29 Dec 2011 – Daily Monitoring Report
Key Headlines:
- Somali lawmaker declares his candidacy for post of speaker (Source: Radio Shabelle)
- EU Plans to Battle Somalia Pirates on Beaches FAZ Reports (Source: Bloomberg)
- MPs set to debate over parliament disputes in Mogadishu (Source:Radio Mogadishu Mareeg Online)
- Al Shabaab militants attack AMISOM (Source: Radio Garowe Shabelle Jowhar Online)
- Djibouti troops to start operations in Somali capital (Source: Radio Shabelle)
- Al Shabaab abducts 2 men in Gedo region (Source: Radio Mogadishu SONNA Radio Bar-kulan)
- Galkacyo Mayor resigns citing lack of cooperation (Source: Radio Mogadishu Shabelle)
- Suspected measles kill minors in Abudwak Galgadud region (Source:Radio bar-kulan Radio Mogadishu)
- Kenya Police search for woman over ‘al Shabaab’ links (Source: Coastweek Xinhua AlShahid)
- Somalia: taking back schools from Islamic militants (Source:Guardian)
- Troubled Ethiopia-Somalia history haunts Horn of Africa (Source: Reuters)
SOMALI MEDIA
MPs set to debate over parliament disputes in Mogadishu
29 Dec- Source: Radio Mogadishu, Mareeg Online, SONNA- 145 words
Somali lawmakers are set to hold a meeting in the parliament’s buildings today (Thursday). The conference is scheduled to kick off today in the morning. Members of Parliament are expected to attend the meeting in large numbers.
Omar Islow, a member of parliament confirmed that they will hold a meeting today.
One of Somali MPs Mawlid Ma’ane confirmed to local FM stations that they are going to meet today to discuss an agenda against deputy parliament speaker, Abdweli Ibrahim Muday who was accused of offending lawmakers.
The Member of Parliament also added that they are set to discuss about dispute that had rocked the parliament buildings in the recent days.
This meeting comes as Somali interior minister Abdisamad Mo’allim Mahamud ordered Somali lawmakers not to have an assembly within 4 weeks.
Al Shabaab militants attack AMISOM
29 Dec- Source: Radio Garowe, Shabelle, Jowhar Online- 149 words
There were clashes Wednesday night between al Shabaab militants and AMISOM peacekeepers in Mogadishu, the country’s capital, Radio Garowe reports.
The clashes took place in the area of Hurwaa, the fighting lasted for more than 1 hour and there were use of artillery from both sides but it is unclear how many casualties resulted from this intense fighting.
The spokesman for the district Omar Jeefana told the media that the Transitional Federal Government TFG troops and AMISOM peacekeepers have repulsed what he called people that did not want peace and fought with government.
Al Shabaab have not yet commented on the fighting that took place last night
This morning the Hurwaa area was relatively quiet despite an hour of clashes and use of heavy artillery the night before.
Al Shabaab lost their stronghold in Mogadishu, just 4 months ago after retreating from Mogadishu into southern Somalia.
Somali lawmaker declares his candidacy for post of speaker
28 Dec- Source: Radio Shabelle- 151 words
A member of Somalia parliament has announced his intention to contest for the position of Speaker of parliament.
Lawmaker Nur Ali Adan, a former minister for religious and endowment, said he is vying for the post of parliamentary speaker, adding that he would transform the parliament for better and would respect the law should he be elected.
Speaking to the press in Mogadishu, the MP said he would bring together political rivals in the country. He said he is vying for the Speaker’s post due to the current political wrangles in the country, adding that he will find a political solution for crisis in the country if elected.
Nur Ali Adan becomes the first member of parliament to announce his intention to contest for the position of the Speaker publicly. Reports say up to five other lawmakers whose names have not been made public are also interested in the seat.
TFG Defectors Displayed in Kismayo
29 Dec- Source: Somalia Report- 104 words
Al Shabaab administration in Kismayo district on Wednesday displayed in a public arena 15 soldiers with their weapons, whom they said had defected from the TFG.
