April 6, 2016 | Daily Monitoring Report
Somalia, Egypt Seek New Military Cooperation, Joint Development
06 April – Source: Hiiraan Online- 293 Words
Somalia and Egypt moved to revive their joint defense corporation which ceased to exist in 1991s after warlords overthrew Somalia’s central government, in a drive to boost Somali army shattered by decades of conflict in the horn of Africa nation. Egypt earlier announced that they are willing to train the Somali army and coast guards in 2012, saying that the war-torn horn of Africa nation was facing mounting challenges including regaining territory from militants.
Many countries including Turkey, US and European Union have provided support to the Somali army which showed signs of recovery. However, the Egyptian government which also faces challenges by militants now appears to be joining a new push to help Somali army’s rebuilding, with a visiting Egyptian delegates held talks with Somalia’s top army brass, assuring of greater support for Somalia to strengthen defense corporations by the two sides.
“Egypt is a major partner of Somalia, and during our meetings we have discussed about the revival of the warm relations and defense corporations between the two countries.” said Brig. Gen. Mohamed Aden, Somalia’s army chief at a press conference in Mogadishu on Monday.
Once mighty, Somalia’s army destroyed by decades old conflict is rebuilding on the backdrop of the rising power of the Al-Shabab group which continue to carry out attacks across the country, a challenge they would have to overcome.
Somalia’s government still heavily relies on support by the African Union forces as the country’s fresh army, largely made up of former militiamen and new recruits are still unable to assume the country’s security. The horn of Africa nation which is recovering from decades of war is struggling to defeat the Al-Qaeda linked Al Shabab group which continues guerrilla attacks across large parts of south and central Somalia.
Key Headlines
- Somalia Egypt Seek New Military Cooperation Joint Development (Hiiraan Online)
- Gunmen Attack Army Chief Residence In Mogadishu (Shabelle News)
- Puntland President Explains Circumstances Under Which His Government Accepted 4.5 (Jowhar.com)
- Somali Forces Retake Several Settlements Under Mahaas And Moqokori (Somali National News Agency -SONNA)
- Thousands May Die In Parched Somalia UN warns (Shabelle News)
- Galmudug Appeals For Urgent Humanitarian Aid As Drought Continues To Wreak Havoc (Goobjoog News)
- Somalia’s Al-Shabab Is Wounded But Resilient (Star Tribune)
- Man-eating Crocodile Killed In Somalia (Ghana News Agency)
- Djibouti Women In Paris On Hunger Strike (AFP)
- Mombasa Queries Anti-terrorism Plan To Evict Airport Squatters (The Star)
- Interview-British FGM Survivor Hopes Her Memoir Will Help End “This Barbaric Abuse” (Reuters)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Gunmen Attack Army Chief Residence In Mogadishu
06 April – Source: Shabelle News – 251 Words
At least one person was critically wounded when unknown gunmen attacked house of a Somali army commander in Mogadishu on Tuesday night, reports said.
Assailants believed to be members of the Al Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab have stormed the residence of Abdullahi Mo’alin Nur who is in charge of the armed forces logistics in Mogadishu. The security guards of the commander’s house fended off the attackers and no casualties reported in the overnight attack. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the assault.
The attack comes as there is a growing security concern in Mogadishu after series of attacks, including assassinations on high-ranking officials by Al-Shabaab militants. The latest attack was targeted a federal MP who has survived an attempt on his life after gunmen riding vehicle have sprayed his car with bullets in Mogadishu on Tuesday.
Puntland President Explains Circumstances Under Which His Government Accepted 4.5
06 April – Source: Jowhar.com – 251 Words
Puntland president Dr. Abdiweli Ali Gas has explained to Puntland public why and how his administration accepted the controversial 4.5 decision. Addressing the public in a televised speech, the President said they softened their stance, given that there were only three options: “To break away from Somalia; to be left out of the expected national elections; or to go into a deal that is worthwhile for Puntland were three scenarios we faced. However, working with my capable team, we felt time was not ripe for the first two and we settled for the final one,” said the President.
Dr. Abdiweli explained Puntland’s main fear was to be represented by someone who doesn’t hail from the state and might not have the best interest of the Puntland at heart, as the 4.5 system can allow for that. He further explained Puntland cannot afford to descend into political bickering over the first two options as unity of the local people is not strong enough for engage in such major political disagreements.
