January 7, 2016 | Morning Headlines
3 Children Killed In Blast
06 January – Source: Goobjoog News – 161 Words
Three children were killed after a device they were playing with went off in Balli-Burse village of Somalia’s northern Sanaag region, witnesses said. The device is suspected to have been abandoned during the two-decade long civil war, which claimed thousands of lives.
“Children found an explosive device left behind from the past wars in a village in Sanaag region yesterday afternoon,” a resident of Ball-Burse told Goobjoog News. The children then started playing with the object, oblivious of the fact that it is dangerous.
“The device went off and the resultant blast caused the death of three of them,” he said. Bodies of the children were taken to hospital and will be handed over to their family members after legal and medical formalities. The parents arrived at the hospital immediately upon receiving news of the tragedy. Such incidents are not uncommon in Somalia. Last year, two children were killed in Gedo region under similar circumstances.
Key Headlines
- 3 Children Killed In Blast (Goobjoog News)
- Favori Employee Injured In Mogadishu (Wacaal Media)
- Jubbaland Leader Arrives In Adado Galmudug State (Shabelle News)
- Somalia Intelligence Agency Detains Journalist For Weeks (CPJ)
- Kenya Renews Appeal To Trace 11 Wanted Terror Suspects (Capital FM)
- Somali Leader To Speak At Brunswick MLK Jr. Day Event (The Forecaster)
- Somalia ‘No Longer Failed State’ And Other Sights And Sounds In E. Africa (Daily Nation)
- Who Is Protecting Somalia’s Fishermen? (Hiiraan Online)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Favori Employee Injured In Mogadishu
06 January – Source: Wacaal Media – 80 Words
A staff member of Favori LLC, the company that manages the Mogadishu International Airport was this morning injured in an attack in the city. Eyewitness told Wacaal Media that two men armed with pistols attacked the woman near her home in Hamar Bile neighborhood of Wardhigley district, Banadir region. The injured woman was rushed to a local hospital where she is now being treated. Her employers, Favori LLC, had not commented on the incident by the time of going to press.
Jubbaland Leader Arrives In Adado, Galmudug State
06 January – Source: Shabelle News – 115 Words
The leader of Somalia’s interim administration of Jubbaland Ahmed Madobe arrived in Adado city, the current capital of Galmudug state for talks with his host, President Abdikarim hussein Guled. Modobe’s entourage was received at the airport by President Guled and other high-ranking officials and immediately escorted to Galmudug State House. Discussions between the two leaders are expected to revolve around the upcoming consultative meeting on the electoral process, which is set to open in the southern port city of Kismayo on 10th January. After the Adado trip, Ahmed Madobe will visit his main ally of Puntland state, where he is expected to attend the opening ceremony to launch the newly built Bosaso airport.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Somalia Intelligence Agency Detains Journalist For Weeks
06 January – Source: CPJ – 458 Words
Somali authorities should immediately release journalist Abdirisak Omar Ahmed or disclose any charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said today. Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency arrested Abdirisak, a freelancer who wrote for the privately owned, Somali-language, news website Xogmaal, on the morning of December 17, near the Jubba Hotel in the Shanghani district of Mogadishu, according to statement by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ).
“Somali authorities have held Abdirisak Omar Ahmed incommunicado for 20 days without presenting a shred of evidence he broke the law. That is 20 days too long,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Sue Valentine. “If Abdirisak is accused of committing a crime, authorities should disclose those charges immediately. Otherwise, they should release him now.”
Abdirisak was detained alongside journalist Abdukar Mohamed Ali of Star FM while the pair was walking to a coffee shop. Abdukar was released without charge the next day, but Abdirisak remains in detention, and has not been brought before the courts, according to his family and the Somalia journalists union. He is being held at the intelligence agency headquarters near the presidential palace in Mogadishu, NUSOJ secretary general Mohamed Ibrahim told CPJ. Ibrahim said he has raised Abdirisak’s case with authorities, but has been unable to learn anything about his case.
The journalist has been denied access to his lawyer and his family, including his wife, Maryan Arale. Maryan said in an interview on Universal Television on December 27 that she was concerned about Abdirisak’s health because he had been suffering a serious case of malaria around the time when he was arrested.
The reasons for Abdirisak’s detention remain unclear. Neither Minister for National Security Abdirizak Omar Mohamed nor Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Hayir Maareeye immediately responded to CPJ’s emailed request for information as to why the journalist has been detained. CPJ recorded several incidents in 2015 in which agents from the National Intelligence and Security Agency engaged in arbitrary arrest and detention of journalists.On World Press Freedom day in May 2014 President Mohamud recognized journalists who, in his words, “work tirelessly to inform the population, often at great risk to themselves.”
Kenya Renews Appeal To Trace 11 Wanted Terror Suspects
06 January – Source: Capital FM – 198 Words
The Interior Ministry has re-published photos of 11 wanted terror suspects and renewed its appeal for public help in tracking them down. The 11 mentioned on the ministry’s Twitter handle and described as dangerous are Abdalla Muumin Abdalla, Abdalla Siraj Marumu, Abdifatar Abubakar Abdi, Isaa Abdalla Ahmed and Anwar Yogan Mok.