“These men belonged to pro-infidels militias, but Allah showed them the right path. We bought their weapons and they are free to go anywhere they want,” the al Shabaab chairman in Kismayo, Sheikh Hassan Yacqub, told a large crowd.
“We are sending a message to the other Somalis who are still with the infidels: still you have a chance, don’t lead your country to the enemy, stop supporting and fighting alongside the enemy and come to the Mujahideen,” he added.
Al Shabaab abducts 2 men in Gedo region
29 Dec-Source: Radio Mogadishu, SONNA, Radio Bar-kulan- 155 words
The al Qaeda-linked group of al Shabaab has abducted two men at El-ade area in Gedo region. Area residents claim that the abducted men were well known in the area.
One of the abducted men according to area residents was an employee of Nation link telecommunication in Gedo region. The reason the two men were abducted is not yet known.
The kidnapped men are currently held at a cell in the town of Baardhere which is situated in Gedo region. Elders in the area have condemned the abduction of the two men and requested the extremists to release them as soon as possible.
The al Qaeda-linked group did not offer any statement about the abducted men.
Displaced Somalis complain of forceful eviction by government forces
28 Dec- Source: Radio Shabelle- 213 words
Displaced families in Mogadishu’s Hodan District have today staged demonstrations in opposition to what they said were forced displacement by Transitional Federal Government Somalia [TFG] forces. These 200 families who live in a Mogadishu camp known as Agoonta have today staged demonstrations and complained that they have been forcefully evicted from their temporary shelters by some TFG soldiers.
These demonstrators told Shabelle they have been thrown out and have no where to go. They appealed to senior TFG officials to intervene on their forceful eviction from the camp.
“We have been living in the Agoonta camp for 20 years and have in the past been displaced by Burundi troops but we came back. One of the men in the camp asked to raise funds claiming that it would be used in construction of a road leading out of the camp and installation of water pipes. Shortly afterwards, government forces were deployed in the camp and people were beaten up and forced out of their shelters. Some of the civilians at the front gates of the camp have also been shot,” said a female resident of the camp.
Majority of the civilians in this camp are women and children who are living in extreme conditions and are in dire need of assistance.
Galkacyo Mayor resigns citing lack of cooperation
29 Dec- Source: Radio Mogadishu, Shabelle- 73 words
Reports from Galkacyo district in central Somalia suggest that the town mayor Farhan Hussein Jay has resigned, Radio Mogadishu reports.
Radio Mogadishu Galkacyo correspondent Abdirizak Mohamed Ahmed confirms that Farhan Hussein resigned citing lack of cooperation from the Galmudug administration and especially the local Galmudug interior ministry.
There have been no comments from the Galmudug administration and the State President Mohamed Ahmed Alin has not yet issued comments on the mayor’s resignation.
Somaliland’s Minister of water, minerals denies corruption charges
28 Dec- Source: Hadhwanaag Times- 116 words
The minister of water and minerals for the republic of Somaliland on Wednesday strongly denied allegations of corruption against him.
Speaking at a news conference held in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, Mr. Hussein Abdi Du’ale said that the charges by the minister of finance are baseless and full of lies.
The minister spelled out that he is managing his office with confidence and honest. He said that he didn’t steal national funds, a charge cast by the minister of finance of Silanyo government.
The minister noted that the dispute erupted after he imparted the cabinet deals his ministry has signed, but noted there are no money he has stolen.
Suspected measles kill minors in Abudwak, Galgadud region
29 Dec- Source: Radio bar-kulan, SONNA- 117 words
At least five children have reportedly died of suspected measles in Abudwak district Hospital for last seven day.
Dr. Ahmed Sheikh Farah, adoctor in the area confirmed to Bar-kulan that some of the victims were referred from Las Anod, El-dibir, Ilanle and Yamarugley, where there is an outbreak of the disease.
He said several other children are now in the hospital wards for treated while others were discharged after their condition improved. The children died at Abudwak general hospital while undergoing treatment on Wednesday afternoon.
