April 24, 2018 | Morning Headlines
Rival Groups From Somali Army Clash At Former UAE Training Facility
23 April – Source: Reuters – 396 Words
Rival forces in the Somali army shot at each other in the capital Mogadishu on Monday, with one group trying to storm a former United Arab Emirates-run training center, soldiers and residents said. The clash was an indication of the difficulty in rebuilding unified security forces for a state where centralized authority collapsed in 1991 and an internationally backed government, elected last year, faces huge challenges. It was also another sign of the fallout from a crisis in the Gulf region that has spilled into the Horn of Africa.
The UAE has trained hundreds of troops since 2014 as part of an effort boosted by an African Union military mission to defeat an Islamist insurgency and secure the country for the government backed by Western countries, Turkey and the United Nations. The Gulf nation ended its program in Somalia this month after Somali security forces seized millions of dollars and temporarily held a UAE plane. “Some Somali military forces attacked us at the base, they wanted to loot it but we repulsed them,” Ahmed Nur a soldier who was trained under the discontinued program, told Reuters.
After 90 minutes of sporadic gunfire, the training facility was secured by presidential palace guards, a Reuters journalist at the scene said. General Abdiweli Jama Gorod, the commander of Somali National Army said they had arrested some soldiers who were behind the attempt take away equipment from the facility. “The Somali national forces now have in hand the few soldiers and officers who were behind today’s incident and we assure we shall bring them before justice,” he said on state-run Somalia News Agency.
Key Headlines
- Rival Groups From Somali Army Clash At Former UAE Training Facility (Reuters)
- First Of Three Ministers Resigned To Contest For Speaker’s Post (Goobjoog News)
- Somali MP Refutes Reports Of Govt Intervention In Parliament (Shabelle News)
- Kismayo Hosts Second Book Fair (Halbeeg)
- Fears Of More IEDs After Al-Shabaab Steal Fertiliser From Somalia Farmers (The Star Kenya)
- Uganda Says Military Operation In Somalia Still On Despite Challenges (Xinhuanet)
- Somalia’s Continuing Crisis Worsens With UAE Dispute (Atlantic Council )
NATIONAL MEDIA
First Of Three Ministers Resigned To Contest For Speaker’s Post
23 April – Source: Goobjoog News – 202 Words
State minister for Trade and Industry Abdi Aziz Hassan Mohamed has resigned from his post to contest for Lower House speaker’s position, heading the pack of three ministers slated to exit their ministerial posts. The minister who was appointed to the post by Prime Minister Hassan Khaire when he formed his first cabinet last March said he submitted his resignation in response to the conditions unveiled by the election committee Sunday. “I am resigning my position in order to vie for the post of speaker in line with the regulations issued by the elections committee,” Hassan told journalists. “I thank the Prime Minister for the confidence he had in me to serve as minister for more than a year,” the minister added.
The parliamentary committee tasked with overseeing the elections said ministers intending to vie for the seat must resign their posts before being registered as candidates. The registration started today and will end tomorrow. The seat fell vacant following the resignation of former Speaker Mohamed Jawari after a month long political dispute with Khaire. Other ministers expected to exit their posts are Water and Energy Minister Salim Ibrow and his Defense counterpart Mohamed Mursal. The election will take place April 30.
Somali MP Refutes Reports Of Govt Intervention In Parliament
23 April – Source: Shabelle News – 141 Words
Mohamed Omar Dalha, a long-serving Somali lawmaker has vehemently denied reports indicating that the executive branch is intervening in the national assembly’s affairs. Speaking to Radio Shabelle, MP Dalha refuted the allegation of government influence in the upcoming election of the speaker of the lower house of Somali parliament as baseless. He added that the vote for the speakership will be free and fair as the candidates eyeing the seat already began to register for the election which will take place on April 30.
The candidate vying for the seat include the ministers of defence, water as well as the state minister for trade and industry who resigned today from his post. The election came after former speaker Mohamed Osman Jawari stepped down on 9th April following weeks of political crisis and an imminent vote of no confidence motion against him.
Kismayo Hosts Second Book Fair
23 April – Source: Halbeeg – 185 Words
Over hundred book-lovers, scholars, authors are attending the Second Annual Book Fair which attracted dozens of participants across the nation. The book festival was officially opened by the deputy president of Jubbaland state, Mohamud Siyad Adan, he commended the organizers of the event for the second consecutive year. Adan pledged that his administration will support and promote the opening of libraries to backup the young writers.
Mohamed Abdikair Adan, the chairperson of the organizing committee of the event described the event as a success compared to the previous one. “This year, the Book Fair is different from the previous one in several ways. We have gained immense experience by overcoming challenges we encountered in the earlier event. Every year comes with its challenges, novelty and desire,” said Adan.
