generalspeaking

Saturday, November 23, 2019

War and Peace in Somalia

"It sounds morbid to say this, but my family has always had the outlook that anything worth doing comes at a cost. And if you're doing the right thing and something happens to you, then it was meant to be and you should just accept it."
"We take as many precautions as we can, but we are under threat -- constantly."
Ilwad Elman, Canadian-Somali peace activist

"It doesn't happen anywhere else in the world that you have a prime minister who just graduated from Carleton University or Ottawa University and did a great job in Somalia."
"It is really something that's unique and we need to build on that."
Gamal Hassan, Somalia Economic Development Minister, dual Canadian-Somali citizen

"They went back to Somalia to do what a lot of Canadians do, which is to go around the world providing leadership on a lot of issues around peacemaking and helping communities to build reconstruction after a conflict."
"The Elman family has been amazing in contributing that to Somalia. Finding that news [death of Almaas Elman, Canadian-Somali dual citizen] was really difficult for a lot of people, including myself."
Liberal cabinet minister Ahmed Hussen, former Canadian Minister of Immigration

Ilwad Elman, center, who was reportedly shortlisted for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, attends the funeral service for her sister, Somali Canadian peace activist Almaas Elman, in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Friday, Nov. 22, 2019. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

A wave of over 55,000 Somali refugees arrived in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, escaping conflict in Somalia when the country was deeply engulfed in a civil war, and the aftermath of that war left a country torn asunder, ungovernable, violent and shattered. During that period Elman Ali Ahmed, a Somali peace activist was assassinated in Mogadishu. His wife and their three daughters left Somalia, to arrive in Canada as refugees.

But they eventually returned to their country of birth, where they resumed their human rights activism. One of the three sisters joined the national military, a second, Ilwad, was nominated for the 2019 Nobel Prize, recognizing her humanitarian work in Somalia and elsewhere. And the third, Almaas, met her death earlier this week while in a car inside a heavily defended base close to the international airport; a 'safe zone', where diplomats and aid workers have offices.

In July, 27 people were killed by a suicide bomb in the southern port city of Kismayo, among them Hodan Nalayeh, another Somali-Canadian, a journalist who had been a child when her family moved to Canada. She too returned to Somalia determined to help in rebuilding her country of origin, as have thousands of other Somalis who had sought refuge from war. Two of Somalia's prime ministers held dual Somali-Canadian citizenship. At present the Somali government is comprised of 30 percent elected cabinet ministers with Canadian connections.