Talk:Galkayo/Archive 1

Unverified five districts
It would be helpful if someone can explain how the two parts of the city correspond to the (unverified) five districts. -- Visviva 04:16, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry i do not agree with the comments posted in the maine page regarding Gaalkacyo city, the writer states that the regions admition office is located in the sourthern part of the city, this is not correct, indeed the regions admitions office and the mayors office is based in the northern parto of the city. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Atoore (talk • contribs) 19:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


 * If you can provide sources, the article can be corrected. --Mel Etitis ( Talk ) 20:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Coordinates
The coordinates need the following fixes:
 * The actual coordinates as given by google earth for example are  6°45'59.77"N  47°25'34.33"E

84.60.114.176 (talk) 02:12, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. BrainMarble (talk) 01:26, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

July 2010
The Marehan clan also live the city of Galkacyo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.254.9.224 (talk • contribs) 16:50, 15 July 2010
 * Are you able to cite a source for this? Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 18:35, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

May 2011
There has been a lot of errors in this articles and some of it quite frankly seemed to look like advertising for the city's progress. I have edited this article and provided REFERENCES. I believe this article should be semi protected seeing as it has been changed frequently over the past half a year.

User:26oo
 * With all due respect, your edits describing Hawiye in Galkacyo as "refugees" stretches credulity a bit. For one thing, people by definition can't be refugees within their own country; the term to use in such instances is "internally displaced". Secondly, the southern part of the city is a Hawiye stronghold, and was well before the civil war broke out in 1991. This part of the city is also officially administered by the autonomous Galmudug government (which, as I'm sure you are aware, is Hawiye dominated). Galkacyo's main Puntland administration acknowledges this, and actually has been working closely with the Galmudug administration to improve security & other local matters; they also share the tax revenue from the airport. The text has been adjusted to reflect this. Regards, Middayexpress (talk) 19:57, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

User:Middayexpess There is no evidence that the airport is shared on your part. I to the contrary have evidence that the airport is not only not shared but the officials from southern regions are treated as ordinary citizens rather than officials acting for a region. The Hawiye in Galkacyo are not refugees, I apologize for that. They are Internally Displaced People. The southern tip of the city became a Hawiye stronghold due to refugees from the south. There's no point arguing about it, it's a fact. Regards. (talk) 03:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I looked at the article and it provides not government sources. It's written by 2 partisan members of the public and it's the only website it appears to be on. I see no government website, thus this is a reference based on a invalid source. I plan to reverse your decision and provide more references. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 26oo (talk • contribs) 02:23, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Threatening to edit-war is not a good idea (please refer to WP:3RR as to why that is). The editing process on Wikipedia is collaborative; meaning, one must actively seek consensus during contention edits per WP:BRD's bold-revert-discuss cycle. That said, the fact that the tax revenue from the Galkacyo Airport is shared between the Puntland and Galmudug administrations is already sourced ("The taxes collected by the airport authority are divided equally between the two sides" ). I'm not sure why you have chosen to dismiss the article's authors as "partisan" since the article was published in the reputable Africa Review publication, which is powered by the Nation Media Group, Kenya's largest media organization (the NMG was founded by the Aga Khan and also publishes the Daily Nation, Kenya's main broadsheet). While I of course agree with your overall contention that Galkacyo is predominantly and has historically been mainly a Majeerteen stronghold, it must be acknowledged that the Galmudug administration does control the southern part of the city (which is why Galkacyo is listed on the divided city article). According to the Galmudug administration, southern Galkacyo is also its 'capital' (though the latter point is debatable). The fact is, the Hawiye presence in the southern parts of the city and central Somalia as a whole long predates the civil war; the Hawiye were actually the first of the northern Somali pastoralists to expand into southern Somalia. From the Italian book Poesia orale somala: storia di una nazione by Axmed Faarax Cali, ed. Francesco Antinucci :


 * "'Yuusuf Cali, infatti, e ancor più il suo successore e figlio Cali Yuusuf, curarono di espandere i territori da loro controllati a spese delle popolazioni che tradizionalmente utilizzavano quelle zone come pascoli, e cioè gli Hawiye. Si arrivò così a una vera e propria 'occupazione', che andava da Obbia a Gaalkacyo nell'interno, fino a Ceelbuur nel sud, e che assunse il carattere di un vero e proprio dominio esercitato nelle varie zone attraverso la figura dei naa'ib, 'rappresentanti' del sultano che imponevano attraverso una specie di milizia, il pagamento di tributi alle popolazioni Hawiye locali.'"


 * rough translation:


 * "'Yuusuf Cali, in fact, and even more so his successor and son Cali Yuusuf, took care to expand the territories under their control at the expense of those populations that traditionally used those areas for livestock grazing, namely the Hawiye. This led to a genuine 'occupation', which extended from Hobyo to Gaalkacyo in the interior, up to Ceelbuur in the south; this assumed the character of a real domination in various areas through the figure of the naa'ib, 'representatives' of the Sultan, whom, through a kind of militia, required the local Hawiye to pay tribute.'"


 * Regards, Middayexpress (talk) 20:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

(talk


 * I am not threatening a edit war, I am merely pointing out that there are errors in your referencing. You only provided one reference whereas I have been providing 2 or 3. I have lived in Galkacyo for 1 month, travelling around Africa. The airport revenue is not in the least bit shared and the control is not shared neither. Africa Review seems to be the only people saying so. The reason I called the article biased is because both of the authors are from Galmudug, another fictional entity. I suggest you search (in Google.com) the following things; Ximan and Xeeb, Awdal State, Ras Aseyr. You will see that these are "states within states" as well.


 * As for the moving north by pastoralists, that is true. However, this changed since the creation of Puntland in 1998, and the ceasefire of 1993 when forces of Mohamed Farrah Aidid kept attacking the city and at one point massacred 400 civilians over a single night. 26oo (talk) 22:28, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Your edits were disruptive and constituted an obvious attack on one particular Somali clan (the Hawiye), which is why the administrator User:Gyrofrog described them as "vandalism" on your talk page and warned you to stop. Instead of seeking consensus for your contention edits per WP:BRD, you have elected to ignore this warning and again removed reliable sources in what appears to be an attempt to erase all mention of the Hawiye-dominated Galmudug administration. You claim that the authors of that Africa Review article  are from Galmudug and that the article itself is therefore automatically unreliable, but have offered no evidence at all to support this. Instead, you allude to what you describe as "states within states"; namely, Ximan and Xeeb, Awdal State and something called "Ras Aseyr". This, however, is a false comparison. For one thing, two of the sources you have footnoted above in support of this new argument are unreliable (as they are a forum post of pictures in the Somali language and a Somaliland-based blog, neither of which is admissible per WP:NONENG and WP:SPS, respectively). Secondly, Puntland itself acknowledges Galmudug's existence as an autonomous entity, and actively works with Galmudug's administration to improve security & other local matters (c.f. Galmudug Accord ). Most importantly, that argument alluding to other so-called "states within states" is a red herring, as it has nothing to do with Galkacyo or Galmudug's official administration of the southern half of the city. Bottom line, these are not helpful edits. Middayexpress (talk) 04:49, 11 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I am not Somali but rather Ethiopian, so I would gain nothing out of attacking an individual group. I however will not continue with the so-called "attacks" and I will edit for the time being along the lines of recent events such as assassinations and other destabilising factors in the city.  If you wish to discuss the Galmudug article, I will be happy to do so in [|Articles for deletion/Galmudug]. 26oo (talk) 23:59, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I didn't ask for your ethnic/national background nor did I speculate on it. I also didn't indicate that you stand anything to gain from this affair; I only commented on your actual edits. The fact that you're again threatening unilateral action shows that you are still apparently unclear on Wikipedia's key WP:CONSENSUS policy. Fact is, you must obtain consensus on contention edits before adding material; those are the rules. Wikipedia is a collaborative project, not a one man show. For the latter, there is the sandbox. Further, as already pointed out, one of your footnoted links above (Somalilandpress) is an unreliable source since it is a blog. Per WP:SPS, blogs and other self-published sources are not allowed on Wikipedia because "anyone can create a personal web page or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field." Your other two links likewise don't say anything that isn't already mentioned in the article; namely, that there have been sporadic targeted assassination attempts against government officials. This part of your edit was retained (not deleted), with the added clarification that the killings are attributed to Islamist militants (not the Hawiye, as you initially indicated) and that Puntland has in response made a lot of administrative changes, including signing an Accord of cooperation with the Galmudug administration. It's your attempts to evidently remove all mention of southern Galkacyo's Galmudug administration that were reverted (that link above to the Galmudug deletion case is broken, by the way). Middayexpress (talk) 07:59, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Etymology
The etymology that stated that the "Gaal" part in Gaalkacyo means Oromo is very dubious and is a folk etymology. The word Gaal in old Somali meant camel; in Rendile and Raxanweyne, two languages closely related to Somali, the word Gaal means camel. Somali went through a vowel shift sometime in its history that changed the word for camel from Gaal to Geel, while Gaalkacyo still kept its original name. Oromo groups never penetrated into Mudug. Emperorgrey (talk) 05:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi there. Do you by any chance have a source for this? Because as it is, the material indicating that Galkacyo's name is derived from its original settlers, the Oromos, is sourced (and not to a tourism website). It's also hardly the only reference indicating this. The fact that Oromos had already settled Somalia's hinterland well before the northern Somali pastoralists began their southward migrations is supported by both Oromo and Somali oral histories, as well as toponyms/place-names and linguistics. Per the Somali linguist Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi, among others, the Sab Somalis themselves trace a large part of their ancestry to Oromo peoples who were assimilated; hence, why the Sab today speak languages more closely related to Oromo than to Somali:


