General Abu Ali Mustafa was assassinated by a missile attack on his office in Ramallah after he returned to the West Bank after 32 years in exile.

In conclusion:

Since the Tricontinental era, in terms of self-confidence and intellectual freedom, of power relations with the West, of the gap between rich and poor, of optimism for justice, the legacy of the inspired liberation movements of the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties has been deeply disappointing. All the material indicators are worse too in Africa and the Middle East, and the situation is compounded by a brain drain that runs directly contrary to the nationalist ideals of the earlier generations.

The Arab world is neither united nor free, much of it a series of shattered societies, headed by discredited and contested elites. Nothing illustrates this better than the current situation of the US occupation and destruction of a former regional giant - Iraq. Iraq’s great history and civilisation has come to its lowest ebb as one client government, manipulated from Washington, has succeeded another, and a new generation of resistance has been born. The daily diet of suicide bombings, carried out both by Iraqis and by jihadis of other Arab nationalities, has its roots in the depoliticisation imperialism worked so hard to produce in so much of the Third World, most notably by its political assassination policy.

• This a shortened version of an article in Race and Class Volume 48 (1) 2006, based on a paper given in a colloquium in Paris in late 2005, on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Moroccan opposition leader Ben Barka.

• Victoria Brittain is a journalist. She worked at the guardian for 20 years, mainly covering Africa and Third World economic and political issues.

• Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Peace talks between the Somalian government and the Islamic courts are scheduled to resume at the end of the month, 30 October 2006. Birgit Michaelis argues that the ordinary Somalis have suffered enough, and says that Islamic courts should bring their judicial procedures into conformity with recognized international and African human rights treaties and standards.

“I do not want to live in Mogadishu” says Ibrahim Sherif Nur, a newcomer to the Dadaab refugee camp, which is located in Kenya's North Eastern Province. It took him 20 days to flee with his family from Somalia's capital to Liboi, a border post on the Kenyan-Somali frontier. Dadaab, a complex of three refugee camps, is already hosting some 134,000, mainly Somali, refugees and at the moment there is a considerable influx of refugees as violence escalates in Somalia. Kenya is cooperating with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and may be forced to set up an additional refugee camp in Dadaab. There are more than 400,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) in Somalia, 250,000 of them are living in Mogadishu in war-destroyed buildings under pitiful conditions. Most of the IDPs have to beg for food.

Somalis are, by most indices of human development, severely impoverished. Any increase in conflict could create a severe humanitarian crisis in Somalia, according to one United Nations agency. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that double the 1.8 million people currently in need of urgent assistance were at risk as malnutrition rates are high in many areas. Like the humanitarian situation the human rights situation is a disaster too. Home to 10 million predominantly Muslim people, the country has been without a functioning government since the former president, Mohamed Siad Barre, was ousted in 1991.

Human rights violations under the regime of Mohamed Siad Barre

The Somali Republic collapsed in 1991 with the overthrow of the Siad Barre government, the disintegration of the state into civil war, the establishment of various and shifting warlord-controlled zones in the south, and the separation of the north-western third of the country. Major General Mohamed Siad Barre’s government originated in a military coup in 1969 after nine years of civilian multi-party government, following Somalia’s independence in 1960. His government was overthrown just over 21 years later, in 1991, by armed opposition forces based in Ethiopia. The Siad Barre government was a military-based, one-party Marxist-Leninist system marked by constant repression of opposition, clanism (clanism particularly refers to clan favouritism in political decision-making and public resource allocation), corruption and economic mismanagement.

The government was responsible for a persistent pattern of gross human rights violations, including large-scale killings by the army in the northwest, culminating in massacres and bombing in Hargeisa in the 80s; systematic torture of political prisoners by the National Security Service; arbitrary and long-term detentions of thousands of prisoners of conscience; grossly unfair trials by National Security Courts; many judicial executions; numerous political killings; and harsh treatment of prisoners in special security prisons. In the northwest in 1991, the Somali National Movement (SNM) force defeated the government forces and declared independence for “Somaliland” from the rest of Somalia, within the borders of the former British Somaliland Protectorate. In the northeast, the Puntland Regional State was declared in 1998 as a future part of a federal Somalia, consisting of two and a half former administrative regions of the former Somalia. [1]

After the state collapse in 1991 clan-based warlords and their armed militias took over and ruled the country until this June. Somalia plunged into chaos and anarchy. Tens of thousands of persons, mostly civilians, have died in interfactional and interclan fighting. The warlords and their militias are responsible for numerous human rights abuses such us kidnapping for ransom, torture, rape, beatings, unlawful killings and crimes such as theft, armed robbery, extortion, cattle rustling and piracy. The warlords’ rule led to infrastructure collapse, refugee flows and humanitarian disaster, which had exceptionally severe effects in this impoverished country. It further caused political instability in the Horn of Africa, which was affected by other armed conflicts and humanitarian and human rights crises.

