February 23, 2016 | Morning Headlines
Pro Al-Shabaab Elder Defects To Somali Government
22 February – Source: Goobjoog News – 139 Words
Pro Al-Shabaab traditional elder has defected to the government soldiers in Adado, official said Monday. The defector named, Ahmed Ali Gees said that he deserted the group and decided to surrender himself to the government. According to a security officer in Adado, the defector was among the traditional elders backing the groups with necessary assistance from the clans living in the region. “The government soldiers caught a man called Ahmed Ali Gees, interrogating him, he told them that he had escaped from Al-Shabaab and was willing to surrender to the Somali Government” said the officer. It is unclear if the man had still been active within Al-Shabaab in recent months or weeks. The number of Al-Shabaab members defecting to the government including senior officials has continued to increase while the group has lost major strategic controls it once controlled.
Key Headlines
- Pro Al-Shabaab Elder Defects To Somali Government (Goobjoog News)
- Somaliland Court To Decide Lost Boy’s Parentage Case (Hiiraan Online)
- Hundreds of Somali Youth Languishing In Indian Jails For Piracy Related Cases To Be Arraigned In Court Today (Wacaal Media)
- Meeting Held For Speakers Of Federal State Assemblies Concluded In Mogadishu (Goobjoog News)
- Istanbul Set To Host Global Meet For Humanitarian Aid To Somalia (Daily News)
- Joy As Somali Pirate Kidnap Victim Arrives Back In Kenya (News 24)
- US Policies Do More Harm Than good in Somalia (Al Jazeera)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Somaliland Court To Decide Lost Boy’s Parental Case
22 February – Source: Hiiraan Online – 129 Words
A court in Somaliland has started hearing three paternity claims for a young boy who has gone missing 10 years ago before local officials found him in Bossaso four months ago. Having lived in Bossaso, the commercial hub of Puntland for 10 years, the 13-year-old boy who goes by the name Farhan and nicknamed ‘Hidig’ can barely remember his place of birth of Lasanod from where he vanished at the age of three, rather than his genuine biological father.
According to the local magistrate court’s judges, two men have so far claimed the boy was ‘theirs’ during the first case hearing on Sunday. However, law experts questioned legality of the judge’s conclusion on such cases without employing the well-advanced DNA paternity testing method to establish the genetic proof of the boy’s biological father.
Nevertheless, the town’s panel of judges expressed optimism over the case to determine the custody of the boy sooner than later. Despite having some rare cases of paternity denials, cases related to paternity disputes are uncommon in the conservative horn of Africa nation which has an overwhelmingly Muslim population.
Hundreds of Somali Youth Languishing In Indian Jails For Piracy Related Cases To Be Arraigned In Court Today
22 February – Source: Wacaal Media – 114 Words
More than 100 Somali youth have been in Indian jails since 2011 after they were arrested on piracy related incidents. Saadia Mohamud Hussein, a sister to one of those in detention told the VOA’s Somali service most of those youth will be arraigned in court today. “They were arrested at different intervals and held at different prisons. My brother is now ailing with TB and I think he caught the disease due to the poor living conditions in the prisons” she said while appealing for help from the Federal government of Somalia. Saadia added the family has been in touch with the Somali embassy in India but did not receive satisfactory response so far.
Meeting Held For Speakers Of Federal State Assemblies Concluded In Mogadishu
22 February – Source: Goobjoog News – 94 Words
Speaker of the Federal Parliament of Somalia Mohamed Jawari Osman and speakers of state parliaments concluded a five days constitutional review consultation meeting in Mogadishu. The heads of Jubaland, Galmudg and South west parliaments reached Mogadishu on 17th of this month after official invitation from Federal parliament leadership. The speakers came to review along with Federal parliament articles from provisional constitution of Somalia. However, Puntland state parliament speaker did not take part the discussion of last five days. Provisional constitution of Somalia set for review before the end of this year and Federal states are required to participate the process .
