February 20, 2017 | Daily Monitoring Report
Somali Government To Pay Medical Bills For Victims Of Sunday’s Deadly Car Bomb
20 February- Source : Goobjoog News – 193 Words
Somalia’s newly elected President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo has pledged his government will pay the hospital bills of the victims of Sunday’s deadly car bomb which also claimed over 30 lives.A car loaded with explosives parked near a restaurant in Kawa-Godey market of Mogadishu’s Wadajir district, went off killing over 30 people including a family of twelve members leaving behind injuries of more than 60 people with some in critical conditions.“I want to say as the president of the nation, the government will pay the health care of the wounded people in the barbaric attack and bereaved families will be helped constantly” said President Farmaajo who visited the victims at Madina Hospital.President Mohamed condemned the blast in a tweet, saying that it shows the “cruelty” of Al-Shabaab.
The explosion destroyed shops around the place leaving in its wake death and destruction in the small market.The powerful explosion was the first major attack since Somalia’s new President was elected on Feb.8.Although no group has yet claimed responsibility, it bears the hallmarks of Al-Shabaab which denounced the new president as an “apostate” and vowed to continue fighting against his government.
Key Headlines
- Somali Government To Pay Medical Bills For Victims Of Sunday’s Deadly Car Bomb (Goobjoog News)
- Universal TV Owner Arrested In Somaliland (Jowhar.com)
- Plans To Liberate The District Of Sakow Finalised (Dhacdo.com)
- A Military Officer Killed In Mogadishu (Goobjoog News)
- IMF To Help Somalia Print First Banknotes In A Quarter Century (Bloomberg)
- AMISOM To Help Construct Military Training Facility For Somali National Army (AMISOM)
- How An American Bureaucrat Became The President Of Somalia (Politico.com)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Universal TV Owner Arrested In Somaliland
19 February – Source : Jowhar.com -103 Words
The owner of Somalia’s popular satellite TV channel Universal TV has been arrested in Hargeisa.Ahmed Abubakar was arrested by security forces on Sunday in very unclear circumstances. It is reported that the reason for his arrest is linked to the airing of a popular satire show which was not liked by the leaders of Somaliland.
Officials are yet to comment on the arrest of the TV owner. Last week , Somaliland’s Information Minister warned politicians and journalists who are against the independence of Somaliland. A few weeks ago, a Universal TV presenter spent days in jail in Somaliland, he was later deported.
Plans To Liberate The District Of Sakow Finalised
20 February – Sourcec : Dhacdo.com – 80 Words
The forces of the Federal Government of Somalia in the Gedo region have unveiled a plan to liberate the district of Sakow from Al-Shabaab. The Somali National Army located in the district of Baardhere will take part in the offensive.It is reported that the forces will approach Sakow from Baardhere.The commander of the Somali National Army in Gedo , Mohamed Abdow Ali has told reporters that they have finalised the preparations for the operation to liberate the town of Sakow.
A Military Officer Killed In Mogadishu
20 February – Source : Goobjoog News – 177 Words
Unknown assailants shot dead a military officer in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Sunday night, eyewitness said. The masked attackers who were armed with pistols shot the officer identified as Sheekeeye near his home in the Dharkenley district of Mogadishu. The assailants suspected of belonging to Al-Shabaab managed to escape the scene of the attack after shooting the officer in the head several times. “The two men wearing masks approached the official and started shooting him in the head and fled after he fell down on the ground, ” said eyewitness Abdi Hussein, who was at the scene during the shooting.
Although no group has so far claimed responsibility for the killing but Al-Shabaab often carries out such assassinations of Somali government soldiers. Dharkeynley administration said they were investigating the attack and will apprehend those behind the assault on the officer and will be brought before the courts of law. Meanwhile sporadic attacks against Somali government soldiers and African Union (AU) peacekeepers in Mogadishu have been carried out by suspected insurgents using ambush tactics to kill the government soldiers.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
IMF To Help Somalia Print First Banknotes In A Quarter Century
20 February – Source : Bloomberg -661 Words
The International Monetary Fund is backing Somalia’s plans to replace tattered currency notes that were printed before the Horn of Africa nation plunged into civil war almost three decades ago. The new Somali shilling notes may come into circulation this year, alongside the dollar that’s been the main means of payment, and will replace fake or old currency in circulation, said Samba Thiam, the IMF’s country head. “About 98 percent of the currency circulating in the country is fake,” Thiam said in an interview Friday in Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya. “The remaining 2 percent is currency printed during 1990-91, still circulating, but in very bad shape.”
Somalia’s descent into anarchy began with the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. A subsequent Islamist insurgency has hastened the destruction of its political and economic institutions, slashing annual per-capita income to $435 and making Somalia the world’s fifth-poorest country, according to the World Bank.
Printing of the new notes, which will initially be in small denominations, is aimed at restoring the Central Bank of Somalia’s powers to set monetary policy, Thiam said. While the institution doesn’t have the money to finance the plan, donors will back the reforms and financing will be agreed on once the government decides whether it wants a floating- or fixed-rate currency regime.
