June 13, 2017 | Morning Headlines
Somalia Should Reverse Its Decision On Gulf Crisis, Says Senator Jurile
12 June – Source : Garowe Online – 327 Words
Somali Federal Senator Abdirazak Osman Hasan “Jurile” the chairman of Foreign Affairs and investment senate committee has called the Federal government to reverse its recent decision to remain neutral on the Gulf crisis. In a special interview with Radio Garowe (RG), Senator Jurile highlighted about the recent rift between Gulf countries, which led Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt to cut ties with Qatar accusing it of funding extremist groups that stabilize the region.
Subsequently, Somalia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry released a statement indicating country’s stand to stay neutral and called Arab countries to resolve matters through dialogue. Senator Jurile said Somalia faces two difficult options, but called to support the Saudi led coalition to protect the long political and economical relationship with Kingdom. “I believe Somalia should reverse the decision, it’s not in our interest to stand neutral, UAE is an important ally in the fight against terrorism in Somalia, it support more than 1000 forces in Bosaso, also carry out military training in Mogadishu and our businessmen are connected to Dubai, UAE,” Jurile told RG. “On the other hand, you got Saudi Arabia that is the biggest market for our livestock export business.”
Asked about the diplomatic consequence if Somalia severed ties with Qatar, Jurile said; “Qatar doesn’t support us in the security sector, therefore we not afraid of that, they provide financial support and implement projects that the country needs, but we will lose a lot if we don’t support the Saudi-led coalition.” He revealed that the Speaker of the Senate held consultative meetings with Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo to deliberate more about effect of Gulf crisis on the country. On the other, a regional political analyst and former Director of Puntland Maritime Police Forces (PMPF) Mohamed Abdirahman Farole, supported Saudi Arabia-UAE decision to cut ties with Qatar, saying the latter is accused of supporting Islamist groups and host figures that are considered threat to the interests of its neighbors.
Key Headlines
- Somalia Should Reverse Its Decision On Gulf Crisis Says Senator Jurile (Garowe Online)
- Southwest President Meets With DP World Officials In UAE (Jowhar.com)
- Kenyan Air Force Attack In Gedo Region Claim Lives (Goobjoog News)
- Puntland Ministers To Visit Recently Attacked Military Camp (Xamarcade.com)
- Somalia Turns Down $80m To Cut Ties With Qatar (Middle East Monitor)
- Kenya Medical Training College To Train Medical Workers From Somalia (The Standard)
- A Fierce Famine Stalks Africa (The New York Times)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Southwest President Meets With DP World Officials In UAE
12 June – Source: Jowhar.com – 140 Words
Southwest President Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, who is on a visit to United Arab Emirates, met with officials from the Dubai-based DP World and discussed the development of Barawa seaport. DP World had previously signed agreements with Somaliland and Puntland regional administrations that saw the concession of the ports of Bosaso and Berbera to the Dubai-based firm.
DP World is now eyeing to sign an agreement with the Southwest regional administration over the takeover and construction of the strategically-located Barawa seaport.During their meeting, the two sides have agreed to asses the port and find out ways to implement the project. The Dubai-based firm will soon send an assessment team to Barawa to assess the situation of the port, town and the region. UAE is gaining a strong influence in the regional administrations at the expense of the federal government.
Kenyan Air Force Attack In Gedo Region Claim Lives
12 June – Source : Goobjoog News – 146 Words
Death and injuries are reported following Aerial bombardment by Kenyan Air Force planes in Bardera district in Gedo region. The airstrikes occurred in Gara Dulan location situated 55Km west of Bardera town resulting in the death of three persons. Goobjoog News reporter in Gedo region said the injured were taken to a hospital in Bardera town. It is believed Al-shabaab fighters have a military camp in the location though no information has been released by them regarding this incident.
Kenyan Air Force planes have many times bombarded locations and towns occupied by Al-shabaab fighters in Gedo and Jubbaland regions though it seems that casualties are allegedly confined to the locals who reside in the areas targeted by the airstrikes. Yesterday the Federal Government announced that they have attacked Sakow location in Middle Jubbaland and in the process destroyed a large camp which belongs to Al-shabaab fighters.
Puntland Ministers To Visit Recently Attacked Military Camp
12 June – Source: Xamarcade.com – 96 Words
A delegation of Puntland ministers have left Garowe, the regional capital of northeastern administration to visit and assess the damage caused by recent Al-Shabaab raid on an army base in Af-urur village in Bari region. The ministers include security, transport and agriculture ministers. They are also accompanied by senior military officials. The ministers are part of a commission tasked to carry out investigation into the deadly incident that saw the death of up to 80 people, mostly army soldiers. They will first visit injured people in hospitals before they proceed with their trip to Af urur.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Somalia Turns Down $80m To Cut Ties With Qatar
12 June – Source : Middle East Monitor – 463 Words
Somali President, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, has been offered $80 million in exchange for his agreement to sever diplomatic relations with the State of Qatar, the New Khalij news outlet reported a prominent journalist has revealed. “After two hours of enticement, Farmajo rejected the tempting offer,” journalist Jaber Al-Harimi said. Yesterday, the newspaper Somalia Today quoted unnamed sources saying “there was pressure put on the Somali government by Saudi Arabia to reverse Somalia’s decision to stay neutral in the siege imposed by some Arab governments on the State of Qatar.”
