28 Jul 2011 – Daily Monitoring Report
Key Headlines:
- Somalia takes the fight to militant group
- PM replaces Minister of Women and Family Affairs
- Puntland reveals more details on Galgala mediation talks
- Government troops secure parts of Mogadishu
- The walking corpses of Somalia: Story of worsening starvation
- Somali citizens abducted in Yemen
- Somali rebels make drought survival tough say refugees
- Security ramped up to aid Somali famine relief
SOMALI MEDIA
Government troops secure parts of Mogadishu
28 Jul – Source: Radio Mogadishu, Bar-Kulan, Radio Risala – 89 words
Government troops have secured parts of Hamar-bile area, junction 30, Towfik, Suq-ba’ad, Folerenca, Siinaay, Afarta Jirdiino and several other areas in Mogadishu early Thursday morning from al Shabaab.
Five people were killed and several others injured when government troops backed by African Union peacekeeping forces in Mogadishu launched an attack on al Shabaab in Mogadishu.
Military officials in Mogadishu said they intend to seize control of all districts in Mogadishu which are under al Shabaab.
PM replaces Minister of Women and Family Affairs
28 Jul – Source: Raxanreeb – 147 words
The prime minister on Wednesday replaced the newly appointed Minister of Women and Family Affairs. Asha Osman Aqil, the only female in the cabinet resigned last week after she was detained by al Shabaab rebels in her home town of Bal’ad district.
A statement issued by the office of the prime minister dated July 27 confirmed the appointment of Maryan Aweis Jama as the new Minister of Women and Family Affairs.
“The nomination of Maryan Awies Jama as the new Minister of Women and Family Affairs of Somalia transitional federal government came after consultations with the president and speaker”, the statement read.
http://www.raxanreeb.com/?p=
Fresh fighting breaks out in Mogadishu
28 Jul – Source: Radio Mogadishu, Shabelle, Bar-Kulan, Kulmiye and Risala – 107 words Heavy fighting between al Shabaab and the Somali national army backed by AMISOM has broken out in the capital Mogadishu this morning killing at least 4, wounding over 10 others, reports said.
The battle started in the north and southern districts of the capital Mogadishu and both warring sides used heavy shells and machine guns.
“It’s too early to comment the casualties of the ongoing war and very hard to find exact number of death and injuries now”, government officials in the front line told state media.
Somali citizens abducted in Yemen
28 Jul – Source: Raxanreb – 104 words
Yemeni militia have abducted at least 73 Somali refugees in Yemen and demanded ransom payment for their release.
Hussein Hagi Ahmed, the first counselor of Somalia embassy in Aden told RBC Radio that 73 Somali refugees entered the country last week and are being held captive by militia in the mountainous region of Abyan. The gunmen have demanded a ransom payment of $200 for each hostage, sources told RBC Radio.
http://www.raxanreeb.com/?p=
IFO II refugee camp not yet opened
28 Jul – Source: BBC Somali Service – 103 words
Nearly two weeks after Kenya’s prime minister announced the opening of a new refugee camp in the north of the country, thousands of Somalis face an uncertain future after the government reversed a decision to allow the opening of a second refugee camp at IFO.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga promised to open IFO II at Dadaab camp and it was hoped that the new camp would provide better conditions for the 80,000 refugees currently fleeing famine and the conflict in Somalia but it is still closed.
The BBC’s reporter said talks were reportedly going on between the government and aid organizations to help open the new camp.
Puntland MPs welcome dismissal of high court judges
28 Jul – Source: Radio Shabelle, Kulmiye – 117 words
The parliament of Puntland has welcomed the president’s decision to dismiss judges of the high court.
Abdullahi Muhammad, a member of the Puntland parliament said they welcome the administration’s decision to disband the high court. He added that parliament was pleased to learn about the dismissal of the high court judges in Bosaso and Galkacyo, and added that it was done in line with the constitution.
Puntland reveals more details on Galgala mediation talks
28 Jul – Source: Radio Bar-Kulan – 137 words
Authorities in Puntland have revealed that mediation talks with the militia based in the mountainous area of Galgala is meant to curb further hostilities in the region.
In a press statement, Puntland authorities admitted that they had close talks with representatives from residents of Galgala area at Afurur area, Sanag region, on 21st July this year.
