March 22, 2017 | Morning Headlines
UN Releases $22 Million To Fight Famine Threat In Somalia
21 March – Source: AFP – 268 Words
The United Nations has approved an emergency loan of $22 million (20.3 million euros) in a bid to prevent another famine in drought and crisis-hit Somalia, its food agency said Tuesday. The Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) is releasing the funds to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the hope it will help stave off catastrophe in the civil-war-wracked country, just five years after the last famine. Somalia declared a national disaster last month as the number of people going hungry hit three million, with 6.2 million people in total expected to face acute food insecurity over the next three months.
The Rome-based FAO said the funds would go to helping rural communities that have been hit particularly hard, as crops fail, cattle die and wells dry up. The head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Stephen O’Brien, said the loan was “part of the efforts to avert a humanitarian catastrophe”. “The loan will bridge a crucial gap and allow FAO to immediately save lives and the livelihoods of farmers and herders until additional funds from donors are received,” he said, amid pessimism from meteorologists about the prospect of rain any time soon.
Somalia is among three nations on the verge of famine, along with Yemen and Nigeria. In South Sudan, 100,000 people are already in famine conditions. In total the disaster threatens the lives of 20 million people. It is the third famine in the 25 years that Somalia has been embroiled in civil war and anarchy, including one in 2011 which left 260,000 people dead.
Key Headlines
- UN Releases $22 Million To Fight Famine Threat In Somalia (AFP)
- Al-Shabaab Attacks Defense HQ In Mogadishu Two Elders Killed (Garowe Online)
- Mogadishu Car Bombing Leaves 10 Dead (CNN)
- Somali Cabinet To Include Drought Disaster Post (VOA)
- Somalia Ambassador To Kenya Appointed Planning Minister (Nep Journal)
- IICO Launches Aid Mission To Somalia (KUNA)
- Somalia Aims To Tap Vast Offshore Fish Stocks With Country’s First Fishmeal Plant (Under Current News)
- Can Military Might Alone Defeat Al-Shabaab? (The Global Observatory)
NATIONAL MEDIA
Al-Shabaab Attacks Defense HQ In Mogadishu, Two Elders Killed
21 March – Source: Garowe Online – 216 Words
Al-Shabaab fighters have launched an overnight ambush attack on the Defense Ministry compound in the capital Mogadishu, injuring at least two people. Military sources estimated that about 20 heavily armed Al-Shabaab carried out the raid against the Defense HQ in Daynile district, which houses hundreds of Somali National Army (SNA) soldiers. “Fierce clash between Al-Shabaab and government troops occurred on Monday night around the Ministry of Defense headquarters. The two sides have used heavy weapons which were heard in major parts of the capital,” said a resident.
At least two civilians were wounded by stray bullets in nearby areas, while casualties from both Al-Shabaab and SNA forces are not yet known. But the situation has returned to normal on Tuesday morning. Al-Shabaab, which wants to topple the Western-backed Somali Federal Government, has claimed responsibility for the raid on the Defense Ministry headquarters in northern Mogadishu.
Meanwhile, the militant group shot and killed an elder identified as Muheydin Amadi in Yashqiid district, the latest in series of targeted killings against Somali clan elders participated in the electoral process to pick the new MPs of Federal Parliament. On Monday afternoon, Al-Shabaab has executed 82-year-old elder Osman Dini in the rebel-held town Awdheegle in Lower Shabelle for participating in the electoral process of the Parliamentary election in December.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Mogadishu Car Bombing Leaves 10 Dead
21 March – Source: CNN – 247 Words
Extremist group Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for a deadly explosion that police say killed 10 people Tuesday afternoon in Mogadishu, Somalia. At least 15 people were injured in the bomb explosion at a busy security checkpoint in the country’s capital, according to Somali federal police Maj. Ahmed Ibrahim. The blast was caused by an explosive-laden vehicle about 150 meters from the entrance of Villa Somalia, the presidential palace in Mogadishu, Ibrahim said.
The attack occurred hours after Somalia Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre appointed his new Cabinet. The dead include a soldier who attempted to fend off the car bomb, and several women selling Khat on the roadside, said Abdifitah Omar Halane, a spokesman for the Mogadishu mayor. Somali security forces sealed off the area, where a thick column of white smoke rose into sky. Local ambulances rushed in and carried away wounded to hospitals in Mogadishu.
