October 31, 2018 | Morning Headlines
Jubbaland President Accepts Farmajo’s Call For Talks
30 October – Source: Shabelle Media – 157 Words
The leader of Somalia’s southern Jubbaland regional state, Ahmed Madobe, has welcomed President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo’s invitation for dialogue with Federal Member States (FMS). Madobe’s apparent change of heart comes after United Nations and African Union envoys in Somalia paid him a visit in Kismayo on Monday. The envoys, Nicholas Haysom (UN) and Francisco Madeira (AU) held a meeting with Madobe amid deepening political crisis engulfing the Horn of Africa country.
President Farmaajo has called on the regional state leaders to convene in Mogadishu for a meeting end the standoff between the two levels of the government. The President said his government was willing to find a lasting solution to the country’s challenges through a framework of consultation, compromise, and protection of the common interest of institutions at the federal and national level. Last Month, the leaders of the regional states suspended their cooperation with the federal government over what they termed “lack of security and political progress”.
Key Headlines
- Jubbaland President Accepts Farmajo’s Call For Talks (Shabelle Media)
- Somali Diplomatic Staff Unpaid for Nine Months FM (252Politics)
- Unidentified Fighter Jets Target Al-Shabaab Camp In Central Somalia (Shabelle Media)
- Five People Mediating Clashes In Wanlaweyn Gunned Down In Lafoole (Goobjoog News)
- New Submarine Cable To Link East African Coastline (The Star)
- Al-Shabaab’s Former No. 2 Leader Runs For Office In Somalia (ABC News)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Somali Diplomatic Staff Unpaid for Nine Months, FM
30 October – Source: 252Politics – 150 Words
The Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has said some of the Somali diplomatic staff have not been paid for past nine months. Speaking during a special session with Upper House of The People on Monday, Ambassador Ahmed Isse Awad told the representatives of Somali Upper House that despite serving the interest of the nation outside the country, some of the diplomatic mission staff had not been paid for close to a year.
Ambassador Awad, who appealed to the Upper House Representatives to approve 2019 national budget to facilitate government expenditure, did not elaborate the main reason behind the nonpayment of his staff despite their apparent lavish lifestyle. His comments contract those of Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire and Finance Minister Dr. Abdulrahman Beyle, who are on record stating that President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo came to power, all civil servants have been paid without failure through their bank accounts.
Unidentified Fighter Jets Target Al-Shabaab Camp In Central Somalia
30 October – Source: Shabelle Media – 98 Words
Unknown warplanes have carried out an airstrike in central Somalia, targeting Al-Shabaab base on Tuesday. According to authorities, the fighter jets bombed Al-Shabaab target in Wabho area located in Hiran region of central Somalia, causing unspecified casualties on the militants.
The airstrike comes a day after Al-Shabaab claimed to have killed at least 30 Ethiopian soldiers serving with African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in a bomb blast in the region. The U.S. and Kenyan air forces often conduct air raids against Al-Shabaab controlled locations in Somalia as part of the war on the Al-Qaeda-linked militant group.
Five People Mediating Clashes In Wanlaweyn Gunned Down In Lafoole
30 October – Source: Goobjoog News – 149 Words
Five people who were reportedly mediating clan clashes in Wanlaweyn district in Lower Shabelle region were shot dead by armed men in Lafoole area on their way to the capital of Mogadishu. Lafoole deputy district commissioner Mukhtar Noor Gesei told Goobjoog News on phone that the five were killed after their assailants forced them to alight from a taxi vehicle they were travelling. Lafoole is barely 15 km north west of Mogadishu.
The attackers released the driver before firing at their victims dead. The five victims, said Gessi, were aged between 30 and 70 years. The official noted they could not establish whether or not the attackers were members of the Al-Shabaab terror group. Clan clashes broke out last week in Wanlaweyn, some 70 kilometres north west of Mogadishu. Gesei said they were pursuing the taxi driver, whom he said fled to Mogadishu. The driver hails from Wanlaweyn..
