August 2, 2018 | Daily Monitoring Report
SFG Leadership Should Review Its Stance On The Djibouti-Eritrea Dispute
02 August – Source: Jowhar News – 130 Words
Former President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has called on the leaders of the Federal Government to reconsider their stance on the Djibouti-Eritrea dispute, saying that President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo’s call for the lifting of sanctions on Eritrea was unwise. On a Facebook post, the former President observes that Djibouti has sacrificed life and limb for Somalia and accordingly “deserves from our protection and support in their quest for safeguarding their sovereignty and efforts to reclaim parts of their territory that are missing and their soldiers”.
His remarks follows yesterday’s protest by the Djibouti embassy in Mogadishu against President Farmajo’s call for lifting the sanctions and economic restrictions on Eritrea. Hassan Sheikh nonetheless welcomed the current government’s efforts to advance Somalia’s diplomatic ties with the countries in the region.
Key Headlines
- SFG Leadership Should Review Its Stance On The Djibouti-Eritrea Dispute (Jowhar News)
- Suicide Bomber Kills 2 Including Minister In Buhoodle (Garowe Online)
- Somalia Cabinet Holds Weekly Meeting In Garowe (Halbeeg News)
- Woman Denies Links With Al-Shabaab And Connection With Terror (Standard Media)
- The Cafe Talkers Of Somalia (Popula)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Suicide Bomber Kills 2, Including Minister In Buhoodle
02 August – Source: Garowe Online – 194 Words
A suicide bomber in the northern Somali province of Togdheer killed at least two people, including a regional minister and wounded four others on Wednesday. Suleyman Aden Elmi, the District Commissioner of Buhoodle confirmed, that a man wearing suicide vest detonated himself at a vehicle carrying former Khatumo State Minister of Interior, Ahmed Mohamud Dalol.
Mr. Elmi added that Abdifatah Mohamed Ali, an ex-finance head of the now-defunct Hizbul Islam – an Islamic extremist group – who defected from Al-Shabab in 2013, was among the dead. Mr. Ali became a political adviser to former Somali Prime Minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke. The deadly explosion occurred shortly after the two officials had just left a mosque in the town for evening prayers at around 7:00 p.m. local time.
According to police sources, the bomber signaled for the vehicle to stop, greeted the officials before detonating an “explosive belt” around his waist, killing all occupants on the spot, and also injuring four civilians. There was no immediate claim of responsibility of the attack, which is the first bombing in the city’s history. The incident nonetheless bears the hallmarks of attacks by members of the Al-Shabaab militia group.
Somalia Cabinet Holds Weekly Meeting In Garowe
02 August – Source: Halbeeg News – 112 Words
Somali Cabinet ministers are expected to hold their weekly meeting on Thursday in Garowe town. Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire and his Cabinet arrived in Garowe town, the administrative capital of Puntland, as part of the PM’s entourage on his tour of the self declared semi-autonomous state.
According to reliable sources, the meeting is scheduled to take place today. In attendance will be the Federal Government ministers and Puntland state regional ministers. The move comes after hours of speculation that the ministerial meeting had been called off following disagreement between Puntland and Federal Government leaders. Reports now indicate that Federal lawmakers have intervened in the situation and the meeting is expected to proceed.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Woman Denies Links With Al-Shabaab And Connection With Terror
02 August – Source: Standard Media – 511 Words
A woman accused of being a member of Al Shabaab terrorist group has told a court that police arrested her when she went to visit her brother in a boarding school in Kajiado. Halima Adan, who is accused of recruiting and funding terrorism activities in Kenya, denied any involvement or connection with the terrorist group.
While giving her unsworn evidence before Chief Magistrate Eric Makori yesterday, Ms Adan said she was arrested together with her brother, her uncle, who is a truck driver, and a conductor who had given them a lift to Nairobi. “I was on my way to visit my young sibling who schools in Manner, Kajiado County. I have never been involved in any terror activity neither do I have any connections,” she said.
Adan, who was remanded at Lang’ata Women’s Prison after being arrested again and charged in Nairobi with funding terrorism activities, said nothing that could incriminate her was found on the day of the arrest about three years ago. She was charged together with Maryam Said Aboud, Khadija Abdulkadir Abubakar, and Ummul Khayr Sadir Abdalla. Aboud has since died. Abubakar and Abdalla were arrested on March 27, 2015, At El Wak in Mandera trying to enter Somalia while Adan was intercepted in Machakos on April 3, 2015. Both are out on a Sh500,000 bond after spending two years in remand.
The three are facing similar terror charges before Senior Principal Magistrate Henry Nyakweba. Adan said she became the breadwinner of her family of eight after her father died in 2009 and her mother became ill. “My father died in 2009 and my mother became the bread winner. But she became ill and I took over from her as the bread winner,” said Adan. She has been accused being a member of Al Shabaab terror group.
She is also facing five charges of collecting videos and articles for commission of terror acts through her Samsung phone. She has denied owning a Samsung phone. Adan said before her arrest, she had never met her co-accused and that she came to learn that they were being charged with the same offence after they were arraigned. “I came to know my co-accused on May 6, 2015, after being charged. I stayed with them in custody for two years and came to know they were good and well-mannered ladies,” said Adan.
