December 2, 2016 | Morning Headlines
Ex Home Minister Elected As MP In Jowhar Elections
01 December – Source: Shabelle News – 139 Words
Former Interior and Federal Affairs Minister Abdullahi Godah Barre has been elected as federal MP in the lower house election in Jowhar on Thursday.
Mr Barre who is an outgoing lawmaker and a critic to President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has retained his lower house seat after defeating his main rival contenders with a majority 32 votes, according to the electoral results. Analysts say the re-election of Godah Barre is yet another blow to the current president who is running for re-election in the coming polls for a second term in office. Four other MPs were elected in today’s ballot in Jowhar, who will represent Interim Hir-Shabelle state in the forthcoming federal parliament of Somalia. Other MPs elected in Jowhar today are following; Mina Hassan Shibis, Businesswoman, Dahabo Susow, Farhiya Mohamud and Mohamed Omar Aymoy, outgoing minister for Fisheries & Marine Resources and former MP.
Key Headlines
- Ex Home Minister Elected As MP In Jowhar Elections (Shabelle News)
- NISA Forces Conduct Security Sweep In Mogadishu (Shabelle News)
- UNHCR Repatriates Over 35000 Somali Refugees From Kenya (Shabelle News)
- Soldier Killed 3 Others Injured In Central Somalia (Xinhua)
- Freed Captives Their Rescuers Tell The Story Of Their Imprisonment In Somalia Release (Global Times)
- After Election Delay Somalia’s First Female Presidential Candidate Says She May Not Run Again (The Washington Post)
NATIONAL MEDIA
NISA Forces Conduct Security Sweep In Mogadishu
01 December – Source: Shabelle News – 126 Words
Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) soldiers have carried out an anti-terror operation in the capital following reports of a would-be car bomb attack by Al shabaab. NISA officers have searched a garage belonging to a former powerful Somali warlord Muuse Suudi Yalahow in Mogadishu’s Wadajir district after a tip-off about a suspected car packed with explosives. African Union forces serving with AMISOM have also conducted similar searches in the suspected Garage on Wednesday night. There were no reports about the findings of the two operations. NISA has confiscated a garage in Black sea area after a deadly suicide car bomb at a busy market in Mogadishu’s Waberi district that left over 20 people, most of them civilians dead, while scores of other seriously injured.
UNHCR Repatriates Over 35,000 Somali Refugees From Kenya
01 December – Source: Shabelle News – 416 Words
The UN refugee agency said on Monday that it had helped 35,192 Somali refugees to return home since the exercise begun almost two years ago. The UNHCR said 327 returnees were supported to voluntarily return to Somalia’s capital Mogadishu by flight from Nov. 1 to 15. “Flight movements have now resumed and are currently operating three days per week. In total, as of Nov. 15, 35,192 Somali refugees had returned home since December 8, 2014, when UNHCR started supporting voluntary return of Somali refugees in Kenya, out of which 29,091 were supported in 2016 alone,” it said in its latest report. Kenya in collaboration with the UN refugee agency are working on a program that will ensure a smooth and voluntary repatriation of over 300,000 refugees living in five camps at the Dadaab refugee camp after Nairobi announced the closure of the camp. UNHCR said it has continued its interventions to support the refugees’ host community areas affected by the drought during the last six months in Dadaab, Fafi and Wajir South Sub-counties in northeast Kenya. “To mitigate against the current drought, UNHCR and partners delivered approximately 2,800 cubic meters or 2.8 million litres of water to approximately 25,000 drought affected people in 28 villages from Oct. 22 to Nov. 11,” it said.
