January 21, 2016 | Daily Monitoring Report
Syrian Fighters May Have Helped Plan Attack On KDF In Somalia
21 January – Source: The Standard – 383 Words
Kenya Defence Forces top commanders led by General Samsom Mwathethe are investigating the increasing role of foreign terrorist fighters used to target Kenya. The military and Ministry of Interior are examining links with ISIS after some 10-15 fighters, who are not of Somali origin, were found to be part of the group of suicide bombers who attacked the KDF camp in El Adde Somalia on Friday.
Documents seen by The Standard and authored by the Ministry of Defence point to an influx of foreign fighters and particularly Jihadists being used on the front line against specific targets: “Al Shabaab are now receiving both technical and financial support from Syria, ISIS and other like-minded entities,” the report said. The foreign fighters have been reported in recent attacks in Lamu and also at the Westgate Mall terror attack which left 67 people dead and over 175 others injured in September 2013. The report points at how several unsuccessful attempts on KDF camps in Hoosingo in 2012 and Baure in 2015 are instructive.
In these attacks, Al Shabaab have been repulsed by KDF and suffered massive injuries and fatalities.” Preliminary findings show there were foreign fighters involved in the planning and execution of the El-Adde Kenya Defence Forces attack. This confirms fears that there are pockets of foreign fighters who have now joined the militant group Al Shabaab. Officials citing intelligence sources said the foreigners are now in charge of many issues and are protected by the militants.
This would be the latest involvement of foreigners in macabre killings. There were foreigners involved in the attack on Kenyans in Mpeketoni, Lamu during which more than 50 were killed. In the 2013 Westgate attack, in which 67 people were killed, foreigners were used in the planning and execution. There were reports a British national popularly known as Samantha Lewthwaite was involved in the attack on September 21, 2013. Another foreigner was last year killed in Lamu when he and other terrorists tried to raid a military camp. In the recent months, a large number of foreign fighters have joined militants in Somalia’s Gedo region, including Kenyan converts to radical Islam. This comes in the wake of revelations Al Shabaab has split into two with one group pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda and the other one to ISIS.
Key Headlines
- Syrian Fighters May Have Helped Plan Attack On KDF In Somalia (The Standard)
- Somaliland Government Deports Over 300 Illegal Immigrants (Garowe Online)
- Eleven Somali Nationals In Court For Entering Country Illegally (Shabelle News)
- UNHCR Repatriates Somali Refugees From Kenya’s Camp (China.org)
- Muslim Workers Quit Wisconsin Jobs After Company Limits Prayers To Scheduled Breaks (The Christian Today)
- Kenya Rattled Al Shabaab Turns Sights On Somalia Military Targets (New York Times)
- Somalia Should Make Concrete Pledges At Rights Council (Human Rights Watch)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Somaliland Government Deports Over 300 Illegal Immigrants
21 January – Source: Garowe Online – 118 Words
Somaliland administration has deported more than 300 illegal immigrants, mostly Ethiopians in line with tough immigration policy, Garowe Online reports.Most immigrants requested for the deportation after their stay permits expired, Somaliland immigration commander Mohamed Ali Yusuf told VOA Somali Service. Somaliland has curbed cross-border movement with controversial measures.
Meanwhile, Somaliland Interior Minister Ali Mohamed Waran Adde said, his government will send all illegal immigrants back to their original places on February 1. He called on people to register for new identification cards that separate Somaliland natives from illegals.Somaliland, located in northwestern Somalia declared its independence from the rest of the country as de facto sovereign state in 1991 but it has not been recognized internationally yet.
Eleven Somali Nationals In Court For Entering Country Illegally
20 January – Source: Shabelle News – 301 Words
Eleven Somali nationals were arraigned in a Garissa court and charged with being in the country illegally. The 11, who included 2 women and 9 men, appeared before Chief Magistrate Margaret Wachira and charged with being in the country unlawfully and without any legal documents. The aliens were arrested at Qabobey area within Garissa County by the Anti Terror Police Unit (ATPU) hiding in a bush near a water pan after their Toyota probox broke down.
The driver of the vehicle managed to escape. The prosecution told the court that the accused were travelling from Liboi to Nairobi through Garissa town. On being interrogated, the 11 said they wanted to travel to Nairobi and had no intention of registering as asylum seekers. They were arrested 90KMs from Dadaab town where asylum seekers normally register when they enter the country from war-torn Somalia. In their mitigation, they said they were duped by Kenyan accomplices whom they paid Ksh 40,000 each to cover ‘transportation to Nairobi’.
