Mutilation Of Women

The number of mutilated woman and girls in Africa and the Middle East is increasing due to population growth, according to Win News.

But internationally financed population, health and safe motherhood programs ignore Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and have failed to implement effective preventive education.

Education should be provided to the woman and men in the participating countries so the risks of this mutilation can be understood fully. FGM is painful, dangerous, and disrespectful to the woman/child and her body and I belive evry woman has the right to education to help make this critical decision.

The mutilation most often performed is Clitoridectomy or Excision- cutting off without anesthetic, the clitoris and most of the external genitalia. This is practiced in a broad area from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Coast. The most dangerous operation, Infibulation is customary in Sudan, Somalia, N.Kenya,, W. Africa and all along the Red Sea coast. After the clitoris is excised and all external genitalia are carved away, the bleeding raw edges of the libia majora are held together by thorns or other fasting devices, until a scar forms to close the entrance to the vagina. The legs of the little girl are tied together for several weeks until the wound heals; a tiny opening is created by inserting a splinter of wood to allow urination. Thus virginity, which is considered especially important by Moslem men, can be proven.

These dangerous operations result in permanent damage: hemorrhage and shock, which may be fatal; many infections including tetanus, scaring which obstructs normal childbirth and may result in the death of both mother and child; infertility due to infection. And that's not all, FGM causes urinary and menstrual problems, frigidity, painful intercourse, and many, many needless deaths. The highest childbirth mortality is recorded in areas where FGM is practiced.

Some may argue that this is their culture, we cannot judge, or interfere, and I agree. I do not feel that these are bad people, and I do not think we should outlaw this practice. I know that this is a way of life to them. But the decision is not being made by a educated adult. The operations are being performed on children only a few days old up to puberty. These children do not realize that their life could be at stake just so their future husband will be satisfied. They live a life of pain for the mans happiness. FGM is desecrating the woman's body and ultimately her soul.

The American Dream

We immigrants like Somalis always talk about American dream and we have to know what is it. What is the American Dream, and who are the people most likely to pursue its often elusive fulfillment?

Indeed, the American Dream has come to represent the attainment of myriad of goals that are specific to each individual

While one person might consider a purchased home with a white picket fence her version of the American Dream, another might regard it as the financial ability to operate his own business. Clearly, there is no cut and dried definition of the American Dream as long as any two people hold a different meaning. What it does universally represent, however, it the opportunity for people to seek out their individual and collective desires under a political umbrella of democracy.

In the fifties, the 'age of suburbia', the American Dream was epitomized by the ability to own a home, live in safety and in a community of like minded souls. The great exodus from the cities to the suburbs defined the American idea of the good life'.

The American Dream was and always will be something that makes America great. It allows those with aspirations to make them come true. In America alone needs is a dream and the motivation to carry out that dream. Ambition is the driving force behind the American Dream.

It allows any one that has an aspiration, a desire, a yearning, to carry out the individual dream. It knows no bounds of race, creed, gender or religion. It stands for something great, something that every one can strive towards. A dream can be a desire for something great.

In America, the American Dream allows dreams to become realities. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, the American Dream is defined as "An American social ideal that' stresses egalitarianism and especially material prosperity". To live this dream is to succeed. It allows anyone, rich or poor to have the opportunity to succeed. It is the ability to come from nothing and become so me thing. To succeed at any thing you do, you must have patience and persistence. It requires hard work, persistence and a desire for something better. To have these qualities and the desire and ambition to carry the moutis part of the American Dream.

The Somali Mothers and daughters are clearly struggling to maintain their culture and traditions. while still seeking after the American Dream. They all try to have a relationship with each other that is exemplary to the viewing eye. One attempts to excel in Islam religion while another at science. Still others are merely striving only to be looked upon in a respectful way. Trials with husbands and the gain of independence from them is a great step to their American Dream. Also, the freedom and respect from their mothers is being sought after and is soon found. The goals of each of the characters were met with persistence and the other aforementioned qualities needed to obtain one's own dream.

The Presidency of the United States of America is an office that exemplifies the American Dream. In the past 25 years, we have had two farmers and an actor become President. Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer, and the late president Bill Clinton was also a farmer. Ron al d Reagan was a " B" movie actor. They all shared the same dream, to become President of the United States. And today we have president Barack Oboma, the first black USA persident whose father is from Kenya. And they all succeeded. What they accomplished was part of the American Dream. They all had a yearning and a desire to make their dream work.

