NATIONAL MEDIA
10 July – Source: Garowe Online – 219 Words
Somali government on Wednesday executed three men in Mogadishu for involvement in the deadly siege at a hotel that killed at least 18 people and injured 48 in October, 2017, Garowe Online reports. The country’s military court convicted Farhan Mohamed, Abdinasir Dhaqane and Abshir Mohamed for their role in a 12-hour Al-Shabaab gun and bomb attack at Nasa Hablod 2 hotel in October 2017.
A group of five extremists armed with AK-47 rifles and grenades stormed the building after a suicide-bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the entrance gate who engaged in a fierce gunfight with troops throughout the night. The three young men who have been veteran members of the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab extremist group were arrested hours after security forces ended the siege at the hotel while they tried to escape. They were sentenced to death in May 2018 by the military court in Mogadishu.The assault took place two weeks after more than 750 people were killed by a massive truck bomb at K5 junction, a busy Mogadishu street which became Somalia’s worst ever terrorist attack in history.
The execution will concern human rights campaigners. Death sentences have been carried out increasingly often in the unstable eastern African state in recent years, with 24 executions in 2017. Somalia receives significant military assistance from the US and the UK.
8 July – Source: Radio Ergo – 368 Words
Agriculture students from universities in Somaliland have been helping local farmers to master improved farming methods in order to strengthen their production. Twenty-five students from Hargeisa, Golis and Beder universities in Hargeisa have been volunteering their knowledge and introducing skills to 500 farmers across Somaliland, including in Gebiley, Arabasiyo, Abarso, Adadley, and Dacadr-budhuq.
Mubarik Mohamed Iman, a farmer in Adalu village, told Radio Ergo that the training had already brought results after years of preventable crop losses. “I learnt many things!” he said. “Some crops do well in warm weather, others in cold weather, but because we did not understand this the seeds ended up rotting. The other problem was that we had no knowledge about crop rotation.”
The four-month training, that has been ongoing since April, covers crop rotation, pests and disease, market demand, consumer taste, local ecological conditions, and planting techniques. Mubarik has planted maize, tomatoes, peppers, beans and watermelon on his one-hectare farm and has converted to the new methods. “My crops have dried up several times due to lack of intervals in planting and failure to prevent
Saynab Ahmed Abdirahman, a farmer in Arabsiyo village, commended the training she received from the university students. In particular, she learnt how to use chemical pesticides safely and effectively. “I sometimes feel guilty and regret the thoughtless way I used to keep the chemicals. My children used to play with the pesticides because I knew little about the harm they could do. Now I keep them out of reach of children,” Saynab told Radio Ergo. The crops on Saynab’s farm including maize, beans, tomatoes, and chills are growing in a healthy way and she is pleased. “The salad, green pepper, tomatoes, pepper and onions I harvested recently are of high quality and good quantity, so I can see this training was very productive,” she commended.
Said Dahir Muse, a third-year agriculture student involved as a trainer, said the initiative stemmed from a student survey of the challenges facing local farmers. “We realized there was a need for awareness and training after intensive observation. The problem we saw was that the farmers use only traditional methods of farming and have no knowledge about modern farming methods,” he said.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
10 July – Source: The Standard – 704 Words
An important meeting taking place in Nairobi this week provides a good platform to craft a cohesive and broad-based platform to develop a counter-terrorism approach in the region, even as the world grapples with strategies to tackle the global crisis. This is a follow up to June last year’s first-ever United Nations High-level Conference of Heads of Counter-Terrorism agencies of Member States in New York convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. This week’s regional conference is the lead-up to the next High-level Conference that will be held in June 2020 in New York to promote the implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and relevant General Assembly and Security Council resolutions.
Collective approach
The conference is important as it comes at a time when the International Crisis Group (ICG), in a report published in September last year titled, Al Shabaab Five Years after Westgate: Still a Menace to East Africa, indicated that countries in East Africa are still vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Although actions by individual states in the region to counter-terrorism seem to have paid off, the only way the Horn of Africa will benefit from the ongoing global efforts is by crafting a collective approach.
Due to its proximity to Somalia, a common porous border, a large number of Somalia citizens in the country and its decision to move military into Somalia in 2011, Kenya remains the most vulnerable country to jihadist attacks outside Somalia and must lead this initiative. Angered by the decision to move Kenyan soldiers to Somalia, the jihadist group also increased its attacks on Kenya, staging invasions that have led to deaths of innocent people.