“The agreement states that this will be the last time the controversial 4.5 system will be used. This has been witnessed and guaranteed by the international community,” he said. Dr. Abdiweli said the agreement has uplifted the position of Puntland in the face of the World and will spearhead free and fair elections in the country. Pundits say Puntland has emerged the winner in the standoff as the agreement has more clauses that favor it than the federal government.
Somali Forces Retake Several Settlements Under Mahaas And Moqokori
05 April – Source: Somali National News Agency (SONNA) – 103 Words
The Somali National Army in collaboration with their AMISOM colleagues have retaken several settlements that fall under Mahaas and Moqokori towns, in Hiiraan Region.
Confirming the takeover, Deputy District commissioner of Mahas, Ali Haji Hassan, told a local media house the joint forces launched the successful offensive to capture Bubah location on Tuesday night.
“The forces are now at Bubah location from where Al-Shabaab used to plan and carry out raids. They are now heading to Adan Yabaal with local people reportedly fleeing,” said Haji. The administrator thanked the local people whom he said extended warm welcome and collaboration to the joint forces.
Thousands May Die In Parched Somalia, UN warns
06 April – Source: Shabelle News- 163 Words
Severe droughts are stifling northern Somalia and forecasts of little rain this year will make things worse, particularly in northern Somalia where people are dependent on livestock for food, the United Nations recently said. On March 31, Peter de Clercq, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia,appealed for $105 million in aid to provide life-saving assistance to nearly 2 million people affected by the severe drought in the autonomous regions of Somaliland and Puntland. The funding would help the country’s malnourished through September, he said.
“Without access to emergency health services, water and sanitation, thousands of people could face death due to preventable causes,” he said in a statement. “The time to fund is now, to come back from the tipping point, avoid a greater crisis and avert loss of lives.”
The water shortage also reduces grasses for livestock and makes the animals more susceptible to disease. The loss of livestock means the loss of a means of income to support their families.
Galmudug Appeals For Urgent Humanitarian Aid As Drought Continues To Wreak Havoc
06 April – Source: Goobjoog News- 238 Words
Galmudug state has appealed for urgent humanitarian aid to help hundreds of people affected by the ongoing drought in the region. The chairman of Galmudug refugees’ affairs department, Adan Jama’a, said hundreds of people who were displaced during the clashes in Da’adheer and Kahandhaale localities are facing desperate situation.
“The situation is now critical, and without quick response from Somali government, the International community and aid agencies, it could develop into a new humanitarian crisis,” warned Jama’a. At least 10 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in a week of clashes in villages near Somalia’s border with Ethiopia. Elders who spoke to Goobjoog News said the clashes involved Somali clan militia and members of the Liyu police, an Ethiopian paramilitary unit operating in Ethiopia’s ethnic Somali region.
“The Liyu Police Unit launched an attack on innocent civilians. They are attacking villagers and killing people who keep livestock,” said Elder Ali Bale. Sources in the region said fighting started last month and displaced hundreds of locals. Another elder in the region, Ahmed Diriye, said the Liyu force had used “excessive force” and said up to 45 had been killed. It was not apparently clear what sparked the clashes, which are separate from ongoing battles between African Union troops and Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab insurgents in the far south of the country. Several sources said the fighting may surround allegations that a Liyu police member had raped a local woman.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Somalia’s Al-Shabaab Is Wounded But Resilient
05 April – Source: Star Tribune- 310 Words
Al-Shabab is not having a good week. On Tuesday, African Union forces said they had killed six commanders of Al-Shabab, the violent and powerful Islamic insurgent group that has been terrorizing Somalia for years. Among the six killed in the Janale, Somalia, area, the African Union said, were a Yemeni explosives expert and a Kenyan trainer. This followed the news on Monday, when the Pentagon said that it had killed Hassan Ali Dhoore, a senior member of Al-Shabab’s intelligence wing, in an airstrike.
And a few days before that, the African Union said that allied forces — which include the African Union troops, Somali security services and American air power — had killed more than 20 terrorists. Still, analysts question how effective this strategy is. Just as in Afghanistan and Iraq, Somalia’s militants have proved resilient in the face of superior firepower.
