January 7, 2015 | Daily Monitoring Report.

Main Story

Hundreds of families flee their homes in Mudug due to dire shortages of food and water

07 Jan – Source: Radio Goobjoog – 158 Words

Severe food and water scarcity in some parts of Mudug region has caused many families to flee their homes. Most of the families reached Bacadweyn locality to get support and life saving assistance. The families were earlier living in deplorable conditions after they were displaced by local conflicts in the region. The administrator of Bacadweyn, Mohamed Ahmed Said, told the media outlets that the administration, with the help of the local people, tried to give emergency support to the displaced families but could not cover the needs of the people. The administrator also noted that the health centers in the locality run short of medicine adding that they are in a better position to give medical supply to the displaced families. He called on well-wishers, the federal government of Somalia, and local and international humanitarian aid agencies to deliver emergency support to the vulnerable people.

Key Headlines

Hundreds of families flee their homes in Mudug due to dire shortages of food and water (Radio Goobjoog)
Mobile library on the road in Garowe (Radio Ergo)
Political alliances emerge (Dalsan Radio)
U.S Senator Al Franken appoints his first Somali staffer (Somali Current)
Britain prepares to send security advisors (Geeska Afrika)
Somalia’s Shabaab militants ‘execute informers’ (Capital FM)
Somalia forms counter-terrorism police unit (Sabahi Online)
Suspected Islamist car bombing badly injures Somali lecturer (Reuters)
Average Mohamed counters terror message with cartoon videos (Washington Post)

SOMALI MEDIA

Hundreds of families flee their homes in Mudug due to dire shortages of food and water

07 Jan – Source: Radio Goobjoog – 158 Words

Mobile library on the road in Garowe

07 Jan – Source: Radio Ergo – 189 Words

Somali Family Services has launched a mobile library service visiting schools in Nugal region, Puntland. The head of the programme, Mohamed Hassan, told Radio Ergo that the programme aimed to encourage reading and writing, and even to inspire a future generation of professional writers. Books available in the library are in both Somali and English and include culture, literature, history as well as fiction.

Mohamed said the mobile library, which has been operating for the past four months, visits 16 schools including one secondary school every day. Students get two hours’ opportunity each day to read through some of the hundreds of books available. The library is planning to allow students to borrow books for a period of one week.

Mohamed said the library service, the first of its kind in the country, would be extended to Bossaso and Galkayo in Bari and Mudug respectively. The NGO also plans to take the mobile library by camel to outlying areas, to benefit the rural communities. “Our goal is to change the view that Somalia is an oral society with few people who write,” said Mohamed.

Political alliances emerge

07 Jan – Dalsan Radio – 367 Words

A new political alliance was launched in Mogadishu on Sunday. The Somali Unity and Democratic Alliance states that its main aim is to challenge the current government in office, and is composed of various political party leaders, businessmen and former cabinet members in President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government. Acting Deputy Prime Minister, Ridwan Hersi Mohamed, who spoke to the media during the launch has said the main aim of the alliance is to unite and create inclusive democratic government in Somalia. This new political alliance comes just after the parliament approved the new Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid following the ouster of his predecessor Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed via vote of no confidence by the parliament weeks ago.

For a list of parties and individuals who make up the alliance, click here.

U.S Senator Al Franken appoints his first Somali staffer

07 Jan – Source: Somali Current – 226 Words

Senator Al Franken has appointed Osman Ali to join his staff as the first Somali American activist working at the senator’s office in Minnesota. Al-Franken was re-elected to a second term after he won against Republican Mike McFadden in August last year. In his affidavit, Osman Ali has accepted to work with Senator Al Franken’s office. Ali said that he is very glad to join Franken’s office, adding that it will boost up his skills and Somalis’ vision of running for high level positions within the US government. “I’m highly pleased to work with one of the most treasured American senators,” Osman said. Osman was born in Somalia, and moved to Kenya as a child during the war in Somalia. When he was fifteen, Osman and his siblings immigrated to Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

In the recent years, Osman was a dynamic Somali American campaigner in Minnesota polls and campaigns. He previously worked with Congressman Keith Allison, and Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges. Early last year Mayor Betsy Hodges has also appointed Abdi Muse, another Somali American activist, as her senior policy aide. The majority of Somali Americans in the United States live in Minnesota, and have an active role in politics, education and the business sector. Most of them escaped from the Somali civil war in 1991.