In 2016 Al Shabaab attacked University of Garissa causing the deaths of 147 students. Seventy lives were lost in Westgate raid in 2013 while up to 200 Kenyan soldiers are said to have died during the El Adde military camp attack inside Somalia. In January this year Kenya lost over 20 citizens when the Al Shabaab attacked Dusit 2 hotel in Nairobi. The Dusit 2 attack revealed the changing face of jihadists’ modus operandi as the terrorists organised the offensive outside traditional methods. The attack was planned in a suburb right in the heart of Nairobi. Three counties from the former northeastern province; Mandera, Garissa and Wajir remain key operation centres for Al Shabaab.
Although the Nairobi conference will focus on broad-based counter-terrorism measures such as the deployment of anti-terrorism police in the northern Kenya, an increase in defence budgetary allocations for acquisition of equipment, role of the international community and intensified border patrols, the role of local communities and their leaders should not be lost. Kenya has already initiated the Nyumba Kumi initiative which encourages citizens to know their neighbours and report any suspicious activities to police.
The ICG noted that unlike in Kenya and Uganda where militant attacks attract sustained attention, this has not been the case in Tanzania. According to the report, media coverage has been scant in part because Tanzania is less open to international media than its neighbours. Tanzania has in the past acknowledged that most of the foreign Al Shabaab recruits in Somalia are from the country. Al Shabaab recruited the second biggest number of fighters from Tanzania between 2009 and 2012. This is evidenced by the increasing number of Tanzanians facing trials in Kenya for trying to cross into Somalia. The highest number of recruits came from Kenya…….
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“Conversations are ongoing with both the humanitarian and development donor communities and the Somali government on the scale and scope of a potential program, Bini said. Ongoing challenges include the varying funding mandates of different donors, government capacity, the lack of national identity cards, and financial sustainability.”
09 July – Source: Devex- 1232 Words
If she were to meet someone from her past life, Halima Dahir Mahmoud is not sure they would recognize her. She’s lost weight and is constantly stressed. She was once a nomadic herder who would roam the Ethiopian countryside with her 200 sheep and goats, and 50 camels. Now she lives in a displacement camp on the outskirts of Somaliland’s capital city of Hargeisa. “One of the things I miss the most is the fresh air,” she said. A few years ago, her animals started dying because of a regional drought. Eventually, there were none left. Her family left Ethiopia and walked 12 hours until they reached the displacement camp where they now live. In the past, she had more agency over her own life, she said. Her family lived off of their livestock, selling a few when they needed cash. Now they are dependent on aid.
Drought has burdened the region year after year since 2015, killing off livestock and crops. Globally, there has been an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. In the Horn of Africa, scientists have linked climate change to frequent drought conditions. “We’ve faced five years of consecutive drought in this country. Livelihoods have collapsed,” said Mohamed Abdalle Hussein, director of administration and finance at the National Disaster Preparedness and Food Reserve Authority in Somaliland — a region that unilaterally declared independence from Somalia in 1991, although this is not internationally recognized.
In the past, there was typically a buffer zone of good rainy seasons in between droughts that allowed people to recover and rebuild their assets, Hussein said. “Drought is a common disaster we’ve always faced, but the interval has changed. Before, it was a five to seven-year interval between [periods] when we experienced drought. Now that interval has decreased to one to two years,” he said. “If you experience drought year after year, you become weak and vulnerable.” With this new reality, the aid sector and local governments are faced with the need to shift the existing emergency response to a development approach that responds to long-term displacement and increases resilience among communities, with a focus on how to preserve their livelihoods.
Adapting to new conditions
In the past decade, the Horn of Africa has been hit by repeated disasters. A famine in southern Somalia in 2011 killed nearly 260,000 people, and another was narrowly averted in 2017. Northwestern Somaliland and Djibouti were also struck by an unprecedented cyclone last year, bringing a year’s worth of rain in only a few days, which killed animals and flooded crops. This year, rains started late and were insufficient, resulting in drought conditions across Somalia. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network estimates that 2.2 million people will experience crisis and emergency food insecurity through September.
In agropastoral areas, maize and sorghum production is expected to reach only about half of normal levels this year. Meanwhile, funding for food assistance is falling seriously short. A key strategy in building resilience in the region is to promote climate-smart agriculture. Since a lack of water is the main problem, aid groups are working with communities to set up basic rainwater harvesting systems that store water in underground tanks or plastic-lined pits, to help keep crops alive during dry periods……. |
