KAKUMA, Kenya — The Kakuma Refugee Camp, her home for the past 18 years. It is one of the world’s largest havens for the dispossessed and stateless, a metropolis of low-slung mud huts and tin shacks that sprawls across 6 square miles of sun-baked plain, and teems with the people the world doesn’t know quite what to do with — 186,000 from 19 different countries who fled war and violence and now share little except a dream for something better, for home: Southern New Hampshire University, the little-heralded regional university on the banks of the Merrimack River in Hooksett, which has relentlessly repositioned itself as an online learning powerhouse, sees an opportunity for overseas growth in the world of refugees, the innocent casualties and castoffs of human conflict.
While many US universities are chasing new markets in the world’s glittering cities, such as Dubai and Shanghai, Southern New Hampshire University is putting down stakes in more isolated corners of the world, where an opportunity to earn a college degree is a one in quarter million shot.
Last year, SNHU launched refugee associate’s and bachelor’s online degree programs in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and Lebanon. The initiative builds on a refugee education program that the university quietly started in Rwanda in 2013. SNHU partners with organizations already on the ground that provide more direct support to students and deal with issues from mental health support to logistical help.
The university has charitable investors willing to help it gain a foothold in the developing world, $10 million in first-round funding from five anonymous Silicon Valley and New York-based foundations and families that hope to help address the refugee crisis and the challenges of distance learning. University officials say it could get 10 times that amount to expand, once its program has proved its merits on the ground.
You want to address the refugee crises?
End the wars!
In Kakuma, SNHU is working with Jesuit Worldwide Learning, which operates out of a small campus in the camp called the Arrupe Center. Twenty-two students have enrolled in the first class, a number expected to grow to 75 in 2019.
Across the five target countries, more than 830 refugee and host-country students are participating in SNHU’s online College for America program currently at no cost, studying business, health care management, and communications. Some are in camps, others live in urban centers among local residents.
Is there one in the West Bank or Gaza?
“It’s raised the profile and credibility of the university,” said Paul LeBlanc, SNHU’s president. And if the university can succeed in bringing a low-cost, quality degree program to refugee camps, it can adapt the model to serve under-resourced areas in the United States, he said.
SNHU is reaching out to refugees just as the United States is retreating from its support.
Kakuma is a place of contradictions, an unsightly sprawl almost without borders, except for the hazy cropping of mountains on the horizon and the endless expanse of scorched, russet earth all around.
It is a place very deliberately set aside. Small aid flights make the choppy hour-and-half journey to Kakuma from Nairobi, the capital, three times a week. The nearest city is 80 miles away, with the connecting road a tattered ribbon of asphalt frequented by dangerous bandits.
Most of all, it is a place that shouldn’t have to be, one that makes no human sense, except of the broken kind.
So perhaps it isn’t so wildly absurd that Southern New Hampshire University is here. Just about everything else is.
The camp began as a short-term sanctuary. It opened in 1992 to shelter the lost boys and girls of Sudan, after their treacherous escape from a crumbling country. The world has gotten no safer since. Instead, richer countries have turned inward, slamming the doors to the displaced outside their borders.
Damn wars they promote drive it.
For much of its recent history, this region of Kenya was inhospitable to all but a local tribe of herders with their goats and camels, but since the refugees began streaming in, it strums with activity. It is essentially the largest imaginable company town, with its own school system, hospital, mosques and churches, a competitive soccer league, and a power grid.
The camp’s roads can be bone-jarring even in a hulking SUV, and nearly impassable after a rainstorm, but they are still packed with merchants hawking just about everything in stalls painted upbeat turquoise and teal.
You can sip a cup of cardamom-spiked espresso while watching men shoot pool in a semi-dark Ethiopian coffee shop as slices of light, from slats in the roof, spill in. You can get your bike fixed and your hair cut along the nameless main drag. You can order a tailor-made dress and buy a secondhand pair of shoes, but this is still a refugee camp, and daily transactions happen in small sums of cash — the equivalent of 50 cents for a ride on a motorcycle taxi called a boda-boda, $2 for lunch, $15 a month for electricity.