They were released on a Ksh 50,000 fine or six months imprisonment before they are repatriated to Somalia. Cases of illegal immigrants in the country have continued to be reported despite roadblocks by the police and the popularization of the Nyumba Kumi Initiative. Early this month, police in Embu arrested 27 Ethiopian aliens from Ethiopia who were being ferried in three private cars to Nairobi and later to South Africa, only a day after four others were nabbed in Isiolo. According to Embu County Commander Karisa Roba, police were tipped off by members of the public about four suspicious Probox cars driving at very high-speed along the Meru – Embu Highway.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
UNHCR Repatriates Somali Refugees From Kenya’s Camp
21 January – Source: China.org.cn – 353 Words
The UN refugee agency said Wednesday it has repatriated more than 6,000 Somali refugees on a voluntary basis from the Dadaab settlement in northeast Kenya to areas in southwest of Somalia which have been pacified. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said some 248 returnees were assisted to return by flight to Mogadishu and Baidoa in southwest Somalia in December.”During the month of December, 248 returnees were assisted to return by flight to Mogadishu and Baidoa. In total and as of December 31 2015, 6,101 Somali refugees returned home since December 8, 2014, when UNHCR started supporting voluntary return of Somali refugees in Kenya,” UNHCR said in its latest report. According to UNHCR, the first repatriation flight to Baidoa, was organized on Dec. 7, taking 63 refugees from Dadaab camps which marked exactly one year since the first road convoy of Somali refugees left.
So far the UN refugee agency has managed to repatriate 3,900 refugees by road and 2,201 others by air to Mogadishu and other areas in southern Somalia. During the reporting period, newborn registration was carried out across all camps, 869 babies issued with birth certificates were registered; out of the 869 newborn registered 37 were assigned in-situ (birth) status.”As a result, compared to an annual performance target of 15,550 children registered and issued documentation under regular birth registration procedure, a total of 10,646 children have been registered as at December 31, 2015, representing 68.46 percent of progress towards the target,” UNHCR said. The UN agency said 76 new refugees were registered by Kenya’s Department of Refugee Affairs (DRA) and subsequently registered by UNHCR.
“The new arrivals registered were relocated cases from Nairobi who adduced the DRA registration forms while others were identified as vulnerable cases and were registered on protection grounds,” it said.
Kenya, Somalia and the UNHCR in 2013 reached a tripartite agreement for the voluntary return of these refugees to Somalia by the end of 2016. The UNHCR argues Somalia is still insecure and there are still insufficient social amenities to accommodate all of them.
Muslim Workers Quit Wisconsin Jobs After Company Limits Prayers To Scheduled Breaks
21 January – Source: The Christian Today – 421 Words
About 53 Somali Muslims have left their jobs at a manufacturing plant in Brillion, Wisconsin after the company imposed a policy requiring them to pray only during scheduled company breaks. Before the new policy, Ariens Manufacturing had allowed 53 Muslim employees to leave the production line twice per shift daily to pray two of the required five prayers under Islam. They prayed for five minutes at a time, according to ABC2 WBAY.
According to a guide by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslims are required to hold morning, noon, afternoon, sunset and night prayers every day that take about 15 minutes each consisting of washing and praying: “We are asking employees to pray during scheduled breaks in designated prayer rooms. Our manufacturing environment does not allow for unscheduled breaks in production,” according to an Ariens spokesperson.”If someone tells you, ‘You pray on your break,’ and the break time is not the prayer time? It will be impossible to pray,” said Masjid Imam Hasan Abdi. But Ariens is offering the affected employees a way to accommodate them, adding that it respects Islam: “We are open to any of the employees returning to work under the new policy or will look for openings in shifts that do not coincide with prayer time. We respect their faith, and we respect their decision regardless of their choice to return to work or not,” the company said.
Ten of the 53 employees have said that they wish to stay in their current positions under the new policy. The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission says that “an employer does not have to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs or practices if doing so would cause undue hardship to the employer… [such as] decreased efficiency.”
Kenya Rattled Al Shabaab Turns Sights On Somalia Military Targets
20 January – Source : New York Times – 1044 Words
The attackers burst into the Kenyan military base in Somalia before dawn, blasting through the gate with a truckload of explosives.Scores of Al- Shabaab militants then flooded through the flames, on foot and in trucks, firing heavy guns into the plastic-covered shelters where the Kenyan soldiers were sleeping.“That battle was over before it started,” said one official in Nairobi with detailed knowledge of the attack. “The Al-Shabaab did their homework and completely wiped them out.”
Somali and Western officials now say that 80 to 100 Kenyan soldiers — and possibly more — were massacred during the attack, which took place on Friday at the El-Adde forward operating base. The Al Shabaab overran the base, held it for several hours and made off with sensitive communications equipment, artillery pieces that can fire 10 miles and several American-made armored Humvees.The bodies of four soldiers killed at the Kenyan El-Adde base in Somalia on Friday were delivered in Nairobi. Raychelle Omamo, the defense secretary, spoke after the attack by the Al Shabaab.“This has been a shock,” said Yusuf Hassan, a member of Kenya’s Parliament. “We’re not Burundi, we’re not Ethiopia, we’re not Uganda. Our country does not have a history of war. We’ve never experienced anything like this.”
The attack could mark a turning point for Al-Shabaab, one of Africa’s most violent militant groups. In recent years, the Al-Shabaab have lost much of their territory, reduced to small bands of famished fighters creeping around Somalia’s rural areas and attacking soft targets in Kenya, including a university and a mall.Now, it seems, they are training their sights on the hardest targets out there — military bases. In the past months, Al-Shabaab fighters have staged assaults against Ethiopian, Ugandan and Burundian troops, all members of a relatively loosely organized African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. They have killed scores of soldiers and stolen their arsenals. Their propaganda videos show alarming amounts of guns, vehicles and overflowing buckets of bullets now in their hands.“This is going to end no time soon,” said David M. Anderson, a professor of African history at the University of Warwick and a renown expert on modern Kenya.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“For victims of rape, there is improvement from the blanket denials of President Hassan Sheikh’s predecessors. But while the government has developed positive policies – promoted by impressive Somali women’s rights groups – the UN continues to document alarmingly high rates of sexual and gender-based violence.,” – Laetitia Bader, Researcher, Human Rights Watch.
Somalia Should Make Concrete Pledges At Rights Council
21 January- Source: Human Rights Watch – 393 Words
Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, a passionate Somali journalist, was sentenced in February 2013 to one year in prison. His crime? Interviewing a woman alleging rape by government security forces. The woman was also convicted of “tarnishing” state institutions. Both were eventually acquitted, but Abdiaziz fled into exile. This highly politicized case, just months after a new government took office, left many wondering whether President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s commitments to human rights reform would mean anything in practice.
Tomorrow, when the United Nations Human Rights Council examines Somalia’s human rights record in Geneva, one crucial question is whether the situation for journalists, victims of sexual and gender-based violence, and internally displaced people has significantly improved. The answer: not enough.Somalia’s displaced community, many of whom live on the federal’s government very doorstep in the capital, Mogadishu, suffers daily abuses. The government adopted a good policy on displacement but has failed to adhere to it. In 2015, the displaced continued to face forced evictions often at the hands of the very security forces charged with their protection. In March, Human Rights Watch found that government forces violently uprooted more than 20,000 displaced people from their decrepit Mogadishu camp. For victims of rape, there is improvement from the blanket denials of President Hassan Sheikh’s predecessors. But while the government has developed positive policies – promoted by impressive Somali women’s rights groups – the UN continues to document alarmingly high rates of sexual and gender-based violence.
And as for Somalia’s journalists, they continue to be threatened and killed without those responsible being held to account.Journalists I speak to say they have limited options in dealing with the incessant threats from government authorities and the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab – other than self-censorship. A new media law establishing a council with the power to impose stringent fines for vaguely worded and undefined offenses, such as “encouraging tribalism” and “baseless propaganda,” will continue to make life difficult for the media.
TOP TWEETS
@GerrySimpsonHRW:New plan needed after only 1.5% of world’s largest refugee camp asked UN to help them to return to#Somalia in 2015 http://bit.ly/1RUzyVw
@AbdulBillowAli:Nice read: Three things we learned from last week’s al-Shabaab attack on #AMISOM in #Somalia.http://wapo.st/1V60Jub?tid=ss_
@HarunMaruf:#Somalia: Pres HSM’s former university (SIMAD) has graduated its 11th batch of students on Wednesday.#Mogadishu
@IlwadElman:I really enjoyed meeting & listening to @fqdayibspeak today in #Mogadishu. She aspires to be the first woman president of #Somalia #2016
@RadioMogadishu:#Somalia‘s #Ministry of #Education &#Heritage officially #celebrates Somali #Writing Day on 21st of January, 2016.
IMAGE OF THE DAY
The President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, walks with the President of the Interim South West Administration (ISWA), Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, before an event to mark the inauguration of ISWA regional parliament on January 19.
Photo:UNSOM