Mogadishu - The Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has today offered amnesty for Al Shabaab fighters until the end of March 2011, and said the TFG will assist those who demobilize with creating opportunities for sustainable livelihoods.

The offer comes as a result of today’s meeting of the Somali Cabinet of Ministers chaired by the Somali Premier, Mohamed Abdulahi.

In a press release, the cabinet of ministers noted that the TFG has labeled Al Shabaab as an “International Terrorist Organization” and their leaders have been put on a ‘most wanted’ list.

The ministers called on the Somali people to take responsibility for supporting peace efforts in the country despite fighting in the capital, Mogadishu. They also asked for international assistance with anti-piracy and anti-smuggling efforts.

“We are calling for the international community to apprehend cargo vessels and merchant boats heading to ports of Kismayu, Brava and Marka and confiscate whatever load they are carrying,” said the press release.

The Somali cabinet also noted that the TFG achieved victory in its latest assault against Al Shabaab in Mogadishu and other South-Central cities including Beled-wein and Beled-Hawo. Reports from Gedo region, however, claim Al Shabaab has regained control of parts of Beled-hawo town from the TFG forces.

Mogadishu - The Committee to Protect Journalists, an international media watchdog group, listed Somalia as the seventh most deadly nation in the world for journalists. Armed groups have killed more than 30 reporters, directors and media administrators since 1992, including nine in 2009. Those who survived and fled the country struggle to make ends meet and continue to live under treats from Al Shabaab militants.

Most senior journalists fled the country for safe havens in Kenya, Uganda, and Djibouti as well as the breakaway Republic of Somaliland. Those who fled to Hargeysa, Somalialand’s capital, are living in miserable conditions.

Abdikadir Sharmaarke, 53 years old, was a senior journalist and Director of HornAfrik Radio, one of most well-known independent media outlets in Somalia. Today he spends his time sitting at coffee shop in Hargeysa after Al-Shabab militants raided and confiscated HornAfrik Radio on 19 September 2010.

Coincidentally Sharmarke was in Hargeysa two days before the crackdown while attending a workshop sponsored by Educational Development Council (EDC) on education development through the media.

Shortly after the station was taken by Al Shabaab, local and international media questioned Sharmaarke to provide further information, but the interviews backfired.

“Soon after I was interviewed by the media, I have received death threats through telephone calls from Mogadishu vowing that I will be targeted if I set afoot in Mogadishu or elsewhere in the Southern Somalia,” said Sharmaarke who currently stay in Somaliland for at least six months.

“I have no job here and I left back in Mogadishu five children and a wife... and I can not afford them money to buy food or pay their house rent,” he added.

In Hargeysa, he is sporadically supported by former class or workmates. Sharmaarke has sent emergency appeals to some of the world’s most popular media watchdogs to no avail.

He has not been the only person targeted. The most recent murder of a Somali journalist occurred on 4 May 2010, when three gunmen assassinated broadcast journalist, Sheikh Nur Abkey, as he was returning home from the state-run Radio Mogadishu. Al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for the killing.

In August 2007, Ali Sharmaarke, co-owner of HornAfrik, was assassinated as he was attending the funeral of Mahad Elmi, director of Capital Voice, who was murdered on the same day by unknown gunmen in Mogadishu.

Said Tahlill, Director of HornAfrik, the successor of Ali Sharmaarke was shot and killed in Mogadishu on 4 February 2009 by armed gunmen.

Today Abdikadir Sharmarke remains in Hargeysa and does not know what the future holds for him in Somalia. He is not alone as journalists continue to be targeted by militants.

Mogadishu - After a lull of a weeklong fighting, students returned to school in Mogadishu. Their return was not without risk, however, as they ran across the road to avoid gunfire between Somali government forces and Al-Shabab fighters.

“We are afraid of being caught in crossfire,” said Halima Mohamed, a 13 years old girl and intermediate school student, who was crossing KM road conjunction, near a major AMISOM base.

School attendance in the capital of the war-torn country of Somalia diminishes day by day due to the persistent fighting that daily claims the lives of civilians, including young students.

“Last month a motor shell battered on our school and we lost three of our classmates and our math teacher,” said Mohamed Ali, a student at Waberi School in Mogadishu.

