December 26, 2017 | Daily Monitoring Report
National Speaker And His Regional Counterparts Converge In Baidoa Town, Southwest State, Somalia
26 December – Source: Goobjoog News – 129 Words
Speaker Mohamed Osman Jawari and his regional counterparts are expected to hold a meeting today in Baidoa town, Southwest state. Speaker Jawari and other regional state speakers arrived yesterday in the town including federal member states of Puntland and Galmudug. Agendas of the meeting are not yet known but the major ones expected to be deliberated are how to strengthen federalism and forging a common ground for collaboration in work between the national parliament and the regional state assemblies.
The meeting which is being presided over by Speaker Jawari, is the first of its kind to take place in Baidoa town, the interim capital state of Southwest. The security of the town is said to be tight while security officers and soldiers are manning major roads searching people and vehicles.
Key Headlines
- National Speaker And His Regional Counterparts Converge In Baidoa Town Southwest State Somalia (Goobjoog News)
- President Farmaajo Orders Youth Officers To Be Nominated For National Armed Forces Leadership (Jowhar.com)
- Government Soldiers And Al-shabaab Fighters Engage In A Fierce Fight In Lower Shabelle (Goobjoog News)
- Hirshabelle Parliament To Hold An Extraordinary Meeting In Jowhar (Radio Dalsan)
- Islamic State Group Releases 1st Video Of Somalia Fighters (Associated Press)
- A Former Refugee Is Shaking Up The $441B Remittances Industry (NBC News)
NATIONAL MEDIA
President Farmaajo Orders Youth Officers To Be Nominated For National Armed Forces Leadership
26 December – Source: Jowhar.com – 145 Words
Somali President, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo has ordered SNA commanders to nominate youthful officers who graduated from military academy abroad for SNA leadership posts following a meeting with youthful officers in the army. Somalia’s Chief of Defense, Gen. Abdiweli Jama Gorod announced that youth will be handed over the leadership of the National Army as President ordered.
“It is very good that the president saw youth who have trained abroad in the army, he asked me to give those officers a chance to be in leadership of the military forces and we agreed,” said Gorod. However, some of the young officers who met with the Commander talked about their training experience in abroad, among them, one officer who was trained in the US told that people used to advise to give up and seek asylum, but he refused since his country sent him to serve.
Government Soldiers And Al-shabaab Fighters Engage In A Fierce Fight In Lower Shabelle
26 December – Source: Goobjoog News – 112 Words
Government soldiers and Al-shabaab fighters last night engaged in a vicious fight in Afgoye town in Lower Shabelle region causing casualties. The fight which is said to have continued for several minutes followed when Al-shabaab fighters ambushed government army positions in the town. Al-shabaab who were using civilian vehicles attacked government soldiers and heavy exchange of gunfire ensued. Casualties include 3 deaths and 4 others injured as confirmed by the local people.
Normalcy has returned to the area this morning and government soldiers are carrying out security search to apprehend the fighters. No official response has been released regarding this latest attack either from the local administration or the southwest regional authority.
Hirshabelle Parliament To Hold An Extraordinary Meeting In Jowhar
26 December – Source: Radio dalsan – 133 Words
Hirshabelle parliament is set to hold an extraordinary meeting today in Jowhor, the capital of Hirshabelle state. The agenda of the meeting remains unclear. Some section of Hirshabelle parliament asked the speaker to review the recently appointed Cabinet according to constitution while others demanded the newly appointed Cabinet to be approved.
Hirshabelle Speaker, Osman Barre Mohamed has delayed his anticipated travel to Baidio due to developing dispute within HirShabelle parliament. Security of the town has been beefed up, many troops were deployed to avoid violence.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Islamic State Group Releases 1st Video Of Somalia Fighters
26 December – Source: Associated Press – 145 Words
A group that monitors extremist organizations says the Islamic State group has posted what is thought to be the first video from IS-affiliated fighters in Somalia. The video posted online Monday calls on supporters to “hunt down” what it calls non believers and attack churches and markets. The SITE Intelligence Group says the video urges supporters to take advantage of people’s “drunkenness” over the holiday season to attack.
