The shooting occurred at AK Home Health Care LLC, one several small businesses inside the Cherokee Place Business Incubator south of downtown St. Louis. The shooter gunned down another man and two women before turning his semi-automatic handgun on himself, Police Capt. Michael Sack said.

Authorities said the shooter either owned or was a co-owner of the small business and his three victims were employees. The victims’ names have not been released. Sack said they appeared to be in their early-40s to mid-50s in age. Other details were not available.
KMSP-TV
“We don’t know if this was a thing that carried over into today or was initiated today,” Sack said.

An employee of another business in the building heard gunshots and called police.

Other businesses in the building include an attorney’s office and an African bazaar.

A woman who showed up about two hours after the shooting began sobbing loudly when she saw the police scene and was comforted by onlookers and police. A neighborhood woman translated the woman’s outbursts for reporters, saying the woman was worried that a relative was inside the building.

Abdi Salam Elmi, an immigrant from Somalia who drives a cab in St. Louis, said he was close to all four of the dead in Thursday’s shooting. He described them as hardworking, friendly people.

“They always smile for me. This is my worst day in my life. It’s a very, very sad day for us and a very sad day for the city of St. Louis.”

St. Louis has long struggled with urban violence, but the last week has seen a troublesome uptick in bloodshed. Police scrambled late Monday and early Tuesday to respond to five different shootings on the city’s north side that left 15 people wounded.

Elmi said as a cab driver he sees too much violence in the city and he’s concerned about the recent shootings. “I feel the same as I did when I left Somalia,” he said, referring to the war-torn African country.

Meant to be a nurturer of startup businesses, the Cherokee Place Business Incubator dates back at least a decade in a once-thriving business section about a five minutes’ drive from downtown.

Big retailers later shifted to the suburbs. But that part of town, which has a strong Latino flair, has regained solid footing. New street lighting complimenting welcomed police responsiveness has helped make it safe, according to Jason Deem, a board member and former president of the Cherokee Street Business Association.

Deem called Thursday’s bloodshed “a very unfortunate situation for Cherokee” but not reflective of the area as a whole.

“It’s not like this type of thing goes on down here. This is very much a shock to us,” he said. “Everything police are telling us leads us to believe it was a targeted incident and not some random act of violence.”

——

Associated Press reporter Jim Suhr contributed to this story.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Read more: St. Louis gunman kills 3, self; Man likens violence to Somalia – KMSP-TV

There is a risk of the same mistakes being made in Somalia, he said, as the West throws itself wholeheartedly behind the new government.

Donini was speaking in Nairobi at the launch of his book, “The Golden Fleece: Manipulation and Independence in Humanitarian Action”, which focuses on the manipulation of humanitarian aid to achieve political, military and other objectives.

What mistakes did the humanitarian community make in Afghanistan?

After the demise of the Taliban regime [in 2001], the international community decided that the war was over, that a legitimate regime had been built around [President Hamid] Karzai.

There was a lot of pressure by donors for NGOs and the U.N. to work with this government and to work to support the government. You know: ‘The war is over. We are in a post- conflict situation. We don’t need the humanitarian principled approach any more.’

We told ourselves that the conflict was over. But of course, the conflict didn’t go away.

The war escalated, but the aid system got stuck in supporting the government. Many NGOs were double hatted, dual mandated – doing some humanitarian relief and some development work.

The U.N. was perceived as having taken sides, as being joined at the hip with the military intervention.

What parallels do you see with Somalia today?

There is a risk that the story telling in the case of Somalia might be similar. I think we should be wary of being carried away by rhetoric as was the case in Afghanistan – the rhetoric of post conflict – when in reality conditions for the continuation of conflict were very present on the ground.

You will potentially see some of the same pathologies: the subordination of the humanitarian agenda, the protection agenda, the human rights agenda even, to political objectives.

In a real post-conflict situation, it’s okay for all the arms of the international community to work together. But in a situation like Afghanistan or Somalia, where there’s an active conflict, I think it makes sense to keep the humanitarian people separate from the political agenda as much as possible.

They have to address need wherever it is and try to negotiate access with whoever’s on the ground. If you are seen as being part of a political mission that’s based in one part of the country, you will be seen as having taken sides.

As head of the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Afghanistan, were you free to work according to humanitarian principles?

We were told we must not do anything to rock the boat, that might derail the peace process and the support that we were providing to the Afghan government.

Violations were occurring. Groups were being victimised. Forced recruitment was happening in some of the militias. And we were told: ‘No, don’t raise these issues. Now is not the time.’

