June 10, 2015 | Morning Headlines

Main Story

Paramilitary Group Refuses To Step Back Amid Calls For Dialogue

09 June – Source: Garowe Online – 178 Words

A spokesman for the paramilitary group of Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamea (ASWJ) has ruled out possible pullout from strategic Dhusamareb town amid calls for peaceful solution to the standoff over state formation process in central Somalia, Garowe Online reports. In an interview with Puntland-based independent station, Radio Garowe on Tuesday, Ahlu Sunna Spokesman, Abdinur Mohamed Hussein said, they don’t have withdrawal option on the table, and would pursue a dialogue. “We have yet to receive [UN envoy] message, but we won’t agree to withdraw,” said Hussein, referring to the press statement by United Nations envoy to Somalia, Ambassador Nicholas Kay. He accused Somalia’s Federal Government of being in breach of a ceasefire agreement signed in Guri’el on March 5. Kay asked Islamist militias to disengage and shun derailing ongoing state formation convention in Adado. On Sunday, Ahlu Sunna militia seized key army bases and police compound in Galgadud regional capital of Dhusamareb after government forces fled. As of Tuesdaymorning, residents reported fresh military expansion by the paramilitary group which seeks to re-exert authority over Galgadud region.

Key Headlines

Paramilitary Group Refuses To Step Back Amid Calls For Dialogue (Garowe Online)
Kenya’s Miraa Continues To Fly In Despite Ban On Commercial Flights (Wacaal Media)
Puntland Ministry Of Public Works Hands Out Motorbikes To Police (Goobjoog News)
Banadir Governor Reshuffles Administration (Somali Current)
Somali Delegation Jets Back With Injured People From Jigjiga (Wacaal Media)
Africa Tracks: Construction Of Key Djibouti-Ethiopia Rail Line To Finish (Yahoo News/Associated Press)
International Community Calls For Dialogue In Somalia Over Jubba State (Xinhua)
Flydubai Touches Down In Hargeisa (Gulf News)
Kenya Seeks UAE Cash To Fight Al-Shabaab In Somalia (Daily Nation)
Growing Body of Law Allows Prosecution Of Foreign Citizens On U.S. Soil (The New York Times)
Tagtalk: : New Perspectives On Somali-Canadian Social and Economic Participation (Hiiraan Online)

NATIONAL MEDIA

Kenya’s Miraa Continues To Fly In Despite Ban On Commercial Flights

09 June – Source: Wacaal Media – 100 Words

Three days after reports emerged that Kenya has cancelled all commercial flights to the Somali capital of Mogadishu, planes carrying miraa still fly the route. Freedom, African Airways and Daalo have all stopped their daily flights between Nairobi and Mogadishu. The aviation companies were accused of running their business without the necessary licences. Sources told Wacaal media that up to 6 planes carrying miraa, the stimulant which is produced by Kenya and largely consumed in Somalia touched down in Mogadishu. The move has inconvenienced aid workers and the general public that used to commute on daily basis between the two capitals.

Puntland Ministry Of Public Works Hands Over Motorbikes To Police

09 June – Source: Goobjoog News – 205 Words

Handing out ceremony of motorbikes from the Government of Puntland to traffic police was held on Tuesday 9, June, 2015 in Garowe. Ministry of Public Works has formally handed out nine Honda motorcycles to the Police Force for use by the traffic department. The cycles, deemed to be modern police bikes, are equipped with loud speakers, microphone headsets, sirens and police lights. The initiative is funded by the Puntland government and is part of the Ministry’s Work Services Group (WSG) which is tasked with utilising some of the bikes issued to the traffic police. This move is aimed at addressing safety issues on the roads, including the safety and monitoring of the roadways. Accepting the motorcycles at police headquarter in Garowe, Commissioner of Police Mohamed Saeed Jaqanaf said that there is a great demand for the traffic police to be more reliable and the bikes will go a long way in benefiting the State at a time when Puntland is facing traffic jams and congestions. The ministry reportedly paid a lot of money for the motorcycles and their spare parts. The motorcycles are expected to be distributed among police in Bosaaso and Galkayo towns.

Banadir Governor Reshuffles Administration

09 June – Source: Somali Current – 136 Words

The governor of Banadir region Hassan Mohamed Hussein Mungab, today reshuffled his administration in an unprecedented move that saw one former member miss out on the new cabinet list. Former Shangani district commissioner, Said Abdikadir Said has been stripped of his title while three others moved to different districts. Former commissioner of Shibis, Abdifatah is now the new district commissioner of Karaan while former Karaan commissioner was moved to Shangani district. Former Shibis commissioner was also moved to Waberi district. Reports say that the governor of Banadir is expected to make more changes in the coming month even as the motive of the reshuffle still remains unknown. Mungaab made similar changes a couple months ago where he appointed a female district commissioner for the first time. Governor Mungab has held the position for a year now.

Somali Delegation Jets Back With Injured People From Jigjiga

09 June – Source: Wacaal Media – 151 Words

A Somali delegation that was in Jigjiga, Ethiopia over the past few days has today returned to the country. Led by office of the President Minister Mahad Salaad and Galgaduud Regional Commissioner Hussein Ali Wehliye, the delegation brought home several people who were injured in the recent flare up between Ethiopia’s Liyuu police and local residents. A plane carrying the delegation touched down at Adaado earlier today. Sources told Wacaal media that a woman who was raped in the course of the conflict was among those brought home today. We could not however immediately establish the exact number of the injured who were brought home. Officials in the Somali region of Ethiopia and their counterparts from the federal government signed deals to stop the conflict. The agreement also led to the release of those who were captured from the Somali side some of whom have injuries.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

International Community Calls For Dialogue In Somalia Over Jubba State

09 June – Source: Xinhua – 315 Words

The international community on Tuesday voiced its concern over the wrangling between Somalia’s federal government and the southern state of Jubba following a declaration by Mogadishu that the state assembly was illegally constituted. In a joint statement, the Eastern Africa regional body, Inter- governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), European Union, African Union in Somalia (AMISOM), the U.S. and Britain called on all stakeholders to refrain from any actions that will undermine the state formation process or reverse gains made in the process. “We welcome the efforts of the Federal Government of Somalia, and encourage the Interim Jubba Administration and the federal government to work constructively to resolve any issues arising from the Interim Juba Regional Assembly process through dialogue and consultations,” the statement said.

“The current challenges concerning the formation of the Interim Jubba Administration Assembly need to be addressed in a spirit of reconciliation and compromise,” it said. The international community called for a mutually acceptable dispute resolution mechanism to ensure both parties reach an amicable solution. The statement comes a week after relations between the Jubba administration and the federal government in Mogadishu had grown frosty over the vote by the federal parliament. The Federal Parliament, through a motion, said the process in which Jubba Administration Assembly was constituted illegal, calling for its dissolution. Following the motion result, the Jubba administration in a swift rebuttal declared it was severing ties with the federal government, a move which could be seen as a threat to peace in southern Somalia and generally the stability of the country. Jubba State was established as an interim administration following an agreement by local and regional stakeholders in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2013. Jubba State is key in the war against terror in Somalia as its main sea port Kismaayo had been the major source of funds for the militant group Al-Shabaab before it was liberated by government forces.

Flydubai Touches Down In Hargeisa

09 June – Source: Gulf News – 154 Words

Dubai-based flydubai’s inaugural flight to Hargeisa landed today at Hargeisa Egal International Airport marking the launch of a direct four times weekly service to Hargeisa, Somaliland. Flydubai’s delegation was headed by Ghaith Al Ghaith, Chief Executive Officer of flydubai, and Sudhir Sreedharan, Senior Vice-President Commercial (GCC, Subcontinent and Africa) of flydubai. Upon landing in Hargeisa Egal International Airport, the delegation was greeted by Abdirahman Abdillahi Ismail, the Vice-President of Somaliland and Mohamud Hashi Abdi, the Minister of Civil Aviation and Air Transport of Somaliland. The Hargeisa route will be served with four flights a week which will see flydubai operate a total of 64 weekly flights between Dubai and destinations in Africa. flydubai offers cargo services on all its African routes, providing cargo solutions to a network of more than 90 destinations in Africa, Middle East and Subcontinent, Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia, and 135 additional destinations worldwide due to interline agreements.