Others in the list include Suleiman Muhamed, Hussein Said, Mohamed Ali Ahmed, Omar Patroba Juma, Abdikadir Abubakar and Ismael Mohamed Shosi. The ministry has encouraged the public to be on the lookout and call police hotlines, 020-219 91 51 or 0702-432877/ 999 or 112 should they see any of the suspects. The appeal comes as the authorities launched a massive manhunt for three wanted terror suspects who escaped a police raid in Majengo, Mombasa on Monday.
Mombasa police boss Francis Wanjohi disclosed that the officers recovered two rifles, G3 and M16 rifle, 345 bullets and 15 mobile phones from the house. The three escaped when detectives from the Anti Terrorism Police Unit and the Recce squad raided the house. Intelligence reports indicate that three were planning a terrorist attack in Mombasa and are part of gang believed to be behind past terrorist attacks in Lamu and Mombasa.
Somali Leader To Speak At Brunswick MLK Jr. Day Event
06 January – Source: The Forecaster – 93 Words
The Democratic Town Committee will hold its fifth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day pasta supper this year at the Unitarian Universalist Church. Fatuma Hussein, executive director of United Somali Women of Maine, will deliver remarks. The event, which the BDTC describes as a “non-partisan … public service,” will benefit the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program. Adults are encouraged to donate $10; children under 10 can eat free, according to a press release. The dinner will run from 5-7 p.m. on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 18, at 15 Pleasant St.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“Anyway, anyone who has been to Mogadishu in recent years will be struck by how rapidly Somalis exploit “peace windows”. Within days of Amisom kicking out Shabaab from a place, they move in quickly and start building things.”
Somalia ‘No Longer Failed State’ And Other Sights And Sounds In E. Africa
06 January – Source: Daily Nation – 720 Words
As everyone was rushing for the holidays, there was a development in our region that seems to have escaped many people’s attention. Nicholas Kay, the outgoing representative for the United Nations Secretary in Somalia, said the country was “no longer a failed state but a recovering fragile country”. Kay said in the last three years the country had stabilised, although there was still a lot of work to do, and that “Al-Shabaab will not succeed in undermining the progress being made.”
So what is going on? One could say credit goes to the African Union’s peacekeeping force in Somalia, Amisom. That is a powerful reason, but only one of many. Today we are interested in two other factors – the Somali people, and the general political winds in East and Central Africa. It is worth noting that when Africans are not fighting for independence and some form of self-determination (as they did in South Sudan or Eritrea), they generally tend to get exhausted rather quickly.
They will therefore fight with fury and murderous energy at the start, but after a few years the war tapers off or gets locked into a low intensity conflict. Or it ends all together, as the leaders age and die off. In fact even in the case of a self-determination war like the long one that took place in South Sudan, the warriors were given to taking breaks. That is because, with the cultural commonalties, many SPLA fighters also had homes on the Ugandan side, for example. They would return to Uganda during the planting and harvest seasons to work in their family garden and sell their produce, then go back to South Sudan in the dry “fighting season”.
“Between Somalia’s central government and the regional administrations, in the past fifteen years there have been six different contracts awarded to six different private maritime security contractors (PMSC) with the aim of rebuilding Somalia’s coast guard. Yet today the country is still lacking a credible national coast guard.”
Who Is Protecting Somalia’s Fishermen?
05 January – Source: Hiiraan Online – 862 Words
As Somalia’s waters have become less dangerous for international shipping, they have become much more dangerous for Somalia’s fishermen. Illegal fishing vessels that were wary of coming into Somali waters a few years ago have come back in a big way, only this time heavily armed and prepared for a fight.
Although piracy has been eliminated in the Horn of Africa region, the “pirate” term continues to be used as a tool to delegitimize and dehumanize Somalia’s fishermen, to the extent where they can now be killed with impunity, by anyone, within Somalia’s territorial waters, with the perpetrators taking comfort in the thought that, so long as they declare to have killed “pirates,” there will be no accountability and no questions asked.
The resources with which the Somali fishermen depended on for their livelihoods have been plundered, their plight used as a pretext to hold international shipping to hostage by transnational organized criminals, resulting in the over militarization of the Somali coast and the sad situation we find ourselves in today. What is happening to the Somali fishermen in Somalia’s waters can only be described as a catastrophe.
After recognizing the seriousness of the situation, BIMCO, the world’s largest international shipping association, appealed to the European naval force in the region (EU NAVFOR) to help stem the rampant illegal unreported and unregulated fishing (IUUF) that is taking place within Somali’s waters. Unfortunately, BIMCO’s appeal was declined, with EU NAVFOR stating that their mandate does not cover the tackling of IUUF in Somali waters. However, what EU NAFOR’s mandate does include is the monitoring of “fishing activities off the coast of Somalia.” And although EU NAVFOR has excellent surveillance capabilities in the region, to date it has not transmitted the gathered information to the Somali authorities.