July 20, 2018 | Morning Headlines

Main Story

Somali President Returns Back To Mogadishu

19 July – Source: Mareega News – 275 Words

The high-level delegation led by Somali President, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo has returned to Mogadishu, after attending the two-day Somali Partnership Forum held in Brussels, Belgium. President Farmaajo and his delegation were warmly received at Aden Adde International airport in the Somali capital city.

The partnership forum, which opened on Tuesday, was attended by the representatives of 58 countries and six international organizations, who all acknowledged that the Horn of Africa nation was on the right path to recovery despite major challenges it continues to face. The participants appreciated this reality after taking stock of the reforms undertaken at the political, security and economic fronts, since the last partnership forum which was held in London, UK, last year. The participants also took the opportunity to set priorities needed to be addressed over the next 6-12 months.

President Farmaajo said the country had made progress since he assumed leadership in February last year. However he cautioned his countrymen and women that the nation still faced a myriad of challenges, which must be tackled in order to achieve lasting peace and security: “There are no quick fix results for all Somali challenges but strong commitment, hard work and consistent evaluation, for tangible results.”

The President said over the last year, his government together with international partners, had formulated a transition plan for the security framework, which was central to assuming the primary security responsibilities from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) by 2020. The Brussels event builds on two earlier meetings held in London and Mogadishu that not only agreed on the Security Pact and the New Partnership for Somalia, but also prioritized a security transition plan.

Key Headlines

Somali President Returns Back To Mogadishu (Mareeg News)
Somaliland Hopes To Get Share Of Funding Declared In Brussels (Goobjoog News)
Somali Military Court sentences 18 Soldiers To Five Years In Jail For Insubordination (Halbeeg News)
Somalia And Tunisia Join Comesa (Daily Monitor)
U.S. Amends Designation Of Al-Shabaab To Include Al-Hijra Other Aliases (Kuwait News Agency)
Lessons Learned In Somalia: AMISOM And Contemporary Peace Enforcement (Council On Foreign Relations)

NATIONAL MEDIA

Somaliland Hopes To Get Share Of Funding Declared In Brussels

19 July – Source: Goobjoog News – 143 Words

Somaliland Foreign Minister Dr. Sa’ad Ali Shire has expressed his country’s hope in getting a share of the funding from development partners for Somalia declared in the just concluded Somali Partnership Forum in Brussels, Belgium: “We expect an allocation of the usual proportion without any changes,” said Saad Ali Shire. The Minister participated in the forum held on 16th and 17th July 2018.

At the conference, EU Commission Vice-President Federica Mogherini announced that the EU will provide additional €200 million to support Somalia’s overall stabilisation in order to create a better future for its people. Sweden, which co-hosted the forum with the EU, also pledged to increase its funding support to Somalia to $350 million over the next five years.

Somali Military Court Sentences 18 Soldiers To Five Years In Jail For Insubordination

19 July – Source: Halbeeg News – 111 Words

Eighteen former Somali National Army (SNA) soldiers have been jailed for five years each after a military court found them guilty of misconduct. The soldiers, who are from the 14th October battalion, were charged with insubordination and misconduct.

According to the court-martial judge, Hassan Abdirahman Adan, the soldiers confessed to committing the charges levelled against them. Each of you has been convicted of insubordination and I hereby sentence you to serve five years in jail,” the military bench ruled. The soldiers are among a contingent formed last year after the country launched a civil defence force following October’s deadly truck bomb attack in Mogadishu that claimed lives of over 500 people.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Somalia And Tunisia Join Comesa

19 July – Source: Daily Monitor – 217 Words

The membership of Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has risen to 21 following the admission of Tunisia and Somalia at the 20th Summit of the Heads of State and Government that had concluded today in Lusaka, Zambia.

Tunisia was admitted as the 20th member while Somalia followed as 21st member of COMESA after having fulfilled the COMESA terms and conditions of accession to the COMESA Treaty. Tunisia first applied for observer status in COMESA in 2005 but the matter was not concluded. In February 2016, the country formerly wrote to the Secretary General making enquiries on joining.

Somalia was formerly a full member of the Preferential Trade Area for Eastern and Southern Africa (PTA), the predecessor to COMESA. However, it failed to make the transition due to lack of government following a long civil war. Tunisia first applied for observer status in COMESA in 2005 but the matter was not concluded.

Article 4 of the Treaty provides that the COMESA Authority may admit a country which is an immediate neighbour of a member State upon fulfilling conditions set forth including acceptance of the COMESA aims and objectives, compliance with the general undertakings and fundamental principles and wishing to cooperate with the regional bloc.

U.S. Amends Designation Of Al-Shabaab To Include Al-Hijra, Other Aliases

19 July – Source: Kuwait News Agency – 176 Words

The U.S. amended Thursday the designation of al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, to include al-Hijra and “other aliases,” the Department of State announced. The Department of State said in a statement that these aliases have been added to al-Shabaab’s designations as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).

The statement added that the Department of State “also completed al-Shabaab’s legally required five-year FTO review and determined that the designation would be maintained.” It indicated that Al-Hijra, “formed in 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya serves as a wing of al-Shabaab,” and that “it has openly engaged in al-Shabaab recruiting in Kenya and facilitated travel of al-Shabaab members to Somalia for terrorism purposes.” “Today’s actions notify the U.S. public and the international community that al- Hijra is an alias of al-Shabaab,” the statement noted.

It stressed that terrorism designations “expose and isolate organizations and individuals, and deny them access to the U.S. financial system. Moreover, designations can assist the law enforcement activities of U.S. agencies and other governments.”

OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE

“Research suggests that AMISOM has delivered some notable successes. Its most important success was protecting Somalia’s fledgling transitional and then federal governments. But it also degraded al-Shabab, certainly from the period of the movement’s “golden age” around 2010 and pushed the militants’ main forces from Mogadishu in 2011”.

Lessons Learned In Somalia: AMISOM And Contemporary Peace Enforcement

19 July – Source: Council On Foreign Relations – 701 Words

Peace enforcement missions have been in vogue over the last decade, particularly in Africa. From Afghanistan to central Africa, Lake Chad to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia to the Sahel, various international organizations and coalitions of states have been tasked with fighting for peace against various “spoilers,” “insurgents,” or “terrorists.”

But these missions have run up against some very difficult problems, not least of which are: how to help stabilize areas where there is no functional central government or a peace process; how to combat transnational armed groups that use asymmetric and terror tactics but also retain deep roots in segments of the local population; how multiple international organizations and states can partner effectively to defeat such foes; and how to do all this when there is usually a huge gap between the mission’s capabilities and its mandated tasks, and political leaders are looking to slash budgets?

Another problem is how analysts and practitioners alike should set expectations for such missions and evaluate their success and failure? All these missions have cost considerable blood and treasure. But it is not clear how to evaluate whether they were worth the costs, in part because it has been difficult for researchers to collect reliable information about how these missions operate.

In my new book, Fighting for Peace in Somalia, I delved into the operational details of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) to try and shed light on these and other questions about contemporary peace enforcement missions and the international partnerships that underpin them. Initially comprising just 1,600 Ugandan soldiers who were deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital city, in March 2007, these African peacekeepers have played the leading role in combating al-Shabab, one of the world’s deadliest insurgencies.

Along the way, AMISOM has also been mandated to help protect political VIPs in Somalia, build the country’s new national security forces, support various electoral processes, and facilitate humanitarian assistance. Now in its eleventh year, AMISOM is remarkable in several respects. It is the African Union’s (AU) longest running and largest peace operation by a considerable margin. By mid-2017 it was the largest deployment of uniformed peacekeepers in the world with over 22,000 personnel.