18 Jul 2011 – Daily Monitoring Report
Key Headlines:
- Puntland planning to form new force to secure disputed Somali regions
- Somali govt warns against the use of old passport
- IDPs in Mogadishu complain about lack of health care
- Somaliland: Female police officer gunned down in Las’anod city
- Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch has aided Somalia militants U.S. says
- 500000 children at risk of imminent death in the Horn of Africa
- U.S. red tape could doom Somalia
- Al Shabaab and drought
SOMALI MEDIA
Puntland planning to form new force to secure disputed Somali regions
18 Jul – Source: Radio Shabelle – 171 words
A meeting in which members of the Puntland parliament are discussing the security of Sool, Sanaag and Ceyn regions has today started in Garowe, the headquarter for Nugaal region. The meeting is mainly aimed at ways the Puntland Administration could tighten its grip on these regions. Those attending the two day meeting are said to be planning to mobilise new forces and academics that are to work together in ensuring the security in these regions. The Regional Coordinator for Puntland’s Ministry of Defense, Ali Muhammad Ali, has said the meeting is to mainly discuss the administration role in ensuring security in these regions. He said Puntland is now mobilizing a special force and scholars who are to work together in ensuring security in this region.
Al Shabaab demolishes water reservoirs in Hiiraan region
17 Jul – Source: Radio Bar-Kulan – 127 words
Al Shabaab in Hiiraan region have demolished four water reservoirs in Ganuribad, an area between Mahas and Beledweyne town. Al Shabaab have reportedly destroyed the reservoirs because they are being used by the enemy. Local residents have denounced the demolition of the reservoirs.
Somali govt warns against the use of old passport
18 Jul – Source: Radio Shabelle, Radio Kulmiye – 138 words
Somalia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday warned against the use of the former national green passport, which was introduced before the collapse of the military regime led by Mohamed Siad Barre. After a joint press conference held in Mogadishu, Somali Immigration and Naturalization director Abdullahi Gafow Mohamoud and the General Director of Foreign Ministry Affairs, Dr, Osman Mohamoud Adam said the use of green passport has been banned. Mr. Gafow noted that the government has introduced the new passport which can be obtained both inside and outside of the country.
IDPs in Mogadishu complain about lack of health care
18 Jul – Source: Shabelle – 127 words
Drought displaced families in Mogadishu are complaining about the lack of health care as malnourishment and other curable disorders become the main cause of death among children. Due to the living conditions in the camps, IDPs are concerned about the outbreak watery diarrhea, measles, and malaria.
http://www.shabelle.net/
Somali pirates “release” commercial boat carrying livestock
17 Jul – Source: Radio Galka’yo – 132 words
Somali pirates have reportedly released a local commercial boat carrying livestock from Puntland without a ransom demand according to Radio Gaalkacyo. The boat was reportedly transporting and livestock belonging to Somali businessmen from the town of Bosaso in north-eastern of Somalia.
Somaliland: Female police officer gunned down in Las’anod city
17 Jul – Source: Somaliland Press – 230 words
The Somaliland Criminal Investigation Unit (CID) police in the city of Lasanod are on high alert this evening after one of their own colleague was gunned down in front of her house by masked assailants. According to eyewitnesses present, three assailants armed with a hand pistol shot the victim Mrs. Sahra Elmi. No arrests have been made in connection with the incident so far.
http://somalilandpress.com/
REGIONAL MEDIA
AMISOM treats Somali IDPs
18 Jul – Source: New Vision – 320 words
Doctors from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) are helping to tackle an outbreak of measles at a camp for Somalis displaced by the drought ravaging the country. AMISOM doctors have begun offering free medical treatment, including distributing Vitamin A pills, AMISOM spokesperson, Lt Col Paddy Akunda has said.
He said, in addition to measles, they are also dealing with other diseases, such as malaria and diarrhoea, resulting from a combination of severe malnutrition and the unsanitary conditions at the camp. Serious cases are being referred to AMISOM’s Level 2 hospital at the main base. The camp, which has sprung up in the last two weeks next to the Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu, is estimated to hold 700 people although the number is increasing every day. Many, particularly children, show signs of severe malnutrition and say they have walked for up to five days in search of food. Living conditions at the camp are also extremely poor and have been worsened by recent heavy rains in the capital.
AMISOM’s Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) unit has erected 5 large waterproof tents at the camp to serve as accommodations and a medical centre.” Though we have few resources, we are doing all we can to help alleviate the suffering,” said CIMIC head, Lt Col. Kaamurari Katwekyeire, adding that AMISOM planned to provide waterproof plastic sheeting to cover the refugees’ shacks which are currently made of sticks and cloth. He also called on international aid agencies to act urgently and help prevent a catastrophe.
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/
Tents arrive for Somalia refugees
17 Jul – Source: Capital News – 449 words
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Sunday morning took delivery of the first consignment of emergency tents destined for Dadaab refugee camp. This is the first in a series of UNHCR emergency airlift flights to bring aid to uprooted Somalis in remote refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.
Speaking after offloading the cargo at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport UNHCR Public Information Officer Andy Needham said the batch containing 100 tonnes of family tents will then be transported by road to Dadaab on Tuesday. “They arrived this morning at 9am and they have now been offloaded. Once they clear customs depart for Dadaab in a truck convoy on Tuesday,” Mr Needham said.
The tents he added will be distributed to about 2,300 families that are in most need of shelter including those that will be moved to the recently opened Ifo 11. The officer disclosed that this is the first of five similar consignments that will arrive over the next few days.
http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch has aided Somalia militants, U.S. says
18 Jul – Source: La Times – 880 words
Al Qaeda’s powerful branch in Yemen has provided weapons, fighters and training with explosives over the last year to a militant Islamic group battling for power in Somalia, according to newly developed American intelligence, raising concerns of a widening alliance of terrorist groups.
Leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen also have urged members of the hardline Shabab militia to attack targets outside Africa for the first time, said U.S. officials who were briefed on the intelligence. The information, they said, comes in part from a Somali militant who was captured en route from Yemen to Somalia and interrogated aboard a U.S. warship before being arraigned in New York on terrorism charges this month. Further intelligence was gleaned from detailed digital files found at Osama bin Laden’s hide-out in Pakistan after he was killed in May.
U.S. counter-terrorism officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing intelligence matters, say text messages found on portable flash drives at the compound where Bin Laden was killed establish that he had sought to strengthen operational ties between Al Qaeda and the Shabaab.
The heads of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, or AQAP, acted at times as Bin Laden’s go-betweens to the Somali fighters. Among those who tried to forge the alliance was Nasir Wahayshi, an AQAP leader who previously operated as Bin Laden’s personal secretary, said a former U.S. intelligence official who was briefed on the matter.
“There was a lot of traffic” about Somalia in the Bin Laden house, the former official said. Some of the thumb drives were smuggled out of Somalia and through Yemen before couriers handdelivered those to Bin Laden in the Pakistani city ofAbbottabad, the ex-official said. The CIA gained other information when Somali authorities allowed them to interview Shabaab militants imprisoned in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, U.S. officials said. The CIA asked about the militants’ ability to launch attacks outside Somalia as well as the group’s command structure.
Discussing the threat with reporters at the Pentagon recently, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen are “trying hard to kill us” and “there is a growing cell [in Somalia] and a growing connection to Al Qaeda that we are all concerned about.”
In a sign of the expanding front, U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at suspected militants in Yemen in May and in Somalia in June. They were the first known military attacks in Yemen since 2002 and in Somalia since 2009.
http://www.latimes.com/news/
500,000 children at risk of imminent death in the Horn of Africa
17 Jul – Source: All Voices – 130 words
The severe drought gripping the Horn of Africa affecting over two million malnourished children, of which half a million are at “imminent risk of dying,” he said Sunday the United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF).
“Half a million children suffer severe malnutrition and are at imminent risk of dying. They need immediate help this is a very serious crisis,” warned UNICEF’s executive director, Anthony Lake, during a press conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
This Saturday UNICEF achieved success first shipment of supplies to southern Somalia, after reaching an agreement with the Islamist militia that controls the region. According to UN figures, some eleven million people in the Horn of Africa need food assistance due to the worst droughts in decades. The most affected countries are Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.
Kenya wants to stop flow of Somali refugees
17 Jul – Source: VOA – 262 words
Kenyan and British officials met in Nairobi Sunday to discuss the drought that has sent thousands of Somalis fleeing into Kenya to escape starvation. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga said Kenya would like feeding programs to be set up on the Somali side of the border to stop the flow of refugees. He also renewed a call for greater international help in dealing with the crisis caused by the drought.
Overcrowded camps in Kenya’s Dadaab area are housing an estimated 440,000 Somali refugees, more than four times the number of people the camps were meant to hold. Kenya agreed on Friday to reopen an unused camp in eastern Dadaab to ease the overcrowding.
Odinga spoke after meeting with British minister for international development, Andrew Mitchell. On Saturday, Mitchell said Britain is providing $83 million in emergency aid to assist drought victims.The aid is intended for Somali refugees at camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, as well as hundreds of thousands of malnourished people in Kenya and Somalia. The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years, sending thousands of Somalis who have no food into neighboring countries for help.