Here in this remote place, women still gather just after dawn every day at communal water spouts to fill yellow water gallons for their families, a ritual as old as time. Then, at dusk, a handful of refugee entrepreneurs crank up their generators, bringing criss-crossed ropes of black wire crackling to life, and supplying neighborhoods with a few hours of electricity.
This vast jumble that makes up Kakuma could not be further away in spirit and setting from SNHU’s leafy campus 55 miles north of Boston. The university was for most of its 85 years known as New Hampshire College, a struggling institution three or four rungs down that state’s higher education ladder. Then a new president arrived in 2003 with an entirely new vision for the place, one that reflected its snappy nickname: SNHU. And suddenly the world is literally the limit.
It’s this kind of drive and unorthodox thinking that propelled the 3,000-student campus to become a leading provider of distance learning with 102,000 online students and a $118 million-plus advertising budget.
Stand up if you are a..... !!
In billboards and television commercials, SNHU has marketed itself to working moms, returning veterans, and low-income communities. In fact, almost half of its US undergraduates receive Pell grants, a marker of economic need, and nearly three out of four take out federal student loans to attend. A majority of its students are 25 years and older.
In some ways, SNHU’s target audience is no different than the for-profit education industry in the United States, but while for-profit schools drew regulatory scrutiny for defrauding students and loading them up with debt, SNHU positioned itself as a nonprofit alternative. It stresses that its accreditation standards are the same as traditional colleges and that it offers nontraditional students a rigorous education and a path to meaningful employment. In the United States, 49 percent of its students graduate with a bachelor’s degree within six years, lower than the national average of 59 percent, but far above the 23 percent average for private, for-profit institutions, but with SNHU’s explosive growth have come some questions about academic quality. For example, this past winter, SNHU was forced to replace an adjunct professor who incorrectly told a student that Australia wasn’t a country and gave her a failing grade. SNHU apologized to the student, reimbursed her tuition for that course, and explained it all on Twitter.
The university prides itself on being nimble.
Amid the immigration debate raging at home, SNHU helped launch an initiative to provide full scholarships for its online degree program to 1,000 Dreamers, immigrants whose parents brought them to the United States illegally as children and who don’t qualify for federal financial aid. It has partnered with companies, such as Aetna, Dunkin’ Donuts, and K12 Inc., to provide two-year, four-year, and master’s degrees, along with certificates, to their workforce. In its efforts to drive down the cost of education, SNHU is experimenting with the use of artificial intelligence to conduct initial reviews of student work.
See: AI Making the Grade in Massachusetts
Still, LeBlanc said SNHU is realistic about what it can achieve in refugee camps.
“We can’t solve the refugee problem, but the thing we can do is education,” LeBlanc said. “It’s an ambitious sort of thing we’re trying to do. We can’t control whether they get in and out of camp, but we can have a big role shaping their lives.”
Whether an SNHU degree will be transformative to refugees remains uncertain, when the barriers to opportunity can seem so daunting.
Many refugees feel that they can’t go home because home is still too dangerous, and they can’t go elsewhere unless a nation is willing to admit them or let them work. It’s often not obvious how or where the skills gained through SNHU coursework will be used.
Life in the camp is also hemmed in by its own oppressive rules.
In Kakuma, refugees can’t be on the camp streets after 7 p.m. or risk police harassment and fines for violating curfew. Even at the Arrupe Center, where the students have shared access to the Internet and computers, they can’t download anything for personal use and even watching CNN on their laptops earns them a reprimand for hogging limited bandwidth. They can’t leave the camp borders without authorized travel documents, which are difficult to come by. And in many countries, including Kenya, they can’t officially work. So they volunteer with nongovernmental agencies and, like interns, are paid a fraction of what the relief employees and nationals they work alongside earn.
Kakuma doesn’t have a gate, but most see no way to leave, said Ajak Mayen 31, a South Sudanese refugee.
Tall and reserved with a blinding smile, Mayen wants to be a lawyer, but one of the few employment options available for educated men in the camp is as school teachers in the system that the UN and relief groups manage here. So he took on a high-school classroom.
