August 30, 2017 | Morning Headlines

Main Story

PM Summons Minister Of Commerce Over Invalidation Of Chamber Of Commerce

29 August – Source: Somali Update – 150 Words

Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire has summoned the Minister of Commerce and Industrialization of the Federal Government of Somalia Khadra Dualeh a day after she traveled to Kenya where she is attending a conference related to her ministry. Sources at the PM’s office said the minister was informed on Monday night to return urgently for a meeting with Mr. Khaire.

The PM seems to be unhappy with the minister’s move to disband the National Chamber of Commerce . “She is expected to return within the day to Mogadishu.” the source who spoke with Somali Update in anonymity said. In an official decree, Ms. Dualeh on Mondayinvalidated the existence of the disputed Chamber of Commerce and said she would set up new chamber which is inclusive for all Somalia regions. But her letter was rejected by the current administration of the Chamber who presented an official recognition letter signed by the Prime Minister himself in March this year.

Key Headlines

PM Summons Minister Of Commerce Over Invalidation Of Chamber Of Commerce (Somali Update)
Ministry Of Telecom Leadership Relocates To Headquarters For The First Time In 27 Years (RBC Radio)
Somalia And Egypt Agree To Cooperate On Farming And Livestock Development (Radio Dalsan)
HirShabelle State Assembly Appoints Presidential Poll Team (Goobjoog News)
Dubai Volunteers Reach Out To Famine-hit In Africa (Gulfnews)
We Shouldn’t Forget the Lessons of Black Hawk Down (Just Security)

NATIONAL MEDIA

Ministry Of Telecom Leadership Relocates To Headquarters For The First Time In 27 Years

29 August – Source: RBC Radio – 216 Words

The Deputy Prime Minister, Mahdi Guleid, has lauded the new leadership of the Ministry of Posts, Telecom and Technology for successfully relocating their offices to the Ministry Headquarters for the first time in 27 years. Speaking after visiting the Ministry, Guleid said this decision would not only improve productivity and accountability, but will also boost the morale of staff.

Since 2014, the ministry’s leadership, such as the minister, his deputy and the director general, maintained offices at the premises of the Ministry of Information (MoI), while the rest of staff members have been working at the main building in Bondhere. However, after the necessary arrangements have been completed in the last few months, the temporary offices at MoI premises were officially closed and handed over back to the Ministry of Information.

Abdi Ashur Hassan, minister for posts, telecom and technology said that the Ministry couldn’t execute its annual plan or deliver credible service to the sector and citizens at large if the leadership and staff members are not working in the same place. “The relocation of offices back to Ministry Headquarters and closure of temporary offices show our commitment. We believe that no proper work can be accomplished without the direct involvement and interaction of top management and the staff members,” added the minister.

Somalia And Egypt Agree To Cooperate On Farming And Livestock Development

29 August – Source: Radio Dalsan – 174 Words

Federal Republic of Somalia and the Arab Republic of Egypt have signed agreement to cooperate in farming. Egyptian Agriculture Minister Abdulmoneim Al Banna has confirmed the cooperation during a meeting with his Somali counterpart in the capital Cairo. Mr. Al Banna confirmed that his government will send agricultural experts to Mogadishu in order to assess over 200 hectares of farmland to implement the first phase of the project. He added that the experts will be on the ground immediately after the federal government of Somalia gives the green light for the ambitious scheme.

Egyptian government through ministry of agriculture has also promised to increase the number of agricultural experts and livestock vets in Somalia by providing training opportunities at Egyptian agricultural research institutions. Somali agricultural minister Said Hussein Eid has welcomed the move saying the federal government will speed up the formation of joint technical committee to follow up the cooperation. The agreement is among several other cooperation pact signed between Mogadishu and Cairo during recent visit of President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo in Egypt.

HirShabelle State Assembly Appoints Presidential Poll Team

29 August – Source: Goobjoog News – 133 Words

HirShabelle state assembly has appointed nine members to facilitate the election of a new state president following the ouster of the immediate president Ali Abdullahi Osoble in a confidence vote mid this month. House speaker Osman Bare Mohamed announced the appointment of the nine and called on them to execute their role with fairness and in accordance with the constitution. “In reference to Article 42 clause 2 of HirShabelle state constitution, I have appointed the presidential election committee for HirShabelle state,” the speaker said in a statement.