 * "It is in the language more than anything else that the Oromo connection is evident among the Sab groups."


 * "Additionally, as far as linguistic diversity in southern Somalia is concerned, Lewis and Turton were laboring under the assumption that Maay, Jiddo, Garre, Tunni, and Dabare are all dialects of the Somali language. In fact, they are not Somali dialects but are separate though related languages, whose main characteristics, moreover, in sound and syntax show them to have much in common with the Oromo language; this is not surprising since it is well known that Oromo speakers were in the southern areas well before the Somalis arrived."


 * Given the forgoing, I have restored the etymology. Best regards, Middayexpress (talk) 11:23, 18 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I have to disagree with you. Oromo tribes first migrated into Somalia in the mid 16th century following the Adal-Ethiopian Wars. The Mudug region that Gaalkacyo is located in has long been a stronghold of the Somali people, unlike the borderlands in the west that the Oromo made intrusions into.
 * "The Somalis form a subgroup of the Omo-Tana called Sam. Having split from the main stream of Cushite peoples about the first half of the first millennium B.C., the proto-Sam appear to have spread to the grazing plains of northern Kenya, where protoSam communities seem to have followed the Tana River and to have reached the Indian Ocean coast well before the first century A.D. On the coast, the proto-Sam splintered further; one group (the Boni) remained on the Lamu Archipelago, and the other moved northward to populate southern Somalia. There the group's members eventually developed a mixed economy based on farming and animal husbandry, a mode of life still common in southern Somalia. Members of the proto-Sam who came to occupy the Somali Peninsula were known as the so-called Samaale, or Somaal, a clear reference to the mythical father figure of the main Somali clan-families, whose name gave rise to the term Somali.


 * The Samaale again moved farther north in search of water and pasturelands. They swept into the vast Ogaden (Ogaadeen) plains, reaching the southern shore of the Red Sea by the first century A.D. German scholar Bernd Heine, who wrote in the 1970s on early Somali history, observed that the Samaale had occupied the entire Horn of Africa by approximately 100 A.D."


 * Somali tribes have been living in Somalia far before the Oromo began their Gadaa migrations. Add to that the fact that numerous places in Somalia that have never been settled by Oromo, have the word Gaal in it. Such as Laas Gaal, near Hargeysa.


 * Somali is part of the Omo-Tana branch of Lowland East Cushitic, as are the Raxanweyne, Rendile, Jiddo, Garre, Tunni, and Dabare languages. All of these language have a large degree of mutual intelligibility and in ALL of these languages except for Somali, the word for camel is Gaal.


 * No matter what the Oromo admixture some Southern Somalis might have, can you provide proof that Oromo tribes migrated into Mudug, or that the meaning of Gaalkacyo is somehow connected to the Oromo?


 * Without any source other than the Oromia Culture and Tourism Commission, the website you used as your link. I will have to remove the etymology section.

Emperorgrey (talk) 20:52, 18 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Hello again. You've brought up the Af-Maay word "gaal" for camel -- it's equivalent in modern Somali (a separate Cushitic language) is geel ; this would only be relevant if Maay were a Somali dialect, which it isn't -- but have not produced a source tying that to the etymology of the place-name "Galkacyo". Please bear in mind that on Wikipedia, we only go by reliable sources, not what individual editors claim to be true. Please also understand that per WP:BRD's bold-revert-discuss cycle, one must actively seek consensus for contention edits.


 * That said, I've had a look at that quote you produced above, and it repeats some of the very inaccuracies that the Somali linguist and historian Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi addresses at length in that book I linked you to.