On a May morning, Mayen stood on the dirt floor before a blackboard with a diagram of the human heart taped to it as he launched into a description of ventricles and valves. His room is spacious by camp standards. There are no desks and 16 students, all boys, sit quietly on plastic lawn chairs and intently take notes, because they have no textbooks.
The camp is no longer life enough for him, Mayen said, and he is making plans to leave and return to South Sudan, but first, he wants to make sure he has a leg up, a way to differentiate himself from other refugees and the mass of workers competing for similar jobs outside this camp.
To do that, Mayen believes he has to get his college degree, and he is racing to finish.
On Sundays, the Arrupe campus is still, students and administrators are home with their families, but Mayen sits alone in a classroom lit solely by the sun, finishing his SNHU projects. He has made plans to quit his teaching job and focus entirely on the degree, a sacrifice of income and another motivation to finish fast.
His dreams are simple: He wants to return to the country he fled with his cousin’s family when he was 9 years old; he longs to start a family in South Sudan; eventually he would like to earn his law degree at a university there; perhaps he could enter politics and help his country find stability.
His friends in Kakuma have warned him that he is safer in the camp and that South Sudan remains a dangerous place in the throes of civil war with mass killings and severe food shortages. But for Mayen it is still home, and he advises refugees counting on resettlement that they are the real dreamers.
“This situation is not how I want my family to be,” Mayen said of the camp. “I want to raise my family in South Sudan. I want a nice job to support them. I want to come home to my children with an apple in my hand. When a father comes home with nothing, it doesn’t look good.”
The world’s refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced now number a record 68.5 million people, spread across the globe, but primarily in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Only 1 percent of refugees have access to higher education.
That's more than in WWII.
Think of that for a moment, and then ask yourself who is responsible.
Most refugees are children who will spend an average of more than 20 years of their lives trapped in emergency shelter, because of continuing conflicts in their home countries and shrinking opportunities for resettlement in the United States, Australia, or Europe.
Imagine being a Palestinian and lived in such a thing for three generations. That's what happened since Israel was created out of whole cloth (Eastern European Khazars with no ties to the land).
Except for a handful of onsite university programs, vocational training options, and scholarships for the luckiest and brightest few, who are plucked from camps and transplanted to campuses in Canada and elsewhere, young refugees are mostly aging in place.
I'm sure they want to stay, too.
The UN is aware of the scarcity in educational opportunities for refugees, especially as many become long-term wards of the international agency. In Kakuma, construction just started on a campus with planned computer rooms and lecture halls, where the UN hopes Kenyan and global universities can come together, share resources, and offer programs to the 1,500 students who complete high school there every year.
SNHU thinks its online College for America offers a pathway. The degree program is self-paced, offered in English, and costs less because it doesn’t rely on traditional classroom lecturers; students are directed to free online material and instructional videos. They must complete tasks and papers that show they have mastered skills such as using spreadsheets for data analysis or identifying works of art by their style and historical context. SNHU assessors in the United States, who review work by all College for America-degree seekers, grade refugees on their projects, papers, and presentations.
Do they, or is it a machine?
Students receive either a “mastered” grade or a “not yet,” which means they must fix problems the assessors have pointed out and re-submit their work until they get it right. Coaches at each site ensure students remain on track. Students have access to independent, online tutors, but many turn to their peers for help.
Internships and employment are a key component of the degree. SNHU hopes to prepare refugees for work, either with online companies while they are living in refugee camps, or with firms willing to apply for special government permits to hire skilled refugee workers, or back in their home countries.
If SNHU’s programs across the five countries prove successful by the end of 2019, the university will be able to tap into another $100 million in donor funds and expand to 20 camps across the world and reach 50,000 refugees in five years, LeBlanc, the college president said, but success is hardly guaranteed. There are obstacles that students on most any other campus in the world don’t have to face.....
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Related:
"Kenyan opposition figure says he was drugged and deported" Associated Press March 29, 2018
NAIROBI — A Kenyan opposition politician alleged he was drugged and deported to Dubai early Thursday after his attempt to enter Kenya led to him being detained in an airport bathroom for more than a day.
