June 19, 2017 | Morning Headlines
Resilient Mogadishu Youth Clean Up Bombed Pizza House
18 June – Source : Radio Dalsan – 221 Words
Mogadishu youth on Sunday joined hands to volunteer for a clean up exercise at the Pizza House two days after the eatery was attacked by Al-Shabaab militant group. Youth from all the districts of the capital converged to show support to the victims of the attack. “This is a show of defiance to those who attacked and killed innocent people” Mohamed Jelle told Radio Dalsan. The youth said that they want Pizza House, Mogadishu’s premier Pizza restaurant, up and running by Eid day which is a week away.
The determination and resilience by the youth has been accorded well by Somalis. “Proud to be the Mayor of a city with this spirit and youth filled with so much strength and positivity” Mogadishu Mayor Thabit Mohamed said. At least 25 people mostly civilians were killed when a VBIED rammed into the popular eatery and gunmen shot out indiscriminately at customers who were having Iftaar dinner at the hotel.
Among those killed were two sisters and a Syrian head chef who had fled Aleppo to seek refuge in Somalia. Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack. “Youth show resilience and came out to clean the Pizza Restaurant that terrorists destroyed in order to reclaim their country back” Information Minister Abdirahman Osman tweeted and also shared photos of the clean up in his twitter handle.
Key Headlines
- Resilient Mogadishu Youth Clean Up Bombed Pizza House ( Radio Dalsan)
- Two Taxmen Shot Dead In Mogadishu (Garowe Online)
- Somaliland: Sluggish Recognition Can Be Surpassed Says Prof. Khalif Ali Galair (Goobjoog New)
- Khalifa Foundation Distributes Food Baskets To Orphans In Somalia (Emirates News Agency )
- 5 Killed 12 Hurt In Al-Shabaab Attack On Somali Military Base (VOA)
- Trump’s Tomahawk Missiles Won’t Help Somalia Find Peace (News Week)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Two Taxmen Shot Dead In Mogadishu
18 June – Source : Garowe Online – 184 Words
Al-Shabaab gunmen shot and killed two Somali taxmen in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Sunday, the latest in series of assassinations by the group. The tax officers were killed outside a barber shop located in a busy market in the capital’s Dharkenley district by two pistol-wielding men, who escaped the area immediately before the arrival of the local security forces. “We reached the crime scene swiftly, responding to an attack on taxmen, unfortunately, the gunmen had already escaped on foot. They are now at large,” said police officer Capt Mohamed Hussein.
Tax collectors working in Mogadishu markets are increasingly being targeted and killed by Al-Shabaab gunmen, added Hussein, while speaking to Garowe Online’s reporter in Mogadishu over the phone. No group has yet claimed credit for the latest murder of the policemen, however, area officials have pointed finger at Al-Shabaab, who often target security force members in the seaside city. Mogadishu has witnessed an increase of rampant targeted assassinations, mostly on the elders involved in the election of the current MPs from the militant group amidst tight security in the city in past weeks.
Somaliland: Sluggish Recognition Can Be Surpassed Says Prof. Khalif Ali Galair
18 June – Source : Goobjoog News – 123 Words
Speaking in a meeting that brokered peace agreement between the self breakaway Somaliland and unrecognized Khatumo State, Prof. Ali Khalif Galair said if they implement full reconciliation on both sides and amalgamated with trust, international recognition can be attained. In the same juncture, Prof. Galair mentioned the biggest recognition can be attained through peace and justice adding that what they need is only intelligence and wisdom.
On the other hand, he acknowledged the absence of some entities who are opposed to the peace deal with Somaliland whom he called them to be lone rangers. Intellectuals, traditional elders and politicians from both sides have on Saturday signed a precursor peace agreement. Another meeting is expected to take place on the 5th of July, 2017.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Khalifa Foundation Distributes Food Baskets To Orphans In Somalia
18 June – Source : Emirates News Agency – 232 Words
The Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation, KF, has distributed food baskets to the students of the Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan School for Orphans in Somalia. The gesture is in line with the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and with the support of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and H.H. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs and Chairman of the Foundation.
The donation also coincides with the ‘For You, Somalia’ campaign launched by President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed to help the Somali people overcome their dire living conditions caused by the continuing drought. The assistance is also a part of the #Year_of_Giving initiative 2017, aimed at enhancing the UAE’s humanitarian role and message, while addressing the drought crisis in Somalia.
The Khalifa Foundation team toured the school, which includes 11 classrooms for more than 400 orphan students. Officials of the Foundation announced that they are working to boost morale, and provide psychological and material care to the orphans, in coordination with the concerned authorities to rehabilitate and reintegrate them into society. In their remarks to the Emirates News Agency, WAM, Somali authorities extended appreciation to the UAE’s wise leadership for supporting the people of their country.