Why were humanitarians so blind in Afghanistan?

I think they were blinded by the perspective that peace was finally going to come to Afghanistan after 30 years of war.

With all the money coming in – and of course money orients you in certain directions –there were very few agencies who said: ‘We are not going to work with belligerents. And all the main donors, except Switzerland, are belligerents in Afghanistan.’

So very few agencies were able to maintain some kind of ethical humanitarian position in a situation where there was an enormous pressure to be part of this peacemaking agenda.

What should they have said?

It was a victors’ peace. It was bringing back the warlords that were despised by the Afghan population and that had been expelled from power by the Taliban.

Very few voices actually spoke out to say that: ‘This is an agreement among victors. The Taliban are not part of the deal.’

Issues about justice were never put on the agenda. There was no provision in the peace deal to address the violations of the past.

I think we made a bad situation worse by this perceived – and real – alignment of NGOs with their donors and the political agendas of donors.

Unknown gunmen opened fire on the truck in which they were travelling in the north-eastern Mandera district.

The region has been hit by inter-clan fighting as well as attacks by Somalia’s Islamist al-Shabab group, which is linked to al-Qaeda.

Kenya sent several thousand troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight al-Shabab.

The troops have since been integrated into an 18,000-strong African Union (AU) force battling the insurgents.

‘Abductions’
‘Abductions’
A schoolboy and schoolgirl were among the people killed in the attack late on Tuesday, as the truck was travelling in the Qooqae area in Mandera county, local police chief Joseph Tenai said, the AFP news agency reports.

“The survivors have told us they were attacked when the gunmen emerged from a bush and sprayed the vehicle with bullets, killing four people on the spot,” he is quoted as saying.

“The bodies of two other people were found this morning [Wednesday].”

North-eastern Kenya is a remote and arid region which borders Somalia to the east and Ethiopia to the north. It is sparsely populated – most people are cattle herders – and usually it is poorly policed and as a result incidents of banditry and cattle rustling are frequent.

The region also hosts the Dadaab refugee camp which houses some 500,000 people who have fled years of conflict and drought in Somalia.

Inter-clan fighting in Mandera district has led to the deaths of about 30 people in the area in recent weeks, Kenya’s Standard newspaper reports.

Last Thursday, two people were killed and two girls were abducted, it reports.

In May, Kenyan police said al-Shabab had killed at least six people, including two policemen, in attacks on the Abdisugow and Damajale border posts.

Al-Shabab has staged numerous cross-border raids since Kenya decided in October 2011 to send troops into Somalia to confront them.

The group says it is fighting for an Islamic state in Somalia.

Somalia’s central government and the leaders of one of the country’s regions are locked in a power struggle that could turn violent.

The dispute centres on Jubaland – an area in the southern-most part of Somalia that has claimed statehood and elected a president.

As the standoff escalates, Jubaland authorities are threatening to cut all ties with Mogadishu.

Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow reports from Kismayo, Jubaland.

Source Aljazeera

Sheikh revealed that the latest count at the Dadaab refugee camp – the world’s largest – showed a reduction of 80,000 refugees who had gone back to Somalia.

The repatriation process has been initiated after Kenya and Somalia signed a Joint Commission Agreement which provides a bilateral opportunity for facilitation of return of the refugees.

Speaking on Wednesday at the Sagana State Lodge where he hosted Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud for a two-day retreat, President Uhuru Kenyatta said the two countries have also agreed to enhance the exchange of information in dealing with the Al-Shabaab elements and their sympathisers.
“We have called for the support of IGAD, UNHCR and the international community to ensure the success of this exercise,” he said.

The Head of State disclosed that during the meeting with the Somalia leader, they discussed the threats, violent attacks and kidnappings carried out by Al-Shabaab targeting innocent people in the two countries and agreed on joint security operations.

On the issue of refugees, Kenyatta briefed President Mohamud on the position of the Kenya Government regarding the disproportionate burden resulting from hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees and its direct bearing on the economic, social, security and environmental consequences.

The two leaders resolved to establish a joint task-force to prepare for a conference on refugees, scheduled for August this year, in Nairobi.

President Kenyatta said that the conference will work out the modalities for the early repatriation and resettlement of refugees to their country.

“We call upon the international community to support regional efforts to create conditions that are conducive including means of livelihood that will ensure safe and orderly return to their homeland,” President Kenyatta said.
The two leaders also appealed to all Somalis, including the federal entities, to support their central government.

The two leaders called on the people of Somalia to embrace the spirit of mutual respect, inclusive dialogue and reconciliation in order to sustain and consolidate all the achievements of the peace process under the provisional federal constitution.

