The Somali Media Centre is an independent forum for the Somali journalists in and outside the country. It is established to promote the profile of the brave, hardworking journalists who devoted their lives to serve their people worldwide.
Somalia has been dubbed as a failed state, a country associated with death, long running civil strife, warlords, terrorism and modern piracy. But one of the most successful stories over the years has been the rise of the independent media and freedom of thought. However, the dedication and reporting of the truth come at a price.

The Centre publishes running blogs by these journalists. Also, the Centre distributes news content and reports by the journalists. The Centre coordinates between the Somali and non-Somali journalists. It gives non-Somali journalists who may be traveling to Somalia with first hand advice and contacts. The Centre also works with high profile international media organizations in commissioning, producing and filing stories and reports about Somalia and the Horn of Africa region.

Solana Larsen writes about the origin of Somali Media Centre project:

In case you hadn't guessed, I'm not Somali.

In journalism school in London in 2002 I had a classmate named Harun Hassan who I used to ask a lot of questions about life in Mogadishu and Somali politics. After we graduated, we remained friends and I introduced him to writing for openDemocracy.net where I was a commissioning editor for a few years. Later on, I became a managing editor at Global Voices Online, where we occasionally also have stories about Somali bloggers.

Harun used to tell me about ideas he had for media projects involving the Somali community in London. He created a newsletter on paper in Somali, and at one point he approached me about making a website for something he called the Somali Media Centre.

Media coverage of the Somali community in the UK was so negative and inaccurate, Harun felt the only way to correct it, was to make it easier for UK journalists to find Somali journalists and researchers to talk to.

We made a website and blog, but we were soon distracted by other work and the project lay dormant.

The website you are looking at now, is our second attempt at creating a networking tool for Somali journalists and others to use to help improve global understanding of Somalis and Somalia.

Below are some of latest blog posts from The Somali Media Centre:

In a post titled, Affair to Remember, Fathia Absie writes about the conviction of Joshua Asisa, a peace-keeper in Somalia, for engaging in an affair with a young Somali woman:

Military court in Kampala convicted Joshua Asisa to a one-and-half years in prison. Mr. Asisa who is a member of the AMASOM peace-keepers in Somalia have been found guilty for engaging in an affair with a young Somali woman by the name of Nimco Omar and impregnating her after marrying her under a false pretence by telling her that he was a Muslim.
This story took place last year in Mogadisho but no one heard of it till this young woman went to Kampala and took Mr. Asisa to court for lying to her. Mohamed Abukar Ahmed who is the Journalist that broke the story has told me that he has learned the story after it was reported by a news paper in Uganda. After that Mr. Ahmed tried to get in touch with the leaders of the Somali community in Kambala and was able to get in touch with the girl. He told me that Ms. Omar told him about her story and how she met Mr. Asisa who is doctor. He was working at a private hospital for the Uganda military in Mogadisho.

“in the spirit of spreading the word..,” writes Idil Osman:

The recruitment taking place in the Somali refugee camps in Dadaab, Northeastern Kenya has stirred some controversial outbursts by many in and outside the region. However what I am particularly bewildered with is the stand-point of the Kenyan government. I did an investigative report on this issue earlier on at work where the defense minister of Kenya firmly claimed Kenya had not given permission for this recruitment to take place.
Meanwhile witnesses and human rights activists are recording and documenting evidence of these youngsters being put in Kenyan military trucks and driven to Kenyan military training bases.
Many of these youngsters are taken under false pretence and the promise of regular salary and a stable job with a UN/EU/AU backed military project.
In reality they are being recruited to go and fight in the very war they fled from and had turned them into refugees. Many of these young refugees are reported to be underage and taken without their parents' consent. It also violated their international human right as refugees according to the recently released Human Rights Watch press release, because refugees are meant to be kept in civilian conditions.

Solana discusses the issue of “unnamed sources” in Western media reports in her post titled “When Local Sources go Unnamed“:

just picked up the latest edition of National Geographic Magazine for their story on “Shattered Somalia”. The photos of Mogadishu by Pascal Maitre are beautiful, though they show a lot of destruction. And the writer, Robert Draper gives a fair and sympathetic summary of a complicated history. He also definitely makes the challenges of foreign reporting in Somalia clear.