That was all they needed. Their job is to make the American Dream possible for others. They are all living proof that the American Dream is possible for anyone. Every day many reap the benefits for carrying out their dream; for not giving up when things seemed to be most bleak. Every day someone else has a dream, and every day many act on it. We truly live in a land of opportunity. The American Dream is a derivative of the principles upon which this nation was founded. This nation was founded by people who had a desire for freedom and a desire to create home in their own nation. That is the American Dream.


Humble families have almost every thing that the portrayed Hollywood families have, but it is not enough because our society today is stricken with greed. We all want more, more, and more. We aren't satisfied with our health, money and family. To live the American dream, you have to believe that you can make it and allow hard work ethic and morality to take its role in out life. We don't understand that other towns a round the United States are far less superior to us, and we don't understand how lucky we are to be living this dream. The Bible states:


Among us, there are many people who have been living the American Dream. Whether it was soccer stars, actors, or even our own friends. Many people who are living this dream don't even realize it because they want even more than they already have. We see them as greedy. Even I feel that I am living this dream. “Humble is at own full of spoiled children who have been living the dream since they were born, and only know, at this age, they a restarting to realize it."(Delahoussaye)

The people that the students a tour school and in other wealthy owns see as living the American dream are sports stars and actors. They are living the dream because they have it all, or so it seems. Even actors and sports stars have their problems. Maybe drug or family, but we hardly ever catch a glimpse at his side.

A poor Scottish lad named Andrew Carnegie immigrated to America as a teen and built up the world’s largest steel mill and became the richest man in the land. Through his philanthropy he gave it all away and helped build our great libraries while reminding us: "No man becomes rich, unless he enriches others."(Capozzoli, 7) It’s OK to fail. After over 10,000 attempts, Thomas Edison finally invented the electric light bulb. Henry Ford put America on the road with the Model T.

So, we somalias also have a lot of work to do to taste the Americam dream. Unfortunately, we are the only nation in the world who is stateless and we are called a nation with no country. So, who wants the American dream when we can't even make peace ourselves and build our country. We, issha allah, will become a great peaceful nation one day, and at the sametime we will pursue the American dream

Tales of a Hidden Ethiopian War

“They killed my husband,” she said. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “And they killed my son,” she said. “Oh, I’m so sorry for your losses,” I said. “And they killed my brothers and some of my brothers’ children,” she said, staring at me with eyes that seemed quite without hope and yet that also seemed to ask me, with astonishing tenacity, ‘Are you really listening, do you really understand?’”

At a Minnesota Market, Tales of a Hidden Ethiopian War

By Douglas McGill
The McGill Report
August 31, 2009

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – The first time I heard Fatima tell her story, I answered in the natural way.

I didn’t know what to say to Fatima at this point, as my repeated condolences seemed pointless. So instead I stood up a bit straighter, I took a deep breath, and felt my feet on the ground. I looked back at Fatima with eyes that said that I was willing to stand there and to listen for as long as she wanted.

“And they have killed many of my uncles,” Fatima said.

The Ogaden War

At the Village Market in Minneapolis, the major social hub for Somali-speaking Ethiopian refugees living in the Twin Cities, endless stories like Fatima’s are being urgently swapped every day. They are tales of evil that is so profound it would be unkind of me to suddenly start describing those crimes in detail right now.

You might well not believe the stories anyway. And even if you believed them, you might not believe that such unimaginable crimes could be happening in the world right now, in a little-known corner of Africa called the Ogaden of Ethiopia.

Where are the TV news teams parachuting into refugee camps? Where is the definitive account of the Ethiopian government’s mass destruction of the people and culture of the Ogaden?

Bare Feet

Here is more of Fatima’s story (she like the other witnesses in this story offered only their first names, fearing reprisal against their relatives in Ethiopia if they are identified):

“One day the soldiers came and started shooting, they killed my husband in front of me. Then they tortured and beat me in the same place they killed my husband. On that same day the soldiers also confiscated my home and all of my property and all of my money, leaving me homeless and destitute.”

Fatima is a devout Muslim woman who wears a veil and will not shake a man’s hand except through the cloth of her robe. But after telling me this story she stretched out her legs and took off her shoes, to show me her bare feet which are twisted and deformed, from the beatings she said. Today, she limps with a cane.

We in Minnesota have a special role in telling about the Ogaden crisis, because Minnesota is home to the largest diaspora population of Ogaden refugees in the world. Some 5,000 Somali Ethiopians have fled to Minnesota in recent years, fleeing precisely the crimes against humanity that Fatima and others describe.

Matching Details

Last week, I walked through the Village Market and spoke with a dozen Somali-speaking immigrants from the Ogaden region. This is what is happening in the Ogaden today, they said:

• People are thrown alive into bonfires by uniformed Ethiopian soldiers;

• Men and women are strangled to death by soldiers who wrap a wire around their necks and pull the wire on either side;

• Innocent goat herders are rounded up by Ethiopian soldiers and lynched from trees;

• Young girls are snatched from their homes by Ethiopian soldiers, put in prisons and gang-raped day after day, their dead bodies finally tossed like garbage on the street.

One Ogadeni Minnesotan said to me: “We could tell you stories like this all day and night for a week, and at the end we still would not have told you all the stories of all the killing and suffering that is happening in the Ogaden today.”

A single crazy person, or a small group of organized zealots, could orchestrate lies and propaganda about such horrors being committed on a genocidal scale. But how could it happen that the first 12 people that you meet at the Village Mall all tell the same types of stories over and over, with the details matching perfectly?

An American Ally

All of these horrific crimes and tortures are, the Minnesota Ogadenis say, committed by uniformed Ethiopian soldiers. Ethiopia is an official ally of the U.S. and receives millions of dollars in U.S. tax-funded military aid every year.

The Ogaden is a Texas-sized patch of land in Ethiopia that is inhabited by some four million Muslim, Somali-speaking citizens, most of them nomadic pastoralists.

The sparse grassland and shrubland of the Ogaden has been a battlefield for years between Ethiopia and Somalia, with each of those two nations often acting as proxies for global superpowers including Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

In 1956, when Britain left the Horn of Africa, it set up decades of conflict by handing over the Ogaden, which is populated by ethnic Somalis who are Muslims, to Ethiopia which is mainly ethnic Amhara and Christian. A war was fought over control of the Ogaden between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977-1978.

In 1984, a separatist militia, the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), was formed to pursue autonomy or independence for the Ogaden by violence if necessary. In 2007, the ONLF attacked a Chinese-run oil facility in the Ogaden, killing Ethiopian soldiers as well as more than 70 Chinese and Ethiopian civilians.

Sealed Off

In response, Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian Prime Minister, launched a brutal counter-insurgency against the “terrorist” ONLF in the Ogaden. The recent atrocities against ethnic Somalis in the Ogaden have been a part of that campaign, with entire villages being wiped out on the mere suspicion of harboring ONLF fighters. Families and friends of ONLF soldiers are often killed or terrorized and family members tortured to give up information on their relatives.

Here is the testimony of a man named Hassan at the Village Market:

“I was in my home. One night Ethiopian soldiers broke down the door and took me to a military camp in Dhagahbur and beat me. I didn’t commit any crime and none of my family members are in the ONLF. They used the butt of their guns to hit me anywhere on my body where they thought it would hurt the most. I was put in jail just like this on three different occasions and placed in a tiny, dirty cell. I spent ten months in prison without ever being charged, without any explanation. Every day I was beaten and I suffered many cuts, sores and infections, but there was no hospital and I got no care.”

There has been virtually no major media coverage of the Ogaden crisis, and the U.S. and other governments have taken virtually no action. This is partly because the Ogaden has been sealed off to journalists and aid organizations, with the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders forced to abandon operations there in 2007.

But the Internet is teeming with detailed accounts of specific atrocities much like those described at the Village Market, and many YouTube videos graphically show the results of beatings, torture, killings, looting and rape.

"Still in Prison"

Based on interviews with refugees, thousands of whom have gathered in camps in northern Kenya, and other sources, some human rights groups have also been warning about the Ogaden crisis for several years. In 2008, Human Rights Watch published a 139-page report called “Collective Punishment” that documented “widespread and systematic atrocities” and “war crimes and crimes against humanity” committed by the Ethiopian military against Ogadeni citizens.

