June 24, 2015 | Morning Headlines
Somali MP Express Hope For Talks With Ahlusunna
23 June – Source: Goobjoog News – 343 Words
Abdisamed Moalim Mohamud, a federal parliamentarian, has expressed hope over the bilateral talks between the Moderate Islamist group, Ahlu –Sunna Waljama’a and federal government of Somalia in Dhusa-Mareeb town, the provincial headquarter of Galgadud region. He emphasized that the federal government of Somalia should put more efforts in the talks to make it fruitful and final solution for the problems of Somalia central regions.“We have hope that the ongoing negotiation talks will be successful and the sides will come up with final agreement to iron out their differences” he said.
He highlighted that the meeting has consumed a lot of time but the main aim is to solve the dispute.“Somalis have to learn from the past and the current disputes as to be lessons for the future obstacles” he said.“Ahlu –Sunna Waljama’a and federal government of Somalia had negotiated about their differences once, earlier March this year, Somali minister [of] defence and Ahlu-Sunna delegates had gathered in Guri-El town to iron out the disputes , since then people were eager to see sides to put function what they agreed upon but it seems that it had delayed, it is not important to blames one another for the past mistakes, the good thing is to get experience from the errors.”
Finally the lawmaker has underscored that all the regional states would remain interim and would become legal only after they get vote of confidence from the federal parliament. Currently, Somali federal government is in talks with Ahlu-Sunna which vowed to form independent regional state. On June 10th, the moderate Islamist group declared that its delegates would vacate the conference within 24 hours. Speaking to Goobjoog News, its leader Sheikh Ibrahim Gurre, who was among the signatories to Somali central State formation conference blamed the federal Minister of Internal Affairs, Abdirahman Odawaa for the breakdown of negotiations between the two sides.
Key Headlines
- Somali MP Express Hope For Talks With Ahlusunna (Goobjoog News)
- Somali President Welcomes Kenyan Move To Lift Suspension On Hawalas (Radio Muqdisho)
- Malkaariye Hospital Closes Due To Lack Of Funds (Radio Ergo)
- Nawal3 Docks At Mukala To Evacuate Somalis (Goobjoog News)
- Somali Community Awareness NGO initiates School For Female Prisoner In Mogadishu
- National Committee Leading Independence Days Celebrations Meets Journalists In Mogadishu(Horseed Media)
- How Extremists Target Victims On Facebook And Twitter (Deutsche Welle)
- Applying New Technologies To Make Remittances Work (Forbes)
- EPL Clubs Battle For Somalia-born Starlet (Africa Star)
- From Al-Shabaab To Daesh (RUSI Analysis)
- From Rebellion to Stalemate “Ahlu Sunna’s Preliminary Agreement” (Geeska Afrika)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Somali President Welcomes Kenyan Move To Lift Suspension On Hawalas
23 June – Source: Radio Muqdisho – 102 Words
President of the Federal Republic of Somalia Hassan Sh. Mohamud has Tuesday welcomed the move by the Central Bank of Kenya to lift the suspicion of 13 transfer companies. President Mohamud said in statement that financial institutions are ready to work with Kenya on restricting money the laundering of money by terrorist networks such as Al-Shabaab. The Kenyan government closed Somali remittance firms in Nairobi on April the 7th of this year. The Kenyan government maintains that closure was part of its fight against terrorism. However, the closure caused headaches for the millions of Somali who rely on the remittance companies for their livelihoods.
Malkaariye Hospital Closes Due To Lack Of Funds
23 June – Source: Radio Ergo – 181 Words
Malkaariye hospital, the only health facility in five villages outside of Baladhawo district, has closed down due to lack of medical supplies and money to pay staff and other bills. The hospital used to offer free services to the local population, most of them farmers and herders. It is the only health facility in the area serving five settlements in Baladhawo district of Gedo region. Hospital director Dahabo Adan Ali said international NGO Trocaire had been supporting the hospital financially but suspended its aid in March. Dahabo Adan Ali said women had to travel by donkey cart to the nearest health centre in Baladhaawo for maternity services. As there was a curfew, she said, such travel could only take place in the daytime. Malkaariye divisional commissioner Omar Dahir Osman said neither the local administration in Baladhawo nor the local community had means to support het hospital. Trocaire supports the two biggest hospitals in Gedo region located in Baladhawo and Luq. Radio Ergo was not able to reach an officer from Trocaire for comment.
