A BACKGROUND BRIEFING OF THE SOMALI BANADIR

The Somali Banadir city of Hamar (Mogadishu), Merca and Brava had survived both internal and foreign invasion since the beginning of the last millennium.  It’s population have endured many foreign invasions without recurring to armaments.  Nevertheless, for the first time in their history, the Banadirs have been forced to abandon their homes and possessions for fear of persecution.

The Somali Banadirs are the only sedentary community in Somalia.  They are productive, peace-loving, who had been known to the early Chinese, Arabs and Portuguese chroniclers as prosperous communities with strong attachment to their Islamic faith. They have always been multi- racial communities, governed democratically by councils of elders. They have been cited by the early travellers of the 14th Century as evidence for their institutional hospitality and early form of government that they practised.

They also played an important role in the early stages of Somali Nationalism, when their first political party emerged known as Hamar Youth Club, then changed to Unione Gioventu Banadir(U,G,B.) and later renamed SANU.

Benadir and the regions between the two rivers of Somalia has a great strategic and economic value to the major tribes of Somalia who are contending for accesses not only to land, resources, port facilities but also to man-power skills.

Mogadishu, Merca and Brava are considered to be the major ports of Southern Somalia.  This region is still experiencing the most sustained inter-clan fighting following the collapse of the Siyad Barre Regime in early 1991, and no wonder its is in this area where most of the United Nations and United States peace- keepers were deployed in 1992.

According to many reports commissioned by different scholars on Somalia, ethnic minorities living on the Benadir coast and in the inter-riverine region of Somalia, represent the only genuine group of refugees from Somalia who has been forcibly disposed from their homelands through extortion, rape and physical violence with the deliberate end for ethnic cleansing.

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