Britain prepares to send security advisors

06 Jan – Source: Geeska Afrika – 219 Words

Britain is preparing to send soldiers to Mogadishu to support and reinforce AMISOM and Somali security forces in the fight against Al-Shabaab militants in southern Somalia. A number of officers are set to help train and advise the Somali National Army (SNA) in Mogadishu. The British elite unit will reside at the AMISOM base that has been established in the Somali capital to protect UN staff, diplomats and international staff.

“The strategy is Somalia first, which is really important,” a British Foreign Office source said. “If Somalia fails or the government becomes weak then that is a massive problem in the Horn of Africa. If we are serious then we have got to stop new Somalia failing. If we can stabilise Somalia then we have got a hard shoulder to start putting the squeeze back on Kenya. If we lose Somalia military operations against Al-Shabaab then we are doomed.”

According to Geeska Afrika Online security sources, more British training teams will be sent to the semi-autonomous Somaliland north of Somalia to flush-out Al-Shabaab and protect regional assets and enforce maritime security in the country. The official announcement is expected in the coming weeks.

REGIONAL MEDIA

Somalia’s Shabaab militants ‘execute informers’

07 Jan – Source: Capital FM – 170 Words

Somalia’s Shabaab militants have executed four people accused of spying for the United States, Ethiopia and the country’s internationally-backed government, officials and witnesses said. The executions by firing squad took place at a square in the town of Bardhere, a Shabaab stronghold in Somalia’s southwestern region of Gedo, late Tuesday, and came a week after the US said it had killed the Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants’ intelligence chief in an air strike. “One of the spies worked with the CIA and facilitated the killing of an Al-Shabaab commander,” a Shabaab judge in the town said before the four were shot dead.

According to the judge, another one of those executed had been aiding US operations in Barawe, a port town and former Shabaab stronghold that was captured last year by Somali and African Union forces, while the other two worked for Ethiopian intelligence and Somalia’s security agency. “After hearing the charges against the four and their confession, the Islamic court sentenced them to the death penalty,”

Somalia forms counter-terrorism police unit

07 Jan – Source: Sabahi Online – 938 Words

The first squad of a new Somali police unit trained to fight terrorism will be deployed in Mogadishu soon to lead security efforts in the fight against al-Shabaab, officials told Sabahi. The new unit, whose members received training in Djibouti, was formed to counter terrorism-related incidents in Somalia, said General Garad Nur Abdulle, head of the Somali Police Force Training and Planning Department. “The Somali police did not have the expertise to counter the tactics al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda were using in the country; therefore, it became necessary to create this new unit,” he told Sabahi. “This squad is the first group [under the new unit] to be trained and comprises 150 officers,” he said. “They are a special force with adequate training and equipment.” Somalia needed a special force specifically trained to prevent acts of terrorism, and this new unit will conduct operations in areas where al-Shabaab has carried out attacks, Abdulle said.

