January 17, 2017 | Daily Monitoring Report
NISA Clashes With Police Near Parliament Compound In Adado, 7 Injured
17 January – Source: Garowe Online – 209 Words
Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) soldiers have clashed with Galmudug Police Forces, around the Parliament hall in Adaa do town in central Somalia on Tuesday. A resident told Garowe Online that the clash has sparked a heavy exchange of gunfire between the sides who have been in deadlock over the control of Galmudug’s Parliament compound in Adado for the past few days.
At least seven soldiers from both sides are reported to have been wounded in the fighting. Local residents expressed fear over the escalating tensions in the town. Reports said NISA forces used battle-wagons and heavy artillery to attack the Parliament building where heavily armed local Police are protecting MPs who recently voted out Galmudug’s President Abdikarim Hussein Guled from office.
State assembly claimed that Guled has lost his job after members of the Galmudug Parliament voted in favor of a no-confidence motion against him last week, causing political uncertainty in the central regional administration. The reports from Adado indicate that the members of Galmudug state Parliament are preparing for an election to pick a new leader despite the resistance of from the incumbent president.
Key Headlines
- NISA Clashes With Police Near Parliament Compound In Adado 7 Injured (Garowe Online)
- Registration Of Candidates Contesting For Upper House Speaker Post Set To Begin Today
- NISA Seizes Counterfeit Dollars And Arrests Kingpins (Goobjoog News)
- Hiiraan Administration To Intervene Clan Clashes In The Region (Goobjoog News)
- Deputy SRSG De Clercq Assesses Humanitarian Crisis In Somalia’s South West State (UNSOM)
- What We’ve Learnt About Donald Trump’s Africa Policy (Newsweek)
PRESS STATEMENT
AMISOM Regrets Deaths From A Road Accident Involving Its Military Convoy And A Civilian Vehicle Along The Mogadishu-Afgoye Road
17 January – Source: AMISOM – 145 Words
On Sunday evening, an AMISOM convoy travelling along the Mogadishu – Afgoye road was involved in a road accident with a civilian vehicle, which resulted in fatalities. Preliminary reports indicate that a minibus ferrying passengers, attempted to overtake an AMISOM armoured personnel carrier, but got in the way of a speeding oncoming omnibus. To avoid a head-on collision with the oncoming vehicle, the minibus swerved and rammed into the AMISOM convoy.
The convoy was immediately driven to a nearby police station, where the matter was reported. The accident resulted in four deaths and fourteen injuries. AMISOM deeply regrets this tragic and unfortunate incident and is currently meeting with the Somali Police, the local administration and elders over the incident. AMISOM will carry out thorough investigations with the relevant federal government of Somalia agencies and will make available more information in the course of the enquiry.
NATIONAL MEDIA
Registration Of Candidates Contesting For Upper House Speaker Post Set To Begin Today
17 January – Source: Jowhar.com – 107 Words
The registration of candidates vying for the speaker post of the Upper House is set to start in Mogadishu today. Mohamed Osman Farah, the chairman of a newly formed committee tasked to organize the Upper House leadership elections, said they will start the registration of the candidates today. The exercise will continue until Thursday, 19 January.
As per the schedule, candidates will be presenting their campaign speeches before the parliament on Saturday. On Sunday, 22 January, the election of the Upper House speaker will be held. After the Upper House leadership elections are over, parliamentarians will elect the country’s president on a date to be set later.
NISA Seizes Counterfeit Dollars And Arrests Kingpins
17 January – Source: Goobjoog News – 129 Words
Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) forces have impounded thousands of fake dollars and arrested several suspects in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The detectives arrested the kingpins in a covert operation launched in Waberi district following tips from locals according to the state’s news agency.
Printing machines as well as other equipment used in the production of the counterfeit currency and dollars in denominations of 100 were reportedly confiscated. The profits from currency counterfeiting are typically divided between the two separate parts of the operation, namely the clandestine labs which print the product and the networks that then distributes the fake bills inside the country. Somalia has been among the countries leading in the production of counterfeit dollars after the fall of the central government.
Hiiraan Administration To Intervene Clan Clashes In The Region
17 January – Source: Goobjoog News – 146 Words
Delegates including local officials and traditional elders will be dispatched to Mahas town to intervene and resolve the renewed clashes in some areas of Hiiraan region, the administration said. Speaking to Goobjoog News, Hiiraan Deputy Governor, Hussein Osman Ali said that it is the right time for the administration to play its role to ease the conflicts that erupted in areas under Mahas town.
