May 13, 2015 | Daily Monitoring Report.

A Boat Carrying 1000 Somalis From Yemen Due To Dock At Bossaso port

13 May – Source: Goobjoog News – 294 Words

A boat carrying approximately 1000 Somali refugees from Yemen is expected to dock at Bossaso port in the regional state of Puntland in forthcoming hours according to the Puntland administration.The boat, which reportedly set out a day before, is ferrying Somalis including women and children who are fleeing the escalating Yemen violence.The Somalis were trapped in Yemen where they have been residing since the government of Mohamed Siyad Barre was toppled in the early 1990s.

Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing civil war in Somalia crossed to Yemen over the past twenty five years.Yemen became home for ferocious fighting between the internationally recognized government and the Houthi rebels, who have taken control of large swathes of Yemen. The conflict has claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands including Yemenis, and Somali refugees who had previously escaped the Somali conflict. Since 1st April, 4,423 of Somali refugees have returned home in small boats by themselves. They accused the government of failing to intervene in their situation.

Life went from bad to worse for the Somalis living in Yemen after the Federal Government revealed that it is supporting the ongoing Saudi-led military offensive against the Houthi rebels who are fighting to take over internationally recognized government.The Somali government promised to dispatch ships and planes for the evacuation of Somalis caught in Yemen’s conflict. On 27th April, the Director of the Parliament Mohamed Iyow told Goobjoog that the parliament has approved to send two ships to evacuate Somalis in Yemen.While other foreign nationals have been evacuated from the gulf nation, the federal government has not yet moved to evacuate its citizens despite announcing plans to bring back them home.

Key Headlines

A Boat Carrying 1000 Somalis From Yemen Due To Dock At Bossaso port (Goobjoog News)
Over 200 Internally Displaced Youths Gain Life-Skills Training In Baidoa (Somali Current)
Puntland MPs Demand Emergency Session Over Security Lapse (Garowe Online)
Puntland Puts Surrendered Al-Shabaab Officials On Display (Garowe Online)
Judge Keeps Terror Suspects In Jail But Says He’s Open To Ideas (MPR News)
Two Swedes Somali Plead Guilty In NY Over Al-Shabaab Conspiracy ( AFP/Yahoo News)
UNHCR Chief Visits Somali Port Of Kismayo Meets Refugee Returnees (UNHCR)
Life And Opportunity In The World’s Biggest Refugee Camp (AFP/Yahoo News)
The Siren Song Of IS: Why Young Midwestern Somalis Try To Join Islamic State (The Economist)

NATIONAL MEDIA

Over 200 Internally Displaced Youths Gain Life-Skills Training In Baidoa

13 May – Source: Somali Current – 207 Words

An international refugee organization has helped 206 Somali youth gain life skills training through a course that lasted for ten-months. The youth were mainly from Baidoa, the capital of South Central Somalia. The International Organization for Migration (IOM), in collaboration with Rural Education and Agriculture Development Organization, initiated the project on 1 July 2015 and were funded by the Common Humanitarian Fund. The participants of the project were selected from internally displaced families and the host community. They were trained in carpentry, masonry, entrepreneurship, tie-and-dye, tailoring and traditional weaving skills.

The graduation ceremony was attended by ministers from the Interim South West Administration, internally displaced persons’ camp leaders and civil society members. Abdullahi Abdikadar Mohamed, a representative of the IOM, said the trainees showcased their skills by making desks and chairs for the local primary and secondary schools. “Two IDP camps also had their latrines rehabilitated by the masonry and carpentry students. These new skills offer new opportunities for our youth in terms of employment and reduce the likelihood that they will migrate irregularly or join militia groups,” Mohamed said. The host community and the IDP’s welcomed the projects, saying it would go a long way in enhancing security and creating jobs for youth.

Puntland MPs Demand Emergency Session Over Security Lapse

12 May – Source: Garowe Online – 231 Words

More than 20 MPs in Somalia’s Puntland parliament have demanded an emergency session over what they described ‘the worsening security situation, imminent political threats and long overdue pays’, Garowe Online reports. In a letter bearing the signatures of 21 MPs of the 66-seat-chamber and sent to Garowe Online, the MPs requested Parliament Speaker to call for the emergency session in light of the constant Al-Shabaab attacks in Bossaso, unpaid salaries of government forces and civil servants, and imminent threats from external sides on Tuesday.

