April 26, 2016 | Daily Monitoring Report
Al-Shabaab Overruns Somali National Army Military Base, Four Soldiers Injured – Military Official
26 April – Source: Goobjoog News – 130 Words
The militant group Al-Shabaab attacked and overrun a Somali army base in a village outside of Baidoa town southwest of Mogadishu Monday night, a military official has said. Goobjoog News correspondent in the area, Adan Geesey says the Somali National Army official in Baidoa town confirmed the base at Daynuunay village was attacked Mondaynight. Four soldiers were injured in the attack, the army official who declined to be named said.
Geesey said SNA reinforcement from Baidoa town was ambushed some distance away at a place called Manyafulka. Baidoa is the capital of South West State, some 250 kilometres away from the capital Mogadishu. Residents told Goobjoog News Al-Shabaab vacated the camp after some few hours. It is not clear if they carted away any military equipment.
Key Headlines
- Al-Shabaab Overruns Somali National Army Military Base Four Soldiers Injured – Military Official(Goobjoog News)
- Businessman Killed Outside A Mosque In Mogadishu (Shabelle News)
- Puntland Election Commission Picks Chairman (Garowe Online)
- Family Fights For Release Of Terror Suspect (Daily Nation)
- Somalia To Hold General Election This August (AA)
- He Once Tried To Fix Failing D.C. Schools. Now He’s Trying To Fix Somalia (The Washington Post)
- There Is More To Warsan Shire Than Beyonce’s Video (BBC)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Businessman Killed Outside A Mosque In Mogadishu
26 April – Source: Shabelle News – 106 Words
Unidentified pistol-wielding assailants have shot and killed a businessman who recently returned to the country from abroad, witnesses said on Tuesday. The slain businessman who was identified as Aden Afgoye was assassinated as he was leaving a mosque in Dharkenlay district after Fajr prayers, said a witness who asked to remain anonymous.
The assassins managed to escape the scene of the crime, before security forces of the federal government of Somalia arrived, the witness added. The motive of the killing and the identity of the killers are yet to be known, but such targeted assassinations in Mogadishu have been on increase in the past few months.
Puntland Election Commission Picks Chairman
25 April – Source: Garowe Online – 118 Words
Transitional Puntland Electoral Commission (TPEC) members have picked former Puntland State Television Director-General Ahmed Mohamed Ali as a board chairman on Monday, Garowe Online reports. Ali was elected to the post during the nine-member commission’s first meeting at Puntland Development Research Center (PDRC). Mohamud Soofe has also been elected a Deputy Chairman.
Ali was today sworn in at Puntland State House in the presence of Puntland Vice President Abdihakin Abdullahi Haji Omar and Parliament Speaker Ahmed Ali Hashi. On Sunday, Puntland members of parliament passed TPEC commissioners in an extraordinary session in the state capital of Garowe. President Abdiweli Mohamed Ali and Speaker Hashi jointly announced nine nominees for the election commission on Feb. 14 and Feb. 15 respectively.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Family Fights For Release Of Terror Suspect
26 April – Source: Daily Nation – 208 Words
The family of a man accused of funding Al-Shabaab activities in Somalia yesterday moved to court seeking to compel the State to produce him following his disappearance from his place of work two weeks ago. Mr Abadallah Waititu Iddi’s family sued the Inspector-General of Police, the Interior Cabinet Secretary, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney-General.
“It is now more than 17 days since he was arrested by security officers from his place of work at Kangundo Level 4 Hospital on April 4 and taken into custody. He has not been released either unconditionally, on police bond or presented before any court as per the Constitution as well as the laws of Kenya,” said Mr Victor Olewe, the lawyer for the family.
Mr Olewe told High Court judge Isaac Lenaola that Mr Iddi, who is a doctor, is allegedly being held at an undisclosed location and that his family has never heard from him since the day he was taken into custody. He argued that Mr Iddi will continue to be held in violation of his rights if the court does not intervene and issue an order that he be released. Ms Khadija Yakub Ali denied claims made on a website linking her husband to terror-related activities.
Somalia To Hold General Election This August
26 April – Source: AA – 152 Words
Somalia will go to the polls this August to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections, the country’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said on Monday. Speaking at an ambassadors meeting held in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, Mohamud officially announced the month the elections will be held. “The upcoming Somali presidential and parliamentary election will be held this August,” he said.
“The election process needs to be completed in a democratic way. We do not care which party wins. The winners will be the people of Somalia.” Mohamud, in power since 2012, is in the final months of his four-year term, but last week he announced that he will seek reelection.