On the bilateral front, Kenyatta welcomed the recent launch of the Joint Commission of Co-operation as the most appropriate platform for economic and technical co-operation between Kenya and Somalia.

Minneapolis mayoral candidates described the city’s Somali immigrants as an important political force at a campaign forum Friday night, vowing to help them more easily open small businesses, smooth tensions between cops and cabdrivers in their community, and win positions in City Hall.

The event at Safari, a Somali restaurant on East Lake Street, came two weeks before DFL delegates meet at a convention to choose the party’s candidate for mayor. Organizers said the forum, moderated by members of the Somali DFL caucus, was the first of its kind for a mayor’s race.

Council Members Gary Schiff, Betsy Hodges, Don Samuels; former City Council President Jackie Cherryhomes, and former Hennepin County Commissioner Mark Andrew — the party’s top contenders — had largely similar messages about how they would bolster Somali-Americans if elected.

‘Powerful force’

Cut regulatory tape and get out of the way of the city’s many Somali-owned small businesses, from south Minneapolis to Cedar-Riverside. Get more Somali perspectives involved in city decisions. Improve educational opportunities, particularly in early childhood.

“The Somali community in Minneapolis is a large and powerful force,” said Hodges.

She wants to have Somali input on ensuring that youth programs combating violence and joblessness are tailored to the needs of their population and to simplify the regulatory code to help their businesses. Hodges also stressed the need to have more interns from the STEP-UP program for minority youth move on to join the city’s board and commissions.

Andrew said the vote could come down to the city’s Somali population.He said that he would establish a Somali advisory committee for the mayor’s office, increase hiring of people of color, and work closely with Abdi Warsame, a Somali candidate who won the DFL endorsement in April to represent the City Council’s Sixth Ward. Andrew also surprised the audience with the news that he had once driven a cab, just like many East African immigrants.

Schiff vowed to launch the rewriting of the city’s outdated regulatory code on his first day in office and direct the city attorney to seek the Somali community’s input. He said he would start an early childhood investment fund and ensure diversity in every department, from police to fire to public works.

“We must make sure that the hiring of the city of Minneapolis represents and reflects the diversity of our people,” said Schiff.

Cherryhomes said she would hire Somali-speaking people in the licensing division to work with Somali-owned businesses and plans to promote the civil rights department’s efforts to include more minorities in city jobs. She also wants to improve their access to loans, offer more business education to entrepreneurs, and give them more access to city contracts.

“The Somali community has really stepped up to become an active part of our city and you are to be complimented,” said Cherryhomes.

Samuels said he identified with the Somali experience, as an immigrant from Jamaica who came to the U.S. with $83 four decades ago and worked multiple jobs to get by. “I know what it means to have to adjust to the culture, to be misunderstood … part of my agenda is certainly to help the adjustment of the immigrant community, especially our young people,” he said.

Jobs, business

Samuels described closing the education achievement gap between whites and nonwhites as his priority. He also noted his early advocacy of setting aside 32 percent of the construction jobs on the new Minnesota Vikings stadium for minorities, and said he would promote Somali restaurants and other venues as tourist attractions.

While some of the issues touched on specific challenges in the Somali community, such as complaints by Somali cabdrivers of police harassment, an organizer of the forum said the subjects candidates discussed matter to many more people.

THESE ISSUES — ACCESS TO GOOD EDUCATION AND JOBS – “affect all the other communities,” said Osman Omar, the organizer.

Abdirahman Ahmed, who owns Safari, told the crowd that the community doesn’t want handouts, but instead is seeking partnerships to succeed in business and school.

“We all share something in common, which is the American dream,” he said.

Maya Rao • 612-673-4210

OKOHAMA – Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has told Japan’s and Africa’s leaders that his country faces four challenges as it struggles to become a constructive member of the global community again after decades of civil war and anarchy.

Meeting on the eve of the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development, African rulers on Friday discussed a number of concerns with Mohamud, including immediate basic security issues, as well as more mid- to long-term economic and social needs.

The Somali leader, in turn, identified his own government’s goals: security, meeting basic human needs, good governance and foreign investment.

“First, we must provide human security in order to uphold the rule of law, restore law and order, realize justice reform and establish credible law enforcement agencies,” he said.

Basic human needs, such as food, water, shelter and disease control for the most vulnerable parts of society, as well as able governance are also crucial, said Mohamud, who was elected president last September.

“And fourth and most important, we must seek economic revival by engaging the private sector and seeking direct foreign investment,” he stressed.