The United States last month launched its first drone strikes against Islamic State group-affiliated fighters in Somalia. The Horn of Africa nation has a small but growing presence of the fighters, many of them defectors from the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group. The fighters are based in northern Somalia’s rural Puntland. Experts warn their numbers could grow as IS fighters flee Syria and Iraq.
OPINION, ANALYSIS & CULTURE
“Ahmed returned to Somaliland after the violence subsided to do research for a Ph.D. He studied the huge impact remittances were having on the rebuilding of his homeland; aid organizations estimated that a few million dollars trickled back annually, but he discovered that the true figure was closer to $500 million,”
A Former Refugee Is Shaking Up The $441B Remittances Industry
25 December – Source: NBC News – 1472 Words
Refugee, strawberry-picker, economist, U.N. whistleblower and tech CEO: Ismail Ahmed has worn many hats on his long journey to running a firm with an annual turnover of $60 million. Along the rocky road to success, the cheerful 57-year-old has survived the ravages of war-torn Somalia and ostracization after calling out corrupt practices. He now employs hundreds of workers worldwide a remarkable outcome for a man whose integrity once left him, in his own words, “not only unemployed, but unemployable.” Ahmed created a business that allows customers to transfer money from 50 countries to over 140 locations across the globe with the tap of a finger.
As a British national who grew up in east Africa, he has been both a recipient and a sender of desperately needed cash and knows first hand how critical such a service can be, especially at a time when anti-immigration sentiment is high in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
When Ahmed grew up in Somaliland, a self-declared state within Somalia, money sent home by family members working in the Gulf states was a lifeline. But the process was arduous: An intermediary would buy construction materials in the Gulf, transport them back and, once the goods were sold, relatives would get their cash. It took months, but it worked.
In the late 1980s, the area was the target of attacks from Somalia’s central government and its dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre. Hargeisa, Somaliland’s main city, was flattened and an estimated 200,000 people were killed in what many say was genocide. In the ensuing chaos, Ahmed and his family were forced to flee and ended up in a refugee camp in Djibouti. Ahmed, who had won a scholarship to study economics at the University of London before the war broke out, eventually made his way to the U.K. with family help.
In between studying, Ahmed worked several part-time jobs including picking strawberries, which he described as the “toughest” work he ever did. Whatever meager wages he earned were sent back to relatives scattered in refugee camps across the Horn of Africa. Witnessing the cost and hassle of sending money home, he began researching the tremendous impact remittances have on the local economies that rely on them.
TOP TWEETS
@NimoJirdeh: Proud! Dadaab refugees excel in KCSE; two#refugee boys defied all odds to score high grades in the 2017 KCSE examination despite numerous challenges in the camp#Kenya #Somalia http://www.nation.co.
@RadioMuqdisho: #Speaker of house of the people Hon.#Jawari opens conference of legislative councils of Federal Government and regional states in Baidoa Southwest State#Somalia.
@Eye_on_Somalia: #allAfrica Militants Surrendered to Somalia Government Flown to Baidoa http://ift.tt/2BTTaYD #Somalia
@Fatumaabdulahi: Electricity and water in #Somalia is unaffordable. I thought#Mogadishu was too expensive until I received my first #Kismayo electric bill, a whopping $47 for 25 days, 21 of which I was not in the house and only fridge was on! Water bill? $42!! For 1 person who is hardly home!
@UNSomalia: @SRSGKeating end-of-year statement recaps achievements of #Somalia in 2017, calls for more cooperation and curbing of violence & corruption in new year http://bit.ly/2laBXPG
Zyiteblog: Somalia:Al-Shabaab Executes Five Men in Baidoa – [Dalsan Radio] Alshabab has executed five young men in the suburbs of Baidoa, the capital of Somalia’s Bay region yesterday afternoon accusing them of working with the regional states, Somali and Americ… http://ow.ly/oy9p50fU2fm
@AP_Africa: This is thought to be the first video by Islamic State group-linked fighters in Somalia. http://apne.ws/i66CxPI
IMAGE OF THE DAY
Speaker, Mohamed Osman (Jawari) opens conference of legislative councils of Federal Government and regional states in Baidoa Southwest State of Somalia.
Photo: Radio Muqdisho