September 7, 2016 | Morning Headlines
Museveni Expected In Somalia For IGAD Summit
06 September – Source: Eagle Online – 416 Words
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is one of the leaders expected to attend the 53rd Summit of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in the Somalia capital Mogadishu over the weekend.
War ravaged, Mogadishu, once described as the ‘most dangerous capital on earth’, will for the first time in over 30 years, host a summit of such magnitude, that will focus on among other issues progress registered in Somalia including the forthcoming 2016 general elections between September and October, and the political crisis in South Sudan.
Other leaders expected to join Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud in Mogadishu include Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Salva Kiir Mayardit of South Sudan; Hailemariam Desalgne of Ethiopia; Omar Bashir of Sudan and Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti.
“It is the first time Mogadishu or Somalia in general hosts such a high-level summit for more than 30 years. We see it as a historic signal and message to the world saying, ‘Somalia is coming back,’” Somalia’s Foreign Minister Abdisalam Omer Hadliye said, adding “this will be a historic moment for Somalia.”
However, Hadliye cited his country’s security concerns, occasioned by terror group Al Shabaab, which has carried out attacks inside Somalia and also outside in countries like Kenya and Uganda.
Key Headlines
- Museveni Expected In Somalia For IGAD Summit (Eagle Online)
- Explosion Hits Bakara Market Killing 4 (Garowe Online)
- Mortars Land Near Somali Palace In Mogadishu (Shabelle News)
- Kenya’s Khat Planes Arrived Puntland Region Despite Federal Government Ban (Garowe Online)
- Somalia President Signs Political Parties Bill Into Law (The East African)
- Somali President Sees Diaspora Driving Growth (VOA News)
- Refugee Journalists Recount Horrors Of Working In Somalia (Capital FM)
- Man Gets 15 Years For Somali Cafe Attack In North Dakota (Reuters)
- The Rise Of Popularism In Somalia (Thomas Friedman Page)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Explosion Hits Bakara Market, Killing 4
07 September – Source: Garowe Online – 160 Words
At least four people have been killed in a bomb blast outside restaurant in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Tuesday. The bomb exploded outside a restaurant frequented by city taxmen. Senior Police official Farah Husain have confirmed to GO the explosion killed four people and injured several others. “A woman and her daughter and two other men died in the blast targeting a restaurant located in the Drug sector of Bakara market,” said the official.
No group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but Al-Shabaab militant group commonly launches attacks on places frequented by Government officials and Somali army troops. The explosion occurred Tuesday while security measures in the capital have been beefed up as leaders from the Somali Federal government and regional administrations are attending NLF Conference on Somali election.
Somalia is also preparing to host the 53rd summit of Intra-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) this weekend in the capital Mogadishu, regional leaders are expected to attend the summit.
Mortars Land Near Somali Palace In Mogadishu
06 September – Source: Shabelle News – 84 Words
Several mortar rounds have landed on Tuesday around the heavily fortified Somalia’s presidential palace in Mogadishu, injuring at least seven people. A witness has confirmed the mortar attack to Radio Shabelle, saying some of the mortars struck residential areas near Villa Somalia, the state house.
No one has claimed the responsibility of the shelling, but Somali militant group al-Shabaab carried out similar attacks in the past. It is not the first time mortars have landed in an area very close to the Presidential Palace.
Kenya’s Khat Planes Arrived Puntland Region Despite Federal Government Ban
06 September – Source: Garowe Online – 184 Words
Kenya’s Khat planes have defied Somali Federal Government’s directive to enter its airspace and delivered Khat loads to Puntland region. A check by GO reporters Tuesday morning found that Kenya’s Khat locally known as “Mirow” is being sold in the markets to the public in Puntland’s main cities Garowe, Bossaso and Galkayo.
Puntland Government have challenged yesterday Federal Government decision to ban Khat planes from entering its airspaces, and stated that Kenya’s Khat trades will continue in its region despite ban. There is no clear information regarding the reasons behind Puntland state challenge to the ban. Local Khat traders talked to GO and said Federal Government ban is damaging their business, and welcomed Puntland Government position against the ban.
However, population in Garowe city welcomed the ban of the Khat saying it has numerous adverse economic and health effects and hoped that Khat ban becomes permanently effective in Somalia. Puntland state decision to dismiss the ban comes while having good relations with Federal Government. Puntland President Abdiwali Mohamed is attending National Leaders Forum conference on Somali election in the capital Mogadishu started on Tuesday.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Somalia President Signs Political Parties Bill Into Law
06 September – The East African – 288 Words
Somalia has legitimised the operations of political parties for the first time in nearly five decades, ahead of this month’s election. All politicians are now required to register with the political parties by October 2018 in readiness for competitive universal suffrage in 2020, when all citizens will have the right to vote on the basis of one person one vote.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Monday September 5, signed into law the Political Parties Bill in line with the resolution by the National Leadership Forum (NLF) issued last month.
All political parties are now required to have branches across the country and pay $1,000 registration fee.
President Mohamud, who is the chairman of Peace and Development Party, said the legislation will promote multi-party system and is critical for Somalia’s democratisation and the ongoing political reform process.