For his part, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who briefly attended the meeting, expressed cautious hope that Mohamud’s leadership could bring Somalia’s decades of civil war to an end.

“Somalia has begun to take steps forward under the leadership of President Mahomud. The path ahead may not be smooth and the country faces tremendous challenges, but these challenges are also an opportunity,” Abe said.

Abe aded that Somalia’s stability is not only important for the security and prosperity of eastern Africa, but also for the rest of the world, especially given the country’s proximity to the vital Gulf of Aden sea route.

“Stability is also indispensable for addressing the problem of piracy off the coast of Somalia and ensuring the safety of a major sea artery, one that plays a global role from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean,” Abe said.

Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off Somalia is an internationally recognized problem with no clear solution, although anti-piracy measures have been showing results of late. Seventy-five incidents of piracy were recorded last year in the gulf, and 14 ships were boarded. In 2011, by contrast, there were 237 incidents and 28 ships were boarded.

Prior to the three-day TICAD conference, Abe met with Mohamud for a bilateral meeting and expressed his satisfaction that, after more than two decades, Japan and Somalia are once again strengthening relations.

Mohamud told Abe that training workers in security, public health, agriculture and education is extremely important. He also called for cooperation with Japan on infrastructure projects.

On security issues, Abe noted Japan has provided $55.4 million (¥5.6 billion) to help train Somalia’s police force and vowed further aid.

A Foreign Ministry representative said the new assistance would generally take the form of human resource development, although to what extent it would be used for further police training, or for training and equipping Somali forces to fight piracy, is still being discussed.

The Japan Times

Somali education coalition releases unified curriculum
An education coalition representing 1,130 private schools across Somalia has unveiled a curriculum that will serve as a blueprint for standardising primary and secondary instruction nationwide
The coalition comprises seven organisations: the Formal Private Education Network in Somalia (FPENS), the School Organisation for Formal Education (SOFE), the Somali Formal Education Network (SOFEN), the Somali Formal Education Link (SOFEL), the Schools Association for Formal Education (SAFE), the Formal Education Network for Private Schools (FENPS) and the Somali Education Development Association (SEDA).

The organisations presented their proposed curriculum, which took three years to complete, at FPENS headquarters on May 16th, with federal government officials in attendance.
Somalia has gone without a unified national curriculum to guide educators since the fall of the Mohamed Siad Barre government in 1991.

“We used the previous national curriculum [that was in effect before the civil war] and curricula used in schools now as a reference guide and model,” Mohamed Farah Ali, co-ordinator of the groups that co-wrote the curriculum, told Sabahi. “Its foundation is Islam and our good culture.”

The education organisations set about creating the curriculum because schools managed by each of the seven groups followed a different curriculum and term schedule and were turning out students with varying education levels, SAFE director Abdirahman Moalim Ablal said.

“What we have prepared [is a composite of] the different curricula used by [schools] with the aim of unifying the education of Somali students,” Ablal told Sabahi. “Agreeing on one curriculum will make it easier to have one examination schedule for the school term. This will also streamline the differing education levels of the students.”

In addition, the curriculum keeps in mind that some schools teach in Somali, while others instruct in Arabic or English, he said, adding that this should make it easy for schools to conform to the curriculum irrespective of the language in which subjects are taught. The schools will be using the same textbooks translated in the various target languages.
Officials representing the coalition said the new curriculum would be mandatory in their schools starting in the 2013-2014 academic year, while other schools are welcome to adopt it at their discretion.

“We had no political agenda in this project and we have no intention of pressuring the government or anyone else to implement it,” Ablal said.

The federal government welcomed the curriculum and praised the coalition for their initiative.
Common national values

Arabow Ibrahim Nur, acting director of the education department in the Ministry of Development and Social Affairs, said the government would evaluate the curriculum and use it as a blueprint for its own standardised curriculum.

“[The proposed curriculum] is a first step, but we want to include all the Somali people so they can add their ideas to this curriculum,” he told Sabahi.

“We are creating a national education policy that will finally resolve problems related to [our] education system,” he said. “We will accelerate work on the curriculum so that we succeed in getting a unified national curriculum in the coming months.”

Abdullahi Ahmed Maalin, 19, a high school student in Mogadishu, said the new curriculum is a positive development that gives schools an opportunity to promote common national values.

“Whenever we meet for an educational debate, we cannot even agree on nationalism,” he said, underscoring that foreign influences in education and other aspects of life since the civil war have compromised Somali ideals.