Puntland says Galgala is part of its territory and the recent mediation talks in the area will foresee stability and curb further hostilities in the area.
Somalia’s semi-autonomous state of Puntland also revealed in its press statement that the main aim of the mediation talks in Galgala area is to convince locals in the area, who have been brainwashed by the al Shabaab militia to hold back their insurgency against the Puntland and denounce violence in Galgala.
EU boosts Horn of Africa aid
28 Jul – Source: Radio Bar-Kulan – 100 words
European Union International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva has announced that EU will boost its humanitarian aid in the Horn of Africa to aid hundreds of thousands dying of starvation and other drought related complications.
The announcement comes after Georgieva visited the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya and parts of Somalia, where hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees are facing starvation.
The EU commissioner said that Europe will donate $40 Million aid package to alleviate the suffering of so many people in the Horn of Africa, saying that the EU had already sent €70 million.
Row erupts within the ranks of al Shabaab in Qansah-dere, Bay region
28 Jul – Source: Radio Bar-Kulan, Radio Mogadishu – 117 words
A row has erupted within the ranks of al Shabaab militia leaders in Qansah-dere district, Bay region, after failing to agree on levies to be collected from local traders and vehicles in the area.
One of the militia leaders in Qansah-dere town who sought anonymity in fear of reprisal due to sensitivity of the issue said that al Shabaab’s area district commissioner and his treasurer had differed on money to be collected from local traders and vehicles in the district.
He added that the two leaders point fingers at each other of misappropriation of their extortions collected from local traders in the district and other illegal levies collected from vehicles plying the routes between Qansah-dere, Bardera and Baidoa town.
REGIONAL MEDIA
Kenyan Police officer killed in al Shabaab attack
28 Jul – Source: Daily Nation – 269 words
A policeman was on Wednesday killed in Mandera Town and three others injured when suspected al Shabaab insurgents attacked them with an explosive device on the Kenya-Somalia border.
The injured officers were taken to Mandera District Hospital, North Eastern deputy police boss Philip Ndolo told the Nation.
Speaking on phone from Garissa Town, Mr Ndolo said the device could have been in the sand, near an abandoned building on the border.
He said the explosive, which they suspect was a landmine, was detonated using a mobile phone by the insurgents.
“They were approaching a building on the narrow borderline separating the two countries when an explosive went off, killing one officer on the spot and slightly injuring three others. “We have intensified investigations and tightened border patrols,” he said.
WFP begins Mogadishu aid airlifts as PM demands accountability
27 Jul – Source: Africa Review – 191 words
A plane hired by the World Food Programme Wednesday landed at Mogadishu’s Aden Abdulle International Airport as the UN begun relief airlifts to Somalia.
According to sources close to the airport, the plane carried aid items meant for the people affected by the famine, including foodstuff, blankets, tents and utensils.
Airport officials indicated that other planes with similar cargo were expected to follow suit. This move appears to be a concrete response from the international community towards the famine that has overwhelmed millions of people in southern Somalia and much of the Horn of Africa region.
In another development, Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali Tuesday met with some of the people affected by the famine, during his first tour of the camps for the displaced people in Mogadishu.
Dr Ali told the media that his government was going to hold all humanitarian agencies operating in Somalia accountable.
He pointed a finger particularly at the agencies at the service of the United Nations.
“We are going to scrutinise the work of the humanitarian agencies, especially the UN bodies, seeing that they have underperformed in helping the needy people,” said the PM.
Horn of Africa Drought: More refugees flock into Dadaab refugee
27 Jul – Source: Al Shahid – 347 words
Having walked for days without food or water, at least 1,500 refugees gather daily outside the reception centre in the Dagahley refugee camp in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, waiting to be admitted.
Seven-month-old Mihag Gedi Farah is the frail face of famine in the Horn of Africa. He stares out wide-eyed almost in alarm, his skin pulled taut over his ribs and twig-like arms.
At only 7 pounds, he weighs as much as a newborn but has the weathered look of an elderly man. Mihag is just one of 800,000 children who officials warn could die across the region. Aid workers are rushing to bring help to dangerous and previously unreached regions of drought-ravaged Somalia.
Famine victims like Mihag bring new urgency to their efforts, raising concerns about how many hungry children still remain in Somalia, far away from the feeding tubes and doctors in the field hospital at this Kenyan refugee camp.