Nawal 3 Docks At Mukala To Evacuate Somalis
23 June – Source: Goobjoog News – 184 Words
The ship chartered by the Somali businessman that sailed from Bossaso port on Monday has reached Yemen. Nawal 3 has docked at Mukalla port in Yemen where the over 2,000 Somalis who stranded are waiting for evacuation. The ship was loaded with drinking water, mattresses and biscuits which will be used by the people on their en route to Somalia. Goobjoog News reporter, Mohamed Salat who is on board says that there are over 2,000 people who have previously registered with the registration committee, are at the port awaiting evacuation. On June 13th of this year, Nawal 3 has ferried over 2, 500 Somalis who fled the war in Yemen between the internationally recognized government and the Houthis Rebels, who have taken control of large swaths of Yemen. On May 25th, Abdi Ali Farah, a well-known Somali businessman and chief executive officer of Jubba General Trading Company has pledged to dispatch a cargo ship to ferry Somalis from Yemen.
Somali Community Awareness NGO Initiates School For Female Prisoner In Mogadishu
23 June – Source: Mareeg Media – 167 Words
In an effort to improve the conditions of prisoners in Somalia, Centre for Community Awareness (CCA) has established school in Mogadishu central prison at the request of prisons department. The school will help female prisoners behind bars with getting education during their incarceration. The school is intended to provide them with skills they can use after their prison sentences end. The ceremony was attended by Women and Human rights minister Zahra Mohamed Ali Samatar, Centre for Community Awareness chairman Mohamed Ibrahim Ali, Somali Prisons commissioner Bashiir Ahmed Jama’a and Anti FGM campaigner Ifrah Ahmed and other. Human rights Minister Zahra Samatar said her ministry will do all it can to protect the rights of prisoners. Somali prison department which is among the government institutions that collapsed following the civil war but thanks to the efforts of community activists, the correctional facilities are improving. Last week Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud opened Mogadishu local authority headquarters which was refurbished thanks to funding from a local project dubbed “build your country.”
National Committee Leading Independence Day Celebrations Meets Journalists In Mogadishu
23 June – Source: Horseed Media – 153 Words
A national committee set up to lead celebrations in the forthcoming independence day celebrations has met journalists at the Prime Minister’s office. The Minister of Information Abdi Hayi Mareeye who is also the chairman of the technical committee of the celebration has called on the various media outlets to play a visible role during the national celebrations. “The independence days are very different from other day as this are the days the Somali society become free from colonialism , and its therefore important for the media to play a visible role to create public awareness and educating the public ,” said the Minister. The same calls were reiterated by the Deputy Prime Minister , Mohamed Omar Arte who spoke during the meeting as the chair of the national committee leading the celebrations. For his part, the Deputy Prime Minister urged the various heads of the media outlets to play a key role during the celebrations.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
How Extremists Target Victims On Facebook And Twitter
23 June – Source: Deutsche Welle – 718 Words
Social media has made communication much easier, but extremists use this very method to spread terrorist ideas. Governments and NGOs are finding it tough to catch up, as experts discussed at DW’s Global Media Forum. Last year in December, Indian police arrested a 24-year-old man, allegedly responsible for operating a Twitter handle linked to the “Islamic State” group from Bangalore, India’s IT hub. Mehdi Masroor Biswas was a promising software engineer and well on his way to a successful career. He is accused of using his technical talent to gather some 20,000 followers for the “IS” Twitter account. Biswas’ alleged activities, and those of militant group recruiters who operate over Twitter and Facebook, show how terrorists are strategically using the mediums to gain more followers. Experts speaking at DW’s Global Media Forum 2015 engaged in a discussion about how social media can be such an effective tool for terrorist activity. Social media is an extremely effective way of getting your message through to your target. The medium overtook pornography as the number one activity on the Internet in July 2009, says Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler, a social news network.
