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Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 12 Issue: 21   By: Sunguta West   AMISOM troops capturing Barawe, Somalia, in October. (Source: AMISOM) In recent months, Somalia’s main Islamist militant group, Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, better known as al-Shabaab, has suffered serious setbacks in its conflict with African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) troops. Since al-Shabaab’s establishment in 2006, the organization had successfully entrenched its authority in central and southern Somalia, where it has implemented a hardline form of Shari’a or Islamic law. However, on October 6, its grip on the region appeared to falter after the militants lost the southern coastal town of Barawe to AMISOM forces in Operation Indian Ocean (Sabahi Online, October 6). The coastal town, one of the group’s most significant strongholds since it lost control of the capital Mogadishu in 2011 and the lucrative port of Kismayo in 2012, had serve

By Faisal A. Roble Somalis are collective in nature and live in a clan corporate culture where individual merit is often subordinated to the collective one. When their nation state failed in 1991, it seemed as if the collective will to reignite the flicker of hope also died. But it did not die in Nuruddin Farah. Nuruddin’s literary work always focused on the tension between the collective society and the individual. Do the society’s morality and norms determine the outcome of the individual, or the individual often defies and must reject the collective? In practice, though, Nuruddin seems to have defied the odds of his society. In places where the collective failed, his individualism triumphed, and in turn redefined and challenged, or so it seems, the corporate nature of his society. For the last quarter of a century, Somalia was entirely forgotten and unrepresented in global conversations. Yet one of her sons single handedly insisted that his narrativ

 By Yusuf Deyr Reading the desperate face of the lay – man on the street is my favourite book. Using his tongue as a pen inked with twisted tears, deep, deep from his heart. As we share and have many things in common. That is why his agony and scream shivers my spine. His coughing and sneezing opens my eyes to see, and entices my brain to visualize. Then I noose around and apply all my senses to snoop. If I set aside all negativity, and redeem all sins. Still, I smell blood in the water. Every morning is another rude awakening for all of us. Our palm is on our heart strings, as we are not sure. How the weather is going to be tomorrow. Because we have fallen a prey to the teeth – grip of some wicked heartless interest – group that are chocking with their throat. Ignorant elements that are trying to mess up both. Our arrival to life, and our departure to heaven. All their intention is to get rich on our behalf and to hold the steering wheel of our destiny,

H.E. Ahmed Osman, Governor of the Central Bank of Djibouti Tuesday, November 4, 2014 The 3rd Annual Islamic Banking Summit Africa (IBSA Djibouti 2014), which opened today at the Djibouti Palace Kempinski, saw more than 200 leaders in the international Islamic banking and finance industry engage in detailed discussions that focused on ‘capturing the Africa opportunity in Islamic finance’. The two day event, held under the official support of the Central Bank of Djibouti, began with an inaugural address by H.E. Ahmed Osman, Governor of the Central Bank of Djibouti. A special Presidential Address was delivered by H.E. Ismail Omar Guelleh, President of the Republic of Djibouti, on Islamic Finance as a Strategic Priority to Boost Economic Development in Africa. HE Ahmed Osman, Governor of the Central Bank of Djibouti highlighted that, "Africa offers exciting growth prospects and, according to projections, seven out of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world will be