And these peoples, each one claiming to fight for the people  of Somalia, came running to assist togheter and listen carefully to the senior  expert guy from the Worlb Bank! Man, hypocrisy have no boundaries, neither  faith... For people interested to know more about the ongoing discussion about  Somalia, please find here the website of the Somali Joint Needs Assessment (JNA)  & the Somali Reconstruction & Development Programme (RDP) conjointly run  by the United Nations Development Groups (UNDG) and the World bank:  I should leave the final word for today to the courageous U.S. Deputy  Ambassador Alejandro Wolff who said that:  "The presence of the Ethiopian troops is a consequence of the  intra-Somali conflict, and similarly their departure will be a consequence of  reconciliation"   I have to go and take some sleep, will keep you informed about this tragic  circus show..."
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
My (very) inside source in the Somali peace talks sent me this (he/she does not want to be identified):  "The fine and nice peoples of the Security Council left us today (I don't  know if I have to cry or joyfully dance on the beaches)...They met separately the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and his  self-proclaimed president Abdillahi Youssouf and the Islamist courts movement  and the Allaince for the Re-liberation of Somalia.   Abdillahi Youssouf asked only one thing and repeated that demand many  times: that the Security Council should leave up the arms embargo concerning  Somalia so he can buy more arms and go back doing what he does the best as a  past warlord leader. And just for free provocation of the other side he  added that he will never ask the Ethiopian occupation troops to leave Somalia  but instead he will even ask more to come in the future.  For their part the Islamist and the Alliance demanded the creation of an  International criminal courts to judge all the past and present warlords of  Somalia and others who did atrocities (the local and international media did not  dare to ask if these peoples includes themselves in the hypothetical case of  creation of such a tribunal)....Today, after a final pictures show within the vicinity of Kempinski, the  'honorables' guests of the Security Council met with the local and international  press where they were all bragging how successful their mission was. And  immediately after that, they headed to the airport and left for Sudan.  Meanwhile, I just learned at that moment that Abdillahi Youssouf left Djibouti  at 3h00am in the morning. A very smart move to avoid meeting others welcoming  mortars at the Mogadisho airport I guess.  An anecdote (not confirmed although): one of the security guard told me  that he didn't sleep last night and he was quiet furious. When I asked him what  happen, he told me that Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, the ousted head of the  Alliance came in Djibouti with his 2 wifes (both of them are staying at the  ImperialHotel). But during the lats couples of days, he took a third wife in  Djibouti and he decided that last night he will go and past nightime with his  djiboutian wife (how nice!). So approximately 10 guards were forced to go with  him and stay on guard without sleeping around the house where he was having fun  with his newly wed wife!  This afternoon, at my surprise, both parties agreed to come togheter and  participate at the same workshop. At first, I was kind of surprise and I was  thinking that maybe this was a shifting moment specially from the Alliance  part.... until I learned about the content of the workshop! This was a  workshop organized and presented by the World Bank about the reconstruction of  Somalia, by the same organization who was behind the economical destruction and  deconstruction of the somali society!!! I was so angry and boilling man, you  cannot imagine how furious I was!   In his book '' The Globalization of Poverty – Impacts of  the IMF and World Bank Reforms, (Penang, Malaysia: Zed Books, Ltd.,  1997)'', Michel Chossudovsky says in p.101: The IMF-World Bank  intervention in the early 1980s contributed to exacerbating the crisis of Somali  agriculture. The economic reforms undermined the fragile exchange relationship  between the "nomadic economy" and the "sedentary economy", - i.e. between  pastoralists and small farmers characterized by money transactions as well as  traditional barter.  On his part, T. Craig Murphy reports in ''The Collapse of Somalia and  Economic Considerations'' available at: "' The banana  industry is one sector that Strutural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) focused on. As  a result of IMF-World Bank adjustment, there was growth in this industry, an  increase in exports, and increased profitability. Financial institutions often  point to this data as an example of SAP success, but they fail to include the  details of the banana industry's "success." Abdi Ismail Samataar ("Structural Adjustment as Development Strategy? Bananas, Boom, and  Poverty in Somalia," Economic Geography  -Vol. 69, No. 1, January 1993) investigates structural adjustment as a  development strategy by using Somalia's banana industry in the Shabelle  valley as a case study. Samataar shows that while SAPs did lead to growth in the  banana industry, the primary beneficiaries were foreign investors (in this case  the Italian company De Nadai) and growth came at the expense of employing child  labor on the plantations. Samataar states,  "Nearly 75 percent of earnings from [banana] exports were realized by overseas  interests, depriving Somalia of an  important source of capital for reinvestment. Furthermore, the profitability of  banana production depended on the poverty of child labor." Samataar goes on to show how the banana industry  in Somalia refutes the basic  idea that SAP liberalization leads to development and that adjustment "deepens  inequality and worsens the poverty of working people."