Kenya Seeks UAE Cash To Fight Al-Shabaab In Somalia

09 June – Source: Daily Nation – 291 Words

Kenya is working with rich Arab nations to stabilise Somalia as it seeks to stop attacks by Al-Shabaab militants trained in the lawless country. Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary, Amina Mohammed said the country had embarked on winning the hearts and minds of the Somali people to speed up the military exit, stabilise the country and stop radicalising youths. She said the country was working with resource-rich United Arab Emirates, countries in the Arab League as well as other development partners, to rebuild and stabilise Somalia. “(The) UAE has partnered with us through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to provide humanitarian support to refugees in camps and has also provided direct support to the government,” she said.

She was speaking at a joint press briefing with her UAE counterpart Sheikh Abdallah in Nairobi on Monday. The two ministers then left for State House to brief President Kenyatta. The UAE minister said his country was also keen on regional matters, such as the crisis in Burundi, South Sudan, Somalia and even further across the border in Libya. On Monday, the UAE Foreign Affairs minister said its effort to stabilise Somalia and other volatile countries in the region had the backing of the Arab League, African Union and the European Union.

Africa Tracks: Construction Of Key Djibouti-Ethiopia Rail Line To Finish

09 June – Source – Yahoo News/Associated Press – 598 Words

The leaders of Djibouti and Ethiopia will oversee the completion of a railway linking their two capitals on Thursday, with the ambition that the link might eventually extend across the continent to West Africa. Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn will attend the ceremonial laying of the last track in the 752-kilometre (481-mile) railway, financed and built by China, linking the port capital of Djibouti with landlocked Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. The first scheduled train is expected to use the desert line in October, reducing transport time between the capitals to less than 10 hours, rather than the two days it currently takes for heavy goods vehicles using a congested mountain road. “Some 1,500 trucks use the road every day between Djibouti and Ethiopia. In five years, this figure will rise to 8,000,” said Abubaker Hadi, chairman of Djibouti’s Port Authority. “This is not possible, this is why we need the railway.”

With a capacity of 3,500 tonnes — seven times the capacity of the old line at its peak — the new electrified line will mainly be used for transporting goods to Africa’s second-most populous nation. Ethiopia’s economy is growing fast, with almost 90 percent of its imports going through Djibouti. Both countries benefit from economic integration, with Ethiopia gaining access to the sea and Djibouti gaining access to Ethiopia’s emerging market of 95 million people. “Ethiopia is an important country for us,” said Djibouti’s Transport Minister Ahmed Moussa Hassan.” It is the main customer for our logistics facilities and this new railway line will strengthen trade.” The new line is in fact the resurrection of an old one, built in 1917 by the Franco-Ethiopian Railway Company, but decades later it fell into disrepair and only worked erratically. Trains would regularly derail and it could take as long as five days to make the journey between the two capital cities. Some abandoned parts of the old line are still visible in Addis Ababa and in central Djibouti.

OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE

“In 2004, when Congress updated the terrorism law, it said that extraterritorial jurisdiction applies in six situations. One that was applied here was breathtakingly simple: that the person is “brought into” the country after the conduct in question. Here, the prosecutors and F.B.I. flew the men into Kennedy International Airport from Djibouti. As a Southern District federal judge, P. Kevin Castel, ruled in the case of Mr. Ahmed, bringing someone in “alone is a sufficient statutory predicate for jurisdiction.”

Growing Body of Law Allows Prosecution Of Foreign Citizens On U.S. Soil

09 June – Source: The New York Times – 1,580 Words

Arrested in Djibouti while he was en route to Yemen from Somalia, far from his home in Britain, Madhi Hashi was baffled to find himself jailed in Manhattan. He admitted to prison officials that he was a member of the Al-Shabaab, the Somali militant group. But he “did not understand why he had been brought to the United States to stand trial,” he told them, according to court documents. The world of soccer was roiled by a similar surprise late last month, heads snapping from Italy to Argentina, when Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch announced that Brooklyn prosecutors had indicted FIFA officials from the other side of the globe, on corruption charges. Using a growing body of law that allows the United States to prosecute foreign citizens for some actions, the government has been turning the federal courts into international law-enforcement arenas. In terrorism cases, the broadening of a key law in 2004, the splintering of terrorist groups and a shift away from military detention has led the United States to bring more foreigners onto its soil, some with only a tenuous link to the United States. Perhaps no federal prosecutor was more aggressive about expanding her office’s global reach than Ms. Lynch when she was the United States attorney in Brooklyn, and the FIFA arrests suggest that now that she leads the Justice Department, overseas cases are likely to become even more of a priority.