AMISOM To Help Construct Military Training Facility For Somali National Army
19 February – Source : AMISOM – 253 Words
The Force Commander of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) Lt. General Osman Noor Soubagleh today led a delegation of senior military officials to South West State to identify a suitable location for constructing a training facility for the Somali National Army. The delegation which included AMISOM Chief of Staff Abreha Tesfay, held discussions with Sector 3 Somali National Army (SNA) Commander, Gen. Ibrahim Yarow, and AMISOM Sector 3 Deputy Contingent Commander, Col. Wanyo Abate. “My trip to Baidoa today was about identifying a location which will be used for training new Somali National Army recruits which will be built and funded by the UK government,” said Lt. General Soubagleh.
The Force Commander said the senior military officers had agreed on a suitable location, expressing confidence that the local administration will approve the location chosen. “The facility will be used to train new recruits for Somali National Army, to build their capacity and skills in order for them to take over the security of the country in the next one and a half years,” AMISOM Force Commander noted.
The construction of the training facility will be a major boost to Somalia, which still needs more soldiers to strengthen and transform SNA into a formidable unit capable of taking charge of the country’s security after AMISOM troops exit.A highly trained Somali National Army is inevitably required to secure the government, the population and its infrastructure. It is also expected to take over the overall security responsibility in the country once AMISOM exits.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“The people Mohamed worked with during those years describe him as a kind and humble family man. But his ambition was evident, too, and it wasn’t just to improve the percentage of minority hires by DOT contractors. He earned a master’s degree in political science at New York State University in Buffalo. His thesis was titled: “U.S. Strategic Interest in Somalia.”,
How An American Bureaucrat Became The President Of Somalia
19 February – Source : Politico.com – 3343 Words
On the morning of February 8, a civil servant from Buffalo, New York—a Somali by birth but an American by choice—walked into a heavily guarded airplane hangar in the battle-scarred capital of his native country where an important vote was about to take place. When he emerged that night, he was president. His surprise victory, which was celebrated with gunfire and camel slaughter in Mogadishu and high-fives at the Buffalo office of the New York Department of Transportation, where he was still technically employed as an equal opportunity compliance officer, was all the more remarkable because it came at the very moment a federal court in the U.S. was deciding the fate of a travel ban that targeted refugees exactly like him.
The story of how Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed came to be the leader of a country that is synonymous with anarchy and terrorism is both a classic American immigrant’s tale and one about the age-old conflict between basic democratic principles and the forces of political corruption. It begins in 1988, when Mohamed, then a first secretary for the Somali embassy in Washington, D.C., decided it was too dangerous to return home and applied for asylum. Back then, the U.S. was inclined to say yes to such requests.
Over the next 25 years, he earned degrees in history and political science, served on local campaigns and acted as a spokesman for other refugees as an elected official, slowly absorbing the lessons of civil society and the basics of American mid management that he knew he wanted one day to bring back to Somalia. He had become, in some ways, an export-ready product. Not soybeans or computer chips but democratic values.“He’s always had an interest to go back and try to bring peace,” said Joel Giambra, a former county executive in Erie County, New York for whom Mohamed campaigned, then worked for, starting in 1999. “That was always his ambition.”
There are those who say that Mohamed, 54, who ran for president on an anti-corruption platform, bought his way to victory. Those same people say it’s the ironic but inevitable cost of doing business in a still desperately unstable country. But tainted results or not, some say Mohamed, with his decades of experience in American governance, could be the very partner the United States needs to fight international terrorism originating in the Horn of Africa. “What I think Mohamed brings is, hopefully, the technocratic understanding of how U.S. democracy works,” said Muhammad Fraser-Rahim, a programs officer at the U.S. Institute for Peace. “I think that’s a skill set that the two former presidents did not necessarily have.”
TOP TWEETS
@HIPSINSTITUTE: Read our report on #LandMatters in Mogadishu: Settlement, ownership & displacement in a contested city http://bit.ly/2llzW2J
@amisomsomalia: #AMISOM lauds #Kenyan Police Officers 4 their outstanding contribution towards the restoration of peace in #Somalia: http://bit.ly/2m0pzBh
@Tobias_Ellwood:Horrendous attack on innocent people in #Mogadishu. UK will continue to stand by #Somalia as it builds a future free of such violence.
@camaaryare143:President #Somalia Mr Farmajo announces $100.00 US Dollar worth informed car bomb attack
@fqdayib:Let’s keep it tactful & frugal as well. #Somalia is 1 step away from famine: 3M facing food insecurity & three-quarters of livestock dead.
@nytimesworld: A suicide bombing in Mogadishu exposes the grave security challenges that Somalia’s new president faces.
@NicholasK111: IMF to Help Somalia Print First Banknotes in Quarter Century https://www.bloomberg.com/
IMAGE OF THE DAY
Somalia’s former President, Sheikh Shariff Ahmed meets Jubbaland President, Ahmed Mohamed in Mogadishu. Photo: Jubbaland Presidency.