Miguna Miguna, targeted in a Kenyan government crackdown amid lingering election tensions, was deported even after a court ordered authorities to release him, lawyer Cliff Ombeta said.
Related: Kenya top court upholds Kenyatta’s win in repeat election
Anger remained despite the vow to unite the country.
Police at the airport roughed up lawyers and forced them to leave when they tried to serve the court order, said another lawyer, James Orengo.
Miguna said in a Facebook post that authorities broke into the bathroom where he had been held and forcibly injected him with a substance and he passed out. He said he regained consciousness when the Emirates flight arrived in Dubai.
There was no immediate response from Kenyan authorities.
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I suppose he was lucky it wasn't the Saudis that came for him.
"At least 44 killed as dam bursts in Kenya, officials say" by Tom Odula Associated Press May 10, 2018
NAIROBI — The bursting of the Patel Dam in Solai, Nakuru County, on Wednesday night was the deadliest single incident yet in the seasonal rains that have killed more than 170 people in Kenya since March. The floods hit as the East African nation was recovering from a severe drought that affected half of the country.
More than 225,000 people in Kenya have been displaced from their homes since March, according to the government. Military helicopters and personnel in the past week have been deployed to rescue people marooned by the flooding.
The dam burst has again raised concerns about the state of Kenya’s infrastructure. The National Construction Authority in the past has blamed contractors of bypassing building codes to save on cost.....
--more--"
Also see:
An official says 50 people have died after the bus they were traveling in left the road, rolled down a slope and crashed in the western Kenyan town of Kericho (BRIAN ONGORO/AFP/Getty Images).
Wasn't the first lady just over there?
"As one of the most visible women in an increasingly divided country, Melania Trump, the first lady, is not exactly wrong: Each public statement she makes, whether it’s to offer words of comfort after a tragedy or to promote one of her initiatives, is met with a torrent of abuse, including hate-filled comments and racy photos from her career as a model, but her comment again put her in stark contrast with her husband, who is known to bully both adversaries and allies. And around the same time as ABC was airing her interview, the president was publicly doing battle with his enemies on Fox. On her recent six-day trip through four African countries, the first lady used her high profile to spotlight the work the Trump administration is doing to assist with foreign aid. By visiting with children, feeding baby elephants and cuddling orphans, the notoriously private Trump also made strides in showcasing a more open side of herself — not to mention a presidential administration that is increasingly isolationist in its foreign policy. Trump was less successful in avoiding criticism over what she wore. She was accused of being ignorant to the struggles of African people when she decided to wear a white pith helmet — a symbol of colonial rule — while on safari in Kenya. The outfit she wore to tour the Great Sphinx in Egypt was also criticized for looking too much like a costume. “I wish people would focus on what I do,” an exasperated Trump said in rare public comments to reporters, “not what I wear.” Trump is not the first person in her role to face a barrage of online hatred. Her predecessor, Michelle Obama, regularly dealt with racist comments and memes, and still does: After official portraits of President Barack and Michelle Obama were unveiled earlier this year, critics mocked them using racist imagery....."
And what did the pre$$ have to ask her upon arrival home?
"Melania Trump brushes off questions about her husband’s alleged infidelity" Washington Post October 12, 2018
First lady Melania Trump brushed aside allegations of infidelity by her husband and said her marriage with President Trump is ‘‘fine’’ during a television interview broadcast Friday.
‘‘It is not a concern and focus of mine,’’ she told ABC News when asked about allegations of infidelity. ‘‘I’m a mother and first lady, and I have much more important things to think about and to do. I know people like to speculate and media like to speculate about our marriage.’’
That's when the printed Globe stopped talking.
Her comments came in the latest installment of an interview conducted while Melania Trump was on a solo trip to Africa. In other segments aired Thursday, the first lady said she considers herself one of the most bullied people in the world and does not trust some people working in the White House.
Who would that be?
The issue of the president’s fidelity came to the fore with allegations by adult film actress Stormy Daniels that they had a decade-old affair. Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 election to remain silent about the alleged tryst. Trump has acknowledged reimbursing Cohen but denied the affair.
Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate, has alleged having an affair with Trump during the same time frame, which the president has denied.