Last month, the Pentagon said it had killed 150 Al-Shabab fighters in an airstrike. But since then, there have been several deadly Al-Shabab attacks, including the suicide bombing of a cafe in Galkayo, a town in central Somalia that had not been considered a hotbed of Al-Shabab activity. “What we’ve seen time and time again is that there’s a whole swath of middle-ranking commanders who are well trained, experienced and eager to step into the shoes of their departed colleagues,” said Cedric Barnes, the Horn of Africa project director for the International Crisis Group.
The recent strikes against Al-Shabaab will “hurt them, no doubt,” he said, “but they tend to regenerate.” Somalia has been steeped in chaos and bloodshed for more than 25 years. A glimmer of hope appeared in 2011 when African Union troops pushed Al-Shabab out of Mogadishu, but Somalia’s political class is widely considered ineffective. In the past year, Al-Shabab has steadily rebuilt, killing hundreds of African Union soldiers and countless civilians in suicide bombings.
Man-eating Crocodile Killed In Somalia
05 April – Source: Ghana News Agency (GNA) – 162 Words
The five-metre crocodile was described as the biggest ever seen in Saakow, which is located about 420 kilometres south-west of the capital, Mogadishu. It often crawled out of a nearby river and entered farms, said the community leader, an elder who identified himself only as Barow.
“It was a long-time enemy which had killed, wounded and attacked children, adults and livestock like camels, goats and cattle,” he added. Barow said the crocodile was spotted outside a farm on Monday, creating panic. The elder grabbed his AK-47 rifle and drove to the site. “I shot it five times and killed it on the spot. Everyone congratulated me,” he said.
Locals were unable to say how many people and animals the reptile had killed in the past years, but said that several humans had died from its attacks. One resident, Muse Dhari, said it had killed six of his cattle. “I have also heard that 10 children survived attacks by this enemy,” Dhari said.
Djibouti Women In Paris On Hunger Strike
05 April – Source: AFP – 356 Words
Nine women from Djibouti who are refugees in France entered the 13th day of a hunger strike on Wednesdayover alleged rapes by soldiers in the tiny Horn of Africa country. Refusing food but accepting water, apple juice or tea, 10 women launched the action on March 25, with one having to drop out on Friday.
Lying on camp beds at a women’s charity in southern Paris, four of the women said they had been raped by soldiers fighting rebels in their homeland. “I’m not starving myself for the fun of it,” said 30-year-old Fatou Ambassa, whose cousin Halima died after several soldiers allegedly raped her in 2003 when she was 16. Florent Geel, head of the Africa section of the International Human Rights Federation (FIDH), accused the Djiboutian army of carrying out “reprisal operations” against civilians seen as sympathetic to the ethnic Afar rebels that have been fighting the government for 25 years.
“Arbitrary arrests, sometimes summary executions, but especially sexual violence,” he said, were aimed at “cutting the civilian population off from the FRUD (Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy) rebellion”. The government of the former French colony has dismissed the allegations as having “no credibility”. “Since 1991, no proof has been given to the Djibouti authorities to back these assertions,” a spokesman told AFP. The Afar people straddle the borders of Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The rebels say they are fighting to keep the Afar from being marginalised by the Issa, Djibouti’s other large ethnic group which dominates the regime of longtime strongman Ismail Omar Guelleh. “We demand that these rapes are recognised as war crimes and that an international investigation is launched,” said Aicha Dabale, spokeswoman in France of an advocacy group supporting the women.
Dabale is the wife of current FRUD president Mohamed Kadamy, but insisted she was not acting in the name of the rebellion. The advocacy group set up in 1993 says it has recorded 246 accounts of rapes by soldiers, but Dabale said the actual number was likely much greater, with many women being turned away by doctors and lawyers when they tried to report abuses.
Mombasa Queries Anti-terrorism Plan To Evict Airport Squatters
05 April – Source: The Star- 773 Words
The Mombasa government is reading mischief in the planned exercise to evict people around the Moi International Airport Mombasa by the national government. The county says it was not consulted, but the National Land Commission has said the evictions will go on as planned. Security bosses have warned the continued inhabitation and mushrooming of structures adjacent to the airport can be exploited by terrorists as potential hideouts, and launch sites for attacks targeting the airport facilities, aircrafts and passengers. A letter by Coast regional coordinator Nelson Marwa to the NLC says the encroachment to the airport is a huge security threat.
Mombasa government says Marwa’s letter dated November 18, 2015, was not copied to them, despite the fact that the county government is an important stakeholder. Marwa wrote the letter while he was Mombasa county commissioner. “Mombasa County Security Intelligence Committee conducted a security audit at the airport, which pointed out the mushrooming of squatters and businesses premises around the facility,” reads the letter.