The situation prompted local residents in the area to appeal to Humanitarian health organizations to intervene as the situation is deteriorating.
Measles is a highly contagious viral disease, which affects mostly children, and there is no specific treatment for measles and most people recover within two or three weeks, and measles can be prevented by immunization.
However, particularly in malnourished children and people with reduced immunity, measles can cause serious complications, including blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhoea, ear infection and pneumonia or even deaths.
Djibouti troops to start operations in Somali capital
29 Dec- Source: Radio Shabelle- 200 words
The Transitional Federal Government of Somalia TFG has said Djibouti forces that recently joined AMISOM troops would soon start operations in the capital.
The TFG Minister for Internal Affairs and National Security, Abdisamad Ma’alin Mahmud in an interview with Shabelle said Djibouti forces that recently joined AMISOM troops would soon start conducting operations in Mogadishu.
“As you are aware, the first group of these soldiers have now arrived and the rest are on their way. They are to set be based in specific areas and the Somali people welcome them and would assist them settle anywhere they please and support them in conducting operations in areas of their choosing. The rest of these soldiers will arrive in coming days and the TFG is ready to receive them,” said the TFG minister for internal affairs and national security.
Abdisamad also said it is possible that Djibouti forces would extend operations to other parts of the country and particularly those under al Shabaab’s control once the security situation in Mogadishu has been fully ensured. Some 200 Djibouti forces have recently joined AMISOM troops from Uganda and Burundi who are based in Mogadishu and are conducting operations in the capital.
NUSOJ: 4 Killed, 7 Wounded, 19 Arrested in 2011
28 Dec- Source: Shabelle, NUSJOS- 549 words
The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) today declares that the year 2011 was characterized by the worst possible perilous conditions in which journalists operate in Somalia, as journalists were deliberately singled out for cruel and unjust treatment.
The year, worse than the previous year 2010 in all respects of press freedom violations and abuse and crushing of fundamental rights of journalists, has been a period smeared with the blood of journalists. Media professionals have been victims of the totally unrestrained and autocratic use of the gun by security and public authorities.
“The conditions in which journalists work have reached new level of crisis in 2011. Journalists have increasingly become victims of threats, deliberate violence, unfounded criminal proceedings, wounding and even heartless murders,” said Omar Faruk Osman, NUSOJ Secretary General.
NUSOJ systematically and thoroughly recorded in the past 12 months horrifying cases of killings, wounding, arrests, beatings, intimidation, harassment, judicial and persecutions of journalists. These frequent instances mostly took place in Mogadishu, Bossasso, Galkayo, Hargeisa and Berbera towns. Media houses were not spared from organized attacks.
In 2011, 4 journalists were murdered in Mogadishu alone, making it the only place where the utmost repulsive crimes against journalists were committed. A further 7 journalists were wounded, 5 in Mogadishu, while the remaining 2 were wounded in Bossasso and Galkayo.
http://shabelle.net/article.
REGIONAL MEDIA
Kenya Police search for woman over ‘al Shabaab’ links
29 Dec- Source: Coastweek, Xinhua, AlShahid – 435 words
The Kenyan police on Wednesday released a photo of a woman they believe has crucial information on activities of suspected al Shabaab militants and urged the public to help in tracing her.
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said Natalie Faye whose passport shows she is South African has entered into the country twice and is believed to be in the country in the company of her three children, a girl and two boys.
“Kenya Police has cause to believe that the said Natalie Faye has information regarding some suspects connected to the al Shabaab,” Kiraithe said in a statement released in Nairobi.
“The said Natalie Fayed is therefore required to report to the nearest Police Station or police officer.
“Any person who may have information on her whereabouts is requested to offer this information to police,” Kiraithe said.
http://www.coastweek.com/3451_
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
EU Plans to Battle Somalia Pirates on Beaches, FAZ Reports
28 dec- Source: Bloomberg- 64 words
The European Union plans to extend the mandate of its naval anti-piracy operations in Somalia to include attacks on installations and boats used by pirates, Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung reported, without saying where it got the information.