“Some of us defend Arab views, some Western and others Asian,” he said. “The reason is that students have not been taught with the same goals; I mean we lack a unified national goal.”

Having a curriculum developed by Somalis would foster understanding and dialogue among youths and help support Somali ideals, Maalin said.

In the past two years, African Union troops have wrested town after town from Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents, hauling down their black Islamist banners and raising Somalia’s flag.
But asserting the authority of the central government — which until recently controlled just a few blocks of the capital Mogadishu — is a far harder task.

“In Somalia today there is only one federal government that is wholly owned by the Somali people, widely represented by all Somalis, all regions,” Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told reporters this week.

But others disagree, including powerful militia forces backed by foreign armies.

The worst flashpoint is the far southern region dubbed “Jubaland” bordering Kenya and Ethiopia.

Both nations have troops there after invading in late 2011, while this month several rival warlords declared themselves “president”, sparking anger in Mogadishu.

But the effective self-appointment of former Islamist chief Ahmed Madobe, one of the most powerful of the “presidents” due to Kenyan backing, risks opening a rift between Nairobi and Mogadishu.

“The effort to create a Jubaland state within Somalia will test the limits of federalism in that country, and threatens to touch off clan warfare not only within Somalia but also in its neighbours,” the International Crisis Group warned in a recent report.

Jubaland, which includes the key port city of Kismayo, has a lucrative charcoal industry, fertile farmland as well as potential off-shore oil and gas deposits.

Addis Ababa, long term experts in playing off powerful factions, is wary of Madobe, who hails from the same Ogadeni clan as rebels fighting inside Ethiopia.

Infighting benefits Islamist insurgents

However, Mogadishu’s government — selected last year by clan elders in a UN-backed process and the first to be recognised internationally in more than two decades — is full of confidence.

“Any one group within Somalia that just gets together sits there and says, we are ‘XYZ’, has no legitimacy and has no recognition at local level and at international level,” said Mohamud.

But international recognition counts for little within Somalia, and central rule is controversial.

The last to claim control was Siad Barre, toppled in 1991 after a rule marked by repression of opposition and a bloody civil war against Somaliland.

Years of anarchy meant Somalis reverted to age-old systems of autonomy and traditional semi-nomadic camel herding.

Somalia split into regions, from fiercely independent Somaliland along the Gulf of Aden, to Puntland in the northeast, which recognises a federal government but says that has no role in its internal affairs.

Analysts warn of tough political times ahead.

While AU troops backing Mogadishu have enjoyed territorial success, Roland Marchal, an analyst with French research institute CNRS, notes the fighting force lacks a “political strategy to go with the military strategy”.

Kenya’s army, which invaded in 2011 alongside Madobe’s allied troops, faces a particularly sticky predicament.

In 2012, its cash-strapped military joined the AU force — funded by the UN and European Union — leaving its soldiers backing a warlord opposing the central government it is mandated to support.

Mogadishu lawmakers have submitted a motion demanding Kenya leave Somalia, while Mohamud said Kenyan troops “misbehaved” when a top level government delegation went to Kismayo and “did not treat the committee well”.

Ambitions by central government have highlighted internal divisions within regions.

Tensions in Jubaland have raised concern in Puntland, which swiftly welcomed Madobe’s election by calling on other regions “to establish states in a similar consultative and open process”.

Puntland has been keen to stake out power boundaries, with its oil agency chief Issa Farah warning Mogadishu it alone is the “competent authority” to manage the region’s oil exploration.

Mogadishu’s inability to “exercise its authority over the Kismayo process is undermining its influence in the remaining regions of Somalia and the emerging arrangements towards federalism,” warned Andrews Atta-Asamoah of the Pretoria-based Institute of Security Studies (ISS) in a recent paper.
At present, the only thing all appear to agree on is that the rivalry benefits the Shebab, still in control of swathes of countryside.

East African heads of state last week urged Somalia hold a “reconciliation conference”, warning infighting could “threaten peace and stability”.

Yet many also eye the economic, strategic and political profits of the region.

Kenya wants a security buffer zone to protect its valuable tourism industry, a proposed major port and hopes of offshore oil and gas finds.

It also hopes stability would let it send back the half a million Somali refugees it hosts.

Landlocked Ethiopia has long played a powerful role in Somalia, with Kismayo offering another possible route to the sea.

Yet Mogadishu remains upbeat, mindful its position today was unthinkable a few years ago.

“Somalia is fragmented, it’s divided into regions, clans, groups,” Mohamud said. “The current Somali government is busy with rebuilding and organising to have one Somalia.”