The formation of the Transitional Federal Government

Numerous efforts have been made since 1991 with varied international support to try to resolve the crisis of state collapse and civil war in Somalia. But none has been successful. In 2000 a peace conference was convened at Arta in Djibouti by Djibouti’s President. The conference elected a Transitional National Assembly, which formed the Transitional National Government (TNG), installed in Mogadishu. The TNG, with a three-year term, controlled only a little part of Mogadishu and did not manage to establish a national system of administration of justice, a national army or police force. Faction fighting continued.

In October 2002 the 14th Somalia peace talks since the state collapse opened in Kenya. The “Somali National Reconciliation Conference” was sponsored by the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD), an inter-governmental regional grouping in the Horn and East Africa. In August 2004 members of a Transitional Federal Parliament were sworn in and Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was elected as President with a five-year term. Yusuf belongs to the original warlord class, which was instrumental in the destruction of the central state.

Several posts in the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) are held by warlords. Still in Nairobi there was a deep rift in the TFG on the future seat of government and a deployment of peacekeeping troops by the African Union. The Transitional Federal Institutions (TFI) relocated from Kenya to Somalia in June 2005. Esteeming Mogadishu too dangerous as seat of government the TFG first settled in Jowhar and later moved to Baidoa.

Most Somalis have a strong desire for a central state but are deeply disappointed with the TFG, which is internationally recognized but does not even have Baidoa under its control. It is divided by disputes and its effectiveness must be questioned. After more than two years the TFG has failed in promoting reconciliation, curbing the power of the warlords and disarming their militias. The executive and judicial branches remain badly underdeveloped and essentially non-functional. The TFG’s omission to establish local administration left a political vacuum. A functioning public administration and judicial system are indispensable for the promotion and protection of human rights and help prevent impunity. Warlords and their militias must be held accountable for war crimes and human rights abuses. Meanwhile, the TFG is perceived within Somalia more as a faction than a national authority.

The rise of the Islamists

After the fall of Siad Barre, Islamists began to argue that the only alternative to clanism and the failed Somali nationalism is political Islam. War weariness, desperation, desire for peace and order as well as widespread poverty seems to have attracted Somalis to join the fundamentalist camp. The state collapse not only created a fertile ground for the emergence and development of Islamic fundamentalism as a major force in Somalia, it also fostered the free movement of extremist and terrorist forces. The country is a refuge for the al-Quaeda team that bombed the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and a Kenyan resort in 2002.

Al-Ittihad Al-Islami (AIAI), a radical Islamist organization, became prominent in 1991 with the objective of toppling President Barre. Its main goal was to form a strong Islamic state in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia, all countries with an ethnic Somali population. In the mid-90s, AIAI initiated attacks in Ethiopia. Islamic courts emerged in the late 90s primarily in Mogadishu and became the de facto judiciary in the capital after the collapse of the government. A Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) was formed from the amalgamation of different clan-based courts, dominated by the Hawiye.

Ideologically, the UIC and AIAI share many similarities as they both have the same radical approach: they want an Islamic state in Somalia governed by Sharia law, sustain a charity wing and the UIC has militias as AIAI once had. The former leader of AIAI, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, is now the most prominent figure of the UIC representing its hard-line faction.

The takeover of Mogadishu on 5 June 2006 by the UIC was the most important political event in Somalia in the last 16 years. It removed the political class of secular, clan-based warlords, which has divided and ruled the country since the collapse of the central state in 1991. As the UIC continues to spread its influence throughout Somalia, the international community has reacted with concern since there are accusations that the UIC has links with al-Qaeda. In February this year the warlords formed the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) backed by the USA with the help of secret funding. The ARPCT clashed with the UIC culminating in a major battle for Mogadishu that led to victory for the UIC in June. The four-month-long strife left 400 civilians dead and 1,500 injured, according to the Dr. Ismael Jumale Human Rights Centre, a Somali NGO.

The UIC is consolidating its power and outside of Mogadishu now controls the provinces of Lower Shabelle, Benadir, Middle Shabelle, Hiran, Gelgedut and parts of Mudug and Lower Juba region. After first gaining the support of Somalis for restoring peace and stability in Mogadishu and ending the warlords’ extortion activities there is now growing fear of the Islamists’ radicalism. Many East African countries consider the UIC takeover of Somalia a threat. Ethiopia strengthened its troop presence on the Somali border.

Eritrea, hostile to Ethiopia, is allegedly supporting the UIC with arms and ammunition. There is a danger that tensions may increase and that a proxy war will take place on Somali soil. The Islamist militia has stressed it will defend the country from Ethiopian forces and is recruiting and training youth in special camps in preparation of jihad (Holy War). The UIC is also opposing a deployment of peacekeepers which had been approved by the AU in mid-September but which is unlikely to be realized due to an UN arms embargo and to lack of funding. On 24 September the Islamists seized Kismayo where the port had been seen as a possible landing point for the peacekeeping force. For the TFG, the takeover of Kismayo was a violation of a ceasefire agreed during peace talks in Khartoum, Sudan, which are mediated by the Arab League.

Human rights violations under the Union of Islamic Courts

The capture of Kismayo, where the UIC had closed down a local radio station and detained three journalists, was followed by three days of anti-Islamist protest. The initial euphoria following the UIC’s victory over the warlords has turned into fear and protest. There are numerous reports of a crackdown on the media. The UIC’s strategy of controlling ideological and political expression also leads to restrictions of the freedom of assembly. On 17 August its forces broke up a meeting in Mogadishu of the moderate Muslim group Al-Islah, which advocates dialogue between the UIC and the TFG. The UIC also curbs non-Islamist sectors of Somali society and bans political meetings.

Islamic guards are stopping minibuses to check women’s clothing and men’s hairstyles. Clothing deemed as un-Islamic is hacked with scissors. In some parts of Mogadishu, cinemas showing foreign films or international football have been raided and closed down and there is a ban on some radio stations from playing western music and local love songs. This level of intervention into private life is not well-received by Somali society. The UIC’s morality policy and the prominence of known militants within its leadership show parallels with the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Like the Taliban the hard-liners within the UIC want an Islamic Somali state where the Qur’an is the constitution and Islamic law, the Sharia, is the only source of legislation.

Sharia laws are derived from the Qur’an, the Islamic holy book, from the writings of renowned Islamic scholars and from the judicial interpretation of these writings. The rules of customary laws in the African context, including Somalia, are contained in the customs and norms of life of the respective communities, but are unwritten. Before the emergence of the Islamic courts no Sharia-based penal or criminal law was part of Somalia’s penal legislation. In recent years, several death sentences have been imposed and carried out by Islamic courts and their militias, although most death sentences have been replaced by compensation negotiated between the clans of the victim and the perpetrator according to Somali customary law.

Omar Hussein was publicly executed in Mogadishu on 2 May 2006. He was tied to a stake, hooded and stabbed to death by the 16-year-old son of the man who he admitted stabbing to death in February. Omar Hussein had been sentenced to death hours earlier by an Islamic court. A large crowd gathered to witness the public execution, with several fainting at the sight of blood gushing from his head. The teenager repeatedly stabbed the condemned person in the head and neck. He reportedly expressed happiness at his infliction of the death sentence in this way. A Sharia law of retribution, (qisas, i.e. ’like-for-like’) was applied in this capital case, after the victim’s family reportedly refused to accept compensation (diya). Such a retribution execution is unprecedented in Somalia and Somali customary law. It is also contrary to Somalia’s former penal code, which would be the basis for court proceedings in state courts. [2]

Another public execution took place in Mogadishu on 22 September this year. Abulkadir Mohamed Diriye and Mahad Osman Ugas, having been convicted of murder, were shot in a public place in the presence of a large crowd including journalists invited to attend the execution. Some of the spectators reportedly vomited after they saw and heard the bullets pouring into the convicts’ bodies. There are also public floggings for selling drugs. On 23 September, for the first time a woman was flogged by Islamist militias for selling cannabis. She was given 11 lashes. Arrested for being in possession of a small amount of the drug worth $1, she pleaded innocence while being beaten. Five men were also whipped, and the seized drugs were burned.

