NAIROBI - A typical prize for a children’s contest might be a backpack, a lunchbox, or some toys.
Not in Somalia.
Over the weekend, a Somali radio station run by Al Shabab, the most powerful Islamist militant group in the war-ravaged country, held an awards ceremony to honor children who were experts at Shabab trivia and at reciting the Koran. The prizes? Fully automatic assault rifles and live hand grenades.
The contest itself was held during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, and featured questions that Al Shabab seemed to think every child should know, like which war was Sheik Timajilic (a famous Shabab warrior) killed in?
Without a functioning central government, Somalia has some of the lowest schooling rates in the world, and many Somali children are more familiar with rifles than rulers. Contestants in the Shabab contest included children from all across Somalia’s Shabab-controlled areas, which is most of the southern third of the country.
The children competed live on air from the many radio stations nationwide that Al Shabab controls.
On Sunday, the awards were handed out at a ceremony held at the Andalus radio station in Elasha Biyaha, a small town near Mogadishu, the capital. (Andalus was the part of Spain seized by the Arabs in the Middle Ages).
The first- and second-place winners won AK-47 assault rifles, some money, and Islamic books. The third-place winner was given two hand grenades. The contestants were children aged 10 to 17.
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"Somalis killed in blast sought education" October 07, 2011|Associated Press
MOGADISHU, Somalia - The scholarships being awarded by the Turkish government are one of the rare paths for young Somalis to earn college degrees. Years of fighting have left few private education institutions in Somalia functioning.
The suicide truck bombing on Tuesday by Al Shabab, an Al Qaeda-linked group, killed more than 100 people. Among the dead were some of the country’s best and brightest in a nation beset by two decades of war and anarchy.
Related: "Al-CIA-Duh" School in Somalia
What one begins to realize is the pirates and Al-Shabab here are simply the SAME OLD WARLORDS that the CIA has supported for years!
Please see: Memory Hole: Somali Slander
Memory Hole: More on Somalia
Oh, how quickly the AmeriKan media thinks we forget.
It was not the first time the insurgents have targeted those seeking an education to better themselves and their country.
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"UN cites deaths of Somali children; Many caught in crossfire as attacks spread" November 16, 2011|By Jason Straziuso, Associated Press
NAIROBI - An increasing number of children are being caught in attacks and crossfire across south and central Somalia, the UN’s children agency said yesterday, as a land mine targeting police exploded at the world’s largest refugee camp in neighboring Kenya, wounding two people.
UNICEF said that 24 children were killed in conflict in Somalia in October, nearly double the confirmed child killings of every other month this year. UNICEF said 58 children also were confirmed to have been injured in October, the highest number this year.
UNICEF’s representative to Somalia, Sikander Khan, said the true numbers are likely to be even higher.
“Somali children’s lives are being put more and more in grave danger with the increasing conflict. In accordance with international law, we call on all parties to the conflict in Somalia to stop all killing, maiming, recruitment for armed services, and rape of children,’’ Khan said.
Related: Soccer Match Monday: Somalia's Kid Soldiers
Working for us in any event, 'murkn.
Kenyan troops moved into Somalia to fight al-Shabab militants in mid-October, but a UNICEF spokesman, Jaya Murthy, said UNICEF is not attributing the increased violence to a particular group.
The Al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab militants claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Mogadishu last month that killed more than 100 people.
UNICEF is one of the few international agencies that has access to southern Somalia, a region that is largely controlled by al-Shabab militants....
Meanwhile, a Kenyan government official said an explosive device went off at the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya yesterday, wounding two guards. The official asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. A UN security official said the blast appeared to be aimed at a police convoy that had just passed by.
No one was killed, but the blast happened only a couple of yards from another improvised explosive device blast at Dadaab earlier this month, in the latest sign Somali militants are increasing attacks at the camp. Militants also kidnapped two aid workers from Dadaab last month. The attacks have forced aid agencies to scale back operations.
The UN refugee agency said yesterday that there are 60 cases of cholera in the world’s largest refugee camp - Dadaab, in eastern Kenya. One person has died from the outbreak.
Maybe the UN brought it with them like in Haiti?
Elsewhere, the Danish Refugee Council, which had two of its workers kidnapped in Somalia last month, said yesterday that traditional elders and members of civil society are mobilizing for their quick release....
The Danish Refugee Council said release efforts are being supported by a “substantial’’ number of Somali leaders who oppose kidnappings as contradictory to Somali values....
Then who could be doing such things, huh?
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Also see: Somali Starvation Was a Sales Pitch
Related:
"Two aid workers abducted in Kenya" October 14, 2011|Associated Press
NAIROBI - Suspected Somali militants entered the world’s largest refugee camp yesterday and abducted two Spanish women working with an aid group after shooting and wounding their Kenyan driver - the third kidnapping of Europeans in Kenya in six weeks.
Police pursued the gunmen, just as they had done after the kidnapping of a French woman from an island resort this month. In September, a British woman was abducted, and her husband was shot to death, at a coastal resort.
The police expressed confidence in capturing the gunmen even though the last two kidnappings saw the female captives taken into Somalia.
Regional police chief Leo Nyongesa said he believes the attackers came from Somalia because that was the direction they fled after yesterday’s abduction from the Dadaab refugee camp, about 50 miles from the Somalia-Kenya border.
“We are following them by the road and air. We have closed the borders. We are tracking them down,’’ Nyongesa said.
Closing the border, however, is impossible. The frontier is marked by a poorly manned border crossing and wide expanses of wilderness on either side of the road, which allows militants - and Kenya’s military at times - to cross with ease.
The world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab would qualify as Kenya’s third-most populous city and has become a mini-Somali state. Tens of thousands of new Somalis have flooded Dadaab in the last three months to escape famine.
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