 * To start, the Boni are not ethnically Cushitic. They are Khoisanoid/Bushmanoid peoples who absorbed neighboring Cushitic peoples and adopted the latter's language (a language shift). This is why, although the Boni language is classified as Cushitic, it has retained many distinctive features of the Khoisan languages, such as the use of 'click' sounds in speech i.e. Boni has a Khoisan substratum:


 * "'Real history begins with the hunter-gatherers. Numbering probably fewer than a hundred thousasnd, living in small units of several families, and either staying in one place for generations or moving through the country according to the dictates of the seasons, these earliest human inhabitants may have been related to the ancestors of present-day Pygmy and Bushman peoples, and probably spoke 'click' languages similar to those spoken by the Bushmen today (Khoi and San). Remnant hunter-gatherer groups still live in remote parts of Kenya -- the Boni on the mainland north of Lamy, the Sanye along the Tana River and the Okiek and Dorobo in parts of the highlands -- but their languages have mostly been adopted from neighbouring peoples.'"


 * Second, the Oromo component in the Sab Somalis is not simply due to admixture. Per the Professor Abdullahi, it is one of their principal ancestral components. This is why in the first place the Sab speak Cushitic languages with strong Oromo affinities i.e. an Oromo substratum. Abdullahi also quite extensively debunks the anthropologist Herbert Lewis & historian E.R. Turton's novel linguistic-based co-theory that the Somali migrated in a northerly direction into Somalia from a southern home-base (the theory that the passage you've quoted above is based on). In reality, the migration occurred in the opposite direction: the Somali pastoralists migrated from a northern homeland into central and southern Somalia, displacing and/or absorbing along the way the pre-existing Cushitic, Bushmanoid and Bantu populations that they encountered. The Sab are the descendants of the Cushitic peoples that they met/displaced along the way, with admixture from the various other elements. This is supported by:


 * Both Somali and Oromo oral histories, as well as those of many neighboring Bantu tribes.
 * The earliest written record of the ethnonym "Somali", which is from a 15th century Abyssinian hymn celebrating a victory over the Ifat Sultanate's Muslim troops based in Zeila.
 * Ancient Greek and Arab documents describing the inhabitants of northern Somalia as "Berbers" (the old name for the Somalis' ancestors), and those of southern Somalia as the Zanj (Bantus).
 * The Somalis' association with the ancient Land of Punt, which is believed to have been located in the general area of northern Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti and the Red Sea coast of Sudan. That would place the Somalis quite far away from the Lake Turkana region, whereas the H. Lewis/E.R. Turton theory hypothesizes that the Somalis expanded from a northern Kenya/southern Ethiopia homeland as recently as the 1st century A.D..
 * Place-names in Somalia, many of which point to an historical Oromo presence (and in some cases, a Bantu one too).
 * Linguistics; specifically, the fact that the Sab speak distinct Cushitic languages, with many noticeable Oromo features that were retained.
 * The fact that the tombs of many Somali patriarchs -- including the progenitor of the now southern-based Abgaal Hawiye clan, who is buried in Abdal, near Berbera -- are all heavily concentrated in the northern part of the country, particularly those of the older patriarchs.
 * The fact that Somali pastoralists traditionally migrate from dryer pastures to greener ones, not the converse. Mostly arid northern Somalia is in no way more fertile than southern Ethiopia, so the movement of herdsmen was almost certainly in the opposite direction.
 * The bi-partite structure of the Somali genealogical tree showing the Sab descending from a separate paternal ancestor (simply dubbed Sab) than the northern Somalis (who descend from Samaale). This is a figurative expression of the fact that the northern Somalis and the Sab share common paternal descent at a higher, meta-ethnic level (i.e. as Cushites), not at the more immediate ethnic level (as Somalis); c.f..


 * As I wrote, Professor Abdullahi discusses this extensively on pages 12-16 in his book . It's obviously too lengthy to quote in its entirety, but here's an excerpt:




 * Besides the above, there's even more evidence which I have not posted (this time of a biological nature) pointing to the distinct origins of the Sab. Whatever the case, I have not restored the etymology (which, by the way, is hardly exclusive to the Oromia Culture and Tourism Commission; it's the standard toponymy c.f. ). I've opted instead to give you the opportunity to produce a reliable source in your reply to this post, one which explicitly supports your contention that the "Galkacyo" place-name indeed has nothing to do with the area's pre-existing Oromo populations. This will take some doing I think. Best regards, Middayexpress (talk) 05:55, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