Mihag’s fragile skin crumples like thin leather under the pressure of his mother’s hands, as she touches the hollows where a baby’s chubby cheeks should be.
http://english.alshahid.net/
The walking corpses of Somalia: Story of worsening starvation
27 Jul- Source: the Nairobi Star- 1384 words
Just hours after giving birth to her first born son and still reeling from the excruciating labour pain, 20-year-old Madina Abdi had to hurriedly jump into a truck ferrying starving children and elderly men and women fleeing a severe drought that has left half of Somalia’s population in dire need of emergency food aid.
When the truck ferrying over 150 dust-filled hungry Somalis together with Madina and her yetto- be named four-day-old son finally made it into Doobley town 24 hours later and without eating anything, the young mother was so weak and barely able to get out of the crowded truck forcing her equally frail husband to carry her off the vehicle.
Around a 100 pale-looking children uncontrollably wept for food as their feeble mothers helplessly watched, not knowing what to tell them. Many of the elderly passengers could not open their mouths to speak, instead pointing at their empty bellies as if to tell us they were too hungry to speak.
The few who gathered strength to speak gave a chilling account of their journey from Dinsoor in Bakool region located around 300km to the Somali border town of Doobley. Bakol and the two Shabelle regions are the worst affected by the biting drought which has not spared the other parts of Somalia.
Their condition was so appalling, we were so touched and had to dig into our pockets to buy them food. They said the two sacks of rice, one bag of sugar and 10 litres of cooking oil and some milk for the kids would give them the necessary energy to trek to Dadaab where they hope they would get aid assistance. “I was struggling to hold my son because the truck was packed to the brim. We fled from hunger after our livestock perished and our farms in Gurban village dried up. We hope to get food and shelter at the refugee camps where we are heading. We have not celebrated his birth and neither have we even named him yet. Food is our priority at the moment,” Madina said safely tucking her toddler under her dusty clothes away from the scorching sun and dusty surrounding.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Security ramped up to aid Somali famine relief
28 Jul – Source: AP – 114 words
An African Union peacekeeping official says his forces are stepping up security in Somalia’s capital so aid agencies can get emergency food supplies to thousands of starving people.
The AU troops are trying to push al-Qaida-linked militants away from the refugee camps where Somalis have fled the country’s famine.
The al Shabaab militants already have killed men who tried to escape with their families, saying it is better to starve than accept help from the West.
Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda said Thursday that AU forces have conducted a “short tactical offensive operation.”
The devastating famine in the Horn of Africa poses a challenge to al Shabaab’s hold on areas under its control, especially in southern Somalia.
http://www.ajc.com/health/
Somalia takes the fight to militant group
28 Jul- Source: CNN- 183 words
Fighting broke out in areas in Somalia’s capital city Thursday morning as government forces backed by African Union forces attacked Islamist militant strongholds, a local journalist and a government official said.
Fighting was ongoing in Mogadishu and also was taking place in rural areas and was not near food aid deliveries, the journalist said.
Fighting has intensified this summer as Somali government forces — backed by troops from the African Union — have battled insurgents from the al Qaeda-inspired group al Shabaab.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/
Somali rebels make drought survival tough say refugees
28 Jul – Source: Reuters – 490 words
Somali refugees fleeing a deadly mixture of drought and conflict at home said draconian conditions imposed by al Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militants had made survival a fight they could not win.
Al Shabaab insurgents control much of southern Somalia, where famine has hit hardest, and the effects of the natural disaster have been compounded by the rebel fighters’ readiness to seize farm animals and forcibly recruit young men.
Wheeling his crippled five-year old daughter on a wooden cart, Noor Ibrahim Hassan queued at dawn with his family to register with the United Nations’ refugee agency, which is battling to deal with up to thousands of new refugees daily.
“Al Shabaab robbed us of livestock, telling us it was for charity. And they stole our men. Many young men were forcefully recruited into their ranks,” said father-of-three Hassan.
Hassan’s determination to ride out the drought that has struck 12 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti — the worst drought in 60 years, some aid agencies say — evaporated with the demise of his remaining livestock.
“We’d had no rain for three years. We had lost everything. People were dying around us,” he said. For days, Hassan led his family through southern Somalia’s scorched scrub, fearful of running into the al Shabaab rebels who regularly mete out beheadings and amputations on convicted criminals.