Most of the schools have been looted or demolished, shattering Somalia’s educational system. What schools remain are concentrated in and around urban areas and are mainly financed by fees or aid organizations. Somalia has one of the lowest primary school enrollment rates in the world.

Somalia’s school curriculum has been replaced by curriculums imported from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Britain and Kenya where students now learn the geographical borders, culture and the literature of these countries rather than Somalia.

“The student can know a certain mountain in Saudi Arabia but cannot answer a question on which Somali region Kismayu town falls under,” said Abdi Mohamed, a father whose three sons attend three schools with three different curriculums.

There are at least three different educational Umbrellas, including FPENS, which unites schools under the UAE curriculum.

Somalia has been without effective central government for almost two decades. Most state institutions have vanished in large parts of the country and schools are no exception. Somalia’s educational system was free before 1991 when the socialist military regime was ousted.

There are limited supplies of educational facilities and very low enrollment rates. Some schools don’t even have textbooks. But regions, such as Somaliland and Puntland have a much stronger education system than South/central Somalia.

School fees are also hindering attendance.

“I have three children and none of them go to school because their father is jobless and cannot afford to pay school fees,” said Shamso Ali, a mother of three children who supports her family selling maize at Elasha neighbourhood, 14 km North-East of Mogadishu.

Detiorating conditions, high school fees, and crossfire are not the only problems students face when they attend school. Recently schools are becoming a place where young children are recruited by armed insurgents fighting against Transitional Federal Government, forcing many parents to keep their kids at home.

A day after the closure of Radio Kulmiye, an independent radio station in Mogadishu, by Transitional Federal Government security forces, the director of the radio station, Osman Abdulahi Guurre, called on the government to respect freedom of press and freedom of expression.

Osaman Guerre told Somalia Report that government security services seized the radio station, ordering it closed and off the air.

“At that time I was attending a meeting at the premises of the Ministry of Information between independent media outlets and state-run media outlets to start collaboration among these entities,” said Osman Guure.

When asked why the station was shut down, the director said they had interviewed five of sixty young men who defected from Al-Shabaab. “I think that is only reason they have,” he said.

Media organizations, journalists and independent media believe that shutting down the station is a way to intimidate journalists and hijack freedom of the press. Both the government and its opponents use this practice in order to silence the voices of the independent media in the country.

In Mogadishu alone, there were at least 14 independent FM radio station, but that number has dwindled after many radio stations, including HornAfrik and Somaliweyn, were looted or shut down.

Almost all independent media in the areas controlled by Al-Shabab has vanished except a few at the Bakara market including Radio Simba and Radio Danan.

‘’Although Radio Kulmiye, which was officially launched in February this year, is in the area controlled by the TFG we may follow the way that Radio GBC, HornAfrik, Radio Sahan and Radio IQK have followed,” said Osman Abdullahi Guure. He said he is very concerned about the way that TFG is dealing with the independent media.

At least 14 independent radio stations ceased their music programmes for fear of their safety after Al Shabaab declared music as un-Islamic.

Mogadishu - Mogadishu port’s revenue has been badly affected by Al Shabaab roadblocks at avenues in and out of Bakara Market, one of the main markets in Somalia.

Mohamed Ahmed, General Manager of Mogadishu Port Authority, said that recent fighting in Mogadishu has caused drastic cutbacks in revenue because trucks hauling goods could not get to market.

“The price of the basic food commodities, construction materials, and fuel doubled,” Mohamed Abdi, a tradesman, told Somalia Report. He added that, “trucks loaded with goods are stranded inside the port hurting the public whose lives depends on the supplies.”

The Ministry of Information of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) accused Al Shabaab of setting up the roadblocks by excavating huge gutters at the midpoint of many of main roads leading to the Bakara market blocking government forces’ ability to infiltrate their defense lines, according to a press release.

The government called on the militants to get rid of the barricades based on humanitarian needs as the people need the products to survive. “If they do that, people will have access to buy food and other commodities in reasonable price and this could eases the mount price rates,” said the statement.

Al Shabaab responded by blaming the TFG and AMISOM for attacking their positions, “We will not let them approach our frontlines easily that is what they are out crying for,” said an Al-Shabab spokesman.

Within the last two years, the port had three different managers. The TFG has accused the port’s managerial system of fraud, citing that much of the revenue goes to personal balance sheets instead of development schemes.