The relationship between Af-maay and the other languages I listed above to Somali is comparable to that between High and Low German. Their mutual intelligibility also points to that fact. Second of all, you fail to realize that scholars almost unanimously place the origin of the Oromo in Northern Kenya/Southern Ethiopia. Scholars are also unanimous in their assertion that the Oromo began their migration northwards in the 16th century. How does that put Oromo tribes in Mudug? If the Oromo lived in much of Somalia as you assert, should there not be more place-names attributable to the Oromo? Why is Gaalkacyo the lone example? http://books.google.com/books?id=zpYBD3bzW1wC&pg=PA279&lpg=PA279&dq=oromo+migrations&source=bl&ots=Sy6SnexclW&sig=yyhtaib3mUkSax_btQwV0MKALqg&hl=en&ei=QKHVTeyBCI_6sAOf2PmwBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=oromo%20migrations&f=false Emperorgrey (talk) 23:15, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of the Abyssinian version of Oromo history, and the Oromos' complete rejection of it (much like the Somalis' rejection of the Abyssinians' take on Somali history and vice versa). I'm also aware that Somali and Af-Maay are distinct Cushitic languages, not comparable to high and low German |&dq=%22homogeneous+school+of+thought,+described+the+difference+between+these+two%22|&hl=en&ei=JKvVTdLLLenL0AHT_ayLBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA:


 * "'Digil and Mirifle who practice agro- pastoralism (a mixture of dry farming and herding) and speak the Maay language. These two languages are not intelligible to each other. IM Lewis, founder of the Somali homogeneous school of thought, described the difference between these two languages as similar to the difference between 'Portuguese and Spanish' (Lewis, 1980, p.5).'"


 * The foregoing does not change the fact that you still have not produced a source disputing the etymology of the "Galkacyo" toponym. I'll be understanding and give you more time to do so per WP:BURDEN. Best regards, Middayexpress (talk) 23:49, 19 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I forgot to mention that, besides Galkacyo, many other place-names in Somalia do indeed point to an historical local Oromo presence. And not just in central and southern Somalia, but in northern Somalia too. Early battles with and remnants of Oromo peoples as well as a general Oromo presence are recorded in both Somali and Oromo traditions, in addition to actual Arab and European documents pre-dating the supposed 16th century northward migration of the Oromos (for an entire paper on this, try to track down "The Galla in Northern Somaliland" by I.M. Lewis):
 * "'Fra Mauro was the first European to locate the Cushitic Oromos of southern Ethiopia on a map, including them in his 'Mappamondo' in 1460. However, their migration process started prior to the 10th century. Originally, the Oromos were pastoralists who lived between the Gulf of Aden adjacent to present-day Somaliland and the lowland areas near Bale. In the 13th century, their cousins, the Somali Cushites, who also lived as pastoralists adjacent to the Bay of Tajura, waged a vicious war to control the grazing lands hitherto used by Oromo clans. This development as well as the need for more fertile land for their cattle incited many Oromos to move southeast to the grassy plains of Banadir straddling the valleys of the WabeShebele and Juba rivers. Finding the Banadir area too dry for grazing, a number of Oromo clans moved into the highlands of Walabu and the rift valley as far as Abaya Lake -- an area known to be extremely fertile.'"
 * "'From local traditions of battles between Somali and Galla in northern Somaliland, it seems probable that the latter formerly occupied the region. This appears to be fairly definitely established for areas in the north-west of what is today the British Protectorate where some place-names are still Galla, and where there are remnants of Galla tribes such as the Akisho whom we shall meet with in later chapters. It seems also that the Galla occupied at least parts of north-eastern Somaliland'"
 * "'An Arabic chronicle of the rulers of Zeila makes it possible to refer a local tradition of Somali conflict with the Galla in the Hargeisa region to the same century. Thus at this time it appears that the Galla still occupied much of the hinterland in the centre of what is today the Protectorate. And from similar traditions of conflict with the Darod, the Galla were still also in the east of northern Somaliland, but in both areas losing ground to the militant and recently converted Muslim Somali.'"
 * Best regards, Middayexpress (talk) 10:45, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Page move
As per WP:USEENGLISH, I have moved this article to Galkayo, as used in a recent news article. In any case, the English spelling should omit the "c" as it represents, not nor. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 15:29, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Old discussions
An older discussion ("May 2011" section) was deleted from this page; I have restored it. I don't know if it was deleted because it was no longer relevant, or if it was sorted out etc. In any case, we shouldn't delete any discussions (see WP:TPO for example). We can, however, move old discussions to an archive, and furthermore this can be automated. See Help:Archiving a talk page for details. I don't want to set this up, though, unless there is a consensus for doing so. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 01:28, 1 September 2012 (UTC)