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Istanbul Set To Host Global Meet For Humanitarian Aid To Somalia
22 February – Source: Daily News – 412 Words
Istanbul is set to host a global meeting focused on humanitarian aid to Somalia, which is scene to persistently high and alarming levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, with an estimated 4.7 million people – nearly 40 per cent of the Somali population – in need of humanitarian assistance. The New Deal for Somalia process was launched by the international community to ensure the coordination of international aid disbursement, enhance its effectiveness and reinforce Somali ownership with a view to maintaining peace and state-building in Somalia, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Feb. 22.
The High Level Partnership Forum on Somalia is the highest decision-making mechanism of this process, in which the Somali government, the United Nations and key donor countries are parties, the ministry said. The sixth meeting of the forum will be held at the ministerial level on Feb. 23-24 in Istanbul, it said. The forum will be co-chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson.
“The High-Level Partnership Forum on Somalia will be a concrete manifestation of the comprehensive policy that Turkey pursues in cooperation with the international community towards the establishment of the state institutions, as well as peace and stability, in Somalia,” the Foreign Ministry said. The forum is expected to be attended by 50 countries and 12 international organizations as well as the federal government of Somalia and the leaders of regional Somali governments. The security situation, peace and state-building efforts, political reconciliation, federalization, democratization and election processes, constitutional reform, financial issues and socio-economic development in Somalia will be discussed at the forum.
Joy As Somali Pirate Kidnap Victim Arrives Back In Kenya
22 February – Source: News 24 – 199 Words
There were tears of joy at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi on Sunday following the return of a man who had been held by Somali pirates for 15 months. James Gashamba was kidnapped alongside his friend, Loice Njoki, at Adado town in Somalia on November 24, 2014 as they conducted their normal business of selling herbal medicine. Gashamba, who was rescued on Thursday when local forces raided the kidnappers’ hideout, said that they had lived in caves and forests during his 15 months in captivity.
The abductors were said to have links with al-Shabaab, a terrorist group which has conducted massive kidnappings on the border towns of Garissa, Mandera and Wajir over the years. The most recent incident was reported in October last year, when they kidnapped a female teacher at Dadaab in Garissa County.
The teacher was, however, rescued a few days later by Kenya Defence Forces soldiers who also killed her abductors. In July, KDF soldiers also rescued two Administration Police officers who had been abducted in Garissa County in 2013. Fredrick Chirchir and Joseph Wambugu were kidnapped during an ambush on their camp on May 25, 2013 and were rescued on June 25.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
If the objective of Washington’s current policy is a “united, peaceful and democratic Somalia” – an objective that most Somalis aspire to – the US and other donors must re-assess the current arrangement and critically scrutinise prevalent narratives and the policies that they inspire.
US Policies Do More Harm Than good in Somalia
22 February – Source: Al Jazeera – 985 Words
To stabilise Somalia, donors and friends must calibrate their policies. Chief among them is the United States. The US is no longer on the fence regarding Somalia. On May 5, 2015, Secretary of the State John Kerry visited Mogadishu. The Obama administration also announced that US boots were on the ground and that the president had appointed a new ambassador, Stephen Michael Schwartz, to Somalia. Moreover, Washington plans to spend more than $1.5bn over the next two years, of which nearly $800m will be spent on security.
Despite these positive developments, nothing much will change until US policy toward Somalia and the narratives that inform this policy are reassessed. Only then could progress towards peace-building, reconstitution of a functioning state, and robust bilateral relations be achieved. The US approach has largely been conceived on the basis of a destructive narrative spun by certain domestic and foreign elements.
This narrative would suggest that Somalis are too corrupt, too incompetent, or too clannish to form a viable state, and that key political actors belong to sinister Islamist groups. Indeed, like other failed states, corruption is rampant, capacity deficiency is by and large factual, and tribal identity is strong within society. Somalia has also various Islamist groups ranging from moderate to radical.
But, relentlessly advancing the same old pattern of unsubstantiated narratives is neither objective nor constructive. If this narrative is to be believed, Somalis cannot be trusted and donors are justified in adopting policies that bypass or undermine the will of the Somali people. This means, for example, granting all hefty contracts related to security, humanitarian and development to external actors.