Last year, he gave Abdul Monim Abu Zant, a radical Muslim preacher from Amman who calls for an Islamist state in Jordan, his own half-hour programme on Iraqi state-controlled television.

ECONOMIST: Iraq rediscovers religion

The maize comes from the United Nation's World Food Programme (WFP), which is banned from operating in territory controlled by al-Shabab.

BBC: Welcome to tough, unpredictable Mogadishu

They are also demanding a managed reversal of the Arabisation programme which drove thousands of Kurdish families from the areas south of the old green line that demarcated government-controlled territory from the Kurdish autonomous area.

ECONOMIST: The Kurds of northern Iraq