She said police had not proved that she was a terrorist and a member of the terror group. The told the magistrate police confiscated a Nokia phone from her and her identity card that she had carried on her journey to Nairobi. Adan said she was detained for five days at Kilimani Police Station before being charged in Mombasa. “I was arrested on May 2, 2015, and not May 3, 2015, as alleged by police. I was detained at Kilimani, where I stayed from Thursday until Monday, when I was bundled into a Probox and brought to Mombasa. I was detained for 30 days before I was finally charged,” said Adan. The judgement is set for August 30.
OPINION, ANALYSIS & CULTURE
“Somalia’s café talkers didn’t go away after the civil war and the collapse of the state in 1991. If anything, they proliferated; as the former Somali Republic fragmented into autonomous and semi-autonomous regional states, the café talkers have become more vested in politicized clan and regional identities.”
The Cafe Talkers Of Somalia
02 August – Source: Popula – 1638 Words
Language is the essence of Somali society: the spoken word is directly linked to power and influence, and oral poetry is synonymous with Somali culture itself. Somalis simply talk. They talk in the nomadic countryside as they set up camp or water their camels; they talk when they encounter one another on journeys, at trading posts, at wells; they talk in huts and in houses, while resting away from the sun during its most intense hours; and in the towns and cities that have grown tremendously in size and importance in the 58 years since Somalia’s independence, they talk in cafés, a form of Somali talk jocularly known as fadhi ku dirir, meaning “fighting while seated.”
These are the café talkers. They are the Somali men gathered in public spaces to discuss and loudly debate social and political problems, from international current events to domestic issues and clan affairs. They are the men gathered in homes and the men gathered in mafrish—or qat chewing houses—discussing politics over sessions of the leafy, stimulant drug. They are also the men in Tim Hortons and Starbucks, the men in Somali neighborhoods across the diaspora, thousands of miles away from the events in Mogadishu and Hargeisa that they dissect and argue about. They are the men dismissed as “café talkers”—their chatter described as “fighting”—because of what they have in common: they are the men whose marginality from the political power structure gives them a desire to talk about it.
Chatter, argument, gossip, and rumor in the cafés has been a political problem for governments in Somalia for a century. In 1953, a Somali soldier of the British Army named Ibrahim Haji Hassan wrote a letter to the editor complaining about the “99 percent of . . . Somalis who are absolutely ignorant of the intentions and policy of the government towards their country.”
Northern Somalia was then still a colonial protectorate, so the “government” he referred to was Britain; the letter was published in War Somali Sidihi, a biweekly newspaper published by the British Somaliland Protectorate’s Information Department in Hargeisa to promote policies of colonial governance to the Somalis they ruled. “Ignorance usually leads them to suspect every system or body the government forms,” as Hassan put it; the information contained in publications like War Somali Sidihi“would enable the good Somali to raise his voice higher than, or at least as high as, the ‘Coffee Shop Lawyer.’ ”
Hassan was right about the problem, at least from his perspective; widespread opposition to secular schooling and public-health interventions was led by the rumor-mongering of what the British called the “coffee shop lawyers” and the “fitna-makers” (an Islamic term for trouble or discord within the Muslim community), whose talk saw conspiracies and sinister intentions in colonial development schemes. The colonial state’s use of pesticides for locust control, for example, was widely believed to be a plan by the British to exterminate camels, and that talk led to riots between 1943 and 1945. In southern Somalia, Fascist Italian administrators banned gatherings of Somalis altogether in the 1930s, fearing the subversive potential of Somali talk.
TOP TWEETS
@HarunMaruf: Former President of Somalia Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has urged his successor @M_Farmaajo to “review” position taken on the issues b/w Djibouti and Eritrea. “The people and Govt of Djibouti deserve our protection and support of their territorial integrity,” he said in a Facebook post
@DalsanFM: Ethio-Somali organisation ONLF demands apology from #Somalia govt. “We call on the President to repeal the decision of the Somali Cabinet Ministers labelling ONLF a terrorist organisation, and to offer a full apology to Abdikarin Sh Muse & all Somali people” via @ONLFofficial.
@Mogadishu_EAH: First at Somalia; We’ve started interventional radiology procedure. Computerized tomography/ultrasonography guided abscess drainage procedure has performed at Mogadishu Somali Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital. @sbkhgm@TC_Mogadishu @TheVillaSomalia
@MoPIED_Somalia: @MoPIED_Somalia team discussing with Save the Children counterparts on the upcoming consultations for Save the Children’s Country Strategic program.
@SahraCabdi: #Somali ministers departed to #Garoweyesterday, to have their ministerial council meeting. This comes as the @SomaliPM was there 3 days.
@DalsanFM: Diplomatic Row Brews Between Djibouti & Somalia Over Call By Farmaajo For Eritrea Sanctions To Be Liftedhttps://www.radiodalsan.com/
@Ahmedcadaali: The terrorist attack in Buhodle today that took the lives of two prominent #Khatumo & #Puntland politicians, bears all the hallmarks of #Somaliland & It’s crony Al-Shabab militants’ goal to destabilize the stability of the region. It’s time for the IC to investigate the nexus.
IMAGE OF THE DAY
Cabinet minister council meeting held in Garowe, Puntland.
Photo: @DalsanFM