The EU’s political and security policy committee has assigned the commander of the “Atalanta” anti-piracy mission the task of revising rules to enable onshore operations, the newspaper said.
Somalia: taking back schools from Islamic militants
28 Dec- Source: the Guardian- 836 words
Schools are beginning to reopen slowly in areas of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, that were until recently controlled by the militant Islamic group al Shabaab. But an estimated 80% of students have not yet returned.
The government is also moving to create a unified syllabus for all schools. Al Shabaab controlled schools had been running a separate Islamic curriculum.
Eleven of Mogadishu’s 16 districts were under the control of the al Qaida-linked militants before their August withdrawal from the capital. Only 20 of the 78 existing schools in these districts have opened since September, but they are mainly empty as families slowly return to the capital.
Somalia was the hardest hit by the drought in the Horn of Africa, with the UN declaring famine in parts of southern Somalia.
Sadeq Salaad, from the NGO Formal Private Educational Network in Somalia (Fpens), told IPS that 78 schools in north and north-eastern parts of the capital were closed because of the daily armed confrontations between al Shabaab and forces loyal to the government in those areas since mid-2009.
“According to our statistics, only 20 schools in these war-ravaged areas have reopened and that is because of the small number of families which have returned to their homes in the city since August,” he said.
In Somalia, most schools are managed by Fpens, as the Somali government has yet to gain control over them after years of war. Fpens has been managing schools since the country fell into anarchy in 1991 with the outbreak of the civil war. During that time there had been no central government control over the country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Troubled Ethiopia-Somalia history haunts Horn of Africa
28 Dec- Source: Reuters- 270 words
Five hundred years ago, an Imam who ruled much of what is now Somalia, led a daring invasion of Christian Ethiopia, looting monasteries, burning down churches and slaying all who resisted.
Centuries on, memories of Imam Ahmad Gragn still haunt both countries, and echoes of that long and bloody history still ripple across the Horn of Africa region which considers Somalia the greatest threat to its stability.
Back then, the Ethiopians were beleaguered as the invaders occupied some two-thirds of the country. Help eventually came in the form of 400 Portuguese musketeers, who sailed into Massawa port and embarked on a six-day march to the front.
Gragn had his backers too. Reinforcements from Arabia soon rolled in alongside a gift from the Ottoman Empire: 900 of its famously hardened musket experts. The war lasted over a decade.
Fast forward to the present day, and with Ethiopian troops deploying over the border again last month to fight Islamist rebels linked to al Qaeda, the latest chapter of a book with few uplifting passages was written. Though present-day incursions and clashes are driven by strategic motivations and regional politicking against the backdrop of the global war on terror, those centuries-old grudges, raids and musket-battles still shape events.
“In Ethiopia, the damage which Gragn did has never been forgotten,” Ethiopia expert, Paul Henze, wrote in a book on the country’s history, Layers of Time.
“Every Christian highlander still hears tales of Gragn in his childhood. I have often had villagers in northern Ethiopia point out sites of towns, forts, churches and monasteries destroyed by Gragn as if these catastrophes had occurred only yesterday.”
http://af.reuters.com/article/
SOCIAL MEDIA
CULTURE / OPINION / EDITORIAL / BLOGS/ DISCUSSION BOARDS
Its Islamic legislation, stated Mr. Hassan
29 Dec- Source: HeadChange Blog- 636 Words
The professed district commissioner of this bullet-riddled town, ‘That’s what tends to make the neighborhood feel pleased. For the very first time in many years, the Shabaab Islamist group that has lengthy tormented Somalis is receding from a number of areas at as soon as, which includes this 1, handing the Transitional Federal Authorities an enormous opportunity to finally step outdoors the richesse and begin uniting this fractious nation following two many years of war. Instead, a messy, violent, clannish scramble is emerging more than who will consider manage. This really is precisely what the USA as well as other donors had hoped to avoid by investing countless bucks within the transitional authorities, viewing it because the greatest antidote to Somalia’s chronic instability along with a bulwark in opposition to Islamic extremism.