“We want to intervene and to bring an end to the fight. We want to call both sides to the negotiating table to iron out their differences,” he said. Three people killed and more than ten others were injured after two clan militias engaged in fighting in areas under Mahas town.
INTERNATIONAL
Deputy SRSG De Clercq Assesses Humanitarian Crisis In Somalia’s South West State
16 January – Source: UNSOM – 510 Words
The Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia Peter de Clercq heard first-hand accounts of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in South West state today during an assessment tour of the administrative capital of Baidoa. Mr. de Clercq visited a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the city’s main hospital to meet with victims of a prolonged dry spell that has produced severe water shortages and acute food insecurity.
An estimated five million Somalis are in need of food aid after sparse rains triggered drought in much of the country. In South West state alone, nearly 820,000 people are in dire need of urgent humanitarian support, according to a newly released report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
“Five million people in this country, which is 40 per cent of the population, are currently in need of food aid because they don’t have enough to eat,” said Mr. de Clercq. “This is as a result of the fourth consecutive drought season, and it is going to take another four months before the next rainy season,” he added. He expressed concern that more people may abandon their homes for IDP camps in the state capital in their search of food.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“It’s not necessarily bad news for sub-Saharan Africa. It means that there won’t be senior level interventions in the region by the Trump administration, which means that middle-level officials might be able to frame policy.”
What We’ve Learnt About Donald Trump’s Africa Policy
17 January – Source: Newsweek – 966 Words
The President-elect of the United States has had precious little to say about U.S. policy toward Africa since his shock election victory in November 2016. But a four-page list of questions on U.S. policy in Africa, submitted by Donald Trump’s transition team to the State Department, has indicated a possible skepticism about the country’s counter-terrorism policy in Africa, and also raises questions about the continuation of aid programs.
The questions, reported by the New York Times, provide the first substantial indication of how Trump’s team sees U.S.-Africa policy changing over the next four years. Newsweek analyzes their possible implications: The Trump team’s questions appear to cast doubt on the efficacy of U.S. efforts at combating militant groups in Africa. In Somalia, where the United States has been involved militarily on and off for at least two decades, Trump’s team was blunt: “We’ve been fighting Al-Shabaab for a decade, why haven’t we won?”
The question is a valid one, according to Stig Jarle Hansen, an Al-Shabaab expert and research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. “It’s not only the U.S. failing to defeat Al-Shabaab, it’s actually the U.S. failing to defeat almost any jihadi group in Africa and maybe [even] outside Africa,” says Hansen.
While U.S. airstrikes and joint operations with Somali security forces have had some successes, Al-Shabaab remains a potent threat in the Horn of Africa country, regularly carrying out suicide bombings, including in the capital Mogadishu. Jansen says that he does not expect Trump to pull the U.S. out of Somalia, but that he is likely to place more emphasis on training local security forces in order to finally eradicate militant groups like Al-Shabaab.
Trump’s team also questioned the usefulness of a signature policy of outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama in Africa: the hunt for Joseph Kony. The Ugandan warlord’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), launched an insurgency against the Ugandan government in the 1980s but has become a peripheral threat in recent years, limited to kidnappings and attacks on small villages in South Sudan, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Obama committed 100 troops to hunt for Kony in 2011 and upped the deployment with another 150 air forces in 2014.
TOP TWEETS
@amisomsomalia : #Afgoye District Commissioner asked the population to be calm & patient, as leaders follow up the matter with #AMISOM authorities. #Somalia
@binnsy95 : Launch of 2017 #Somalia #HumanitarianResponse Plan -Mogadishu/Nairobi-need 2 step up response 2 extreme drought now 2 save lives @OCHASom
@Suazitos : In #Somalia #Rape is the only crime in which the victim is also the accused. #Justiceforoursister #PublicOutrage
@Daudoo : Today, 8 buses carrying more than 550 Somalis departed #Kenya‘s #Dadaab refugee camps to #Dhobley town in southern #Somalia – @WhoseinMoulid
@DrumChronicles : #Somalia #Galmudug #Adado fighting erupts around parliament house
@SimonaFoltyn : #Somalia is for the 1st time attempting something like democracy—and it isn’t looking pretty.Gr8 piece@MatinaStevis
@USAIDSomalia : Improving the quality of Somali teachers in 15 day teacher training #Beledweyne #Somalia @USAID
@HarunMaruf : Earlier, the National Leadership Forum gave Pres HS Mohamud “exceptional extension” as president until a new president is elected. #Somalia
IMAGE OF THE DAY
UN OCHA Launch of the 2017 Humantiarian Resonse plan for Somalia.
Photo: @UNOCHA