5 Killed, 12 Hurt In Al-Shabaab Attack On Somali Military Base
17 June – Source : VOA – 261 Words
At least five people were killed and 12 others wounded Saturday in heavy fighting between Somali National Army soldiers and al-Shabab militants in the Bakol region of southwestern Somalia, officials said. Somali army officials told VOA that the militants had attacked a government military base in El-Lahelay village, about 20 kilometers west of Hudur, the provincial capital of the region. The militants used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to assault the base from different directions at midday Saturday, engaging in a fierce gunbattle with Somali troops for about an hour, officials said.
On the condition of anonymity, witnesses told a VOA reporter in the region that they saw the bodies of at least five combatants, some from each side. No civilian casualties were reported. Meanwhile, a ceasefire was brokered between two rival clan militias near the central Somali city of Beledweyne, about 325 kilometers north of Mogadishu a move intended to end several days of fighting that killed at least 25 people.
The Somali National Army and forces loyal to Ahlu-Sunna Wal Jama (ASWJ),a central Somalia-based paramilitary group consisting of moderate Sufis opposed to radical Islamists, have been deployed between the warring clan militias belonging to the Habar Gidir and Hawadle of Hawiye subclans. They have been fighting over pastures and land. “Now we have succeeded in moving the rival militias away from the front line where they have been fighting. We sent troops to go between them, and I hope the fighting will be over,” said Mohamed Ali Adle, a senior government official involved in the peace effort.
OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE
“Sadly, the population is no stranger to U.S. strikes. Trump’s tactics follow a legacy of dozens of airstrikes by the past two administrations, all of which have not left Somalia measurably safer or more secure. If the Trump administration is serious about security in Somalia, there are three fronts his Pentagon should consider. First, only Somali security forces can defeat Al Shabaab. Outside intervention is only making it worse. Any American attempt at defeating Al Shabaab that does not include providing resources to Somali soldiers will certainly fail.”
Trump’s Tomahawk Missiles Won’t Help Somalia Find Peace
17 June – Source : News Week – 929 Words
Blowback is already happening in response to President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. This week’s car bombing and siege at a restaurant in Mogadishu, Somalia, which killed 31 people and resulted in dozens of hostages, is an apparent reaction to Trump’s airstrikes over the weekend, which killed eight Somalis. In an unmitigated effort to ramp up hard power, Trump is now making the same counter-terrorism mistakes in the Horn of Africa that once plagued President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in this region. Meanwhile, the shelling of Somalia isn’t making this impoverished country, or America, any more secure. Trump’s White House, like Obama’s, mistakenly thinks that airstrikes, carried by Djibouti-launched reaper drones, deploying hellfire missiles and costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars, will quell violence among a population that is overwhelmingly poor. This is wrong-headed thinking. Million-dollar missile strikes will do nothing to address the underlying insecurity of the over 70 percent of the Somali population living on less than $2 per day.
Equally egregious: the soldiers tasked with protecting the population are only getting paid on average $100 a month, or just over $3 per day, and went on strike recently to demand higher wages. The U.S. could easily meet this need and boost morale immediately. Not only are military means largely ineffective in undermining or ending terrorist groups. Most terrorist groups, exhibiting characteristics akin to Somalia’s Al Shabaab, end either through a political process or through better policing. An overwhelming 83 percent of terrorist groups end this way.
Those findings are based on the work of the think-tank Rand Corporation, a close ally of the Pentagon. And yet the Trump administration seems clearly unwilling or uninterested in investing the necessary resources to build Somalia’s political and policing apparatus, even though they’d cost less than drones and hellfire missiles. Instead of pursuing political processes, police capacity building or poverty alleviation, Trump’s Pentagon appears to be doubling down on drones and hellfire missiles.
After loosening the counter-terrorism rules in Somalia earlier this year, which allows U.S. forces to strike without regard to civilian casualties, this month’s strike will likely be the first of many forays into an escalated war on Somalia. Going forward, Somalis should expect U.S. airstrikes, and the reactionary violence they instigate, to increase dramatically.
Sadly, the population is no stranger to U.S. strikes. Trump’s tactics follow a legacy of dozens of airstrikes by the past two administrations, all of which have not left Somalia measurably safer or more secure. If the Trump administration is serious about security in Somalia, there are three fronts his Pentagon should consider. First, only Somali security forces can defeat Al Shabaab. Outside intervention is only making it worse. Any American attempt at defeating Al Shabaab that does not include providing resources to Somali soldiers will certainly fail.