Al-Shabaab, which claimed responsibility for the attack through its Radio Andalus, announced 20 had been killed, though the terror group is known to exaggerate the death totals of its attacks. Mogadishu is subject to frequent attacks as Al-Shabaab, an al Qaeda-linked terror group, seeks to turn the country into a fundamentalist Islamic state. This is the second car bomb attack the group has claimed responsibility for this month, and the fourth since the beginning of the year. On March 13, four people were killed in two attacks, while a February car bomb left 30 dead and a January explosion killed 21.
Somali Cabinet To Include Drought Disaster Post
21 March – Source: VOA News – 283 Words
Somalia’s next Cabinet will include a minister of disaster management to deal with a drought that has left more than six million people in need of aid. Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire unveiled his Cabinet picks Tuesday in Mogadishu. For the first time in Somalia’s history, several women are among the nominees, including the proposed disaster management minister, Maryan Qasim Ahmed. Khaire nominated 68 cabinet members in all, many of whom served in previous governments.
Many Somalis were expecting a smaller Cabinet, in keeping with President Mohammed Abdullahi Mohammed’s promise to run an effective administration and cut down on corruption. “The fact that it is a big cabinet would not meet with the people’s higher expectation from the current leaders,” said Virginia-based Somalia analyst Abdiqafar Abdi Wardhere.
“We believe that the new Cabinet does not reflect the reform we were expecting from the president and his prime minister,” said Dini Mohamed Dini, the chairman of the Somali Civil Society Organization. “We were expecting new, trustable faces, and technocrats and people who can lead the nation to the right direction, but the old faces in the Cabinet show otherwise.” Qasim Ahmed was formerly the minister for human development and public services.
Somalia Ambassador To Kenya Appointed Planning Minister
21 March – Source: Nep Journal – 187 Words
Somalia’s ambassador to Kenya Gamal Mohamed Hassan was among the ministers named by the country’s newly appointed Minister in Mogadishu on Tuesday. Hassan was appointed the Minister for planning and international relations in the 26 member cabinet largely composed of technocrats some of whom served in the previous administrations. Hassan assumed office at the busy Nairobi embassy in August 2015 after his predecessor Mohamed Nur Americo stepped down to concentrate on his presidential bid.
Somalia’s Nairobi embassy is one of the busiest embassies of the horn of Africa nation since the Kenyan capital is a regional hub that is home to many UN agencies and other international organizations and embassies that have presence in Somalia. The embassy has played an active role in the management of refugee affairs in Kenya, which is home to the largest Somali refugees in the World leaving in the Dadaab refugee camps.
Veteran journalist and immediate Somali representative to the UN Yussuf Garad was named the foreign affairs minister. President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo was elected on the platform of change and recently named little know Hassan Ali Kayre as the Prime Minister.
IICO Launches Aid Mission To Somalia
21 March – Source: Kuwait News Agency – 197 Words
Kuwait’s International Islamic Charity Organization (IICO) announced on Tuesday that local charities have joined forces to deliver aid worth USD 50 million to victims of a severe drought in Somalia. Speaking at a press conference to launch a media campaign for the aid program, IICO Chairman and Advisor at the Amiri Diwan Dr. Abdullah AlMatouq said that IICO had overseen an agreement to provide much needed relief for the needy in the impoverished African nation.
Moreover, he said IICO launched an urgent relief program that encompassed around 70 million displaced Somalis, which comprised food and medical aid. On relief programs in the works, AlMatouq noted that IICO is in the process of putting together an economic aid package designed to lift scores of Somalis out of sheer penury.
He also encouraged fervent Kuwaiti philanthropists to keep the aid coming, in a nation with a remarkable penchant for altruism. Based in Kuwait, IICO has provided humanitarian aid to 136 nations and is one of the most prominent global charities. A humanitarian crisis of epic proportions has unfolded in Somalia, as the country has been ravaged by the third drought in 25 years due to lack of rainfall.
Somalia Aims To Tap Vast Offshore Fish Stocks With Country’s First Fishmeal Plant
21 March – Source: Under Current News – 786 Words
Somali businessmen are planning to build Somalia’s first fishmeal plant. Should the plan go ahead, the East African country could reap benefits from rich fisheries offshore, until now primarily fished illegally by foreign vessels. According to sources close to the Somali government, the fishmeal plant will be built with a $600,000 investment. Investors in the plant are Somali businessmen, and the plant will be 100% Somali-owned. Though not formally announced, an official announcement is expected at the Seafood Expo Global in Brussels next month. A Somali delegation to the expo — who will have a stall called Somali Rising — will look to secure technical expertise from foreign companies to help develop the plant and Somalia’s nascent offshore fishing industry.