Asked by ABC’s Tom Llamas if she has been hurt by the speculation, Melania Trump said: ‘‘It’s not always pleasant, of course, but I know what is right and what is wrong and what is true or not true.’’
Asked if she loves her husband, she said: ‘‘Yes, we are fine,’’ adding that gossip is ‘‘not always correct.’’
During the interview, Melania Trump was asked about an assertion in June by Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, that she ‘‘believes her husband, and she knows it’s untrue’’ when it comes to Daniels’s claims.
At the time, the first lady’s office issued a statement saying she had not spoken to Giuliani about the matter.
‘‘I never talked to Mr. Giuliani,’’ Melania Trump told ABC.
Asked why Giuliani would say that, she said: ‘‘I don’t know. You need to ask him.’’
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Did they ask her anything about Africa?
It really has become a gutter pre$$!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Why they are fleeing Sudan:
"South Sudan violence against women is twice global average" Associated Press November 30, 2017
JUBA, South Sudan — The ‘‘shocking scale’’ of violence against women and girls in South Sudan is double the global average, a study released Wednesday says.
The first comprehensive report on the ‘‘magnitude, frequency, and brutality’’ of such violence in South Sudan’s conflict zones was released by the International Rescue Committee and George Washington University’s Global Women’s Institute.
As the world’s youngest nation approaches its fifth year of civil war, rape has often been used as a weapon by both government and opposition forces.
The civil war has killed more than 50,000 people, forced more than 2 million to flee abroad, and plunged parts of the country into famine.....
And a famine?
--more--"
Maybe they can fly in some aid:
"A plane crashed into a lake on Sunday, killing 20 people, said a local official. The 19-seater Baby Air plane had been traveling from the capital, Juba, according to the the minister of information for the town of Yirol, Taban Abel Aguek. Officials were investigating the cause of the crash. Among the dead were at least three children and the bishop of Yirol, the authorities said. The three survivors were a 6-year-old, an adult man, and an Italian doctor with an aid organization who was in surgery and in serious condition, Aguek said. ‘‘There were people everywhere,’’ the official said of the crash site. Yirol is in the central part of the civil war-torn East African country."
Related:
"Fighting breaks out in South Sudan 2 days after peace deal" Associated Press September 14, 2018
JUBA, South Sudan — Fighting has broken out in South Sudan two days after the warring sides signed what the government called a ‘‘final final’’ peace agreement to end the civil war. Each side blames the other for the attacks.
Clashes erupted Friday morning in Central Equatoria state when government troops stormed bases in Lainya and Kajo Keji counties, opposition spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel said.
‘‘That means the regime is not serious about the peace,’’ Gabriel told The Associated Press.
The government called the accusations ‘‘propaganda.’’ The attacks were instigated by opposition forces that emerged from hiding along the Ugandan border and were trying to reclaim territory, spokesman Lul Roai Koang told the AP.
An investigation into the reports is underway, the Ceasefire and Transitional Security Arrangements Monitoring Mechanism, the body charged with monitoring the cease-fire, said on Twitter. It reminded all parties of their commitment to refrain from hostilities. The body reports to the East African regional bloc that negotiated the peace deal.
South Sudan’s five-year civil war has killed untold tens of thousands of people and created more than 2 million refugees, Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Half of the remaining population of 12 million faces hunger and the economy of the oil-rich nation has collapsed.
More a curse than a blessing is the oil.
If you don't have that, they seem to leave you alone.
President Salva Kiir and the head of the armed opposition, Riek Machar, signed the latest attempt at peace on Wednesday in neighboring Ethiopia. Under the power-sharing arrangement Machar will once again be Kiir’s deputy — an arrangement that sparked the civil war in December 2013 when supporters of the two men clashed. Machar’s return to the vice presidency in 2016 was short-lived when fighting broke out in the capital, Juba, and he fled the country.
Many international observers have expressed skepticism about this new agreement.
--more--"
Also see:
New report estimates at least 380,000 people have died in South Sudan’s civil war
"In the latest snapshot of atrocities, a UN report this week said government troops and allied fighters killed at least 232 civilians in a five-week period this year."
Report: South Sudan troops raped, killed while peace pursued
I suppose it was party time as they talked peace:
"Hundreds arrested in Ethiopia after violence around capital" Associated Press September 25, 2018
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — An Ethiopian security official has confirmed the arrests of hundreds of youths in the capital, Addis Ababa, following violence within the city and in nearby towns last week in which several dozen people were killed.
The announcement on Monday came following widespread calls on social media by citizens of the East African country to disclose the reason why the arrests were made.
‘‘We arrested several people following the violence but most of them were released shortly after provided with advice. If we were to keep them all, our prisons wouldn’t be able to handle them,’’ said Degife Bedi, a police official with the Addis Ababa Police Commission. ‘‘Twenty-eight people lost their lives in the violence in Addis Ababa alone. Most of them lost their lives after beatings with stones and sticks. Other seven people lost their lives due to actions taken by security forces.’’
According to the official, more than 1,200 individuals who were ‘‘directly involved’’ in the violence in the capital have been sent to a military camp to be ‘‘rehabilitated’’ and 107 others will face criminal charges.
‘‘An additional 2,000 people were detained inside hookah-serving houses, gambling shops, and khat-chewing stores,’’ the police head said, adding that most were later released.
A week of violence erupted in Addis Ababa and its surrounding areas beginning from Sept. 12 following disagreements between youths from the capital and its surrounding Oromia region over the use of different flags.
That is where the printed copy ended, with a lame false flag of a cover story to hide the destablization effort for the usual reasons.
If there is peace, there is no need for the U.S. to be there.
On Sept. 15, several people were killed in the Oromia region’s towns of Burayu and Ashewa Meda which victims blamed on youths from the same region.
City officials said 26 people lost their lives and close to 15,000 were displaced in the attacks in the capital’s outskirts but hospital sources said that at least 70 people were killed in the attacks that were mainly carried out on ethnic lines.
Ethiopia’s new leader, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, hails from the Oromo ethnic group, Ethiopia’s largest. Various attacks based on ethnic rivalries are mushrooming across the country and are his biggest challenges to date.
Ethnic-based conflicts that are mainly driven by competition for land and resources are not new to Ethiopia, which is home to more than 80 ethnic groups, but the escalation of the current conflicts is alarming many. Some fear it may derail the reforms made by Abiy since he came to power in April.
And cui bono?
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We were told the opposition is in Uganda:
"Protests erupt as Ugandan pop star and critic of president is charged with treason" Associated Press August 24, 2018
KAMPALA, Uganda — The Ugandan government filed a charge of treason Thursday against a pop star-turned-lawmaker who has emerged as a major critic of the long-serving president and whose jailing drew outrage from top musicians around the world.
Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine, was visibly weak and struggled to walk into court from what his lawyer said was a severe beating while in custody. The government denied it.
It was the first time Ssentamu had been seen in public since his detention, and he clenched his fists as he greeted supporters. A colleague wrapped a scarf in the colors of Uganda’s national flag around his shoulders.
The 36-year-old Ssentamu was arrested with other lawmakers while campaigning for a candidate Aug. 13. He was charged with illegal possession of firearms and for his alleged role in an incident in which the motorcade of President Yoweri Museveni was pelted with stones.
The arrest sparked protests in the capital, Kampala, and elsewhere demanding his release, with scores of people detained as security forces cracked down on demonstrators. Dozens of top musicians — including Angelique Kidjo, Chris Martin, Chrissie Hynde, and Brian Eno — signed a letter demanding Ssentamu’s release, and a social media campaign to #FreeBobiWine was launched.
In Kampala’s Kisekka Market area on Thursday, protesters held posters of Ssentamu, praising him as the ‘‘People’s Voice.’’
--more--"
Just wondering where Museveni strayed.
"Ugandan pop star Bobi Wine has kidney problem after jail" Associated Press August 30, 2018
KAMPALA, Uganda — Bobi Wine, the Ugandan pop star who opposes the longtime president and has been charged with treason, has a ‘‘kidney problem’’ that needs urgent medical attention abroad, his lawyer said Wednesday, two days after the singer was freed from detention on crutches.
A medical report confirmed the suspicion of a kidney problem afflicting the singer and Parliament member whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, Medard Sseggona said.
Ssentamu, who is being treated at a private facility in the capital, Kampala, also reported that in detention ‘‘they squeezed his manhood,’’ he said. ‘‘He was suffering pain in the hips.’’
All efforts were underway to get the papers necessary for Ssentamu to travel abroad for specialized care, the lawyer said.
Looks like a rescue.
Ssentamu, through lawyers and colleagues, has alleged severe torture at the hands of security personnel. He has not made any public statement since he was arrested on Aug. 14 in the northwestern town of Arua for his alleged role in an incident in which the presidential motorcade was pelted with stones.
Ssentamu was freed on bail Monday after being charged with treason alongside 32 other suspects. Ssentamu’s driver was shot and killed in the aftermath of the incident, allegedly by the security forces. The government says the killing is being investigated.
Ssentamu and others on Thursday will appear before a magistrate who will consider the evidence and decide if the case should go to the High Court for trial.
Ssentamu is widely seen as a challenge to the long rule of 74-year-old President Yoweri Museveni.
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I guess the case was dismissed after they got him out of the country.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Once around the Horn:
"At least 16 dead in pair of bombings in Somalia" by Abdi Guled Associated Press October 13, 2018
NAIROBI — A suicide bomber detonated in a restaurant in the Somali town of Baidoa and another blast struck a hotel nearby, leaving at least 16 people dead and more than 30 wounded, authorities said Saturday.
Most of the casualties were caused by the bomber who walked into the restaurant with explosives strapped around his waist, Col. Ahmed Muse told The Associated Press.
Many of the wounded at Baidoa’s main hospital had horrific injuries, nurse Mohamed Isaq told the AP.
The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group claimed responsibility for the blasts via its radio arm, Andalus. It said one blast targeted a hotel owned by a former Somali minister, Mohamed Aden Fargeti, one of several candidates running for the presidency of the region in November’s election.
It's the clearest signal that it's Al-CIA-Bob, folks.
Baidoa is a key economic center about 155 miles west of the capital, Mogadishu, and about the same distance east of the Ethiopian border. Al-Shabab, which controlled Baidoa between 2009 and 2012 before being driven out by Ethiopian-backed government forces, still holds parts of southern and central Somalia.
Is that why the new leader of Ethiopia is being undermined?
Want's to cut back on the slavish militarism?
The blasts came a day before Somalia marks the first anniversary of the deadliest attack in its history, a truck bombing that killed more than 500 people in Mogadishu.
Another subtle signal as to who is responsible.
Attention in recent days has turned to Baidoa, the interim capital of South West state, as high-level al-Shabab defector Mukhtar Robow also seeks the regional presidency.
Robow is the highest-ranking official to have ever quit al-Shabab, surrendering to the Somali government last year after the United States cancelled a $5 million reward offered for his capture.
So he is our guy now?
Somalia’s government earlier this month said Robow was not eligible to run for the regional post because he is still under U.S. sanctions that were imposed against him in 2008 when he was identified as a ‘‘specially designated global terrorist.’’
Robow, who has yet to respond to the government’s statement, has continued his campaign and remains registered on the list of candidates.
He is among several people challenging former Somali parliament speaker and incumbent regional president Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden. Among the candidates is Somalia’s former intelligence chief Hussein Osman, who has just resigned.
Turns out he stepped down to avoid a showdown with the president.
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Meanwhile, a month earlier:
"Suicide car bombing in Somalia’s capital kills at least 6" Associated Press September 02, 2018
NAIROBI — At least six people were killed, including two children, after a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle outside a district headquarters in Somalia’s capital, authorities said Sunday.
Captain Mohamed Hussein said the bomber tried to speed through a checkpoint but was stopped by security forces, prompting him to detonate the vehicle near the gate of Howlwadag district headquarters.
The three soldiers who stopped the truck were killed instantly and the three others killed were civilians, said the Mogadishu mayor’s spokesman, Salah Hassan Omar.
Fourteen people, including six children, need intensive care, said the Aamin Ambulance service. Among the wounded was deputy district commissioner Ibrah Hassan Matan.
Many victims were students at a nearby Islamic school. Officials warned there could be more casualties as the blast brought down nearby buildings, including a mosque.
‘‘I saw bodies strewn on the ground after the explosion before the ambulances and the paramedics reached the scene, and the whole scene was very ugly,’’ witness Halima Mohamed said.
The attacker ‘‘literally failed to achieve their goal of inflicting maximum casualties,’’ police captain Hussein said, accusing the Al Qaeda-linked extremist group al-Shabab of carrying out the attack.
The Al Qaeda-linked extremist group al-Shabab later claimed responsibility for the explosion, which shattered a period of calm in seaside Mogadishu. The Somalia-based al-Shabab often targets the capital with bombings, including a truck bombing in October that left at least 512 people dead.
Somali troops are meant to take over the Horn of Africa nation’s security in the coming years from an African Union force, but concerns about their readiness remain high. The UN Security Council recently voted to delay the reduction of troops in the AU force from October to February and the target date to hand over security to Somali forces to December 2021.
Yeah, this will keep the AU/UN/US troops there, cui bono?
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Speaking of U.S. forces:
US says its airstrike kills 5 militants in central Somalia
The US military said no civilians were killed, but there was a casualty on our side:
"US soldier killed in Iraq identified" Associated Press June 10, 2018
MOGADISHU, Somalia — A US service member killed while battling militants in Somalia has been identified as an Army special operations soldier from Arizona.
The Pentagon said Staff Sergeant Alexander W. Conrad, 26, of Chandler, Ariz. died Friday of injuries suffered from what it called enemy indirect fire. Conrad was assigned to 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, Fort Bragg, N.C.
Four US service members were wounded in an extremist attack, treated by a US medical team in Kenya, and discharged, the US military said Saturday. They have not been identified.
It was the first US military combat death reported in Africa since four service members were killed in a militant ambush in the West African nation of Niger in October.
In a separate attack Saturday, the Somali army foiled a car bomb attack on a military base in the southern province of Lower Jubba that was blamed on the Al-Shabab militant group.
Friday’s attack in Jubaland that killed the special operations soldier is likely to put renewed scrutiny on America’s counterterror operations in Africa.
Not really.
US troops with Somali and Kenyan forces came under mortar and small-arms fire and one ‘‘partner force member’’ also was wounded in the attack about 215 miles southwest of the capital, Mogadishu, the US military said.
The Al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab extremist group, which is based in Somalia and controls parts of the country’s rural south and central regions, claimed responsibility. The group was blamed for the truck bombing in Mogadishu in October that killed more than 500 people and raised concerns about al-Shabab’s ability to build ever-larger explosives.
Next thing you know they will have built a nuke.
Friday’s joint operation was part of a multi-day mission including about 800 Somali and Kenyan troops. The United States said its personnel had provided advice, assistance, and aerial surveillance during the mission.
President Trump in early 2017 approved expanded military operations against al-Shabab, leading to an increase in US military personnel to more than 500 and the launch of dozens of drone strikes.
He brought Obama's shadow war out into the open.
The United States had pulled out of the Horn of Africa nation after 1993, when two helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu and bodies of Americans were dragged through the streets.
What are they doing going way back then, as if the U.S. hasn't had forces in there the last decade or so?
It's about about hitting the Blackhawk Down mental trigger, isn't it?
Another US service member in Somalia was killed in May 2017 during an operation about 40 miles west of Mogadishu.
So we lose about one a year, huh?
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"The family of a Tanzanian billionaire industrialist who was abducted last week offered $437,000 to anyone with new information that will lead to his rescue. Three phone hotlines have been opened to gather information about the kidnapping of Mohammed Dewji, the 43-year-old owner of MeTL Group, a family spokesman told reporters Monday at the company’s offices in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. The spokesman, Azim Dewji, didn’t take further questions. Police have arrested 26 people in connection with Dewji’s kidnapping, the local Mwananchi newspaper reported Monday. Dewji is listed by Forbes as Africa’s youngest billionaire with a net worth of $1.5 billion."