The three-day exhibition of literary works drew various participants such as scholars, playwrights, Intellectuals, poets and book enthusiasts as well as ministers from Jubbaland state attended the event. In recent years, Somalia has held different book fair events in different towns across the nation. Among other towns that hosted the book fairs are Mogadishu, Garowe and Hargeisa.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Fears Of More IEDs After Al-Shabaab Steal Fertiliser From Somalia Farmers
23 April – Source: The Star, Kenya – 192 Words
Suspected members of the Al-Shabaab terror group on Saturday stole fertilisers from local farmers in Gedo region, Somalia. The farmers started preparing their farms for planting three weeks ago soon after the rainy season kicked in. They mainly engage in the cultivation of bananas, watermelons, onions, and tomatoes. They had received fertiliser supplies from humanitarian aid agencies working in Somalia.
However, a group of militants raided a village in Lower Shebelle and demanded for the consignment. The supplies had been delivered to the farmers the previous week by the aid agencies. Kamal Abdi, a tomato farmer, reported that four armed militants raided his home on Saturday morning while he was away at the farm. He said the militants took away all his fertiliser and repeatedly raped his teenage daughter who had been left alone at home.
Security agents suspect that the militants are using the fertiliser as a component in making Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDS). The terror group is synonymous with using IEDs against enemy forces allied to AMISOM and troops from the Somali National Army. The residents are appealing to security agencies to intervene and provide sufficient security to them.
Uganda Says Military Operation In Somalia Still On Despite Challenges
23 April – Source: Xinhuanet – 193 Words
The Ugandan military on Monday said its peacekeeping mission in Somalia is still ongoing, refuting reports that the troops are not making progress. Despite some challenges which are being addressed, the AMISOM remains on course and significant successes have since 2007 been achieved, Brig. Richard Karemire, the Ugandan military spokesman said in a tweet.
AMISOM is an acronym of the African Union Mission in Somalia.
Karemire was responding to a lead story in the local Daily Monitor on Monday quoting David Muhoozi, Uganda’s military chief as saying that the military was stuck in the Somali mission. The report alleged that Ugandan soldiers deployed in the Horn of Africa country to fight the al-Shabab militants are stranded due to underfunding, logistical deficits and a challenged Somali national force.
Uganda was the first to deploy troops in Somalia in March 2007 and still has the largest number of soldiers in the 22,000-strong African Union peacekeeping operation. Other troop contributors include Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya. The troop contributing countries met in Uganda in February this year and urged the international community to support the mission warning that the military gains made may be reversed.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“What has transpired is that the diplomatic conflict between Qatar and the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council—especially Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain—has spilled over into a proxy conflict in the Horn of Africa. That much could have been anticipated, but what is both surprising and, from the point of view of the United States and other allies, more worrisome, is that the FGS has apparently taken sides.”
Somalia’s Continuing Crisis Worsens With UAE Dispute
23 April – Source: Atlantic Council – 1592 Words
The recent statement from the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) that American forces had carried out an airstrike destroying an al-Shabaab truck bomb near Jana Cadalle in southern Somalia on April 11 was the third time this month that the US military is reported to have hit the terrorist group in the East African country.
While AFRICOM stressed that the action and the eight other airstrikes that it has acknowledged since the beginning of this year alone was taken “in coordination with the Federal Government of Somalia” (FGS), the truth is that this heightened operational tempo in response to the ongoing threat from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab as well as a smaller ISIS-affiliated group only underscores the ongoing weakness of the internationally-recognized Somali regime.
While it is imperative to keep up military pressure on the militants, ultimately insurgencies like Somalia’s can only be defeated by political legitimacy and, as I pointed out late last year, this is one test that, more than a quarter of century after the collapse of the last central government to really exercise sovereignty over the country, the authorities in Mogadishu still struggle to achieve a passing grade on: recall that the FGS’s own auditor estimates that $20 million changed hands in the process that led to the establishment of the current administration in February 2017, a fact that does not exactly stir patriotic adherence to or otherwise bolster the regime’s credibility with ordinary Somalis.
Protected in the seaside capital by the 22,000-strong military force of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)—made up of troops from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda whose salaries are paid by the European Union and whose operations are supported by a United Nations logistical package and various bilateral donors led by the United States-Somalia’s political elites wile away their time in internecine power struggles.
Earlier this month, the speaker of the country’s parliament, Mohamed Osman Jawari, was forced to resign ahead of a no-confidence vote, after losing out in a fight with President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, a.k.a. “Farmajo” (from the Italian formaggio, or cheese) a dual US-Somali national who worked as a Buffalo-based diversity contracting officer for the New York State Department of Transportation in between stints in politics.