Corporal punishments violate the most elementary standards of humane treatment. Executions constitute the ultimate form of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment in violation of the most fundamental right of every human being: the right to life. When carried out as a public theatre they can only serve to fuel a climate of violence and vengeance. Amnesty International categorically opposes the implementation of the death penalty, but takes no position on the introduction and application of laws based on the interpretation of religious texts, as long as this is carried out in full respect of human rights principles. These principles include the right to legal representation, the right of appeal to a higher court, the right of a fair trial and the right of those condemned to death to petition for clemency.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has commented on the application of Sharia law: “When national courts apply Sharia, they must do so in accordance with the other obligations taken by the State. Trials must always accord with international fair trial standards”. Somalia is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Amnesty International calls on the Islamic courts to bring their judicial procedures into conformity with recognized international and African human rights treaties and standards. The human rights organization calls on the TFG to take steps to establish a fair judicial system throughout the country as a fundamental part of the reconstruction of Somalia.

• The author is the country coordinator for Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia of Amnesty International - German section.

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

References

[1] See Amnesty International, Somalia: Urgent need for effective human rights protection under the new transitional government, AI Index AFR 52/001/2005, 17 March 2005, pp. 2 ff

[2] See Amnesty International, Somalia: Child publicly executes father’s killer on orders of summary court, AI Index AFR 52/001/2006, 9 May 2006

The Darfur conflict began in 2003, and in just three years, it has left about two hundred thousand people dead and still counting. Assodesir argues that “The situation on the ground has worsened each day with an intensification of attacks in several places obliging humanitarian organizations to evacuate their personnel leaving behind them, women and children in the hands of criminals without scruples.”

With more than two hundred thousand dead, two million refugees and a worsening situation on the ground, the conflict in Darfur presents a hard test for the African Union. The recent extraordinary meeting at the presidential level of the of the African Union Peace and Security Council, held in New York on 20th September 2006 on the margins of the General Assembly of the United Nations, did not give the anticipated result. The extension of AMIS’s (Africa Union Mission in Sudan) mandate was the only important result of the meeting. Heads of State did not succeed in convincing the Sudanese government to accept a stronger United Nations force as requested by resolution 1706 adopted by the UN Security Council on August 31, 2006.

Whereas the AU’s 7000 troops, present on a territory as vast as France, could not manage to prevent sadly famous Janjaweed from killing, looting and raping, the AU also has problems to implement provisions of its own Constitutive Act, which is devoted to the respect of human rights and dignity, peace and security in our continent.

The NGO community was enormously disappointed by the very weak conclusions of the Peace and Security Council meeting. Some days before this extraordinary meeting, NGOs presented to the 15 Member States of the Council a series of recommendations that one can summarize in four points:

- To extend AMIS’s stay in Darfur at least until the end of the year with a stronger mandate and more troops
- To support UNSC resolution 1706 authorizing the deployment an U.N troops in Darfur and to convince Sudan to agreed to this deployment;
- To denounce the plan of the Sudanese government aiming to deploy more than 15000 troops in Darfur and rather call all parties to the conflict, to respect the Peace Agreement and the ceasefire;
- To invite the international community to support AMIS until the end of the year.

Unfortunately, the greatest achievements of this meeting were the extension of AMIS’s mandate until 31 December 2006 and a hypothetical increase in its troops. Nothing was said - at least not officially - on its mandate that remains very weak and very vague. The African Union has agreed to increase its troops in Darfur but has yet to make it happen, or concretise it. The situation on the ground has worsened each day with an intensification of attacks in several places obliging humanitarian organizations to evacuate their personnel, leaving behind women and children in the hands of criminals without scruples. Today, at least 40% of the displaced people do not have access to humanitarian aid. In this situation, every one has a role to play:

A firmer and prompter African Union

Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the AU gives it the right to intervene in a Member State on a decision of Heads of States, in serious circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The AU has the right to do this even without the consent of the concerned State. At this moment where the situation on ground has become more and more alarming, African Union must show more firmness and must act quickly.