The country’s 25-member cabinet includes the largest number of government ministers since Somalia established its first permanent government in 2012. Somalia, a long-troubled Horn of Africa country, had been in the grip of political violence since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“I used to say D.C. was like a third world country. Then I came back here and I realized what a third world country really was,” Omer said on a recent balmy evening at the hotel, sitting on a patio and sharing a plate of watermelon.
He Once Tried To Fix Failing D.C. Schools. Now He’s Trying To Fix Somalia.
25 March – Source: The Washington Post – 1,146 Words
Fifteen years ago, he was working for the mayor of Washington, trying to turn around crime-ridden neighborhoods and a failing school system. Now, Abdusalam Omer is trying to turn around a failed state. The former D.C. bureaucrat known as Dr. O has a new title: foreign minister of Somalia.
Each morning, Omer climbs into a bulletproof SUV for the drive to his office, surrounded by young armed men in green uniforms. He lives behind layers of blast barriers in a city where al-Qaeda-allied rebels regularly target government officials. Several of his friends have been killed.
He tries to traverse a range of diplomatic interests — the Turks want a port, the Kenyans want a border fence, the United States wants counterterrorism operations. And yet Omer’s own government is still in its infancy. When the top U.N. official here asked him what his short-term goals were as minister, Omer responded:
“I want to have clean bathrooms and I want people to answer their emails.” He wasn’t kidding. “You have to be realistic,” he says. It’s not a position he expected to occupy. He had thrived in Washington, learning to navigate the District’s cutthroat local politics. He could rattle off the names of all its high schools. He knew who mattered in which ward. Diplomatic Washington could seem a world away. He was a man who lived for city hall.
“Yet as introspective as Shire’s words might be, they burn with a quiet fury. Her words pack a wallop, something that has garnered her more than 60,000 Twitter followers and earned her the title of Young Poet Laureate for London in 2014.”
There Is More To Warsan Shire Than Beyonce’s Video
25 April – Source: BBC – 582 Words
“I tried to make a home out of you/But doors lead to trapped doors.” So begins the first interlude of Beyoncé’s new ‘visual album’. Released on 23 April with a special on HBO, Lemonade features 12 songs – interspersed with words written by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire.
While the album has whipped up a social media frenzy over Beyoncé’s lyrics, brimming with rage and accusations of infidelity, the quiet moments in between offer a thoughtful counterpoint. The words are those of Shire, a 27-year-old born in Kenya to Somali parents, who published her first pamphlet Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth in 2011 and went on to win the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2013.
Taking second billing in Lemonade’s production credits for ‘Film Adaptation and Poetry’, ahead of the directors, Shire offers contemplation among shots of a flood, a car-smashing monster truck and a laughing Beyoncé wielding a baseball bat as she strides down a street followed closely by a fireball.
The songs feature lyrics like “Looking at my watch you should have been home/Tonight I regret the night I put that ring on” – and their immediacy is given added weight by Shire’s poems. “I tried to change/Closed my mouth more/Tried to be softer, prettier – less awake” – uttered as Beyoncé spins under water, her eyes open as if in a trance – is adapted from For Women Who Are Difficult To Love.
TOP TWEETS
@RadioErgo : #Somalia:Herders see benefits of farming in Buhodle,Togdheer
http://bit.ly/1NvIv6r @faoinsomalia @OCHASom
@jasminechic1: #Somalia #AlShabaab fighters attacked gov’ment militia base: #Baidoa, killed more than 10 + seized vehicles/weapons
@R_Dualeh: Take #action for #somalia and support free #fairand open #elections in #2016 http://sigad-united-somalia.
@AbdulkimRoble : #BREAKING: (NISA) confirms arrest of Hassan Fanah, A High Ranking #AlShabaab Commander in#Mogadishu #Somalia
@AgendaOfEvil : #Somalia: Suspected #AlShabaab gun down a cleaning #woman outside the UN headquarters.
@Vatescorp : #Somalia: Businessman killed outside a mosque in Dharkenley, Mogadishu this am
@Tomi_Oladipo : AMISOM spox dismisses IS claims that it attacked an AU convoy in Mogadishu, saying there were no AMISOM casualties #Somalia
@KravetzDaniela : #Somalia: sexual violence must be subject to criminal justice, not to traditional elders, says UN experthttp://www.un.org/apps/news/
IMAGE OF THE DAY
Participants from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the United Nations and attend a workshop on Human Rights Due Diligence Policy (HRDDP) held in Mogadishu on April 26, 2016. The two-day workshop brings together AMISOM, UNSOM, UNSOS and to discuss human rights issues on the mission in Somalia.
Photo: AMISOM