The sources confirmed that Saudi Arabia threatened to withdraw financial aid to the Somali government unless Somalia change its neutral stand in which it has called for an end to the political dispute between Qatar and the other Arab nations through dialogue via Islamic organisations like the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). The sources added that “ministers of the Somali government returned from Saudi Arabia after meetings with their counterpart were unexpectedly postponed.” It is understood that the rulers of the UAE, with the knowledge of Saudi Arabia, have already sought to persuade Farmajo, who won the presidency despite opposition from the UAE, to change his position.
Sources close to Mogadishu and Abu Dhabi, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, explained to the New Khalij that the rulers of the UAE, in particular the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed Bin Zayed, would have preferred the former president, Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud, to remain in power, especially because of the concessions that the UAE were given by Mahmoud, including contracts for the unfettered access and management of a number of Somali ports that would have provided the UAE with an important strategic position in trading across the world.
Kenya Medical Training College To Train Medical Workers From Somalia
12 June – Source : The Standard – 243 Words
The Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) is currently training medical students from Somalia. This follows a request by the Somali government in its efforts to deal with the shortage of health workers in the country. Some 200 nurses and clinical officers have already started training in different KMTC branches across the country following the partnership agreement between the State institution and the government of Somalia.
The health workers will be deployed to different health institutions in Somalia after their training. “The students, most of whom are from Somaliland, are being trained with the knowledge that they will be deployed to serve in their motherland,” said KMTC Managing Director Peter Tum. “Prolonged political instability in Somalia has caused a major crisis in the health sector. Other than the acute shortage of health workers, there are no proper structures in place in State hospitals and health centres across Somalia,” Dr Tum said in Kapsabet.
Tum also revealed that Kenya is planning to open a new branch of KMTC in Mogadishu in January 2018 to facilitate medical staff training in Somalia. “The college will cater for Somalia students who may not be able to afford the cost of training in Kenya,” he said. Somalia does not have adequate medical workers and is forced to depend on non-government organisations and aid workers. But the recent decision by US President Donald Trump to suspend funding to key health programmes in Africa has strained the NGOs offering health services.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“A few weeks back, at the London Conference on Somalia hosted by the British government, 40 countries sent their representatives. Antonio Guterres, the U.N. Secretary-General described the drought as Somalia’s “most pressing concern” but security and the intensifying war against the Al-Shabaab sucked most of the oxygen”.
A Fierce Famine Stalks Africa
12 June – Source : The New York Times – 1092 Words
Somalis traditionally did not number years but instead gave each a name that immortalized important events or crises. Nineteen eleven was the year of forbidden food, meaning a hunger so profound that people were reduced to eating haram foods that Islam proscribes; nineteen twenty-eight was the year of registration, widespread drought forcing northern Somalis to finally submit to registration by their British colonizers in return for aid; nineteen seventy-four was the year of the long-tailed, an interminable drought in the whole region that contributed to the fall of Haile Selassie. Famines have visited the Horn of Africa so regularly in the past 25 years that there has been no time for new poetic appellations. As a child in the mid-1980s in Hargeisa in northern Somalia I suffered from malnutrition. My hair was just a pale fuzz on my head; I was small and sickly. The local hospital was starved of supplies and maintenance, and my mother got me treated by German aid workers in a sprawling refugee camp, some twenty miles away.
I was one of the lucky ones. My family had enough financial and social capital to ensure that I got whatever help was available in the dysfunctional, collapsing state. Other children must have died or been left with the long-term effects of severe malnutrition such as stunting or brain damage. Today six million people are at risk of starvation in Somalia, and another fourteen million in South Sudan, Nigeria, and Yemen. It is the gravest emergency since the Second World War, according to the United Nations. The 2011 famine had hit the southern areas of Somalia, which are most hobbled by long-term conflict and poor administration; the current drought has affected all the states in the Horn of Africa.
Somaliland is dependent on livestock exports for 70 percent of its income. Lack of rain in three consecutive years has meant that 10 million goats, sheep and camels have already perished. Food prices have escalated and families must decide whether to stay with their livestock, in hope that the rains will arrive and be strong, or become refugees in their own country, looking for aid in whatever dusty camp has space for them.
My family migrated to England in 1986 when I was four but we maintained the ties with our ancestral home. Along with my extended family in the Somali diaspora, I help support a primary school near the Ethiopia-Somaliland border. The school, which opened four years earlier, served about a hundred students from a pastoral community near a settlement called Camp Rooble. Last year, our email discussions around the school moved from administrative matters to urgent requests for water supplies and food. And then the nomads had to disband the settlement, abandon the school, to look for water elsewhere.
Famines were commonplace across the world, but the last five decades have seen them generally limited to Africa, particularly to East Africa. Temperatures have risen in already arid parts of the continent, by one Celsius in Kenya and 1.3 Celsius in Ethiopia between 1960-2006. Communities across the region report droughts occurring every one to two years rather than the previous every six to eight years. This climatic transformation is also seen in West Africa and when combined with conflict, food price spikes, and political and economic marginalization the result is famine, even in countries as wealthy as Nigeria.