Curiously, Somali journalist Harun Hassan is mentioned by name in a photo caption of a traffic guard in Mogadishu, but as far as I can see nowhere in the text itself. Why the reluctance to reveal sources? If Draper has taken the trouble of contacting and interviewing Somali media sources, why not share this information with the readers?

Is this a typical experience of Somali journalists who assist Western journalists with their reporting? I hope members of the Somali Media Centre will help shed light on what it's like to be on that end of the reporting team.

You can see the list of current members of the Centre here.

Blogger Royale Somalia profiles a young female Somali doctor in Mogadishu who'd graduated last year, he writes:

In December 2008, 20 Somali students overcame huge odds and graduated from medical school in Mogadishu—the first batch to do so for almost two decades in the failed Horn of Africa state.

Dr. Hafsa Abdurrahman Mohamed, 26, was one of those receiving a diploma from the capital’s Benadir University. Upon completing her studies, she decided to work for the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), using her skills to help provide free medical care in Somalia.

The East African Philosopher comments on Somali President Sharif Ahmed's visit to US and the US government's policy shift in dealing with Sharif:

In December of 2006 Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, currently only-in-name president of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, was on the run from the Ethiopian army, the CIA, and the U.S. Rangers.

East African Philisophers continues:

This week Sheikh Sharif is in Minneapolis, MN (and the home of this crazy congresswoman) meeting with Congressmen, Governor, and city councilmen/mayor. Couple of months ago he had a meeting with Secretary Clinton in Nairobi during her Africa trip. From terrorist to president for Sheikh Sharif in just two years. That, friends, must be a first. To me this says a lot about the U.S.’s awful foreign policy than anything else.

The Kenya Somali Blog says Somali government is recruiting Somali youth from Kenya:

Somalia's U.N.-backed government has recruited more than 170 young Kenyans and former servicemen to help it fight rebels in the failed Horn of Africa state, local leaders in eastern Kenya said.

Mohamed Gabow, the mayor of Garissa, told Reuters the enrolment of ethnic Somali Kenyans was being conducted at a home in Bulla Iftin village, on the outskirts of his town.

The recruitment is not a secret. Those involved are not worried. They are going around all the villages to announce the exercise,” Gabow said in an interview late on Thursday.

In the last three decades, Egypt has become host to refugees fleeing conflicts and persecution in Africa, Asia and Middle East. Many refugees have made Egypt their home and various refugee communities live amongst Egyptian, contributing to the Egyptian society. Though Sudanese are considered to be the largest refugee population, there are also large numbers of Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians, North Africans, and even more from Central and West Africa as also Iraqis. Refugees from the Middle and Far East also seek asylum in Egypt. In addition, there are an estimated 70,000 Palestinians. These refugees are often falsely identified as economic migrants, rather than a vulnerable population who fled their homelands due to political unrests and violence.

The Cairo Refugee Film Festival is an attempt to integrate refugees in their new host country:

Since the vast majority of refugees will never be resettled, integration in Egypt is of great concern and the need of the hour. This is possible only when when the misconceptions between the host communities and the refugee communities are cleared and an appreciation and understanding of the others' circumstances is fostered.

Against this backdrop and with a view to bring the refugee and the egyptian communities together, the idea of a film festival took birth.

Taking place from June 16 to June 20 at the Rawabet theatre in downtown Cairo, the festival being held in commemoration of the World Refugee Day, seeks to:

chronicle the lives, struggles, and achievements of refugee populations around the world from the 1930s to the present day. We aspire to break the Egyptian myth that the refugee movement is an Afro-centric problem and that refugees are always African. Through the medium of film, we aim to sensitize the Egyptian community on refugees’ stories, obstacles and resilience.

The blog also lists sponsors, collaborators and organisers, schedule, and workshops being held in conjunction with the event.

