Worksheet 1

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Fill the gaps using these words from the text:

academy graduate lawless dictator warlord

enthusiastic

militia

tense

roadblock

chaos

1. If a country is ___________, it has no laws.
2. If a situation is ___________, people feel nervous because they do not

know what is going to happen.

3. ___________ is a situation in which everything is confused and in a

mess.

4. If you ___________ , you complete your studies at a college or

university.

5. An ___________ is a school or college that teachers a particular

subject or skill.

6.  6 A ___________ is a private army.
7.  7 A ___________ is a part of a road where soldiers stop traffic.
8.  8 A ___________ is someone who uses force to take and keep power

in a country.

9. 9 If you are ___________ , you are very interested in something and

excited by it.

10. 10 A ___________ is the leader of a private army.

Look in the text and find this information as quickly as possible:

1. What is the capital of Somalia? ___________
2. How many refugees are there in Somalia? ___________
3. When did the rule of the dictator Muhamed Siad Barre end?

___________

4. How many people are in the new government? ___________
5. How many Somali police officers are being trained in Kenya?

___________

6. How many militiamen are there on the streets of Baidoa? ___________

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Somalia's fledgling security force / Xan Rice sees a glimmer of hope in
the world's most lawless country as the first police cadets graduate

A man lies dying under a tree in Somalia. Then something very unusual in this
country happens: the police arrive. A white Toyota car stops suddenly and six
policemen jump out. Three of them chase a man and arrest him. The others
inspect the body. Another officer finds the murder weapon and says:
‘Evidence’.

This was a training exercise, one of the last before the 134 men and 19
women of the Armo Police Academy, in northern Somalia, graduated last
month. They are the first police trained in Somalia for 15 years. ‘You are the
beginning of hope for the Somali police,’ said Bashir Jama, 52, the deputy
police commissioner, speaking to the new graduates.

Hope is a word which you do not hear very often in Somalia, which is probably
the most lawless country in the world and one of the most dangerous. Since
the end of the rule of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, there has
been no central government. Many people have tried to form a government
but without success. There are no state schools, hospitals or social services.
More than 400,000 people are refugees in their own country. Warlords and
their gangs rule the country. ‘We have one religion, one people, so we are
one family, really,’ said Abdinur Yusuf, 70, a senior policeman who is helping
to train the new police at Armo. ‘Our problem is that many people want to be
head of that family.’

In October 2004 elders elected a 275-member government. The president is
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and the other members are the warlords who have
caused the chaos in Somalia for the last 15 years. But the government does
not control any large towns or cities; it has no ministries and no money.

Somalia used to have the best police force in sub-Saharan Africa. Now it has
just a few hundred police officers and no army. The government cannot
guarantee its own security, and it certainly cannot guarantee the security of
the people of Somalia. This is why the new police training academy was so
important. It is located in the small town of Armo, an hour's drive south of the
Red Sea port of Bossaso, and was built last year with money from the UN
Development Programme (UNDP).

Three Ugandan police officers working for the UNDP have been training the
new Somali policemen. They did not train them to use guns because the
import of guns into Somalia has been officially prohibited since 1992. The
trainers are worried that the four-month course is too short. But the trainees
are very enthusiastic. Andrew Kaweesi, 32, an assistant superintendent in the
Ugandan police, said: ‘The trainees who've never been in the militia are the

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best students. Some of the militia have bad morals . . . like taking money from
people at roadblocks.’

Sooner or later the new police force and then the new Somali army will need
members of the militia. Tens of thousands of young men work for private
militias and the only way to make them give up their weapons will be to offer
them something else. In the next few weeks about 100 of the graduates from
the Armo academy will fly to the government's base at Baidoa in central
Somalia. Another 200 other police officers who are now being trained in
Kenya will join them in Baidoa. This is the start of what the government hopes
will grow to a police force with 12,000 officers.

In Baidoa the officers will see the problems they will meet in other parts of the
country. At least 3,000 militiamen are on the streets of the town and the
situation is very tense. Last month the militias killed two World Food
Programme guards. Seven men died in an argument over a mobile phone.
But Baidoa is peaceful compared with Mogadishu. Probably the world's most
dangerous capital city for a foreigner, Mogadishu is a no-go zone for the
government too. Two groups are trying to take control of Mogadishu: one is a
group of warlords and the other the sharia courts, whose members may
include Islamic extremists.

Both groups have plenty of guns from Yemen and Ethiopia, and both are
against the new government because they might lose the money they get
from their control of ports, airfields and roadblocks. ‘If we send these
policemen there now, they will be killed,’ says Garad Nur Adbulle, the deputy
head of the Armo academy. ‘For sure.’

Match the beginnings and endings of the sentences:

1.  Somalia is lawless because …
2.  Now there is some hope because …
3.  Warlords and their gangs …
4.  The import of guns …
5.  The trainers are worried because …
6.  There will be 353 new police in Baidoa because …
7.  The situation in Baidoa is very tense because …
8. Mogadishu …

a … rule Somalia.
b … another 200 Somali police are being trained in Kenya.
c … is much more dangerous than Baidoa.

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d … there has been no police force for the last 15 years.
e … they think the training course is too short.
f … more than 3,000 militiamen are on the street.
g … is officially prohibited.
h … a new police academy has been training young police officers.

Match these words from the text with their meanings:

1. 1 evidence
2. 2 refugee
3. 3 no-go zone
4. 4 guard
5. 5 guarantee
6. 6 trainee

a   someone whose job is to look after a place or person
b   an area that is too dangerous to visit
c   things that help to prove that someone has committed a crime
d   someone who has to leave their home because it is too dangerous to

live there

e someone who is studying on a training course
f to promise that something will happen

Complete the table:

Country

Adjective/Nationality

1. Kenya

___________

2. Somalia

___________

3. Yemen

___________

4. Ethiopia

___________

5. Uganda

___________

Match the words in the left-hand column with words from the right-hand
column to make two-word expressions from the text

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1 social

a government

2 training

b phone

3 police

c services

4 state

d exercise

5 mobile

e force

6 central

f school

7 capital

g militia

8 private

h city

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KEY

1 Key

vocabulary

1 lawless
2 tense
3 chaos
4 graduate
5 academy
6 militia
7 roadblock
8 dictator
9 enthusiastic
10 warlord

2

Find the information

1 Mogadishu
2 400,000
3 1991
4 275
5 200
6 3,000

3 Comprehension

check

1 d; 2 h; 3 a; 4 g; 5 e; 6 b; 7 f; 8 c

4 Vocabulary

1 c; 2 d; 3 b; 4 a; 5 f; 6 e

5 Vocabulary

2 Word-building

1 Kenyan
2 Somali
3 Yemeni
4 Ethiopian
5 Ugandan

6 Vocabulary

3 Collocations

1 c; 2 d; 3 e; 4 f; 5 b; 6 a; 7 h; 8 g