The report detailed “routine mass detentions,” “extrajudicial executions,” “rape of women in military custody,” and documented the destruction (sometimes by satellite photographs) of at least a dozen Ogaden villages. Yet the scale of village burnings and other crimes described in the report “is believed to be significantly larger” than those officially documented in the report, its authors warned.

Here is the testimony of a man named Abdulrahman at the Village Market:

“We talk to our friends and family back home, but we never feel safe, because we know that they could be captured, tortured or killed just for talking to us on the telephone. It is a kind of psychological torture we all still suffer in Minnesota. Also there are Ethiopian government collaborators who live here in Minneapolis, who tell the Ethiopian army if we criticize the government, and our family and friends in Ethiopia could be jailed or killed as a result. America is a free country but in this way we are not psychologically free. It is as if we were suffocating and still in prison.”

The atrocities in the Ogaden have even reached the U.S. Congress where Rep. Donald Payne (D-New Jersey), the chairman of the House Subcommitte on Africa, has repeatedly criticized Ethiopia for “deliberating targeting civilians” with “routine raping and hanging” innocent citizens in the Ogaden region. He says the Ogaden crisis is “by far one of the worst” human rights tragedies he has witnessed in his life.

New Intelligence

In October last year, Britain balked at committing foreign aid to Ethiopia after Douglas Alexander, the British international development secretary, discovered on a visit to the Ogaden that the crisis was far more severe than he had thought.

In the U.S., various think tanks and social justice groups have called for the U.S. government to similarly pressure Ethiopia. But the U.S., which regards Ethiopia as an ally in the Horn of Africa which helps to rout Islamist terrorists in neighboring Sudan and Somalia, has so far ignored these warnings and calls to action.

The Minnesota Ogadenis, through their constant cell phone conversations with relatives back home, are unearthing troves of new intelligence about the nature and extent of the Ogaden crisis. For example they report:

• A network of political prisons throughout the Ogaden. An enormous prison in the Ogaden capital city, Jijiga, has been known for years to house thousands of innocent civilians rounded up by the Ethiopian military on suspicion of knowing or harboring ONLF fighters. But the Minnesota Ogadenis say that prison quarters are attached to every military garrison throughout the occupied territory of Ogaden including in the cities of Dhagahbur, Aware, Kabridahar, Fiiq, Wardere, Gode, and Garbo. Many Minnesota Ogadenis have spent months or years in these prisons, or have relatives currently suffering there. They offer details about conditions in the prisons, the crimes routinely committed by the authorities against the prisoners, and the names of those who run the prisons.

• Burning people alive in Garbo, Ethiopia. The torture and killing methods used by the Ethiopian military against the Ogadenis changes over time, with new methods evolving that are ever-more cruel and perverse. For a time, strangling people with rope or wire, with two soldiers pulling on either side, was widely reported. Burying children alive has been reported, as has the sodomization of young boys. Sources in the Ogaden told the Minnesota Ogadenis that this past July, Ethiopian soldiers killed six Ogadenis by throwing them alive into a bonfire.

• Attacking nomads outside of town markets. Most Ogadeni towns have markets where nomads bring their livestock to sell, after which they buy food and clothing before returning to their grazing lands. According to Minnesota Ogadenis, these nomads frequently are attacked by Ethiopian soldiers who lie in wait for them outside of town where they steal their food, clothing and provisions and often kill the nomads while doing so.

Comfort Enough

At one point during my day at the Village Market, a few of us gathered in an office space at the market. Fatima was there along with four other women in veils, and a half-dozen Ogadeni men as well who told me their stories.

We sat on chairs in a circle. As I was listening to another person in the group, I saw Fatima suddenly cover her face with her hands and put her head down towards her lap. Everyone stopped talking.

No one in the group made a move towards Fatima to comfort her. Rather, they allowed her the dignity of her own suffering. Anyway the comfort was simply the supportive presence of the group itself, and everyone knew that was enough.

If was not enough, it was in any case all the comfort there was.

Within a few seconds, Fatima straightened up, daubed her eyes, and everyone continued telling their inconceivable, impossible, true stories of the Ogaden.