The pirates already announced tomorrow Saturday as a deadline ,if their demands are not met , they will blow the ship !! Yes in less than 48 hours the Blue star ship will be bombed and its crew will be killed if the demands of the Somali pirates are not met
Yesterday Thursday the families of the crew protested in front of the Blue Marine Company in the middle of Alexandria over the news that the company will abandon the ship

She further questions the Egyptian foreign ministry’s rule, as well who is responsible for this:

There 28 crew members on the board of the Blue star
I do not know where the hell is the Foreign Ministry?? Where are our army and our navy?? where are our naval special forces ??
I pray to God that the crew members return back to their families safe and the company gives the pirates the ransom they want even if they have to sell the company itself , we are talking about people , if those 28 crew members are killed their blood will be distributed equally between Blue Marine Co., Foreign Ministry ,the Egyptian Navy and any party who can help them in this crisis and did not do it.

Saudi blogger Ahmed Ba Aboud wants Arab nations, and international bodies, to do something about the reasons for the increase in piracy:

Syrian blogger Maysaloon believes there is more to the story than meets the eye:

Apparently this Somali piracy issue has only become a problem since 2005, around the time that somebody started supplying the men with fast white speedboats. There is probably some truth to this, and somebody is probably making a lot of money out of this, so the actual pirates are getting only a fraction of the takings. Still, there are huge sums of money being paid in ransoms, lots of good which are being stolen and I'm not so sure I understand how well these goods are being sold in a country with practically no infrastructure. Recently a shipment of Russian tanks was also seized. Interesting that Somalia was only recently “liberated” by Ethiopian troops with US blessings.

Iraqi blogger Roads to Iraq also has a conspiracy theory, translating some opinions found on Arabic news sites:

There is some truth behind Yemen accusations of Western countries with ignoring the piracy to internationalize the Red Sea. … This is also what Al-Akhbar reported today saying:

Western fleets raises doubts about the nature of their mission… Puntland’s Minister of ports, Nur Said, the West fleet led by the United near the coast of Somalia was involved in the increasing piracy operation…Chairman of the Red Sea shipping company, Abdul Majeed Matar, recalled how the commander of a British warship, called the company to tell them the details of hijacking the company’s ship (Al-Mansoura) rather than to militarily intervene to prevent the operation.

The last clue is reported on Al-Sharq Al-Awsat by asking one of the pirates, who revealed:

Some countries provide the pirates with information about the routes of the ships in the area.

John Burgess, who writes about Saudi Arabia at Crossroads Arabia, reports on the kingdom's plans to get more involved in the attempts to control piracy:

Saudi Arabia has decided that it needs to play its fair role in confronting international piracy, particularly after the hijacking of Sirius Star, the Saudi-owned supertanker seized over the weekend. The tanker, which holds 1/4 of one day’s production of Saudi oil is being held off the coast of Somalia. While Saudi Arabia’s Navy is small, it does have ‘blue water’ capabilities. It can take part in anti-piracy patrols and is sufficiently armed to sink any pirate vessel, from attack boats to ‘mother ships’ from which they descend. The Saudi Navy is probably not large enough to do port-to-port escort duty, even for only the super-est of tankers, but might manage shorter escorts, through particularly dangerous waters. […] The new Saudi assertiveness is pretty hot. Arab News, in an editorial, does call for attacks on the port cities of Somalia that are hosting the pirate fleets. And yes, ‘collateral damage’ is always a possibility when military action is taken. I don’t see any way to get around that. But perhaps if Arab armed forces were required to face up to that reality, it might change some of the overblown rhetoric about other unintended casualties in other wars.

In his post John Burgess mentioned that the Indian Navy sank a pirate ‘mother ship' earlier this week, and commenter ratherdashing quipped:

Apparently the defense of shipping lanes has been outsourced to India just like everything else.

American-born Israeli Yisrael Medad is looking at the situation from a different angle:

If these [Arab] countries can't handle a dozen pirates, what can we expect against Iran going nuclear?

Jordanian blogger Hareega wants to offer the pirates a little encouragement - by linking to a Japanese animated version of Treasure Island he watched as a child:

To watch the clip, click here.

Transparency International, Donzella writes about her country's ranking, in Arabic: