Somalia - next stop on the Jihadiya trail?

"The Warlords Used Brute Force to Coerce People and the Islamists Use Religion to Dehumanize People"

"The warlords used brute force to coerce people and the Islamists use brute religion to dehumanize people. They ban music not because it is against religion but because it is beyond their realm of control. They close cinema houses and theatre not because they spread vice but because they want to keep the people in the dark. They hide women not because Islam orders their mummification but because Islamists suffer from a masculinity problem. They think he who is not a master of his wife cannot be a master of others. Power and tyranny is their ultimate goal and tyranny should first crush and subdue the weak so the strong could tremble. Anyone who wants to see where the Islamists would like to lead Somalia should only see how they treat women, music and ideas. These three elements constitute the beauty, spirit and future of any nation. In a story published by the Islamist Qaadisiya website on the graduation of 140 women who completed a course on cooking and handicrafts at a center called Asma Bint Omair Center, reflects a glimpse of what is in store for women. Only pictures of the Islamist officials who attended the ceremony and row after row of food was shown. It seems as if the photographer tried to accentuate his frustration by showing many food items, as he was not allowed to show the faces of women for whom the ceremony was held."

Bashir Goth, August 26, 2006 in Awdalnews. Via MEMRI

Islamist authorities detained a journalist for two days and shut an independent radio station for a similar period in separate incidents this weekend, according to news reports and the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ).

In Beledweyne, a western town controlled by the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), authorities jailed journalist Osman Adan Areys of the private station Radio Simba on Friday, according to NUSOJ. He was released without charge on Sunday. Local journalists said they believed Areys' arrest was linked to interviews broadcast on Thursday, in which local residents criticized ICU-imposed restrictions, NUSOJ reported. A CPJ source said the restrictions include a curfew in Beledweyne, which lies near the border with Ethiopia.

ICU-backed authorities in Jowhar, some 56 miles (90 kilometers) north of the capital, Mogadishu, shut Radio Jowhar on Saturday and ordered that its electricity be cut, according to NUSOJ and international news reports. The Associated Press quoted an Islamic official, Sheik Mohamed Mohamoud Abdirahman, as saying that the station's programs were "un-Islamic" and that it was "useless to air music and love songs for the people."

The shutdown, though aimed at musical content, also silenced news programming on Radio Jowhar for two days. The station went back on the air today after agreeing to tight restrictions on musical content. (source)

More and more people are being smuggled across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia to Yemen, the United Nations refugee agency, which has repeatedly been warning of the dangers involved, said today.

"If the present trend continues, this month could set a new record for the number of arrivals," Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a press briefing in Geneva. Source

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- About 50 jihadist leaders have left Pakistan for Somalia since a pro-al-Qaida militia movement took control of the capital there, say Pakistani officials.

Alexis Debat, a terrorism analyst and former adviser on counter-terrorism to the French prime minister, told a Washington briefing Tuesday that the assessment came from a senior official in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.

In June the Union of Islamic Courts, an Islamic extremist coalition which U.S. officials say supports al-Qaida, won control of the Somali capital Mogadishu after a four-month-long armed struggle with the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism. The organization is an umbrella group for several warlords supported, according to media reports, by CIA funding. (source)