February 17, 2016 | Morning Headlines
Somali Federal Parliament Grills Security Minister Over Legislative Immunity
16 February – Source: Goobjoog News – 182 Words
Members of Somali Federal Parliament have grilled Security Minister Abdirzaq Mohammed Omar on national security breaches and the immunity privileges extended to Federal Members of Parliament. Somali Interior and Federal Minister Abdirhman Odywa and the Federal Police commander, were also summoned by Parliament for questioning.
The move comes in the wake of President Hassan Sheikh Mahmud’s speech to Parliament in the aftermath of a terrorist mid-air attack at the Dallo Airlines. His speech attracted a backlash from the Federal MPs. Addressing the legislators, the President called on them to go through security checks, as other ordinary citizens, at all the airport checkpoints while on transit. The President’s pronouncement instead drew the ire of MPs with 50 of them submitting a no-confidence motion against the President.
During the grilling session, the security minister denied having given orders that compel the MPs to go through security checks: “Neither me nor the Police commander have given such orders” said Mr Omar. His Interior and Federal counterpart stayed calm and composed throughout the session with few questions being shot his way. The MPs sent a strong message to the security agents of the country, warning them against infringing on what they termed “our constitutional rights of legislature”. The provisional Federal constitution grants the legislators a host of privileges including the right to access sensitive places unsearched.
Key Headlines
- Somali Federal Parliament Grills Security Minister Over Legislative Immunity (Goobjoog News)
- At Least 7 Killed In Heavy Fighting In Afgoye (Jowhar Online)
- Puntland Won’t Accept An Election Based On 4.5 Formula Says Somali MP (Shabelle News)
- Fire Exchange Between Soldiers And Private Guards Injures 3 Civilians In Mogadishu (Goobjoog News)
- Boost For Tourism As Kenya Records Drop In Rate Of Terror Attacks (Daily Nation)
- Somali Plane Bomber Was Known As Religious But Not Extremist (Associated Press)
- The Quiet Epidemic Of Mental Disorders In Refugees (Wired Online)
NATIONAL MEDIA
At Least 7 Killed In Heavy Fighting In Afgoye
16 February – Source: Jowhar Online – 178 Words
Al-Shabaab fighters entered Afgoye, a major town in Lower Shabelle region, on Monday night after launching an attack against the Somali military bases inside the town. Reports from the town confirmed casualties on both sides following the fierce battle that stretched for hours on Monday night.
According to reports by Xinhua News Agency, at least seven people were killed and several others injured in the fight between Somali National Army backed by the African Union peacekeeping troops and the Al-Shabaab militants. Head of Somali Government’s Police Station in Afgoye town, Yusuf Mohamed told journalists on Tuesday that bitter confrontation between joint forces and Al-Shabaab militants broke out after Al-Shabaab fighters attacked a police station. According to the Mohamed and independent sources, five civilians and two police officers were killed during the heavy fighting.
Residents say they heard heavy exchange of gunfire. The Al-Shabaab reportedly entered Afgoye from the direction of Mukayga, where there is a military base. Some reports indicated that members of the militia group burnt several military vehicles, and managed to flee in some. But deputy Governor of Afgoye said they repulsed the attackers and denied claims that Al Shabaab had taken over control of the town for some time.
Puntland Won’t Accept An Election Based On 4.5 Formula, Says Somali MP
16 February – Source: Shabelle News – 103
Abdi Barre Yusuf, A Member of the Federal Parliament of Somalia has said that the north-eastern semi-autonomous state of Puntland will insist on its rejection of an election based on 4.5 formula of sharing elective slots along clan lines.: “Puntland will not succumb to pressure to accept an electoral process model based on a clan-sharing system, which contradicts the country’s draft constitution,” said Abdi Barre Yusuf. Speaking to Radio Shabelle, the MP said the leaders of the Federal Government of Somalia had ignored the interim constitution and were instead taking a path charted for them by the international community. He accused the international community of hijacking the country’s political process.
Fire Exchange Between Soldiers And Private Guards Injures 3 Civilians In Mogadishu
16 February – Source: Goobjoog News – 70 Words
At least three people were wounded after private bodyguards and police exchanged fire around Maka Al Mukarama Hotel on Tuesday. Reports say that the fighting started as the security guards suspected a police car and open fire at its occupants. This resulted in a gunfire battle leading to the injury of three civilians. Local residents told Goobjoog News that the gunfire exchange lasted at least ten minutes.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Boost For Tourism As Kenya Records Drop In Rate Of Terror Attacks
17 February – Source: Daily Nation – 280 Words
Research by a London-based risk company shows that for the first time in three years, Kenya has recorded the lowest number of terrorist attacks. Dubbed, “Africa had a violent 2015”, the research carried out by Verisk Maplecrosoft, says that the number of terrorist attacks in Kenya dropped to 46 last year, which is about half of the number of incidents in 2014 and the lowest since 2011.
Tuesday, Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho told the Nation that the security agencies were better equipped to deal with the threats now than they were three years ago: “There is now one command structure between the Administration and Regular Police and the intelligence coordination is tops,” Dr Kibicho said. He added that this would also result in gains for tourism.