“The state is facing serious security threats, and they continue to gain momentum by day in light of the latest events including the deadly capture by the enemy of Yalho village, the self-declared administration of Somaliland’s encroachment which edged closer to Garowe and the near-daily Al-Shabaab attacks in the commercial city of Bossaso,” read the letter. Citing article 65 of Puntland constitution, MPs said the session is necessary ahead of the next parliamentary session on June 15. We have “seen the complaints of forces and civil servants, and assessed the political dangers facing Puntland,” said the MPs, adding that they requested urgent parliamentary consultations on the prevailing matters. Puntland MP, Abdiasis Saed Mohamud said, he’s is concerned about the security, especially since May 9. Bossaso saw wave of Al-Shabaab attacks, mainly targeting security forces and night raids on residences of senior government officials.

Puntland Puts Surrendered Al-Shabaab Officials On Display

12 May – Source: Garowe Online – 136 Words

Amidst an unprecedented upsurge in terror attacks, Somalia’s northeastern state of Puntland has displayed three Al Shabaab officials who handed themselves in four months ago in the Gulf of Aden Port City of Bossasoon Tuesday, Garowe Online reports. Mukhtar Abdinur Ahmed, the commander of militants in the Galgala mountains, Abdiwajid Ali, terror poet, and Gulled Bashir, a fighter, defected from the group in January according to Puntland Police Force Commander-in-Chief Gen. Mohamed Saed Jaqanaf. Jaqanaf told reporters that the three admitted to Al Shabaab membership, but sought amnesty from the government. The display marks the first in recent months as the current administration tries to fend off damaging threats posed by the militants. Bossaso, Puntland’s most populous city has become a scene for military-style ambushes and night raids. The Puntland military court previously handed down dozens of death sentences, and life imprisonment sentences to Al Shabaab members.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Judge Keeps Terror Suspects In Jail But Says He’s Open To Ideas

13 May – Source: MPR News – 816 Words

A Minneapolis judge offered a flicker of hope Tuesday to families of five young men accused of trying to join the ISIS terror group who now sit in county jails. Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis ruled that the five men will continue to remain in jail pending trial, but he said he was interested in finding an alternative that would work for the families and the community. The federal judge said he’s open to looking at less restrictive conditions, but expressed concern about sending them to a halfway house without a detailed plan in place. Four of the men were appealing the April ruling of a magistrate judge who ordered their detention. Attorneys described their clients as young men with clean criminal records and strong family and community support. Adnan Farah, Zacharia Abdurahman and Hanad Musse, all 19, and Guled Omar, 20, were arrested April 19. Hamza Ahmed, 20, was arrested last November and charged in February with trying to aid a foreign terrorist organization and conspiring to provide support. Davis launched a nationally watched experiment earlier this year when he agreed to let another terror suspect live at a halfway house, rather than prison, pending trial. On Monday, however, he ordered that man, 19-year-old Abdullahi Yusuf, back to jail after Yusuf apparently violated unspecified rules at the halfway house.

“It’s not black and white with me on these issues,” Davis said Tuesday of detention. “It’s a dilemma that this court has to deal with, with so many arrested.” He said he’ll review each case separately. “At some point we have to sit down and map out a plan,” Davis said. “It’s not a cookie-cutter situation.” Farah’s lawyer, Paul Engh, said Farah is only accused of thinking about traveling to Syria to join ISIS. “He may have talked the talk,” Engh said. “But he did not walk the walk.” However, prosecutor John Docherty said Farah’s detention was appropriate. Farah at least twice planned to travel to Syria, and the threats of ISIS are well known, he said, adding, “Anyone who’d want to … help (ISIS) is someone who presents a danger to the community.” Jon Hopeman, Abdurahman’s lawyer, proposed his client be allowed to live with his father or a halfway house and that Abdurahman be allowed to participate in a “circle of faith” at his father’s Minneapolis mosque to give him a core grounding in the community. “I don’t find this young man to be radicalized or embittered,” Hopeman said. Davis said he was open to Hopeman’s proposal but kept him in custody for now. Davis ordered the same for Musse, Farah, Ahmed and Omar, but again said he was open to alternatives.

Two Swedes, Somali Plead Guilty In NY Over Al -Shabaab Conspiracy

12 May – Source: AFP/Yahoo News – 311 Words

Two Swedes and a Somali, handed to the FBI more than two years ago in Africa, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to aid the Al-Qaeda-linked Al -Shabaab group in Somalia, US prosecutors said.The trio face up to 15 years in an American prison and deportation, prosecutors said in New York.Prosecutors say Madhi Hashi, 25, from Somalia, and Swedes Ali Yasin Ahmed, 30, and Mohamed Yusuf, 32, were members of the Shebab militant group in Somalia from December 2008 to August 2012. Al-Shabaab is blacklisted as a foreign terrorist organization in the United States and federal prosecutors have spearheaded efforts to try foreign terror cases in New York courts in recent years.