The plans come as the current Somali government augurs a more business-friendly environment for domestic and foreign private investors, and as funding from international donors ramps up. In 2015, USAID established a $74 million fund for the Somali economy and to help develop the country’s fishery resources, which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and World Bank have estimated could yield up to 100,000 metric tons of fish annually.
Support is also coming in from the European Union, FAO, and Pew Charity through Fish-I, an organization which tackles illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU). “We have famine but we have riches in the sea,” Jama Mohamed, deputy minister of Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources Somalia told Undercurrent News. Somalia’s fishing industry has suffered from years of underinvestment and has “no big vessels”, according to Mohamed.
Most fishing activities in Somali waters are conducted by foreign vessels fishing illegally offshore and small artisanal fleets inshore. Technical expertise is lacking. “The fish stocks are probably better than any other coastal nation in the world. What’s desperately needed in particular is some kind of pelagic capability to bring these small pelagics ashore,” Andy Read, fisheries team leader with Growth, Enterprise, Employment & Livelihoods (GEEL) told Undercurrent.
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
“To thoroughly weaken and ultimately defeat al-Shabaab, an inclusive security architecture must be developed over the next few years, focusing not just on military strategy but broader accommodation of political and social dynamics. This will need to be done through a consensus-based approach among Somali stakeholders.”
Can Military Might Alone Defeat Al-Shabaab?
21 March – Source: The Global Observatory – 1,020 Words
Developing a “security pact” to tackle insurgent jihadists al-Shabaab, who continue to stifle state-building efforts, is one of the key agenda items at the upcoming high-level conference on Somalia scheduled for May this year in London. This complex challenge first depends on identifying what makes al-Shabaab such a resilient movement. Despite some success on the battlefield, this is an understanding that has largely escaped Somalia’s various security forces—and their international supporters—until now.
Donors such as the United Kingdom, European Union, and United States have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Somalia’s security services, including 1.8 billion euros pledged in September 2013 as part of the “New Deal Compact.” Yet al-Shabaab remains a potent force throughout most of the country. The London conference thus presents an opportunity to develop security architecture—and associated justice mechanisms—more in line with previous political progress in Somalia.
Al-Shabaab continues to demonstrate sophisticated organizational planning and execution of attacks. While the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Somali army have made significant military gains in liberating areas previously under the group’s control, this has brought little overall stability. This is largely because systems of governance and delivery of basic services to citizens have often failed to follow military operations. In addition, the retaking of major towns by AMISOM and government forces often leaves swaths of rural areas in the hands of al-Shabaab, which in turn shifts strategy to attacking main supply routes, rendering towns isolated. At the same time, the federal government has yet to establish a broad, predictable, and consistent policy framework of governance that appeals to communities.
Al-Shabaab remains a viable local actor for the provision of basic services and, in particular, security and justice. To date, national security forces have focused on force alone and have neglected building political consensus and legitimacy within communities they serve. They are thus yet to demonstrate their comparative value to al-Shabaab in many areas. At present, al-Shabaab presents itself as providing Somalia’s only effective justice system. It operates mobile courts that deal with cases swiftly and effectively. Most commonly, Somalis who have a land or property dispute turn to the group because they consider it likely to provide the most consistent and thorough response. This sort of parallel justice network exists across the country and even the capital Mogadishu.
As an extension of this informal justice system, al-Shabaab’s thrives off support from disgruntled clans or individuals, particularly along the Shabelle and Jubba rivers in southern Somalia. The group’s support doesn’t necessarily bring economic benefits, rather it provides self-defense from persecution and protection from manipulation by individual clans and predatory economic interests. Despite its jihadist rhetoric, which locates Islam as the one and truly only identity, al-Shabaab relies more on Somalia’s traditional clan leadership system. Its own leadership in turn manipulates this system by duplicating it or forcing out traditional leaders when such systems fail to operate in favor of its ideological agenda. It often goes further, by delegitimizing, labeling as “apostates” and “anti-Islam,” those traditional elders who criticize the group. Routine assassinations are dealt out to elders deemed to have collaborated with the government or army.