A senior county official said: “We only got to know about the letter in March, four months after Marwa wrote it to the NLC. We are concerned because national government is planning to evict residents without even consulting us.” But NLC chairman Muhammad Swazuri defended Marwa saying, “The county will be involved at the right time once we are done with our investigations on how these people acquired that airport land.”
Speaking on the phone yesterday, Swazuri said he met Marwa on Saturday and discussed the problem. “We agreed this is a matter of urgency. This week we shall meet with the Kenya Airports Authority officials,” he said. Swazuri said there are about eight individuals who have acquired part of the 539 hectares of airport land and set up structures. “We want to establish how they acquired title deeds to these parcels before we revoke them and continue with the eviction,” he said. Swazuri said there are about 11 structures which border the airport and have been marked for demolition, since they are a security threat. “We do not know yet the number of people who live in these structures and others as squatters, who will be affected,” he said.
Marwa could not be reached for further comment.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“FGM nearly cost Wardere her life and she remembers many girls who never reappeared from their huts. Yet the practice remains almost universal in Somalia where parents see it as an important purification rite designed to protect a girl’s virginity. Many also believe the ritual, called gudnin in Somalia, is a religious duty even though it predates Islam and is not mentioned in the Koran.”
Interview-British FGM Survivor Hopes Her Memoir Will Help End “This Barbaric Abuse”
05 April – Source: Reuters Africa – 851Words
Hibo Wardere’s childhood ended abruptly at six years old when she was led to a hut outside her Mogadishu home, pinned to the floor and subjected to the most brutal form of female genital mutilation (FGM). As a wizened old woman hacked between her legs with a rusty blade, the little girl screamed out repeatedly for her “mummy” – the person she loved and trusted most in the world. But her mother turned away. From that day on she never called her “mummy” again.
Like all girls in Somalia who undergo FGM, Wardere was told never to speak about what had happened. But 40 years on, she is determined to break the secrecy that she said perpetuates this “barbaric and medieval abuse”. This week sees the publication of her memoir “Cut”, the first book about FGM in Britain where Wardere has lived since fleeing civil war in Somalia as a teenager.
“I felt as if someone had dropped me into bright orange molten lava,” she wrote, recalling the day she was cut. “From head to toe the pain burned … exploding in my brain … every nerve ending screaming in agony.” But worse was the complete sense of betrayal by her mother. “My life changed forever,” Wardere told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It severed the closeness, the bond, the trust – everything was gone.”
Wardere, a mother of seven from northeast London, is part of a growing anti-FGM campaign in Britain, where an estimated 137,000 women and girls are believed to have been cut and 60,000 girls are thought to be at risk. She works for a new government-led FGM prevention programme, talking to teachers, school children, medical staff and the police. Her message is simple: FGM is child abuse and everyone has a duty to end it.
TOP TWEETS
@MOALIMUU: #Somalia government forces & AMISOM advance towards Aden Yabaal in Middle Shabelle province. Alshabaab was controlling it the last 6 years.
@SalahOsman0: Good Morning From #MogadishuReconstructing our roads shows how committed we are. We will never stop it #Somalia
@BrookingsInst: In Somalia, al-Shabaab is on the upswingwhile counterterrorism efforts have stalled, explains@VFelbabBrown
@AlmaasElman: Last night the @SomaliEmbKenya hosted the first ever consultative dinner w/ the Somali business community in Kenya.
@Guled_Salah: During his mission to #Garowe, Somalia Ambassador to USA @AmbAhmedAwad1 visited@SIDRAInstitute this morning.
@UNDPSomalia: Meeting between Helen Clark and H.E. Sahra A Samantar, Minister for Women & Human Rights Development of #Somalia
@Aynte: Diaspora will play vital in role in implementing#NDPSomalia because they bring much-needed skills, resources. But NDP serves people in #Somalia
@Aynte: Since Allah blessed us w/2 much sun, we must go renewable for our energy. Solar is gr8 option. #Somalia now has most expensive electricity
@somalia_report: Somalia arrests 500 people in terror crackdown.
@Ladhka: Photos: Thousands may die in parched#Somaliland, @UN warns via @NewsHour
IMAGE OF THE DAY
Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke visited East Africa University in Garowe, Puntland.
Source: Radio Muqdisho