Dr Kibicho cited the control centre at Jogoo House, Nairobi, as one of the facilities that had given security agencies “eyes on the ground”.Fixing security was at the top on the wish list of Kenyans at the dawn of 2015 and “the President has shown over the year that he has found a formula for keeping Kenyans safe”. However, the risk company attributed it to “better intelligence gathering by the authorities and fights within the militant groups in Somalia”.
This was articulated by Ms Emma Gordon, a senior Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, who told Bloomberg Business News in an interview that “a dispute between members of the group in the second half of 2015 over their allegiance to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State probably contributed to Kenya seeing its lowest number of attacks in three years in 2015”. Dr Kibicho also said there had been improved people surveillance.
Somali Plane Bomber Was Known As Religious But Not Extremist
16 February – Source: Associated Press – 1,002 Words
He was a teacher at an Islamic school, known in his hometown in northwestern Somalia as a talkative, religious man with a sense of humor. He has also been identified as a suicide bomber who tried to bring down an airliner. Abdullahi Abdisalam Borleh boarded a plane on Feb. 2 with a bomb which exploded at 11,000 feet. The blast created a hole in the fuselage of the Airbus 321, just above the wing, and Borleh was blown out, his body falling to earth and landing in the Somali town of Balad.
Borleh said he was going abroad for health reasons, according to Sheikh Mohamed Abdullahi, a mosque imam in Hargeisa near where Borleh was from, and who met with him in January. Abdullahi estimated Borleh’s age at between 50 and 52, described him as “chatty,” and said that he had a leg problem that required him to sometimes walk with a cane.
“He travelled to Mogadishu to obtain a passport to go to either Turkey or India for medical reasons,” Abdullahi said in a telephone interview. “He was probably travelling overseas to straighten his leg.” On Saturday, Al-Shabaab, Somalia’s Islamic extremist rebels, claimed responsibility for the attempt to destroy the plane with 81 passengers and crew aboard. The al-Qaida-linked group mocked efforts to prevent such attacks and threatened more “to purify this Muslim land from the filth of the disbelievers.”
“Despite all their security measures … the Mujahideen can and will get to them,” the group said. There are mounting signs that Al-Shabaab had inside help. A senior civil aviation security officer, who supervised operations of screening machines at Mogadishu airport, was one of 20 people arrested after he was seen on CCTV accompanying another man, who handed the laptop believed to contain the bomb to Borleh after he had gone through security. The other man, identified as an airport employee, was also among those arrested.
“It was a meticulously planned and coordinated plot, and the bomber would never have gone beyond any security screening without the assistance of well-placed insiders facilitating his limitless access into the airport,” said a senior Somali counterterrorism official who insisted on anonymity for his own safety. Borleh may also have had help from other official quarters.
A Somali federal official recommended that the government issue Borleh a passport, said a senior intelligence official in Somaliland, the autonomous region where Borleh was from. Borleh had been on security agents’ radar, “but we had never considered him to be dangerous,” the official told The Associated Press by phone from Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“It doesn’t just hinder the refugees in the short-term, either: Mental disorders have long-term consequences for physical health. You’re constantly feeling fight or flight. Your heart rate is higher; your level of adrenaline production is higher; your consumption of blood sugar goes up, and this causes a lot of these physical disorders in the long run”
The Quiet Epidemic Of Mental Disorders In Refugees
16 February – Source: Wired Online – 948 Words
Sixty miles west of the Somali border, in Dadaab, Kenya, is the largest refugee settlement in the world. First built a quarter century ago, more than 300,000 Somali refugees now live in a dusty, sprawling community of makeshift houses and tents originally intended for 90,000. Children have been born in the Dadaab refugee camps—and the children of those children, too. Waves of Somali people first fled to Dadaab because of a civil war that is still ongoing. In the past decade, more came still because of famine and drought that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
To live in Dadaab, they have escaped violence and death—only to plunge into an abyss of uncertainty. In 2014, the United Nations’ refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, resettled less than 1 percent of all Somali refugees in Kenya, two-thirds of whom reside in Dadaab. Overcrowding in the camps means that they don’t have enough bathrooms or sufficient security. Sexual assault is a looming threat for women and children. Not to mention their makeshift homes are not really theirs: Last April, Kenya’s government threatened to shut down the Dadaab camps and deport the refugees.
“They are not certain of the future,” says Michael Kamau, a psychotherapist who works with Dadaab refugees through the international nonprofit Center for Victims of Torture. “They are under a lot of stress.” The stress from this instability—in addition to the trauma they’ve already experienced—means that refugees are particularly vulnerable to mental disorders. Refugees resettled in Western countries might be as much as ten times as likely to have PTSD; one in three refugees has PTSD or depression. (In American adults, it’s more like one in 14.)
As you’d imagine, all that can make it tough for refugees to piece together new lives in new countries. “You’re suddenly in a new environment. You don’t have a social support system, and you have to figure out how to live and how to support your family,” says Liyam Eloul, a CVT psychotherapist working in Jordan, where over 900,000 Syrian refugees live. “Often, people who are suffering from PTSD, increased anxiety, or depression are less able to manage these situations.”