Al – Shabaab has claimed responsibility for some of the worst terror attacks in East Africa, including an April massacre at a Kenyan university that killed 148 people. The Swedes fought against US-funded African Union forces in Somalia, prosecutors said. Hashi was close to Omar Hammami, the US-born public face of Shebab who was killed by fellow fighters in 2013, they added.Yusuf appeared in a Al- Shabaab video to encourage recruits to travel to Somalia and join the group, and threatened a cartoonist who depicted the Prophet Mohammed — considered blasphemous to many Muslims. US officials said the men were arrested by local authorities in East Africa en route to Yemen in August 2012, then handed over to the FBI in November 2012 and flown to New York to be prosecuted.Acting US attorney Kelly Currie said the defendants were “committed supporters” of the Islamist insurgent group, which holds large swathes of territory in the south and center of Somalia.

UNHCR Chief Visits Somali Port Of Kismayo, Meets Refugee Returnees

12 May – Source: UNHCR News – 622 Words

Twenty-two-year-old Ali Abdi Madar was born and raised in Kenya’s sprawling Dadaab refugee camp. But when the opportunity arose to go to Somalia, his home country, he decided to take it. Ali arrived in the southern Somalia port city of Kismayo last February, leaving his mother and brother behind, and said he wants to spend the rest of his life here. Talking to UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who visited Kismayo last week on a short trip to Kenya and Somalia, Ali said he speaks to his mother every night and misses her, but has no regrets about his decision. “If I get a good job, I will bring my mother here,” he said. Though glad to be back in Somalia, Ali acknowledged that building a life in a country he does not know, which is itself trying to rebuild after decades of conflict, is not easy. “I have finished my secondary school [in Dadaab], but I still cannot find a job,” he said.
Ali has returned under an agreement, signed in November 2013 between UNHCR and the governments of Kenya and Somalia, to assist Somali refugees in Dadaab to voluntarily return to selected areas of Somalia in safety and dignity. High Commissioner Guterres discussed the agreement and the way forward during his talks with top Kenyan and Somali officials, including Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud and Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta. “The emphasis is not to push people to go back, but to create more conducive conditions for sustainable return and reintegration in Somalia,” he said. Currently Dadaab hosts more than 350,000 refugees living in five camps. Ninety-five percent of the refugees who reside there are Somali. The first camp at Dadaab was established in 1991. More than two decades of war and instability, compounded by drought and famine, have led generations of Somalis to settle there, unable to return. As part of a six-month UNHCR pilot project for voluntary return and reintegration, a limited number of refugees began returning in December last year. So far, more than 2,000 refugees have returned to the Luuq, Baidoa and Kismayo districts.

OPINION/ANALYSIS/CULTURE

“People think there’s no life in the camps, but there is life,” said Liban Mohamed, a 28-year old filmmaker from Kismayo, in southern Somalia. “There are problems here but there are also hopes and dreams.” Mohamed’s dream is to be resettled in the US where his mother and siblings already live, and to continue making films. For others the dream is closer to home, and nearer to being realised.”

Life And Opportunity In The World’s Biggest Refugee Camp

13 May – Source: AFP/Yahoo News – 973 Words

Soon after dawn Bashir Bilal sat outside on his usual plastic jerry can surrounded by young girls and boys chanting Koranic verses. Each child clutched a worn plank of wood instead of an exercise book, writing on it in Arabic script with ink made from charcoal and water. In Somalia the Islamic madrassa is often the only education on offer, but here in the Dadaab refugee camps it is just the start. Later in the day the children are able to attend, for free, primary and even secondary school while scholarships are available for college education. Uprooted and dispossessed, life as a refugee is tough. But for the Somalis who have for years, or even decades, called Dadaab home there are opportunities too. Bilal, 47, used to live in Afgoye, a breadbasket town 30 kilometres (18 miles) northwest of the capital Mogadishu. When he came to Dadaab five years ago he found better schooling options than at home where fees were high and children would often spend their days helping out on the family farm. “Children here in Dadaab have the privilege of better education,” said Bilal. “They will bring change in Somalia when they go back.”

Just when they will go back is contentious. Kenya’s government has hosted refugees from Somalia since 1991 when civil war tore the country apart. Since then Dadaab has grown into the world’s largest refugee settlement, with over 350,000 residents. Kenya now wants the camps shut down claiming they are a security threat used by members of the Shebab, Somalia’s Al-Qaeda branch, for recruitment, training and downtime. Albert Kimathi, the area’s top government official who, as deputy county commissioner is responsible for security, called Dadaab “the breeding ground, the training ground” for Shebab. “They use the camps as safe havens,” he said. “I’m not branding anyone a terrorist, but quite a number of these terrorists come from Somalia. These people are one and the same,” said Kimathi. People living in the camps find such allegations perplexing. Yakub Abdi left the southern city of Kismayo in 2011 after Shebab gunmen accused his father of being a spy, and then executed both his parents. He hates and fears the militants and so volunteered to chair a neighbourhood watch group in one of Dadaab’s five camps. “This is not the place they are recruiting,” said the 29-year old father of two. His 260 fellow volunteers in the Community Peace and Protection Team keep tabs on new arrivals to their camp, reporting anyone suspicious to police.