Mohamed Hussein Yusuf will chair the committee while Abdiweli Ali Omar will be the committee’s spokesperson. The committee will be expected to lead the presidential election process which according to the state law is supposed to be conducted 30 days after the the no confidence vote.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Dubai Volunteers Reach Out To Famine-hit In Africa

29 August – Source: Gulfnews – 781 Words

A Dubai-based health care group last week reached out to thousands of famine-hit refugees and distributed food in the east-African country of Somaliland ahead of Eid Al Adha. A group of volunteers from Aster DM Healthcare distributed meals in Buraco town, east of capital city Hargeisa on August 26. Meals worth Dh1.5 million were shipped in two containers in coordination with Awqaf and Minors Affairs Foundation (AMAF), Dubai Charity Association and Al Hayat Islamic Foundation in Somaliland. Aster employees from the UAE, India, Philippines contributed for the charity initiative as part of the company’s 30th anniversary year celebrations.

A total of 150,000 meals are being distributed in remote colonies occupied by famine-hit refugees who lack housing, have no electricity or water and survive on handouts by local and international agencies. The volunteers from Dubai arrived in Hargeisa on August 25 and the following day distributed boxes containing 42 ‘Salma’ halal meals to around 3,500 families in three refugees clusters.

On Saturday, hundreds of women and children gathered at Kausar Primary school in Buraco, a small town near the port city of Berbera. “These meals are nice but please give us rice and lentils next time,” an old woman said. “As of June 2017, around three million people, an estimated one quarter of Somalia’s population, are experiencing acute food shortages at crisis or emergency levels and 363,000 children are suffering from malnutrition. Aster aspires to be responsible members of the international community to think about others, and to do what we can to alleviate the suffering of those in less fortunate conditions than we are.

OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE

“In subsequent years, and with the international community largely departed, Somalia would devolve into a hotbed of clan warfare and extremism, and amid the instability, Osama bin Laden would send operatives from his young al-Qaeda organization to the Horn,”

We Shouldn’t Forget the Lessons of Black Hawk Down

29 August – Source: Just Security – 2719 Words

Twenty-four years ago this month, President Bill Clinton, a first-term commander in chief with no military or foreign policy experience, approved a request from his military commanders to deploy several hundred special operations forces to Somalia. The deployment would eventually lead to a bloody battle on the streets of Mogadishu, horrific images of U.S. soldiers being dragged through angry mobs, and the greatest foreign policy disaster of Clinton’s Administration.

Fast forward to the present, and in roughly the same amount of time in office, President Trump has presided over a significant expansion in special operations deployments while delegating authority to Pentagon leadership and “his” generals in the field. Earlier this summer, his National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster declared that the White House was “getting out of the tactical business.” McMaster’s comment is reminiscent of what Clinton would later say in describing the Somalia mission: That he had heeded the lesson of Vietnam, which was not to manage tactical decisions from Washington. Yet the tactical mishaps in Mogadishu would have strategic fallout for President Clinton, teaching his young administration a lot about the role Washington should play in overseeing military operations and ultimately laying the groundwork for how each of his successors would oversee sensitive military missions. We should hope that McMaster’s comments reflect a genuine desire to streamline the National Security Council process, not to neglect those painful lessons learned.

Of course, much has changed since 1993. President Trump inherits a very different geopolitical landscape and a cadre of special operations forces honed through continuous operations since 9/11. But since the Black Hawk Down incident, three successive administrations have developed approaches to managing special operations that consider the full range of risks – operational, diplomatic, political – through careful policy process prior to operational deployments. The framework that Barack Obama left to his successor evolved out of his predecessors’ approaches and formalized careful oversight of operations.
Through its early months in office, the Trump administration, both by design and circumstance, has presided over a deconstruction of the Obama framework that critics had blasted as inappropriately tactical. No president is obliged to follow the policies of his predecessor, but through his early actions, President Trump may be raising the specter of a special operations disaster for which the government and the U.S. public are both unprepared. His responsibility as Commander in Chief is not to eliminate the risks that are inherent to counter terrorism but rather to set the conditions – by hiring a good team and creating a sound policy process – so that he can make sound decisions and the American people can feel confident about the risky missions for which their military is deployed. To do anything less is to ignore the lessons of the past 24 years – and invite a disaster of the President’s own making.

ADDITIONAL SOMALIA NEWS WILL APPEAR IN THE AFTERNOON REPORT

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