Page Page Photo album of
African trip that
kyboshed Carrie
Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 21, 2019Ms Symonds to go to the US
as planned.’
For decades the Somali region
has been hit by violence from
rival Islamic terror groups
including Al Qaeda and
Al Shabaab.
In the minds of many Ameri-
cans, Somalia is associated with
the Black Hawk Down tragedy,
when 18 US Special Forces sol-
diers were killed in 1993 after
two helicopters were shot down
in the capital Mogadishu when a
mission to seize a warlord went
tragically wrong.
Donald Trump sparked con-
troversy last month when he
told Somali-born US Democrat
politician Ilhan Omar to ‘go
back’ to her native country.
Miss Ali, who was awarded the
OBE in June, was born in Soma-
liland in 1982, when it was part
of Somalia. She moved to the
UK aged four.
Miss Symonds carried out her
first public engagement at No 10alongside Mr Johnson last week
when they met guests from six
hospices. She followed it up on
Friday with her first speech at
the annual Birdfair event in Rut-
land, East Midlands, known as
the ‘birdwatchers’ Glastonbury’,
appearing alongside TV animal
rights activist Chris Packham.
Miss Symonds’ hopes of estab-
lishing herself as Downing
Street’s ‘First Lady’ were boosted
at the weekend when it was con-
firmed she will accompany MrJohnson on the Prime Minister’s
traditional September stay at
Balmoral with the Queen. She
will be the first unmarried part-
ner of a sitting prime minister to
visit the Queen’s official resi-
dence in Scotland.
Mr Johnson was born in New
York, but in 2016 it was reported
he had renounced his US citizen-
ship after being hit with a tax bill
of tens of thousands of pounds
by American authorities.
[email protected]SOMALILAND is a self-declared
nation on the horn of Africa which
celebrated independence from
Somalia in 1991 following a brutal
civil war.
Even though Somaliland has gov-
erned itself for 28 years, every other
nation – including the UK and the
United States – views it as an autono-
mous region of Somalia rather than
as an independent state.
Somaliland has for the most part
not suffered from the violent Islamic
insurgency that has plagued Soma-
lia for years.
Despite this, it was targeted by
Donald Trump’s travel ban, which
restricts the ability of citizens of
seven Muslim-majority countries to
enter America. Its citizens are
banned from entering the US as
long-term immigrants and may face
further security checks if travelling
as tourists.
Somaliland officials have been cam-paigning to be exempted from the
travel ban. In 2017, former foreign
minister Saad Ali Shire said: ‘Somali-
land is a separate country. We don’t
have the troubles and problems with
terrorism and extremism that they
have in Somalia.’
However the Foreign Office warns
that Britons should avoid all travel
to both Somalia and Somaliland,
with exceptions for the Somaliland
capital of Hargeisa and the coastal
city of Berbera.
In 1993, Somalian forces shot down
two Black Hawk helicopters, pic-
tured, in the capital of Mogadishu,
resulting in the deaths of 18 Special
Forces soldiers. Director Ridley Scott
dramatised the conflict in the 1999
movie, Black Hawk Down.Somaliland – a
‘country’ no one
calls a nation