“Somalis are one of the most troubled groups of immigrants. Many young Somali men are in prison; many Somalis of both sexes drop out of high school. Unemployment hovers around 21%, the highest of Minnesota’s five largest immigrant groups. More than half of Minnesota’s Somalis are poor. Many are isolated from other immigrants and even from other Muslims, who find them prickly, proud and standoffish. No clear pattern of IS recruiting in Minnesota can be discerned. The six who were recently arrested were largely self-radicalised through the internet or lured by “peer-to-peer” recruiting: a process by which friends persuade friends to join a terrorist group, compare notes on how to raise money for a flight, and make connections with middlemen in Turkey.”

The Siren Song Of IS: Why Young Midwestern Somalis Try To Join Islamic State

09 May Edition – Source: The Economist – 966 Words

On May 3rd two Muslim men with rifles attacked a security guard at a venue in Texas showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Both were shot dead before they killed anyone—they were incompetent terrorists, fortunately. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. There is no evidence that it had any direct involvement, but the gunmen may have been inspired by the global jihadist movement. One of them, Elton Simpson, was questioned by the FBI in 2010 and later convicted of lying to them. He denied that he had made plans to go to Somalia and become a jihadist, when in fact he had. For Richard Stanek, sheriff of Hennepin County, Minnesota (which covers most of Minneapolis), the story is all too familiar. For eight years he has been searching for the “magic trick” to stop young men from joining Islamic extremists, especially in Somalia. He has been called as an expert witness before Congress and shared his insights with officials from 38 countries. Since the 1990s more than 100,000 Somalis have come to America as refugees. Many settled in the Minneapolis-St Paul area, which today is home to around 75,000 immigrants from Somalia and their children. The Cedar-Riverside neighbourhood in the Twin Cities is sometimes called “Little Mogadishu”. After they arrived, Somalis clustered and kept to themselves; many intended to return home as soon as the civil war was over. Somali women made little effort to learn English.

Since Mr Stanek became sheriff in 2007, several dozen young Somali-American men from Minnesota have disappeared to join the Shabab, a group of Islamist fighters in Somalia linked to al-Qaeda. But “It really hit home in 2009, when Shirwa Ahmed blew himself up outside of Mogadishu,” the sheriff says. Ahmed was the first known American suicide-bomber—and a graduate of a Minneapolis high school. Over the past two years the danger has increased, as young Somali men, and some young women, attempt to join Islamic State (IS) rather than the Shabab. Yet Mr Stanek feels more confident. His relationship with the Somali community has much improved. He has made friends with a local imam, hired Haissan Hussein to be the first Somali deputy sheriff in Minnesota, and created a six-member team to build “communities of trust” with Hennepin County’s many cultures. The team includes Abdi Mohamed, a Somali who immigrated in the 1990s, whose full-time job is to liaise with Somalis. And Minneapolis has become one of three pilot cities for Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), an initiative by the Obama administration under which police try to connect with Muslim groups through local events, mentoring and youth programmes.

TOP TWEETS

‏@OCHASom: In #Somalia, schools & universities have been used for recruitment & military positions forcing pupils & students out of #education.

@Daudoo: BREAKING: #Somalia military court executes 2 alleged #AlShabaab fighters accused of killing govt officials incl MPs.

@UKinSomalia: @FCONeilWigan attended a historic launch of#Somalia National Integration Commission held @ the Ministry of Defence

@HarunMaruf: #Somalia:Puntland displays 3 #Shababdefectors incl Sr commander Mukhtar Abdinur (centre)who says he gave up violence

@LegalActionWW: Human Rights WG on #Somaliaencourages #AU to form independent & properly resourced permanent oversight body @hrw http://bit.ly/1G5vj2F

‏@mary_harper: People in central #Somalia tell @BBCAfrica a boat carrying 14 #Iranians has washed ashore. Seamen are said to be in the hands of #AlShabaab.

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IMAGE OF THE DAY

A meeting between AMISOM and its partners opened in Nairobi, Kenya on Tuesday to discuss means of strengthening Civil- Military Cooperation (CIMIC) in Somalia. “CIMIC has a vital role to play in the day to day delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Somalia. It is the essential dialogue and interaction between civilian and military actors to protect and promote humanitarian principles. It is a potential force multiplier. ” Lydia Wanyoto, Deputy SRCC AMISOM. Photo: AMISOM