December 3, 2014 | Morning Headlines.

Main Story

Top leaders denounce Mandera quarry attack

02 Dec – Source: Goodjoog – 251 Words

The President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, on behalf of the Federal Government and the people of Somalia, offers his sincere condolences in response to this morning’s murderous attack by al-Shabab terrorists on defenseless quarry workers near Mandera, Kenya. He said: “The governments of Kenya and Somalia are united in their condemnation of the actions of al-Shabab and stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight against the scourge of terrorism in both countries.”

The Somali intelligence service is cooperating with its Kenyan counterparts to find those responsible for this and other recent attacks.” President Hassan continued: “We understand al-Shabab’s ploy and we will not fall into their trap. Al-Shabab thinks that their headline-seeking atrocities will drive wedges between Somalis and Kenyans, Somalis and Somalis, Kenyans and Kenyans. But we must prove them wrong…We must use our outrage constructively, channeling it wholeheartedly into finding those responsible and making them subject to the due process of the law.”

Somali President concluded: “We must take care to avoid the lures of al-Shabab: rendered powerless on the battlefield, they seek to draw us into excessive responses with these attacks. We must be calm, measured, and target our responses carefully. We must remain unified, regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religion and we must remember that there is only one enemy here: al-Shabaab.” On his side PM Abdiweli strongly condemned the deadly attack in Koromey, the outskirts of Mandera town, he sent condolences to the families and relatives who lost their beloved ones during the attack.

Key Headlines

Arab League takes role to mediate embattled Somalia leaders (Radio RBC)
Top leaders denounce Mandera quarry attack (Radio Goodjoog )
Somali Jihadist fighting for ISIS killed in Iraq (Horseed Media)
Puntland ministerial delegation leaves for SW president inauguration (Radio RBC)
Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku fired as Inspector of Police David Kimaiyo resigns (Standard Digital Media)
Bodies of 36 people killed in Mandera quarry attack flown to Nairobi (Daily Nation)
Kenya massacre: Al-Shabaab vows more ‘ruthless attacks against occupation of Somali lands’ (International Business Times)
Somalia’s troubles come south (The Economist)
Al-Shabaab Militants in Somalia execute woman accused of spying (Bloomberg News)

SOMALI MEDIA

Arab League takes role to mediate embattled Somalia leaders

02 Dec – Source: Radio RBC – 221 Words

A delegation from the Arab League reached Somalia capital, Mogadishu on Monday as part of playing the League’s role to mediate between the country’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and his Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed in their ongoing rift since October this year, RBC Radio reports. The Arab League delegation came after the Council of the Ministers of the Arab Countries endorsed a call from Egypt to mediate between Somalia leaders as part of Arab League Member State. Somalia’s Foreign Minister Dr. Abdurahman Duale Beileh together with other government officials and Members of the Parliament received the Arab delegation at Mogadishu’s Aden Abdulle International Airport.

According to the foreign ministry officials, the delegation will hold different meetings with the President Mohamud and his Prime Minister Abdiweli in the coming days to discuss with them on the best possible solution for the standing “no confidence” motion which was tabled to the parliament last week against the Prime Minister and his cabinet. The mediation efforts by the Arab League delegation comes while the parliamentarians were planning to hold a voting session on Saturday December 6th for the standing motion in which many MPs were urging to be voted soon. The MPs remain be divided into two groups, one endorsing the “no confidence” motion and the other opposing it.

Top leaders denounce Mandera quarry attack

02 Dec – Source: Goodjoog – 251 Words

Somali Jihadist fighting for ISIS killed in Iraq

02 Dec – Source: Horseed Media – 138 Words

A Somali jihadist is reported to have been killed in Iraq while fighting for the militant group ISIS. According to social media accounts linked to the extremist group, Abu Musa al-Somali was said to have died in heavy fighting in the Northern town of Kirkuk last Thursday. An online video showed him while reading the holy Quran before going to the battle. In recent months, Syria has lured many young Muslim men from abroad who want to join the jihad against the Assad government, which has waged a bloody conflict against its opponents. Many of the foreign fighters are from the Middle East but some have arrived from other parts of the world. As many as 20 young Somali boys and girls have left their homes in western countries to join the Islamic state fighters.