She quotes a Stanford University study according to which, “when you’re on social media, you have elevated levels of certain chemicals like Dopamine… Oxytocin, the love hormone.” Tweets and Facebook posts carry emotions to the reader, and tweets by terror groups are often “fun,” says Gulmina Bilal, executive director of Individualland, an NGO in Pakistan. Extremist organizations have specialized public relations strategies. They use Facebook for teenagers and for women who stay at home. Children under eight years of age get their own set of militant cartoons to familiarize them with the ideology.Activists for groups like Hizbul Islam and Jaish e Muhammad use tweets about daily life, like the food they eat, and slowly sneak in their “views” on the plight of children in Palestine, Bilal explains. Who is the typical victim? Poverty, loneliness, a non-existent love life – all these can contribute to why ordinary people fall victim to terror groups and get attracted by their ideologies, Bilal explains. While some turn to friends, many fall prey to terror activists and recruiters.
Al Shabab militants in Somalia for example often promise more money and a better future to attract combatants from Kenya and Tanzania, Bakari S. Machumu, Group Managing Editor at Mwananchi Communications in Tanzania tells the audience at the GMF 2015. Young people often go to terror training camps thinking they can work there and send money back home. Terror recruiters in Afghanistan, for example, often criticize regimes or foreign forces like NATO and the USA that have been in the country but have failed to improve the situation there. “They try to recruit through trying to offer financial packages. There are lot of unemployed people who go and join them,” Lotfullah Najafizadah, Director of Afghanistan’s Tolo News, told DW.
Applying New Technologies To Make Remittances Work
23 June – Source: Forbes – 831 Words
The global economy spent approximately $44 billion last year on fees for remittances. Remittances—money sent from one country to another—most often go to low-income households and are proven to reduce the overall poverty of a given nation. They also come with high transaction fees and long transfer delays—significant obstacles to people trying to pull themselves out of poverty. A core cause of high fees for remittances is friction—money moves slowly and inefficiently from one country to another. Transferring money is expensive because there are limited connections between financial institutions and systems. Currently, we don’t have a neutral network to tie our disparate, siloed institutions together and move money cheaply and seamlessly.
Remittances cross national boundaries, cross currencies, and cross financial institutions. All these barriers add up to inefficient and expensive transactions for everyone. In particular, micro-transactions—or transactions, as they’re called everywhere outside of higher-income nations—become prohibitively costly for low-income people who rely on remittances. A typical transfer can cost 10% of the total remittance; when you’re living on $2 a day that lost $0.20 is a direct cut to basic needs like food, healthcare, and education. For example, let’s say that Maria, who lives in the United States, wants to send $20 home to her mother, Paulina, in Mexico City. Maria can’t transfer money directly from her Bank of America BAC +0.89% account to her mother’s Santander account, so she sends $20 via MoneyGram. MoneyGram charges $4, a 20% fee. The $16 left over is converted to 246.36 pesos, which arrive in Paulina’s Santander account three days later. This friction places a huge and expensive burden on migrant families and makes it difficult for families to send smaller amounts of money on a regular basis.
Bank of America has to talk to MoneyGram, which then talks to Santander. Each of these financial services has its own rules and technical processes, so moving money between them means wasted time and money. But what if there were a system that could connect them all? What if Paulina could have the 61.60 pesos lost in the transfer? What if the transfer could take less than 10 seconds? Our current financial infrastructure dates from the pre-Internet days. Siloed financial systems and channels prevent currency from traveling efficiently. Email used to have the same limitations: Previously, only people within the same network could email one another, but that changed when email networks connected around an open standard, also known as a protocol. As with email, the best way to streamline remittances is to connect the backend infrastructure for financial institutions with an open protocol. Digital currency protocols are especially significant for global remittances. The most well-known digital currency protocol, Bitcoin, is already being used by some technology startups to help alleviate the cost of remittances. Because bitcoin is a peer-to-peer currency that works freely on the internet, transferring money with it is cheaper than using traditional banking methods.