Like many of his compatriots, Hassan found his way to Kenya’s Dadaab camp, about 50 miles (80 km) from the frontier, and which now hosts more than 400,000 refugees. The registration of new arrivals and distribution of emergency food rations to the continuous wave of new-comers appears an endless task. “It’s taking longer and longer to process them,” said one aid worker from United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) manning the registration queue.
“We need more man power. We have thousands and thousands who have wristbands,” he said, referring to the colour-coded bands identifying new arrivals awaiting registration.
Freshly dug human graves and rotting cattle carcasses dotted the camp’s arid soil. On the outskirts of one of Dadaab’s three camps, Ifo, hundreds of UNHCR tents have been erected in the past four days and already house about 4,000 people.
UNHCR estimates the new settlement, dubbed Ifo-extension, will eventually host 80,000 refugees.
Crouched under his family of twelve’s new canvas, 40-year old Ali Ibrahim accused al Shabaab of compounding food insecurity levels by driving out aid agencies.
http://af.reuters.com/article/
Ex-Recruit speaks out on al Shabaab experience, methods
27 Jul – Source: Fox 9 News – 1345 words
As a new round of congressional hearings focuses in on the terror group al-Shabaab in Somalia, FOX 9 News delved into a question few have dared to ask: What is the connection between a local mosque and the recruitment of Somali youths?
As the nation’s lawmakers take a deeper look into the radicalization of American Somalis, many are asking how the young people became radicalized to begin with. How do you take a teenager and convince him it’s his duty as a good Muslim to fight — and possibly die — for a country he may not even remember?
In an attempt to answer that question, FOX 9 News spoke with a man who has seen both sides of the Holy War.
“They were telling us, ‘One day, we’ll take over the whole world,’” recalled the former recruit, who will be identified only as Marsel.
Marsel said he was recruited for jihad in Somalia at just 16 years old. “I was involved with the mother organization,” he admitted.
Marsel said he was trained by al-Quaeda for a group that would later become known as al- Shabaab. At training camp, there were religious lectures at night and terrorism classes by day, he said.
“They were like a mystery to us,” Mansel recalled. “In the mornings, they were our teachers — teaching us everything from hand grenades to making bombs.”
Mansel’s journey began in the early 90s, when Somalia was beginning its long road into anarchy. Injured and disillusioned, Marsel found his way — like thousands of other refugees — to Minnesota, where he married and settled down to raise a family.
He sent his three young sons to Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, the state’s largest mosque located in south Minneapolis, on the weekends to keep them away from drugs and gangs. Then, Mansel said one of his own children brought home a message that spoke to him once before.
“’Is America our country, our enemy, or ally? How do we know that, dad?’ When your children approach you and ask you these kinds of questions, a parent is only left to wonder: What am I going to do about my children?” Mansel said.
Somalia: victim of war, famine and a pestilence of policy
27 Jul – Source: the Guardian – 844 words
The news from Somalia is grim. Last week, the UN declared a famine in two southern areas, calling the food crisis Africa’s worst since 1991-92 (which was also in Somalia). The UN estimates that a staggering 3.2 million people need urgent assistance.
The immediate cause of the crisis was the recurrent failure of seasonal rains across the Horn of Africa. But it will be exacerbated by the continuing instability in Somalia, where the internationally recognised (and appointed) government controls but a few blocks of the capital, Mogadishu. The rest of the country is under the sway of various other groups, including the al- Shabaab militia. For most Somalis, the famine represents a deeper trough of an already existing and perpetual misery of abject poverty and instability.
International policy to stabilise Somalia has been a total failure. Yet, the same policies persist. In 2000, the “international community” set up what it thought was a legitimate government in Somalia, in an attempt to create a political consensus where none existed. Today, the so-called Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is neither transitional nor federal, nor even really a government, in that it offers no prospect of a transition to a more durable alternative, does not represent the rest of Somalia in a meaningful way, and, as a government, provides no services to its people, who did not elect it, in any case. The TFG is, in the words of a recent International Crisis Group report, “incompetent, corrupt and hobbled by weak leadership” and should be given a deadline to shape up, or be removed. Very few observers expect it to shape up: the current system pays the cabal who control it far too well.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/