Puntland ministerial delegation leaves for SW president inauguration

02 Dec – Source: Radio RBC – 121 Words

Puntland large delegation had departed the state’s capital of Garowe to attend the inauguration of South West new President Sharif Hassan in Baydhabo, the provincial Capital of Bay region. A ministerial delegation lead by Puntland Minister of Information Abdiweli Indha Guran will be representing Puntland in the swearing in of the President Sharif for South-West three region administration. The Inauguration ceremony is scheduled to take place on December 3rd. Puntland Information minister speaking to the press at Garowe Airport before departure stated that they are happy to attend the inauguration of the president of the new federal member state of South-west region.

REGIONAL MEDIA

Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Lenku fired as Inspector of Police David Kimaiyo resigns

02 Dec – Source: Standard Digital Media – 220 Words

Joseph Ole Lenku became a casualty of the rising insecurity in the country when he was fired after barely serving for 20 months. At the same time, Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo threw in the towel and resigned from his position in huff. President Uhuru Kenyatta immediately nominated Kajiado Central MP Major General (Rtd) Joseph Nkaissery as new Cabinet Secretary for the Interior ministry. Nkaissery takes over amid serious security breaches in the country. At least 36 quarry workers were Tuesday killed by suspected Al-Shabaab militants in an attack in Koromei area, Mandera County. The workers were ambushed as at the site as they slept by gunmen believed to be the militants and killed by shooting. Others were decapitated by the attackers. Other reports say the attackers kidnapped some of the workers. All the victims are non-Muslims.

Bodies of 36 people killed in Mandera quarry attack flown to Nairobi

02 Dec – Source: Daily nation – 659 Words

The bodies of the 36 people killed during an attack at a quarry in Mandera were Tuesday evening airlifted to Nairobi. The bodies were flown as police in Mandera maintained that security lapses had been sealed despite attacks by Al-Shabaab militants from Somalia. North Eastern Regional Police Commander Patrick Lumumba and Regional Coordinator Earnest Mwinyi said tight measures had been put in place to curb insecurity in the county.

Mr Lumumba said past mistakes within the security framework in the county had been rectified and that the changes would soon be felt. “We have identified the vital and weak points in our service and we are moving with speed to ensure all is fine within a very short time,” Mr Lumumba said. He spoke at a Mandera airstrip after the bodies of the 36 victims of the Tuesday morning attack were flown to Nairobi. Tuesday’s attack is the worst to be reported in the expansive county that borders Somalia.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Kenya massacre: Al-Shabaab vows more ‘ruthless attacks against occupation of Somali lands’

02 Dec – Source: International Business Times – 309 Words

Somalia’s terror group al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for a deadly ambush which killed 36 people in northern Kenya, adding there will be more attacks to follow in retaliation to the “Kenyan occupation of the Muslim lands”. According to witnesses, armed men separated Muslims from non-Muslims and shot the Christians dead. The incident took place a few days after 28 people were killed when a bus was ambushed in Mandera.

In a statement sent to news agency AFP, a spokesperson for the group labelled the latest attack as “successful”, adding that it was part of a series of attacks planned by the terrorists. “In another successful operation carried out by the Mujahideen, nearly 40 Kenyan crusaders met their demise after a unit from the Saleh Nabhan brigade raided them in the midnighthours of Monday at Koromei, on the outskirts of Mandera,” Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said. “This latest attack was part of a series of attacks planned and executed by the Mujahideen as a response to Kenya’s occupation of Muslim lands and their ongoing atrocities, such as the recent airstrikes on Muslims in Somalia which caused the death of innocent Muslims and the destruction of their properties and livestock, as well as the continued suffering of Muslims in Mombasa,” the statement continued.