U.S. red tape could doom Somalia
17 Jul – Source: The Daily Beast – 877 words
Last week Secretary Hillary Clinton’s office at the State Department announced that the U.S. was willing to send humanitarian aid to Somalia despite the fact that much of the country is under the control of al Shabaab, a ragtag bunch of grafters and militants, some of whom have ties to Al Qaeda. Somalia is bearing the brunt of the worst famine and drought in 60 years—the worst since Africa’s colonial period.
Ten million people who live on the knobby spit off the East African coast called the Horn are suffering the famine’s effects: starvation and death. Somalia is bearing the brunt of this crisis, especially the nearly 3 million people who live in country’s south. The death toll could easily surpass that of Ethiopia in the ’80s, which left 1 million people dead. State Department intervention could spur the international community to act. But sadly, Clinton’s announcement is meaningless thanks to a bureaucratic snafu within the U.S. government.
In 2009 the U.S. spent roughly half as much in food and disaster aid to Somalia ($130 million) as it did in military assistance ($246 million) not including CIA programs, such as drones. Yet thanks to a gnarl of red tape between the State and Treasury departments, it’s currently illegal for America to provide southern Somalia so much as a cup of rice or a bag of corn, due to the vagaries of an ill-defined law against providing material support to terrorists.
BLOGS/CULTURE/EDITORIAL
Al Shabaab and drought
15 Jul – Source: HIiraan Online ( Muuse Yussuf) – 1238 words
The decision taken by al Shabaab to allow international aid agencies to operate in some of the regions under its control such as Baidoa city to provide relief and humanitarian assistance is a revealing story that should not be left without some comments. For those with short memory span, remember those days when al Shabaab used to ban all foreign aid charities’ work in their regions in the pretext that these organizations were “infidel and un- Islamic” entities that were determined to convert their fellow Somalis to Christianity? Well, al Shabaab arrogance and stubbornness seem to be fading away as their grip on power is being weakened by a mixture of inner power struggle, the death of Osama Bin Laden and the gradual disintegration of his Al-Qaeda network and the international community’s determination to defeat global terrorism networks.
The decision has exposed that al Shabaab is at its lowest ebb and that it is only matter of time before its gradual disappearance from Somalia’s political map. Indeed, gone are those days when the movement boasted of its power by desecrating the shrines of Sufi saints, by mob-lynching women adulterers, and by bragging their determination to implement Sharia. By allowing foreign aid agencies, it is highly probably that agents of anti-terrorism will infiltrate in the Al-Shabaab structure to destroy it within. Loads of CIA operatives will ensure that its leaders are eliminated, followed by a popular uprising against the movement. (…)
The irony of the situation is that Al-Shabaab and its Al-Qaeda/Wahabiya-imagined is unable or are unwilling to intervene in the current drought, which is sweeping across the county, in order to save hundreds of thousands from starvation. Consequently, al Shabaab leaders are now being challenged intellectually by the same masses that they have been oppressing for so long. The populace is now asking them the following hard nosed questions: · What can you and your Wahabiya-Al-Qaeda-inspired can practically do to help us out of this devastating famine?
· And do not tell us that God is punishing us for being bad Muslims because we have been faithful to and observant of your draconian way of Islam, which included chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women adulterers to death, two phenomena that have never been part of Somalis’ mystical Sufi Islam? · Surely, god is not so stupid and cruel to punish those who obey his laws as we have doing?
Al Shabaab leaders are struggling to find some answers to these legitimate questions, but so far have failed to come up with any solution except to invite the “infidel” organizations and their powerful logistical networks to help out hundreds of thousands of Somalis. Pragmatism has overtaken the rhetoric of distorted principles and dogmatic beliefs! For the masses, as they could not get convincing answers from their oppressors, the only thing they can do is to escape to neighboring Christian countries, such as Kenya; at least these countries allow Muslims and non- Muslims to seek protection from natural disasters and wars. (…)
The fact of the matter is that al Shabaab leaders are now learning the difference between preaching dogmatic beliefs and boasting about implementation of Sharia in Somalia and the difficult task of governing a tribal society in a harsh drought prone environment. They are also learning how they cannot operate in isolation from an inter-connected world where images of starving children are beamed across the globe through TV screens. Ironically, the “infidel” is coming to save al Shabaab and its populace! A painful reality to digest for the leaders!! In conclusion, it seems though Al-Shabaab is on its way out of Somalia’s messy politics, and therefore, in my humble opinion, the TFG and the international community, should ensure legitimate governance structures are in place, which are capable of taking over from the declining force. This is to prevent power vacuum and anarchy.
http://www.hiiraan.com/op2/