MOGADISHU, Sunday - Somalia's hardline al Shabaab insurgents have warned schools not to use textbooks provided by UN agencies and other donors they accuse of being un-Islamic.

The number of street children in Hargeisa, capital of secessionist Somaliland, is on the rise as more Ethiopian children cross the border in search of a better life.

The immigrant children are adding to the burden of local street children, most of whom have been forced on to the streets by drought and insecurity within Somaliland and further south, in Somalia.

"You can see old women accompanying about 20 children, of different ages, crossing the border into Somaliland from Ethiopia. These women may be their grandmothers, aunts or mothers," Khadar Nour, chairman of the Hargeisa Child Protection Network (HCPN), told IRIN.

"The children, who are mainly from the Oromo [region of Ethiopia], beg in the streets of Hargeisa with their mothers," Nour said. Some work as shoe shiners, sending their earnings to relatives in Ethiopia.

Mogadishu is ground zero for the failed state of Somalia, a place where pirates and terrorists rule.  Yet to the north, the breakaway region of Somalialand is stable and at peace.  What happened?

It is not an obvious refuge. Built nearly a century ago, the Italian lighthouse has been in disuse for years. Its spiral staircase is in a state of mid-collapse. Its hollowed-out rooms smell of sea rot and urine. Young men sit cross-legged in the rubble, chewing qat—a plant whose leaves contain a stimulant—and playing a dice game called ladu for hours. Some huddle in a corner and smoke hashish. They seem like ghosts in a city left for dead. But the lighthouse is quiet and it is safe—if anyplace in Mogadishu can be considered safe.

Mohammed, 18, comes for the view. From the top floor he sees the ruins of his neighborhood in the once illustrious Hamarweyne district. He can see the remains of the former American Embassy, the posh al Uruba Hotel, the Shangaani district, once teeming with gold merchants and perfume emporiums—all now blasted away. A lone goat stands in the middle of the main road, while the centuries-old houses alongside it slowly crumble, occasionally burying alive the squatters who inhabit them. Mohammed can also see, just below the lighthouse, the small crescent of sand where he and a few other guys sometimes improvise a game of soccer and the naked children clinging to chunks of discarded Styrofoam as they bob on the waves. He can take in this daily paradox of joy and destruction if he wishes. But he prefers to gaze farther out, at the unspooling carpet of tranquillity that is the Indian Ocean. "I spend my time looking at the sea," he says, "because I know that my food comes from there."

Until this year, 14-year-old Burhan Ali could hardly speak to his mother.

UCSD professor Antonio De Maio is on a mission to change the face of biomedical science, and Mohamud Qadi and Jonathan Okerblom could serve as his poster boys.

Qadi lived in refugee camps in war-torn Somalia before immigrating to Chula Vista as a child. Okerblom was jailed on drug charges and dropped out of high school.

Now Qadi, 20, and Okerblom, 24, are undergraduate students at the University of California San Diego. They work in De Maio's laboratory as part of an innovative, federally funded program created by the professor to help minority and low-income students become scientists.

De Maio, a native Venezuelan, became painfully aware of his rarity in the world of biomedical research while attending conferences over the past decade.

“If you were in a room with 200 people, you would see only one African-American, and I would be the only Hispanic,” said De Maio, 57, whose lab team explores the role of genetics in traumatic injuries.

He eventually found that few disadvantaged students pursue the graduate degrees needed to work in biomedical science, which seeks treatments and cures for diseases. They often lack early exposure to the sciences, don't know about scholarships for biomedical education or are urged by their parents to become doctors or other health professionals.

De Maio decided to single-handedly recruit such students into his profession.

After 25 years as a refugee in Melbourne, where he earned a university degree from La Trobe and worked in community radio, in January he returned to his homeland — the often violent anarchy that is Somalia.

Politics in this strife-torn country has a heavy cost. Mr Farah left behind his white Australian wife and two young daughters for fear of kidnapping. He is constantly shadowed by bodyguards. His final protection is the gun tucked into his trousers.

So why go? "Simple, because I'm a Somali."

Mr Farah is now minister for oil and minerals in the state of Puntland, a northern Somali region commonly known as the Horn of Africa. He has joined a government in a country that has been ungovernable for almost two decades and an administration not yet formally recognised by the outside world.

Tomorrow evening, tens of thousands of families across Britain will gather around their television sets, shunning the BBC and commercial channels in favour of Universal TV, the Somali community’s most popular forum.

At 8pm, their eyes will be glued to Somali Voices, a programme that aims to tackle the community’s most difficult issues head on. Last week it highlighted the importance of education and analysed the drop-out rates and academic achievements of young Somalis. This week it will examine drug problems, including the use of qat, the legal drug that is prevalent in Somali society.

Despite the enormity of the issues it tackles, Somali Voices is put together with a tiny budget and produced by a small group of young men — who together form the London Somali Youth Forum (LSYF) — working from a rundown council estate in Camden, North London.

But it is testament to their dedication that they have succeeded in reaching a community that is so often considered unreachable. For decades, one of Britain’s largest African communities (there are up to 160,000 Somalis in London alone, and tens of thousands more in cities including Birmingham, Leicester and Cardiff) has also been one of its most marginalised.

"The Americans have gone to the moon. And the Russians. The Chinese and Indians will go there soon. Africans are the only ones who are stuck here," Museveni said, addressing a meeting of the Uganda Law Society in Entebbe.

"We must also go there and say: 'What are you people doing up here?'."