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
New Submarine Cable To Link East African Coastline
30 October – Source: The Star – 207 Words
Cheaper internet is on its way after a 5,400 km cable system linking Djibouti, Mogadishu and Mombasa undersea cable was launched. The Djibouti Africa Regional Express 1(DARE1) will in due course link major coastal towns in the region and will deliver a capacity of up to 30 terabits per second. TE SubCom will be the main supplier in undersea communications technology and marine services.
“It will provide an alternative high-capacity and low-latency route,” the companies said in a joint statement. The partnership is projected to improve on productivity and cost advantages of a short-haul cable route while still maintaining the capacity and reliability of a much larger long-haul system using SubCom’s scalable system design.
The DARE1 consortium is composed of Djibouti Telecom and Somtel, and is configured as a three fiber pair trunk, with each fiber pair delivering a cross-sectional capacity of 150 channels at 100 Gbps. It will include diversified Points of Presence with options for future connectivity via SubCom’s industry-leading optical reconfigurable add/drop multiplexing (ROADM) product line.
Abdirashid Duale, the CEO Dahabshiil Group said the submarine cable will offer affordable internet services and ease congestion across existing systems: “DARE1 will be the first submarine cable to link Mogadishu to the global network.”
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“It doesn’t help that Somali law and institutions are still very much evolving and the amnesty program for ex-al-Shabab members is a bit unclear,” Mahmood said. Some low- and mid-level defectors go to rehabilitation centers while others end up on trial. Robow has received other arrangements, including security.”
Al-Shabaab’s Former No. 2 Leader Runs For Office In Somalia
30 October – Source: ABC News – 1186 Words
The normal-looking campaign rally in Somalia’s capital this month was anything but. Dozens of people in T-shirts bearing the smiling candidate’s image and “Security and Justice” were praising the former No. 2 leader of Africa’s deadliest Islamic extremist group, the Al-Qaida-linked Al-Shabaab, who until recently was the target of a $5 million U.S. reward.
Stunned, Somalia’s federal government is in an awkward spot. If Mukhtar Robow’s campaign for a regional presidency goes forward, observers say the man who once praised Osama bin Laden and tried to impose an Islamic state has a good chance at winning next month’s election.
Ever since surprising Somalis by defecting to a delighted government last year, the former Al-Shabaab spokesman and founding father has not been shy. Robow openly discussed his break with hardliners that led him to quit the extremist group — “I disagreed with their creed, which does not serve Islamic religion,” he said — and the threats that pushed him to defect after years of living in the safety of his clan. Then he donated blood in a show of support after Somalia’s deadliest attack, the October 2017 truck bombing in Mogadishu that killed over 500 people.
Now the lanky, bearded Robow, Al-Shabaab’s highest-profile defector, seeks to lead his native Southwest region despite a sharp “no” from the federal government. The interior ministry says he’s ineligible to run because he remains under international sanctions.
The problem, observers say, is that Somalia’s federal government is in such a state that no one knows who has the authority to decide who can be a candidate. The presidency did not respond to questions. The United Nations mission in Somalia, which provides electoral support, would not comment. “Who has the last call on who runs? Nobody knows,” Hussein Sheikh-Ali, a former national security adviser and chair of the Hiraal Institute who has known Robow for years, told The Associated Press.
On top of that, relations between Somalia’s federal government and its regional ones are so bad that cooperation is almost severed, victim of the wary politics in the Horn of Africa nation recovering from decades of warlord-led fighting and devastating Al-Shabaab attacks. Over the weekend, Southwest residents and some members of parliament protested what they called the federal government’s meddling in the vote.
While Robow told the AP he couldn’t comment, there’s no sign of him backing out of the race, even as al-Shabab calls him an apostate. When the group this month bombed Baidoa, the Southwest’s interim capital, he quickly appeared at a local hospital to visit victims and condemn the attacks.
Despite his dark history that includes recruiting many local young men into al-Shabab, some in the Southwest reserve goodwill for Robow after he spared several government officials from certain execution when the extremist group overran Baidoa in 2009. “That has contributed to change his people’s perception toward him, so they owe him a bit,” regional lawmaker Ahmed Nur Adam told the AP.