The UN refugee agency said it relocated 212 individuals (non- Somalis) to Kalobaye by UNHCR in collaboration with International Organization for Migration (IOM). The UN agency said it expects the majority of the remaining refugee population to return to Somalia throughout 2017 and possibly into early 2018. Kenya, which has since postponed the closure of Dadaab refugee camp, says it has put solid measures in place to fast-track repatriation of Somali refugees and their reintegration in their native country. The East African nation on Nov. 16 said it will delay by six months the closure of the Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest.UNHCR has supported people’s returns from Dadaab for years and in June, it worked with Kenya and Somalia to devise an action plan to that effect. A survey between August and October found that 283,558 refugees were living at Dadaab, 58,000 fewer than in the past. The UNHCR has since called on Kenya to be flexible in terms of a return time frame in order to meet the different elements of the plan that was devised earlier this year, citing a concern that rigid time frames would be difficult to meet.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
1 Soldier Killed, 3 Others Injured In Central Somalia
01 December – Source: Xinhua – 159 Words
At least one soldier was killed and three others including District Commissioner (DC) of Jalalaqsi district in Hiiraan region were injured on Thursday after Al-Shabaab militants attacked their convoy in central Somalia, officials said. Jalalaqsi Police Commissioner Farah Aden Gafow told reporters that the militants carried out an ambush against the governor’s convoy which was en route from Jowhar town to Jalalaqsi. “The terrorists carried out an ambush against the convoy of the DC of Jalalaqsi town. One soldier died and two other soldiers were seriously wounded, the DC escaped with a slight injury on his hand,” Gafow said. The police commissioner added that the government soldiers engaged the militants in heavy gunfire but could not tell the number of casualties on the militants side. Jalalaqsi is a town in Hiiraan region in central Somalia and it is under Hirshabelle state administration. The DC was from Jowhar town, the administrative capital of Hirshabelle State where Lower House elections are underway.
Freed Captives, Their Rescuers Tell The Story Of Their Imprisonment In Somalia, Release
01 December – Source: Global Times – 699 Words
After being held in captivity for 1,671 days by Somali pirates, 10 Chinese captives finally heard the longed-for words in their mother tongue: “We are here to take you home. You are safe now.” These words were from Yang Shu, standing deputy director with the Consular Protection Center under China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and head of the government’s hostage-retrieving team, upon his meeting with the Chinese sailors. On the evening of November 23, after being released by pirates off the coast of Somalia, the 26 hostages including 10 Chinese nationals arrived at Nairobi International Airport, Kenya in a United Nations plane. They are all crewmen of the Naham 3, a Taiwanese-flagged fishing vessel that was hijacked in March 2012. Uncertain till last minute; The United Nations, the Beijing-based Association for Relations across the Taiwan Straits and many other charity organizations including the US-based Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP) also took part in the rescue, said Yang. Yang received advance notice that the hostages had been released, but it was not until he saw them in person that he reported to Beijing.
Before they were handed over nothing is certain, Yang was quoted as saying by the China Youth Daily. In fact, the pirates previously made several claims about releasing the hostages but changed their minds. Two months ago, the pirates took a picture of the 26 hostages, in which every frowning man was holding a sheet of paper with a code, to prove they were still alive. The picture was sent to John Steed, a member of OBP, who was assisting the negotiations and rescue mission. You are never certain about whether things will go sour, John said, adding that he was holding his breath until the last second. The 26 freed sailors later took probably their last ever group photo together on the Nairobi runway, with tired yet relaxed smiles.
OPINION , CULTURE & ANALYSIS
“I will run again in a democratic, one person-one vote system, but not in a 4.5 clan-based, apartheid system. It’s a racist system that segregates clans based on their ethnicity and their race. “
After Election Delay, Somalia’s First Female Presidential Candidate Says She May Not Run Again
01 December – Source: The Washington Post – 849 Words
Somalia’s first female presidential candidate, is so dismayed by the decision this week by Somalia’s electoral body to postpone the country’s presidential elections for the third time that she thinks she will not run for president again, even if a new date is set. “I think I am not going to run … because the level of corruption, the shocking level of corruption, it is all very, very disheartening, and I don’t want to legitimize something that is that bad by running in it,” Dayib said via Skype from Nairobi. The elections in Somalia have been billed by Western countries as the first democratic polls in decades, and as an important stepping stone to fairer elections in 2020. However, the process is more of a clan-based selection process than an election process: The president is selected by a national assembly of more than 14,000 delegates chosen by tribal elders, as it was determined that Somalia was not ready for a one-person, one-vote election system. The official reason for the postponement was that the election process for the delegates had not occurred in all parts of the country. The United States and the European Union are major donors to Somalia.
Dayib said of the clan model: “I will run again in a democratic, one-person-one-vote system, but not in a 4.5 clan-based, apartheid system. It’s a racist system that segregates clans based on their ethnicity and their race. This is why we are saying four major clans, and then .5 as if they are sub-humans. For the past 26 years, the international community has said this was a stepping stone to democracy, but how long will we keep this monster on life support?” Dayib, who is the only woman out of 18 presidential candidates in Somalia, fled with her family to Finland after the collapse of the Siad Barre regime 25 years ago, as a teenager. She learned to read and write at age 14. Dayib eventually got a master’s degree from Harvard and has earned multiple degrees in public health. She worked as a healthcare specialist for the United Nations and for UNICEF and is pursuing a PhD.