Al-Shabaab has a history of attacking government buildings and taking hostages inside, he said, so the new force is trained to repel those attacks and rescue the victims. Officers have also been trained to control and combat riots during public demonstrations. “The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is paying the expenses and the salaries of these officers, and governments such as Britain, Italy, Ethiopia and Djibouti will support us in skill building and vehicles,” Abdulle said. Contributing partners provided police experts to carry out the three-month training in Djibouti, which concluded mid-December, he said. “The force’s first [public] appearance was during the event to commemorate the anniversary of the police force on December 20th, but they are not yet operational,” Abdulle said, declining to say when they will be deployed for security reasons.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Suspected Islamist car bombing badly injures Somali lecturer

07 Jan – Source: Reuters -283 Words

A car bomb critically injured a university lecturer in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Wednesday and was blamed on Islamist rebels who have promised to keep up attacks even as they have lost territory to a military offensive. There was no immediate claim of responsibility by the Al Shabaab group but it has often used such devices. An al Shabaab car bomb killed four people in Mogadishu on Sunday. “It was a planted bomb probably controlled remotely,” police captain Isa Ahmed told Reuters, blaming Al Shabaab for the Wednesday’s blast. It was not clear whether the bomb had targeted the lecturer, he said.

A source at Madina hospital said the man, a lecturer at Mogadishu’s SIMAD University, was in a coma and in a critical condition. Al Shabaab has been driven out of its main strongholds in southern and central Somalia by African Union peacekeeping forces and Somali troops. But analysts say the group still has the capacity to wreak havoc with hit-and-run attacks and to hinder the Western-backed government’s efforts to restore order to a nation that is struggling to rebuild after more than two decades of war.

In the northern, semi-autonomous Puntland area, regional President Abdiweli Mohamed said 20 al Shabaab rebels and five soldiers have been killed in fighting in the past week in the Galgala hills, an area Puntland previously said it controlled. “The battleground is now in our hands,” the president told reporters on Tuesday. Al Shabaab’s military spokesman, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, said the group had killed 23 soldiers in three days of clashes and said the fighting was continuing. Rebels and officials often give different accounts and death tolls.

Average Mohamed counters terror message with cartoon videos

07 Jan – Source: Washington Post – 653 Words

In the war for young people’s hearts and minds, Mohamed Ahmed hopes to use cartoons to dissuade a generation raised on “The Simpsons” and “South Park” from taking up arms for the Islamic State group and other extremist causes. Ahmed, a convenience store manager from Minneapolis, has launched Average Mohamed.com, a website offering homemade videos aimed at countering the messages and images terrorists use to lure disaffected youths into holy war. “I don’t want my children fighting this war. Let’s end this in my generation,” said Ahmed, a married father of four young children. Sitting in his sparsely furnished recording studio, Ahmed, 39, said he started his videos out of frustration. “I’ve decided to take on one value at a time, one item at a time, to shoot down extremist ideology and philosophy,” he said. He took the moniker “Average Mohamed” because of the worldwide popularity among Muslims of the Prophet Muhammad’s name.

Ahmed is operating out of an urban area that has been a target of terror recruiters. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the U.S. Since 2007, an estimated 20 to 25 young Minnesotans have traveled to Somalia to take up arms with al-Shabab, a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida. And authorities say a handful of Minnesota residents have traveled to Syria to fight with militants within the last year. Ahmed, who shows his videos at community centers or mosques, uses bright, simple cartoons aimed at kids ages 8 to 16. “Easy to use, easy to understand, easy to tell others,” he said. Ahmed records voiceovers with the help of an engineer and has a friend in Southeast Asia create the animation. Each video costs up to $4,000 to make. His website features seven cartoons — in English, Somali and Swahili — that have drawn more than 11,800 views in the last six months and also can be found on YouTube. Ahmed said he hopes to get funding from a government agency to allow him to produce many more videos in the next two years. He’d also like to hire a social media expert to spread the messages rather than relying on word of mouth.

SOCIAL MEDIA

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

“The government is struggling with the national security and establishing social amenities, therefore, solving land disputes is not their priority.”

Land and property disputes undermine Somalia’s national reconciliation

06 Jan – Source: Wardheer News – 673 Words

“This Is An Inherited Property, Do Not Buy!” Such warning messages painted in bold on the walls of premises and residential buildings are very common in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu; cautioning potential buyers not to fall into deception. Over the past few years, Somalia has seen considerable stability and development attracting back a huge influx from within, and [from the] diaspora, but for many Somalis whose land and properties are occupied, the fight for justice preoccupies their role in the country’s recovery.

