January 6, 2016 | Morning Headlines
Turkey Set To Build A Military Training Center In Somalia
05 January – Source: Today’s Zaman – 368 Words
Turkey has started to build a military training base in Somalia as part of its pledge to build up the national army for the Somali government, a senior Turkish diplomat has said. Emel Tekin, the head of the Foreign Ministry department responsible for Somalia, stated that Turkey is establishing a military base in Mogadishu, a first for Turkey, to train Somali soldiers. She said the initiative is part of a framework agreement between the two countries on military cooperation.
“This military training facility will also be an important base for [providing] military training for the entire [continent of] Africa,” she added. The Turkish diplomat’s remarks were delivered during deliberations of Parliament’s Defense Commission, where the agreement on defense industry cooperation between Turkey and Somalia was approved on Dec. 9, 2015. The agreement was signed on Jan. 25, 2015, in Mogadishu.
Col. Murat Yaman said at the commission meeting that the agreement is a framework deal to boost defense cooperation between the two countries. He noted that it built on two earlier agreements signed with Somalia in 2010 on military financial cooperation and military training. Turkey has been providing defense assistance to Somalia since then to shore up Somalia’s security forces. The Turkish military is also building a military school in Somalia to educate and train both officer corps and noncommissioned officers.
Tekin said that, when she visited Somalia, she noticed Somali soldiers were wearing different uniforms and shoes provided by various donor countries from the Gulf and the European Union. “They [Somalis] are trying to overcome this,” she said, by establishing a military structure that is complete and under a single chain of command. Turkey is trying to support this as well,” she explained. Strengthening the national army is important for the security of Somalia as well as the viability of the UN-backed transitional government against the background of terrorism committed by the al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Shabaab militants.
Key Headlines
- Turkey Set To Build A Military Training Center In Somalia (Today’s Zaman)
- Somalia Condemns Attack On Saudi Embassy In Iran (Shabelle News)
- Somalia To Produce Combat Uniforms For National Army (Garowe Online)
- Four Al Shabaab Fighters Killed In Rabdhure Town (Shabelle News)
- Eight Suspected Al Shabaab Arrested In Mandera Operation (The Star)
- Somali Man’s Belfast Home Targeted In ‘Hate Crimes’ (UTV News)
- Somcable Partners Airspan & Alepo For 4G LTE Launch In Somaliland (The Fast Mode)
- Buurhakaba: Government Forces Launch Offensives Against Al-Shabaab (Wacaal Media)
- Somali Union Workers Fired for Wildcat Strike (Counterpunch)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Somalia Condemns Attack On Saudi Embassy In Iran
05 January – Source: Shabelle News – 134 Words
Somalia has added its voice to the ongoing condemnations by countries across the world, of the attack on Saudi Arabia Embassy in Tehran, Iranian capital, by an angry mob on Sunday. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and investment promotion of the Federal Republic of Somalia issued a press release condemning attack on Saudi Embassy in Tehran.
“The attack on Saudi Embassy in Tehran breaks the international treaty on diplomatic relations signed in Vienna in 1961,” read the statement. Somalia showed solidarity with Saudi Arabia and followed several Arab countries, which have cut the diplomatic ties with the Shiita-dominant Islamic Republic of Iran. On Saturday, Saudi Arabia executed 47 people convicted of “terrorism”, including a prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr who was known for his sermons criticizing the Kingdom and for his support of political anti-government protests.
Somalia To Produce Combat Uniforms For National Army
05 January – Source: Garowe Online – 129 Words
Federal Government of Somalia is planning to produce combat uniform with national patterns in the first half of the new year, 2016, for the first time in over two decades. Defence Minister Abdulkadir Sheikh Ali Diini disclosed on Tuesday when laid foundation stone of a new military apparel facility funded by Turkish government. When completed in mid-2016, the factory will free the East African country of dependence on other entities, Diini told reporters.
“It is a historic day for Somalia. We’re laying stones for national army combat uniform factory which would be a leap for the country,” said the Minister for Defence. Somali National Army (SNA) is being propped up by over 22,000-strong African Union peacekeepers in the fight against Al Shabaab militants in central and southern Somalia.
Four Al Shabaab Fighters Killed In Rabdhure Town
05 January – Source: Shabelle News 121 Words
A police officer has reported that four Al-Shabaab members were shot dead by the Somali National Army (SNA) soldiers in Rabdhure town, Bakool region, following the murder of an elder by the militant group. Confirming the incident, Hassan Mohamed Abdirahman who is the police boss of Rabdhure, told Radio Shabelle that security forces carried out a security sweep in the area to prevent further attacks from Al-Shabaab. It is in the process of securing the city that they encountered the Al-Shabaab elements whom they eliminated on the spot. The region, claimed the officer, was now hundred percent protected by government troops. He called on local residents to work closely with security forces operating in the town. The Al-Shabaab militants have been trying to get a foothold in Rabdhure since they were expelled from their main strongholds in Bakool region in 2014 by SNA and AMISOM forces.H
Buurhakaba: Government Forces Launch Offensives Against Al-Shabaab
05 January – Source: Wacaal Media – 66 Words
Government forces in Bay region have launched an offensive against the Al-shabaab militant group in Ja’eemo town, in the outskirts of Buurhakaba District. Confirming the operation to Wacaal Media, the area District Commissioner, Ali Hassan Abdi, said the allied forces had recorded “tremendous success”. He added that several members of the militant were killed. Ja’eemo has under the control of the Al-Shabaab group for quite some time now. By the time of going to the press, we had not received Al-Shabaab’s version of this development.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Eight Suspected Al Shabaab Arrested In Mandera Operation
05 January – Source: The Star – 292 Words
Eight suspected Al-Shabaab operatives were arrested in Kenya’s Mandera county on Tuesday and are being held in El Wak for interrogation.They were arrested between Kotulo and Lafey in an ongoing police operation, said Northeastern regional coordinator Mohamud Saleh.
Saleh told The Star on phone the suspects were in the country illegally and were arrested at their hideouts in the operation that followed attacks along Mandera-Wajir road: “The heavy operation is yielding fruits. We strongly believe these individuals have been behind attacks that have occurred along the road,” he said Saleh said some of the suspects had confessed to being involved in some of the attacks.
“They have been very cooperative; they took us to the hideout they retreated to after carrying out attacks. Some of them are planners and others ringleaders,” he said. The operation will go on for the next two weeks, the police boss said, adding they made changes after the militiamen changed their strategy.
“We changed tack to confront them head on. We will never allow them to have a field day carrying out attacks on Kenyan soil,” he said. On December 21, two people were killed at Dabacity between Kotulo and Elwak when militiamen attacked a bus. Six days later, two police officers were killed and another injured when al Shabaab gunmen ambushed them along Lafey-Elwak road. Around the same time and place, an attacker was killed when an improvised explosive device he was planting went off.
Somali Man’s Belfast Home Targeted In ‘Hate Crimes’
05 January – Source: UTV News – 93 Words
A Somali man has been the victim of two separate racially motivated hate crimes in which windows were smashed at his west Belfast home, police say. The first attack at the Broadway-located property took place when a stone was thrown at an upstairs window on 6 December last year. Ground floor windows at the same property were then smashed sometime between 6pm on 22 December and 11.15am on 23 December. Police are treating both incidents as a racially motivated hate crimes and investigating officers would like to hear from anyone with information.
Somcable Partners Airspan & Alepo For 4G LTE Launch In Somaliland
January 05 – Source: The Fast Mode – 147 Words
Somcable, a major communications service provider in East Africa, has officially gone live with 4G LTE in Somaliland. Somcable has deployed the LTE-Advanced network alongside a fiber optic network (GPON), which will enable Somcable to offer high-speed, fixed and mobile broadband services to commercial and residential customers. The operator partnered with Airspan and Alepo for pre-integrated end-to-end 4G LTE solution for the launch.
Somcable deployed Airspan’s 4G LTE RAN and Alepo’s policy control solution to enable network monetization immediately upon launch. Alepo has also provided its convergent online charging and billing platform (Alepo OCS, Alepo Service Enabler) to support flexible data plans for both LTE and fiber services.
“A combined LTE-Advanced solution from Alepo and Airspan gives us the foundation we need to expand our services into new mobile broadband markets and technologies in ways that connect and empower our region,” said Abdourahman Mohamed, CEO of Somcable.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“And for another, good employees or not, it doesn’t take much effort to see these misguided Somali workers as culpable. Not only did they clearly violate the contract by refusing to work, the argument can be made that they were asking for more than “religious freedom.” They were asking for preferential treatment” — David Macaray, an American playwright and author.
Somali Union Workers Fired for Wildcat Strike
05 January – Source: Counterpunch – 1,048 Words
On December 23, approximately 180 workers, most of them Somalis (in the U.S. as “protected refugees” under ICE provisions), were fired at a Cargill Meat Solutions facility in Fort Morgan, Colorado, for staging what amounted to an illegal “walkout” in protest of not being given sufficient on-the-job time to pray.
While the Somalis claim that Cargill management had reneged on its pledge to give Muslim workers adequate time away from their job to pray, Cargill management insists that, while they’ve willingly sought to accommodate employee wishes to engage in prayer, the demands of the workplace have always taken precedence.
In response to being deprived of “prayer time,” approximately 20 Somalis walked off the job, and another 160 refused to report to work. Cargill’s Fort Morgan plant employs roughly 2,000 people, 600 of which are Somalis, more than 400 of whom are still on the payroll. This is an IBT (International Brotherhood of Teamsters) facility, Local 455. It is covered by a standard Teamster contract, one of whose provisions is its 3-day “no call, no show” language, which states that an employee failing to report to work for three days, and failing to contact the company (and can’t be reached by the company), is subject to termination. This is boilerplate language found not only in Teamster contacts, but in thousands of other union contracts.
I spoke with a reporter from the Denver Post this morning, but no one seems to know (or is willing to say) what is happening, other than noting that back-channel discussions are taking place between Cargill management and employee representatives. The Somalis are being represented formally by the IBT, and informally by CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). Although it’s based on pure speculation, there’s a good chance that Cargill management and the Somali “holdouts” will reach an agreement that allows employees who have been terminated (for whatever reason) to waive the mandatory six-month waiting period before reapplying. That would be a happy ending for all concerned.