However the authorities is as well weak, corrupt, divided and disorganized to mount a declare past Mogadishu, the richesse, leaving clan warlords, Islamist militias and proxy forces armed by international governments to battle it out for your regions the Shabab are dropping. Currently, clashes have erupted in between the anti-Shabaab forces combating for your spoils, and roadblocks operated by clan militias have resurfaced around the streets of Mogadishu, even although the federal government states it’s in manage.
Numerous analysts say the Shabaab and also the authorities are splintering and predict the warfare will only improve, complicating the reaction to Somalia’s widening famine. What you now have is really a free-for-all contest in which clans are unilaterally carving up the nation into unviable clan enclaves and cantons, stated
Rashid Abdi, an analyst for International Crisis Group, which studies conflicts. ‘the way things are heading, the danger of future inter-regional wars and instability is real, Mr. Abdi additional, even following al Shabaab is defeated. Much more than 20 separate new ministates, which includes 1 to get a drought-stricken region incongruously named Greenland, have sprouted up across Somalia, some small much more than Web sites or so-called briefcase governments, other people seriously armed, all eager for worldwide recognition and also the cash that might arrive with it.
Officers using the 9,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force, the backbone of safety in Mogadishu, say they are deeply worried by this fragmentation, reminiscent of Somalia’s warlord days following the federal government collapsed in 1991. What was holding everyone collectively is now gone, lamented an African Union official, who asked not to become identified simply because he was departing in the official line that all is nicely in Mogadishu.
http://headchange.com/blog/
Somalia: A Turn-around to Somalia’s system
28 Dec- Source: RaxanReeb- 1074 Words
On Saturday, a friend of mine dropped me a message, telling me how embarrassing office politicking became in Somalia. He authoritatively put it this way, and I quote: “We routinely work in demanding environments where stakes are determined not just in vain but in an alienating manner. Losing relationships is out of context here, while you can hardly hit objectives without sacrificing a soul.” This is expectable; but what frightened me was how acute he wanted to tip me off.
In earnest, the essence of the message was that this kind of workplace where politics dominates the environment, both performance and outcomes greatly suffer. In other words, environments where people are busy with irrelevant and inappropriate wars, promoting selfish and narrow interests, high performers and active drivers of the organization experience fatigue and low morale which lead to bad outcomes, and most importantly worrying bureaucracy.
Logically, irrespective of work environments, who does what, or who bosses around, some facts remain true: the structure of the dynamic determines who’s who and the players around. Much depends on the vision of the organization and how leaders enforce the vision. In practice, however, visions and goals are normally set at the upper echelon—especially in the public sector—and what is to be done comes down the line of leadership chains.
The structured chain, as a result, puts oversight on how the organization is run. That is why evil doers who aim to sabotage the system are caught up and dealt with immediately. So regardless of who passes on the order, all managers, line supervisors included, are required to do the job right otherwise their future careers will be in jeopardy.
http://www.raxanreeb.com/?p=
Somali women RAPED by Shabaab foreigners
TOPIX SOMALIA FORUM THREAD
Today’s discussion on the board is about an article that appeared on The New York Times detailing the rape of Somali women and girls by al Shabaab militants.
Below are some of the threads
“How much lower can the country go with these criminals?? Is there any sane person still supporting the criminals?”
“The criminals are desperate so they may be deciding to give the foreign Jihadist free women to keep them from running away. No intelligent person would be hanging around the criminals at this point considering how hot it is for them with at least 6 countries chasing them around.”
“Such propaganda only a fool who has no knowledge of what occurs back home would believe this. The whole article is false and heavily exaggerated things are actually better than the worst period 1996-2003. Just like this “famine” I worry for the people who are so lazy and uneducated to go to a Somali website, read few books and call some family back home and find out whats really occuring. Is it really that hard?”