EPL Clubs Battle For Somalia-born Starlet
23 June – Source: Africa Star – 145 Words
Bournemouth and Watford football clubs have sparked the surging rush by the English clubs vying to sign the young Somali-born international striker, Abdisalam Ibrahim.Managers of the 24-year-old former Manchester City midfielder confirmed, on Monday that both Premier League new entrants – Bournemouth and Watford said they have found great potentials in the Norway international Ibrahim. Ibrahim played just once for Greek side Olympiakos after his contract at City ran out last summer. The powerful midfielder, once dubbed the new Patrick Vieira, made only a single league appearance during his seven-year stint at the Etihad – and was farmed out to Scunthorpe, Dutch top-flight side NEC and Norwegian side Stromsgodset. Officials at Aston Villa have also confirmed the club is keen on Ibrahim, who has two senior caps for Norway, last summer but are unlikely to renew their interest.
Buckinghamshire Jihadist Killed In Kenya Was ‘Second In Command’ Of His Unit
23 June – Source: GetBucks – 257 Words
A Buckinghamshire man killed while fighting with the Islamist militant group al-Shabab in Kenya was second in command of his unit at the time. Thomas Evans, 25, from Wooburn Green near High Wycombe died in the failed attack on a military base on 14 June. According to the BBC, police now say he was also the group’s cameraman, and captured images of the incident up until his death. Kenyan security forces killed 11 gunmen, and two soldiers died in the raid near the Somali border. Christipo Mutali, from the Kenyan police, told the BBC he witnessed the attack in which the 25-year-old died.
“He was the one carrying the video during the attack. And he was commanding, ‘Let’s move on, we are winning men, let’s go, come in, let us shoot, we are winning.’ “There were two lines. He was the one leading the front line.” On the video Evans can apparently also be heard shouting orders over a radio to younger al-Shabab fighters. Al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, has been behind a series of high-profile attacks including the Westgate shopping centre siege in Nairobi in 2013, and a violent assault on a university earlier this year in which nearly 150 people were killed. Western sources believe that Thomas Evans was one of around 100 British fighters who have joined al-Shabab. That figure is considered low compared with a couple of years ago when people were talking in the order of thousands.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“Following the announcement of British deaths in Iraq and Somalia, it has become clear that foreign fighters are attracted to various battlefields. However, there has been a noticeable shift away from Somalia to Syria/Iraq in travel patterns from the UK. Understanding why and how this has taken place might offer some ideas for how to stifle some of the attraction of Syria and Iraq.”
From Al-Shabaab To Daesh
23 June – Source: RUSI Analysis – 1116 Words
Thomas Evans’s death fighting against Kenyan forces in Lamu the same weekend that it was revealed that Talha Asmal was involved in a suicide bombing in Iraq reminds us once again that Syria/Iraq is not the only battlefield drawing British foreign fighters. There has always been a curious connection between the Somali and Levantine battlefields, with both conflicts proving able to project a global narrative that appealed to excitable young Britons. However, over time, Somalia’s attraction has shrunk while Syria and Iraq’s has grown: it is therefore an interesting question to try to understand this shift better to see if there are policy lessons that can be learned to counter Daesh’s current draw.
Emerging from the ashes of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) Al-Shabaab was an organization that had a strong link to the Al Qa’ida cell operating in East Africa (AQEA). Led by prominent jihadists Saleh Ali Nabhan Saleh and Fazul Mohammed, the AQEA cell was a key draw and conduit for Western fighters going to the Horn of Africa. Amongst those who went was Bilal el Berjawi, a Lebanese West Londoner who, alongside his close childhood friend Mohammed Sakr, ended up fighting alongside the group before both were killed in drone strikes. They were both were young men brought up in West London and excited by the narratives of global struggle and jihad that had most prominently taken root in East Africa in the mid-to-late 2000s. Al-Shabaab had managed to show itself as a key point in the global struggle championed by Al- Qa’ida and, as Afghanistan/Pakistan became harder to travel to, Somalia offered itself as an alternative location with a strong link to Al-Qa’ida core.