The following must been done without delay by the AU:

- To clearly redefine the mandate of AMIS by reinforcing it in order to provide protection to civilians and to disarm Janjaweed militias;
- AMIS must thus transform from an observation force to a true peace making force and a guarantor of human rights and dignity. To achieve this, all Member States must provide troops. African state’s plethoric armies must be finally used for something positive;
- To express clearly its material and financial needs for the deployment of a larger force and to accept all assistance suggested by the UN and other partners;
- To impose targeted sanctions on Sudanese political leaders from all parties of conflicts that violate the Abuja Peace Deal or that prevent its implementation;
- To make a clear decision in favor of deployment of UN troops in which AU must fully take part.

A more coherent and reactive International Community

The international community must be united and must speak with one voice. China and Russia must join the United States, United Kingdom, France and the European Union to pressurize the Sudanese government through comprehensive sanctions including freezing assets, arms and oil embargo, and prohibition of travel among others. At the same time, the international community must immediately support AMIS materially and financially to reinforce it and allow it to deploy across the whole of Darfur. The International Criminal Court must be more vocal in its work on Darfur and even issue arrest warrants if possible against people suspected of carrying out atrocities. The United Nations must be prepared for a robust and massive deployment in Darfur by the end of the year with the consent of Sudan. However, they must also consider a strategically strong intervention without Sudanese consent if the humanitarian situation becomes dangerously worse.

The situation in Darfur is seen as a very first test for the new AU on peace and security issues. Obviously, the AU has a paramount role to play. However, given the gravity of the situation, the entire international community must contribute. All nations of the world have the responsibility to protect Darfur populations because genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are not African business. They are odious crimes that touch the whole of humankind.

• Assodesir, a pseudonym, is an African activist engaged in Darfur

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

At the Third Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) Assembly of Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in July 2004, the Heads of State and Government adopted the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (SDGEA) . The Declaration is an important African instrument for promoting gender equality and women's empowerment as it strengthens African ownership of the gender equality agenda and keeps the issues alive at the highest political level in Africa. To date only seven Member States have submitted their reports, namely: Algeria, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.

20- 23 November 2006 - Second Conference of African Ministers of the Economy And Finance (CAMEF II), Yaounde, Cameroon
20 – 21 November 2006: Meeting of Experts
22-23 November 2006 - EU- Africa Ministerial Conference on Migration and Development, Tripoli, Libya
13-17 November 2006 - First Pan African Cultural Congress organised by the African Union , Addis Ababa , Ethiopia
General Theme: “Culture, Integration and African Renaissance”
30 October 2006-Implementation of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality In Africa : First Report by all AU Member States, for Consideration at the January 2007 Summit to be Held In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
27- 29 October 2006 - Congress of African Scientists and Policymakers, Alexandria, Egypt
26- 27 October 2006 - CSO Consultation and Preparation For PAWO Congress, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Organized by: The Women, Gender & Development Directorate
25- 26 October 2006 - AU/AAVP Consultation HIV Vaccines Research and Development in Africa

New research by the Control Arms Campaign: Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) has found that Bullets manufactured in Greece, China, Russia and the USA have been found in the hands of rebel groups in the Ituri District of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which is under a UN arms embargo.

The Ministry of Culture's review board has announced the censorship of playwright Jalila Baccar's new work, "Corps-otages" ("Captive Bodies"), directed by Fadhel Jaibi. After wavering for more than three months, the review board, which is responsible for reviewing all theatrical releases in the country, refused to issue the permit required for the play to open. The board is demanding that Jaibi bring the play in line with a list of 100 themes subject to censorship before it grants the opening permit.

On 9 October 2006, a High Court in Banjul unconditionally released Malick Mboob, a journalist and former staff member of the "Daily Observer", a pro-government newspaper, after he was kept for 139 days in illegal detention for allegedly sending damaging information to an online US-based newspaper. According to a Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) Gambia source, the Court's decision followed a request filed by Mboob's counsel, Edward Gomez, seeking his unconditional release.

Highlighting the important role of cartoons in forming public opinion, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on cartoonists to help society “promote peace and understanding,” while warning that their work can also encourage intolerance as shown by the deadly furore earlier this year over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Researchers have unveiled a safe and effective treatment for pregnant women suffering from malaria in West Africa. Trials carried out in Ghana showed that treating pregnant women with the drug amodiaquine, either alone or in combination with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), can almost completely wipe out malaria parasites without causing any serious side effects. But the researchers say that further tests are needed to assess the risks of the combination treatment.