In the FIFA case, prosecutors chose not to invoke “extraterritorial jurisdiction.” Instead they relied on the defendant’s use of American banks and American locations to conduct meetings as the basis for charging them in federal court. But in terrorism prosecutions, United States courts are trying people who were not targeting the United States, are not from the United States and, before their court cases, had never set foot in the United States. (In these cases, prosecutors say, the country extraditing or otherwise handing over custody of the defendant is, by definition, choosing to cooperate with the United States.) The United States has become “the jailer, the military front and now the prosecutor” of global crimes, particularly terrorism, said Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University School of Law. In Brooklyn, the trial earlier this year of Abid Naseer, a Pakistan-bornQaeda member plotting a to set off a bomb in Manchester, England, saw a parade of MI5 agents, Manchester police officers and an English mall-security expert. Another man, Lawal Babafemi, who will be sentenced in the summer after pleading guilty to providing support for terrorism, was a Nigerian who traveled to Chad and Sudan before being smuggled to Yemen by a Ugandan, then was arrested and sent to Brooklyn after he returned to Nigeria.

Across the East River, in Manhattan federal court, Mohamed Ahmed, accused of terrorism, wrote to the court that he was detained, beaten and interrogated at the direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Nigeria, denied help from the consulates of Sweden, where he was a permanent resident, and Eritrea, where he is a citizen, until he was blindfolded, put on a plane and sent to New York for prosecution. Mr. Hashi’s case is another example of this phenomenon, illustrating how federal prosecutors are able to bring these cases, and why they choose to, despite protests from defense lawyers who say their clients are often tortured or denied their rights in the process. Mr. Hashi was born in Somalia and moved to England in 1995. By 2009, he had gone to Somalia and joined the Somali-affiliated Al-Shabaab. By 2012, after Al-Shabaab intelligence imprisoned him because they thought he was a spy, he had decided to fight in Yemen instead, prosecutors said. En route, he was arrested in the tiny East African nation of Djibouti, along with two other Al-Shabaab fighters, Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mohamed Yusuf, both of them Somali-born Swedes. Mr. Hashi told the court that he watched Mr. Ahmed being tortured, and he was threatened with torture and sexual abuse, by Djiboutian law enforcement; when the F.B.I. joined in the interrogations, he says he was advised of his rights but remained fearful, and gave statements because of that fear.

“This narrative change is very important because, in Canada, Somalis continue to be part of a society and media that, by default, favors mainstream narrative and voices over those of immigrant communities.”

Tagtalk: New Perspectives On Somali-Canadian, Social And Economic Participation

09 June – Source: Hiiraan Online – 274 Words

Think. Act. Grow. ( TagTalk) in association with Somali Tenant Association and Reghaay Community Services held a provincial conference of its first kind titled Narrative Change: New Perspectives on Somali-Canadian, social and Economic Participation. This new initiative focuses on highlighting the positive contributions of the Somali community in North America. Hundreds gathered June 6th 2015, in Toronto’s Plaza Hotel in North Etobicoke to participate in what transpired to be a very energetic evening were the participants came from as far as Atlanta, Minnesota, Ohio and Alberta. The Narrative Change conference was to promote new dialogue and solicit presentation that tell the stories, shift perspectives on old ones, include participants who are not commonly at the table, and develop transformation and emerging possibilities.

This narrative change is very important because, in Canada, Somalis continue to be part of a society and media that, by default, favors mainstream narrative and voices over those of immigrant communities. As “Narrative Change” is therefore, about creating conditions for us to surface, share and hear those voices from our community that traditionally ( systematically) are unheard. The conference brought together leading Somali Canadian Academia, Business, Research Scholars, working professionals, grass root organizations and students from Universities in Canada and the United States to exchange and share ideas to decontextualize the current painted Somali-Canadians narrative and explore the achievement and contribution of Somali Canadian in education, social and economic participation in Canada. Hassan Aden, who is one of the organizers of the conference said that “We want to continue these kind of gathering every year so that Somali community in north America will have a platform to showcase their positive narrative.”