Millions of Somalis were displaced when the civil war broke out leaving behind all their belongings only to fall into the hands of various groups, most of whom being people who permanently settled, and some internally displaced whose occupation was temporary. Following the recent sense of security, many people returned to the capital Mogadishu to claim their houses, but were caught in a life threatening battles between them and those alleged settlers. Some died in the process and others almost gave up.

The issue of land-grabbing and occupation is a widespread problem across the country. Mogadishu is the central to the whole issue, and since it is the headquarters of the federal government; people expect it to lead by example. However, the government is struggling with the national security and establishing social amenities, therefore, solving land disputes is not their priority. The country’s judicial system has collapsed and there is no legal framework to settle such matters. Unfortunately, some senior government officials are alleged to be among the notorious people who have forcefully occupied people’s households.

“We, rural people, have much confidence in plant medicines. It is not that we are avoiding the normal drugs because of our economic status, but the fact is that we have realized that plant medications are more effective.”

Herbal medicine thrives in Garowe

05 Jan – Source: Radio Ergo – 683 Words

In Jid-nugul, 70 km from Garowe in Nugal region, the use of medicinal plants is increasingly popular for treatment of various ailments. It is rare for people in this village to access formal health care services. Some of the plant remedies are being purchased from Jid-nugal by families in urban areas, who are also choosing traditional healing. Saleban Omar Salad, 65, is an expert in traditional medicinal plants. He has also been a vendor of traditional herbs for the past 10 years. He harvests and transports them to major cities like Garowe, where most of his customers live. “Every plant that is grazed by livestock has a medicinal content and all that are avoided by the livestock are purely poisonous,” Saleban told Radio Ergo, describing how to identify useful plants.

Most popular among the plants used for medicine in this area is the acacia tree. “Acacia products can be used for the treatment of more than 114 ailments, such as snake bites, bleeding, eye conditions, diabetes, gastritis, among others,” Saleban said. “Also the aftuxullaha plant is used to stop bleeding, while the aloe plant is used to treat malaria. The burdadka plant can treat liver conditions while the jirmaha and dhaafaa-dhul are also used to treat kidney stones,” he added. Doctors warn of the potential risks of relying on medicinal plants. Dr Abdifatah Isse of Somali hospital in Garowe told Radio Ergo that some plants could cause more harm than good, especially if they were taken under the wrong conditions and without some kind of expert prescription. Saleban admitted he relied on trial and possible error. “Remember we live in rural areas and we don’t have the proper equipment, so what we do is give a little dose to patients and closely monitor and follow the effects on the patient,” he said.

Top tweets

@amisomsomalia: @MamanSidikou1 ‘#Somalia demonstrates how the partnership between the @_AfricanUnion & the @UNcan have tangible results on the ground.’

@UNSomalia: Women have a vital role to play in #Somalia‘s political progress. Watch them talk about challenges & opportunities: http://bit.ly/1wTEXvN

@MattBryden: Puntland security forces capture Al-Shabaab commander Ahmed ‘Gurey’ in fighting in Galgala #Somalia http://goo.gl/sJQlqN

@lasoco: Somalia media watchdog says 2015 is a tough new year for Somali media http://j.mp/1HL8GPA #Somalia

@UNHCRUK: 52% of the world’s #refugees come from #Syria,#Afghanistan & #Somalia – http://goo.gl/KS049k

‏@neptune_ms: Navy Foils Pirate Attack on Iranian Oil Tankerhttp://bit.ly/1Ip94BO #pirates #Somalia #Iran

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Image of the day

AMISOM head Amb. Maman Sidikou held consultations with the Chairperson of the AU Commission, H.E. Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma this afternoon and briefed her on the prevailing situation in Somalia. Photo: AMISOM