Somali President Sees Diaspora Driving Growth
06 September – VOA News – 429 Words
Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud says he wants more young Somalis from abroad to return and help rebuild the country, even as al-Shabab militants continue to mount deadly attacks. Mohamud spoke one-on-one with VOA Somali chief Abdirahman Yabarow in Mogadishu, after taking questions from Somalis in a VOA-sponsored town-hall meeting Saturday. The program was the first of its kind to connect Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, with St. Paul, Minnesota — home to the largest Somali community in the United States.
The president said the Somali diaspora is responsible for many of the new businesses that have taken root in the Somali capital since al-Shabab lost its hold on the city in 2011.
“Today in Mogadishu, the best hotels, the best supermarkets, the best other services that are run here are all, or most of them, run by young people from the diaspora,” he said. “And to encourage them to come back, we have outsourced some government services to those professionals and their small companies to do. And they’re doing a very good job in providing these government services to the public.”
Refugee Journalists Recount Horrors Of Working In Somalia
06 September – Capital FM – 1,106 Words
They were the worst moments of his life but moments he has lived to treasure after a narrow escape from members of the Al Shabaab terror group in Somalia. Abdi Fatah Mohammed is a Somali journalist living in Nairobi as a refugee after he was rescued from terrorists who had captured him while shooting a documentary at an Internally Displaced Persons camp in Mogadishu. It was a tragedy that befell him on August 23, 2008.
Though years have passed by and the physical wounds meted on him have partially eroded, Mohammed freshly recounts every moment of the torture and humiliation at the hands of terrorists. He was captured by Al Shabaab terrorists together with his four colleagues.
“The people at the camp were facing a lot of difficulties and we needed to show the world how they were suffering. We were not doing anything wrong to the religion or even to the country.”
“But they kidnapped us. They tortured us. They were doing everything wrong to the Islamic religion. I was Muslim and I am still Muslim, I was their brother but they were beating me every night. They allowed us to go to the toilet only four times a day. Even when you have a stomach problem, they did not allow us to go to the toilet – only those four times,” Mohammed recounted.
Man Gets 15 Years For Somali Cafe Attack In North Dakota
06 September – Reuters – 288 Words
An American man who threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of a Somali restaurant in North Dakota was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday over what federal prosecutors said was an act of “hate violence.”
Matthew Gust, a 26-year-old of Grand Forks, North Dakota, pleaded guilty to arson and hate-crime charges onMay 19, Vanita Gupta, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. Gust in a plea agreement admitted that he threw a lighted beer bottle filled with gasoline into the Juba Café in Grand Forks in the early morning hours of Dec. 8 to “intimidate and interfere with the Somali employees and patrons,” Gupta said, calling Gust a perpetrator of “hate violence.”
An attorney for Gust did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The North Dakota incident came a little more a month after Islamic State’s Nov. 13 gun and bomb attacks on entertainment sites around Paris, France, that left dozens dead.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a U.S.-based Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization, said it had received more reports of discrimination, intimidation, threats and violence targeting Muslim-Americans in the wake of the Paris siege than during any other period since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. Somalia is heavily Muslim. In the North Dakota incident, the early-morning explosion and fire caused more than $250,000 in damage, federal prosecutors said.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“I don’t know what Somalia will be like a few years from now, but I do know that it will remain true to its cultural heritage, even if it looks very different from the country we see now. I know this because, through all the disorder, the people still haven’t lost sight of their dreams.”
The Rise Of Popularism In Somalia
06 September – Source: Thomas Friedman Page – 443 Words
What has been going on in Somalia is truly historic, and it has been on my mind ever since it began. It is impossible not to be tantalized by the potential of these events to change the course of Somalia’s history. What’s important, however, is that we focus on what this means to the people. The media seems too caught up in spinning the facts to pay attention to what’s important on the ground. Just call it missing the desert for the sand.
When thinking about the ongoing ethnic strife, it’s important to remember three things: One, people don’t behave like car salesmen, so attempts to treat them as such are a waste of time. Car salesmen never suddenly set up a black market for Western DVDs. Two, Somalia has spent decades torn by civil war and ethnic hatred, so a mindset of peace and stability will seem foreign and strange. And three, hope is an extraordinarily powerful idea: If authoritarianism is Somalia’s curtain rod, then hope is certainly its faucet.
When I was in Somalia last August, I was amazed by the variety of the local cuisine, and that tells me two things. It tells me that the citizens of Somalia have no shortage of potential entrepreneurs, and that is a good beginning to grow from. Second, it tells me that people in Somalia are just like people anywhere else on this flat earth of ours.
So what should we do about the chaos in Somalia? Well, it’s easier to start with what we should not do. We should not let seemingly endless frustrations cause the people of Somalia to doubt their chance at progress. Beyond that, we need to be careful to nurture the seeds of democratic ideals. The opportunity is there, but I worry that the path to peace is so poorly marked that Somalia will have to move down it very slowly. And of course Mogadishu needs to come to terms with its own history.