At the same time, the popular radical preacher Anwar al Awlaki championed Al-Shabaab’s fight from his base in Yemen, amplifying its attraction to the young international warriors. And for a brief while, Somalia was the big draw to excitable young men and women seeking the glories of jihad in foreign fields. The group would release videos with good production values venerating their dead or re-playing their battles using actors and graphics reminiscent of Hollywood productions. They were even active online (with some who still are now), with their warriors taking to Twitter to communicate with the world and spread ideas, videos and information. All of which is very reminiscent of what ISIS and the battlefield in Syria and Iraq are currently producing.
“In its dismembered condition, Somalia became prey to the interference of external powers and dependent on their financial support, particularly in its southern and central regions. One of the means of influence applied by the external powers has been to pressure reluctant and internally divided domestic actors to come to the conference table and then to pressure them to reach agreements satisfactory to the “brokers.”
From Rebellion to Stalemate, “Ahlu Sunna’s Preliminary Agreement”
22 June – Source: Geeska Afrika – 2, 676 Words
On February 19, Afrique en Ligne reported that the Pan-African News Agency had obtained a copy of an agreement on power sharing and military unification between Somalia’s internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) and the Sufi Islamist movement Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jama’a (A.S.W.J.), aimed at integrating A.S.W.J. into the T.F.G. politically and combining their armed forces in order to oppose more effectively the revolutionary Islamist forces of Harakat al-Shabaab Mujahideen (H.S.M.) and Hizbul Islam (H.I.), the latter of which dominate in eighty per cent of southern and central Somalia. The deal between the T.F.G. and A.S.W.J., which was reached in Addis Ababa and was called “preliminary,” was pressured and brokered by external actors – Ethiopia (playing the front role through its foreign minister, Seyoum Mesfin), the African Union (A.U.) and the United Nations Political Office for Somalia (U.N.P.O.S.).
According to Abdirazak Usman Hassan, the T.F.G.’s post and telecommunications minister and a member of the T.F.G.’s negotiating team, who was interviewed by Voice of America: “The United States of America is leading.” The international coalition supporting the T.F.G. marshaled its diplomatic resources, because it judged that an agreement was an essential step in its grand strategy of defeating the Islamic revolutionaries through a multi-front offensive against them by the T.F.G. in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, A.S.W.J. in the country’s central regions, and a collection of sub-clan militias led by ex-warlords in the southwest and deep south. A.S.W.J. was a sticking point in their design, because it had remained stubbornly independent of the T.F.G. organizationally, held strategic swathes of territory in the central regions, and had its own political agenda that included interpretations of the character of Somalia’s statehood and political formula. The multi-front offensive could not be undertaken until A.S.W.J. was brought fully on board, which meant that the T.F.G. would have to make painful concessions to A.S.W.J.
The negotiations, which had begun at the start of February, were stalled by the middle of the month over A.S.W.J. demands for the prime minister’s post in the T.F.G., other top positions, T.F.G. recognition of an autonomous administration in the central regions run by A.S.W.J., and A.S.W.J. determination of the forms of Islamic worship and implementation of Shari’a law in Somalia. AllPuntland reported that the talks were three-sided with A.S.W.J. holding fast to its agenda and the T.F.G. split between an old-guard faction of officials from before the T.F.G. was amalgamated with a faction of the Islamic Courts movement in 2008-09, and the Islamic Courts faction led by T.F.G. president, Sh. Sharif Sh. Ahmad, and his strongman and finance minister, Sharif Hassan Sh. Adan, who represented the T.F.G. at the talks and signed the preliminary agreement.