vanguard blog | April 14, 2010 | 18 comments

Radio Silence in Somalia

This week, most Somalian radio stations abruptly stopped playing music or international news programs.

According to the New York Times:

At least 14 radio stations...stopped broadcasting music on Tuesday, heeding an ultimatum by an Islamist insurgent group to stop playing songs or face "serious consequences." ...

The insurgent group, Hizbul Islam, issued its ultimatum 10 days ago and set Tuesday as the deadline to comply, saying that music was “un-Islamic.” In other parts of the country, insurgents have taken over or shut down some radio stations. Last week, the Shabab, the country’s most powerful insurgent group, said it was banning foreign programs like those broadcast by the BBC and Voice of America, calling them Western propaganda that violated Islam.

I interviewed the leader of Hizbul-Islam, Sheikh Hassan Aweys, back in 2006 when Kaj and I were in Somalia shooting "Mogadishu Madness" for Vanguard.

Back then he was the spiritual leader of the Islamic Court Union. In the piece, we covered his earlier attempts at helping the ICU implement Sharia law and the reaction from the Somali community when he did so.

We captured exclusive footage of the uneasy peace that prevailed, albeit briefly, and interviewed other Islamist leaders who held the city, exposing the stated goals and fears of people the U.S. government branded as terrorists.

Shortly after we returned to the U.S. to show viewers what we had seen, Ethiopian troops, backed by U.S. forces, invaded Somalia and drove the Islamists into hiding. The country returned to a state of war. In retrospect, was the U.S. justified in backing Ethiopia to invade Somalia so they could overthrow the Islamic government that Aweys had helped establish?

Things certainly got a whole lot worse. As a journalist, of course I cringe at the idea of banning a free press. But if 20 years of fighting has taught us anything, its that its time to start thinking outside the box when it comes to bringing stability to Somalia.

I wonder if Aweys would grant us an interview today or if we’d be banned along with the rest of the press. Certainly makes me look at this whole radio ban differently.

  1. groups:
    Community,   News and Politics,   Human Rights,   Endangered Earth,   3 more
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    News,  News and Politics,  War,  Religion,  26 more
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18 comments // Radio Silence in Somalia

  • CarolineS
    • +1
      CarolineS  

    • Insanity exists in many forms all over the globe, we need a revolution! religious and political nuts have ruined good decent peoples lives for too long now

    • 2 years ago
  • iPedro
    • +1
      iPedro  
    • CarolineS:

      Good intentions but no revolution is needed. Religion will fade away as knowledge increases.

      Here is the reasoning: Religion relies on "Faith". You can only believe in religion if you suspend your belief of proven science.

      With the increase in knowledge over the last 100 to 200 years, your level of faith has had to grow to suspend your belief and follow what religion teaches instead.

      So as knowledge increases, so does the amount of faith needed to continue being religious.

      We're close to a point where only extremists will have sufficient faith to adhere to a religion. It's at this point where those very extremists will fight hard to retain their way of life and their control over the masses. This is already happening.

      In the next 50 to 100 years, religion will be all but a niche for the uneducated and extremists will work to prevent people from becoming educated.

    • 2 years ago
  • krazykizza
    • krazykizza  
    • This comment was removed as a violation of community guidelines.
  • DRudeBoy
  • krazykizza
  • iPedro
  • julesrs007
  • vanna5890
  • julesrs007
  • cutee_leslie
  • ozoneocean
    • 0
      ozoneocean  

    • The US backed invasion was a bad, bad thing. As with almost every situation where this has happened around the world, it buggered things up. Eventually the US might learn that it should really just leave countries to sort out their own problems in their own ways, or be completely open about the imperialisim (like Britian and France used to be), and just go right ahead with a policy of colonialism and control. ...Because this passive aggressive "intervention" sponsoring specific groups etc. (yes, even in Afghanistan and Iraq) is incredibly destabilising.

    • 2 years ago
  • BRAVATRAVELS
  • dalistuff
  • CaptB
  • idealist
  • manuschnirkt
    • +4
      manuschnirkt  

    • Thank you for the inside. In Germany Somalia was pretty much pulled out of the medias focus after "the pirate story" stopped being the common interest. It looks almost as if they need to give the headlines an entirely new face every week or so in order to keep us entertained...

    • 2 years ago
Christof

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