Quotes About Somalia

I made a vow to myself while I was a hostage that if I were lucky enough to live and to get out of Somalia, I would do something meaningful with my life - and specifically something that would be meaningful in the country where I'd lost my freedom.

The same men who are placing all these outrageous restrictions on women's freedoms in southern Somalia – that type of mentality – that's what I had to deal with in captivity.

My mother was an activist so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960.

I have big hope for the Canadian government to help Somalia with something concrete and tangible. I haven't seen that.

My first assignment was 12 weeks in Afghanistan. After that, I covered the Indian election for two months. Then I got a phone call saying, 'Hey, we want you in Brazil,' and the same happened for Somalia.

The extreme situation in Somalia favored the imposition of international conservatorship. At this point, what I have termed strategies of construction and maintenance overlap. Conservatorship may involve international territorial administration. International territorial administration, in turn, may simultaneously involve the construction of new, and the maintenance and reequilibration of surviving, institutions of state.

I come from Somalia. We start working young, and we understand that kind of life. I would be bored to death not doing anything creative.

Many Muslims consider the United States hostile to Islam and to Arab interests. In fact, the United States saved tens of thousands of Muslims in the Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

I left Somalia when I was seven years old, but I witnessed a whole year in a war.

Death in Somalia seldom bothers to announce its arrival. In fact, death calls with the arrogance of a guest confident on receiving a warm welcome at any time, no question asked.

Female genital mutilation predates Islam. Not all Muslims do this, and a few of the peoples who do are not Islamic. But in Somalia, where virtually every girl is excised, the practice is always justified in the name of Islam. Uncircumcised girls will be possessed by devils, fall into vice and perdition, and become whores. Imams never discourage the practice: it keeps girls pure.

Several hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs live in slums known as refugee camps in Gaza, Judea, and Somalia. Attempts by Israel to rehabilitate and oust them have been defeated by Arab objections. Nor has their fate been any better in Arab states.

The UN lacked the ability to act without the support of its more powerful members, notably the United States. The American government wanted to avoid a repetition of its unsuccessful intervention in Somalia, in which thirty American troops were killed. President Clinton issued a directive on UN military conditions. The operations would also have to be directly relevant to American interests. These conditions excluded American support for UN intervention to stop the genocide [in Rwanda].

Tom Donilon walked in to brief me on a developing situation involving an issue I'd never been asked about during the campaign. "Pirates?" "Pirates, Mr. President," Jones said. "Off the coast of Somalia. They boarded a cargo ship captained by an American and appear to be holding the crew hostage.

We grew up as poor people but we never knew poverty. I still love and miss the Somalia I grew up in. Things changed, when my father became a diplomat later on.

He charged me about £50 and in fifteen minutes I had a genuine Somali diplomatic passport, bearing my own name and photograph. No checks, no birth certificate, of course. I still have the passport, and it remains one of my strangest travel souvenirs.

Immediately after 11 September, the U.S. closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the 'war on terror.' In contrast, Washington's withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice.

Barack Obama commits war crimes - Somalia, Yemen. He commits war crimes in Pakistan, Afghanistan. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to keep a spotlight on war crimes, to keep track of the innocents killed... There is a major clash.

When I was commander of Central Command, obviously we were very concerned about the developments in Yemen, the developments in Somalia and elsewhere, in Africa and so forth. But the al Qaeda senior leadership is under unprecedented pressure.

Armed drones have become Barack Obama's way to engage in terrorist-infested hellholes without putting 'boots on the ground.' For years, the CIA has been running a secrecy-shrouded program of targeted killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, and more recently in Somalia, Syria and Iraq.

The U.S., often in secret, carries out counterterrorism missions all the time, with drones in places like Yemen and Somalia.

Accompanied by an Australian photographer named Nigel Brennan, I'd gone to Somalia to work as a freelance journalist, on a trip that was meant to last only ten days.

The really disturbing thing about Somalia is that in a country where there are few economic opportunities, pirates are perceived as glamorous and are held in awe by young boys who aspire to their lifestyle.

The only way I see the world now is through coming out of and growing up and living in Somalia. In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras.