July 17, 2017 | Morning Headlines
Turkey Completes The Construction Of Military Base In Mogadishu
15 July – Source: Garowe Online – 216 Words
Turkey has announced it finalized the construction of a military base in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, in which Turkish military personnel will train the Somali government troops. According to a statement released by the Turkish embassy in Mogadishu, it stated the military base is ready for operation, as the embassy is hosting an event to mark the anniversary of failed military coup in 15 July 2016. Turkish Ambassador, Olgan Baker told the media that the first batch of Turkish military personnel are scheduled to arrive to Mogadishu in August to commence the training program for the Somali national army. He added that the official ceremony to cut the ribbon off the military base is expected to take place in September with the attendance of Turkish and Somali top government officials.
The complex will be Turkey’s first military base in Africa, which has been approved by the United Nations, and its second military base abroad. The agreement between the Turkish and Somali government will include training of over 10,000 Somali soldiers by 200 Turkish military officers to support their fight against al-Shabaab militants group. In the past years, Somalia became the largest recipient of Turkish aid globally, whereas the Turkish President became the first head of state to pay several visits to the capital Mogadishu.
Key Headlines
- Turkey Completes The Construction Of Military Base In Mogadishu (Garowe Online)
- Training Of Staff From The Federal Ministry Of Constitution Start In Mogadishu (Goobjoog News)
- Puntland Court Freed Online Journalist Jailed For 14 Days Without Charges (Horn Observer)
- Internet Outage In Violence-Plagued Somalia Is Extra Headache For Businesses (Reuters)
- Kenyan Killed By Al-Shabaab After Fallout With Commanders (Daily Nation)
- A Visit To Refugee Camps In Somalia (World Bank)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Training Of Staff From The Federal Ministry Of Constitution Start In Mogadishu
16 July – Source: Goobjoog News – 156 Words
The Ministry of Constitutional Affairs kicked off a 90 days staff training programme Sunday in Mogadishu which will see 100 staff members undergo on various training pertaining on their work. Speaking during the launch of the programme, Constitutional Affairs Minister Abdi Hosh Jibril said the training was aimed at building the capacity of the staff to enable them effectively deliver quality service.
“The slogan of my Ministry is peace and life. The word justice stands for both where people will live in peace and lead good life. If justice is absent, then there is no life,” said Jibril. The minister said the country was facing many challenges adding that his ministry was now actively involved in reconciliation and justice in a bid to promote national cohesion and development. Present during the opening ceremony of the seminar included House Speaker Mohamed Osman Jawaari, his Upper House counterpart Abdi Hashi Abdullahi, appeal court chief and chief prosecutor.
Puntland Court Freed Online Journalist Jailed For 14 Days Without Charges
16 July – Source: Horn Observer – 162 Words
A court in Nugal region has on Sunday ordered the release of an online journalist, who was jailed for 14 days without charges. Puntland security forces loyal to Gen. Muhudiin Ga’amey detained Ahmed Ali Kilwe on July 2, accusing him to have posted what they described “a defamatory report against Puntland President” Speaking to reporters in Garowe, soon after his release Mr. Kilwe described his arrest “illegal and violation against his basic human rights.” “My arrest was illegal and sort of kidnap that violated my basic human rights and similarly, the same illegal procedure was followed of my release without official charges.” Ahmed Ali Kilwe said.
Mr. Kilwe further shared painful experiences during 14 days he was in the central jail saying that he was treated like a terrorist after the journalist was put in prison cells with terrorists and pirates. Mr. Kilwe thanked local and international human rights organization who tirelessly advocated for his release.The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), Media Association for Puntland (MAP) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned Ahmed Ali Kilwe’s arrest.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Internet Outage In Violence-Plagued Somalia Is Extra Headache For Businesses
16 July – Source: Reuters – 439 Words
A severed marine cable has left Somalia without internet for weeks, triggering losses for businesses, residents said, and adding a layer of chaos in a country where Islamist insurgents are carrying out a campaign of bombings and killings. Abdi Anshuur, Somalia’s minister for posts and telecommunications, told state radio that internet to the Horn of Africa state went down a month ago after a ship cut an undersea cable connecting it to global data networks. Businesses have had to close or improvise to remain open and university students told Reuters their educational courses had been disrupted. Anshuur said the outage was costing Somalia the equivalent of about $10 million in economic output. “The night internet went off marked the end of my daily bread,” Mohamed Nur, 22, told Reuters in the capital Mogadishu. Nur said he now begged “tea and cigarettes from friends” after the internet cutoff also severed his monthly income of $500 that he took in from ads he developed and placed on the video website, YouTube.
Somalia’s economy is still picking up slowly after a combined force of the army and an African Union peacekeeping force helped drive the Islamist group, Al-Shabaab, out of Mogadishu and other strongholds. Al-Shabaab wants to topple the western backed government and rule according to its strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. The group remains formidable and lethal, with its campaign of frequent bombings and killings a key source of significant security risk for most businesses and regular life. Now the internet outage potentially compounds the hardships for most firms. Most young people who say they are unable to work because of the outage spend hours idling in front of tea shops. Mohamed Ahmed Hared, commercial manager of Somali Optical Networks (SOON), a large internet service provider in the country, told Reuters his business was loosing over a million dollars a day. Hared’s clients, he said, had reported a range of crippled services including passport and e-tickets printing and money remittances.
Kenyan Killed By Al-Shabaab After Fallout With Commanders
15 July – Source: Daily Nation – 279 Words
A Kenyan Al-Shabaab militant was killed in Somalia after he fell out with commanders of the terrorist organisation. Mustafa Hassan Mohamed, a former student at Isiolo Boys High School, was killed last week after he complained that Muslims and children died in explosions that have rocked Mandera, Garissa and Mandera counties in recent weeks. Dozens of security officers have also died in the attacks. Mustafa dropped out of school in 2015 to join Al-Shabaab. Previously Al-Shabaab has killed other Kenyans within its ranks, accusing them of spying for Kenya Government. A number of Kenyan Al-Shabaab militants who have been arrested on return from Somalia and who have been interrogated have provided crucial details to security agents.
Other Kenyan militants have also been killed by Kenya Defence Forces in Somalia. Noordin Gulam Fazilai aka Dinero, 23 was killed this month after an Al-Shabaab group attempted to attack KDF camp in Kismayu. He was born in Mombasa and lived in Majengo-Sokoni before moving to Somalia. “Before his death, Noordin had been reaching out to potential recruits from Majengo area, notably those associated with Musa mosque and coordinating their movement to Somalia,” police said in a report seen by the Nation. Other Kenyans are Ibrahim Adan Abdi, Mohammed Issa and Adan Ismail Khalid. The youngsters from Mandera crossed over to Somalia between March and May 2015 to join the terror group. They were killed in a United States airstrike on June 11, 2017 in Sakow, Southern Somalia.“It has also been established that Al Shabaab is now using its foreign fighters especially from Kenya to carry out suicide attacks. Further, many foreign fighters were removed from leadership positions,” the report also says.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“The drought has forced 680,000 people to leave their homes in search of food and water since November 2016. Disease outbreaks are also of concern with cases of acute watery diarrhea and measles spreading at an alarming pace. Although humanitarian partners, in close collaboration with the Somali authorities, have been scaling up the provision of assistance, the risk of famine continues to persist in the country.”
A Visit To Refugee Camps
14 July – Source: World Bank – 681 Words
Due to drought conditions and conflict, more than 20 million people in in Somalia, Northeast Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen are at risk of starvation and famine, which is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis since 1945. In a recent mission organized by the UN to famine-stricken Somalia, I saw firsthand the devastating impacts of the drought and the coordinated response to the famine crisis. My mission to Somalia included senior officials from the UN and African Union, and was led by UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). I met senior officials in Mogadishu, as well as with the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, and travelled to Doolow on the Somali side of the Ethiopian border in the so-called Mandera triangle, which is a hub for cross-border flows of displaced people.
Due to an ongoing drought, 6.7 million people in Somalia are in need of humanitarian assistance, and 3.2 million of these are currently are at grave risk. As a result, an estimated 1.4 million children under the age of five will be malnourished this year. The drought has forced 680,000 people to leave their homes in search of food and water since November 2016. Disease outbreaks are also of concern with cases of acute watery diarrhea and measles spreading at an alarming pace. Although humanitarian partners, in close collaboration with the Somali authorities, have been scaling up the provision of assistance, the risk of famine continues to persist in the country.
In Somalia and many other places, the fragility landscape in the world has become more complex since violent conflicts spiked dramatically since 2010. Conflicts drive 80 percent of all humanitarian needs, while reducing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth by two percent per year, on average. In our response to crisis- and conflict-affected areas, the World Bank Group is not and cannot be in business-as-usual mode. The World Bank Group is responding differently to this crisis. We are leveraging innovative operational linkages with UN agencies and non-state actors to deliver support in the most-affected areas.
Through innovative financing windows, such as the global crisis response platform, we are able to mobilize quickly relatively large amounts of resources to help bridge the humanitarian-development-peace divide to serve those most in need. To support resilience building, our collaboration with humanitarian actors is intended to support immediate, medium-, and long-term impacts. As part of this humanitarian-plus approach, the WBG is investing $1.8 billion in emergency operations for countries affected by famine, in partnership with UN agencies and local actors on the ground.
A good example is the recently approved US$50 million Somalia Emergency Drought Response and Recovery Project (SEDRP), leveraging an unprecedented partnership agreement with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Using its comparative advantage, ICRC will address the immediate needs of the drought-affected people in Somalia, and support resilient recovery through the provision of livelihood opportunities and the restoration of agricultural and pastoral production. The project will support resilient recovery through the provision of livelihood opportunities and the restoration of agricultural and pastoral production.