Dryland communities have traditionally used land extensively, moving in response to varying climatic and environmental conditions. But rapid population growth, both urban and rural, and more settled patterns of agriculture have increased the pressure on scarce natural resources, in some cases causing severe land degradation. Water quality and supplies are particularly threatened.

The MTN Group, the GSM Association and Ericsson are joining forces to establish biofuels as an alternative source of power for wireless networks in the developing world. The move comes as mobile operators look to move beyond the established power grids in many countries in Africa and extend their user base into the more rural communities.

Cellular providers stand to make a better profit margin from community service telephones (CSTs) than they do from other service offerings, says Nashua Mobile MD Mark Taylor. The reason CSTs offer larger profit margins per minute is because of the disparate interconnect regime between the cellular operations and Telkom, he said. Unlike the individually-held SIM card where the user may make one or two calls per day, CSTs are used by a number of people each day, he notes.

The Namibian Minister of Gender Equality and Child Welfare, Marlene Mungunda, has expressed concern over the slow pace of development of women in the country. She said women have a prolonged life of being disadvantaged especially when it comes to developmental issues.

Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa are not on track to meet the millennium development goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2015, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in its regional economic outlook for Africa, released in Dakar on Tuesday. The IMF has estimated that Africa needs to accelerate annual GDP growth to seven percent to attain the goal of reducing by half the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day by 2015.

The Refugee Council believes that everyone has a right not to live in poverty and to contribute to the community in which they live. Having a job plays an important role in being able to achieve this. At present, a majority of asylum seekers are prevented from working. Although they are able to do voluntary work, the Refugee Council is concerned that excluding asylum seekers from paid employment leads to them becoming socially isolated.

Guinness World Records have officially verified that the first ever world record has been set for the most number of people to Stand Up against poverty in multiple locations over 24 hours. On 15-16 October, 23,542,614 people, in over eighty countries around the world set a new Guinness World Record for the largest number of people to "STAND UP AGAINST POVERTY". The Stand Up record attempt, an initiative of the United Nations Millennium Campaign in partnership with the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) was set in time for the United Nations International Day for Poverty Eradication on 17 October.

Three days into presidential election campaigns, tensions remain high in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as supporters of candidates Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba burn effigies and stone vehicles involved in the campaigns. "This tension is deliberately maintained by those who have no hope of winning the elections, who already know they have lost," said Lambert Mende, the rapporteur of Kabila's electoral platform, known as Alliance pour la marjorité presidentielle (Alliance for the Presidential Majority).

The impasse over deploying a major UN peacekeeping force to Darfur results directly from the international community's three-year failure to apply effective diplomatic and economic pressure on Sudan's government and its senior officials.

The women of Somalia have a critical role to play in laying the foundation for sustainable peace in their war-torn nation by acting as a bridge between rival political movements and clans, says Asha Elmi, a member of Parliament of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG).

The government has conceded that the law on adultery is discriminatory and unconstitutional. Principle State Attorney Patricia Mutesi representing the Attorney General in a petition filed against the government challenging various provisions of the law regarding adulterous acts, told a panel of five Constitutional Court Judges led by Justice George Engwau that section 154 of the Penal Code Act regarding adultery is unconstitutional.

With two weeks to go to the second round of the presidential election of the 29 October, Mr. Ibrahim Gambari, UN Under Secretary General in charge of political affairs, met with media representatives on 14 October, 2006 at MONUC headquarters to speak about the outcome of his meetings with the two remaining presidential candidates and the president of the Independent Electoral Commission.

An opposition leader has been denied entry into Madagascar to register for the December presidential election but the United Nations (UN) is confident that the country's ability to hold a credible poll remains intact. Officials closed the airport to international flights in the eastern city of Toamasina on Saturday, preventing former Deputy Prime Minister Pierrot Rajaonarivelo from returning from exile in France.

Health officials in Burundi have moved to control an outbreak of cholera in the capital, Bujumbura, and the surrounding Bujumbura Rural Province, where a total of 90 cases of the disease have been recorded, an official said on Tuesday. The Health Ministry has launched a campaign to spray households of those affected in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease.

More women and girls than men continue to contract HIV, the virus that causes Aids due to among other things gender inequality, ministry of Women and Child Development has said. The ministry has since asked organizations in the HIV/Aids fight to mainstream gender issues as one way of reducing the further spread of the pandemic amongst women and girls.