Somalia’s troubles come south

02 Dec – Source: The Economist – 892 Words

In the small hours of December 2nd gunmen snuck up on a group of sleeping quarry workers in Mandera country, close to Kenya’s border with Somalia. They were rounded up and made to lie face-down on the ground. Thirty-four of the men, who make a pitiful living mining and breaking stones, were executed with a bullet to the head; two were beheaded; all were non-Muslims. Ten days earlier in the same remote part of Kenya gunmen flagged down an early-morning bus. Each passenger was asked to recite a verse from the Koran and to respond to a Muslim greeting. Those who failed were shot in the head. Twenty-eight people, many of them teachers going home for the Christmas holidays, were killed.
The Shabab, the militant Somali group affiliated with al-Qaeda, which is strengthening its foothold in Kenya, said it carried out both massacres. The attacks underscore Kenya’s state of dire insecurity and inability to come to grips with the Shabab, either in the countryside or in key cities. The militant group had already struck the capital in an assault on the Westgate Mall in which at least 67 people were killed in September 2013. But this was merely the most prominent of at least 136 terror attacks that have taken place since 2011, when Kenyan soldiers were sent into Somalia to help push back the Shabab. Most have been small-scale: a grenade tossed at a bus stop or a volley of bullets fired into a church, but the group’s ability to mount more complex attacks seems to be improving. The Shabab’s focus has shifted somewhat from Somalia, where it has lost control of towns to Kenyan and other forces operating under an African Union banner and where key leaders have been killed in American air or drone strikes. In Kenya it is seeking to drive a wedge between already divided Christian and Muslim communities.

Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia execute woman accused of spying

02 Dec – Source: Bloomberg News – 184 Words

Al-Shabaab militants in southern Somalia executed by firing squad a woman accused of espionage, the Islamist group and a witness said. The woman, named as Ruweydo Ibrahim, was shot dead in front of a crowd of hundreds of people in the town of Jilib, about 350 kilometers (217 miles) south of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. Speaking to pro-al-Shabaab broadcaster Radio Andalus, an Islamist judge who wasn’t identified said an investigation revealed Ibrahim had spied for Ugandan troops, part of the African Union’s peacekeeping force in the country.

“They riddled her with bullets and blood gushed from her head and chest,” Nuur Iidow, a Jilib resident who witnessed the killing, said by phone. Ibrahim wasn’t represented by a lawyer to defend her against the charges, according to Sidow Hassan, who runs a local human rights organization. Al-Shabaab have been fighting Somalia’s government since at least 2006 in their campaign to establish an Islamic state in the Horn of Africa nation. Somali government forces, backed by African Union soldiers, have made territorial gains against the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters since forcing them to withdraw from Mogadishu three years ago.

SOCIAL MEDIA

CULTURE / OPINION / EDITORIAL / ANALYSIS / BLOGS/ DISCUSSION BOARDS

“The headline of the opening speech of Mr. Jeffrey Feltman, the Under Secretary General of the United Nations for Political Affairs, was ‘Somalia cannot afford pattern of division, paralysis.’ He expressed great sadness at the political infighting and urged President Hassan to resolve the crisis rapidly with new commitment to unity and stability.

Assessing ministerial HLPE Copenhagen conference on Somalia

02 Dec – Source: Mogadishu Journal – 1, 621 Words

In September 2013, International Development Partners (Donors) of Somalia endorsed a three year (2014-2016) “New Deal for Somalia” outlined in the Somali Compact (SC) and Somaliland Special Arrangement (SSA) in Brussles, Beligium and pledged 2.4 billion dollars for its implementation. The SC and SSA are complementary documents to the Provisional Constitution which is the supreme law of Somalia.

Thus, after one year, International Donors and the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) were looking forward to filling the airwaves and international headline news with success and progress stories in Somalia during the first “Ministerial” High Level Partnership Forum (HLPF) conference on the “New Deal for Somalia” in Copenhagen, Denmark, 19-20 November 2014. More than 60 delegations and 400 participants were expected to attend the conference.

But, nasty political power struggle between President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed of FGS literally overshadowed and spoiled the celebration spirit of Copenhagen conference. The power struggle between the two leaders simmered for a while but Cabinet reshuffle announced by the PM but immediately made “null and void” by the President was the public trigger. Five days before the reshuffle that affected the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Review, H. E. Farah Abdulqadir, the Foreign Affairs Council of European Union (EU) issued statement saying among other things, “While the EU welcomes recent progress, further efforts will be needed if the ambitious timeline [2016 election] is to be met. The EU therefore urges the federal government of Somalia (FGS) to maintain momentum, unity of purpose and build the positive gains made to date.” This might offer another clue that precipitated the crisis.