October 25, 2013 | Morning Headlines
Ghana to send 90 police officers to Somalia
24 Oct – Source: Bar-kulan – 75 words
Ghana is to send 90 police officers to augment efforts by UN peacekeepers in Somalia. There has been civil unrest in the country, as Militant group, al Shabaab fighting the present regime. However, there are fears Ghana will be the target of terrorist attack considering the allege claims by al Shabaab that it was responsible for the Nairobi Shopping Mall attack in Kenya which claimed many lives due Kenya’s contribution of troops in Somalia.
Key Headlines
- Grenade explosion rocks Janale town(Shabelle)
- Al Shabaab ambush kills ten in Somalia(Somali Current)
- Grenade explosion rocks Janale town(Shabelle)
- Threat to arrest journalists an eerie reminder that dark days are yet to go (Daily Nation)
- Kenya police cancel summons of journalists over Westgate(AFP)
- Piracy discussed conference is concluded in Brussels(Al Shahid)
- Kenya’s former prime minister criticizes the security forces’ response to the Westgate mall shootings last month(PRI News)
- Norway’s Somali community rattled by reports of young members joining jihadist groups (AP)
SOMALI MEDIA
Ghana to send 90 police officers to Somalia
24 Oct – Source: Bar-kulan – 75 words
Ghana is to send 90 police officers to augment efforts by UN peacekeepers in Somalia. There has been civil unrest in the country, as Militant group, al Shabaab fighting the present regime. However, there are fears Ghana will be the target of terrorist attack considering the allege claims by al Shabab that it was responsible for the Nairobi Shopping Mall attack in Kenya which claimed many lives due Kenya’s contribution of troops in Somalia.
Al Shabaab ambush kills ten in Somalia
24 Oct – Source: Somali Current – 52 words
Al Shabaab attack in Gofgaduud town of Bay region on Wednesday night has left at least 7 people dead, local media reported. The militants attacked military base in the town and the clash lasted hours in the night, creating concern among the people in the area. Residents say the killed people include civilians.
Grenade explosion rocks Janale town
24 Oct – Source: Shabelle – 77 words
News from Janale town which is located in the lower Shabelle region of Somalia says that an explosion occurred when a grenade was hurled at a government controlled checkpoint. Two people including a soldier died on the spot while 14 others sustained injuries after the explosion. Government troops rushed to the scene immediately after the deafening sound was heard and it is believed they conducted security operations to hunt down the culprits.
REGIONAL MEDIA
Threat to arrest journalists an eerie reminder that dark days are yet to go
24 Oct – Source: Daily Nation – 143 words
Police chief David Kimaiyo should desist from intimidating journalists, especially Mohammed Ali and John Allan Namu for doing what the investigative arm of the police was unable or unwilling to do. His warnings negate sections of the Constitution while stifling the citizens’ right to access information as stipulated under Article 35. ‘Jicho Pevu’, in airing the clip, did not propagate war, incite violence or engage in hate speech. On the contrary, that narrative sobered us up and made us wiser to the shortcomings of those we have entrusted with our safety. Based as it was on closed circuit television (CCTV) imagery, the report has one unshakable defence going for it in any court of law: Truth. While fighting the loathsome Al-Shabaab in Somalia, the UN accused KDF soldiers of stealing and selling charcoal, an allegation I don’t remember anyone in authority vehemently denying.
Piracy discussed conference is concluded in Brussels
24 Oct – Source: Al Shahid – 116 words
Somali MP confirmed on Wednesday to local media that a conference in which was discussed how to undermine Somali piracy and also the violations made by fish exploiters which illegally enter in Somali waters and destruct Somali fishing boasts seizing the fishers telling that they are pirates, ended in Belgaum capital, Brussels. Mohamed Omar Dalha, an MP, who is the Deputy Speaker of Somali Parliament Committee for Foreign Affairs and attended the conference said, “Both the threat of the piracy and the problem made by foreign illegal fishing companies have been discussed deeply”. He has not mentioned any tangible agreement which was reached in the conference. Officials from many countries and international agencies attended the meeting.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Kenya’s former prime minister criticizes the security forces’ response to the Westgate mall shootings last month
24 Oct – Source: PRI News – 145 words
Former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is in the US, sharing his thoughts about last month’s terrorist attack at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall. He says Kenyans were surprised when they learned that Kenya’s security forces had looted the mall, while there to fight the terrorists. Odinga was Prime Minister of Kenya for five years until this past April, when he lost a controversial presidential election. That vote had Kenyans on edge. But it was nothing compared to the trauma Kenyans went through last month during the siege at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall. 67 people were killed when the upscale shopping center was attacked by extremist al Shabaab militants from Somalia. “Kenyans, first of all, are shocked by what happened, the sheer audacity of people taking over the mall and killing with impunity,” Odinga says. He spoke with The World’s Marco Werman at Boston University’s African Presidential Center.
Kenya police cancel summons of journalists over Westgate
24 Oct – Source: AFP – 144 words
Kenyan police cancelled Thursday an order summoning journalists for questioning over their reporting of looting and disarray among security forces during the massacre in the Westgate mall, an official said.
The order for two reporters and an executive from the KTN television station to appear for questioning had sparked anger from rights groups and other media. But an Interior Ministry official late Thursday said the order had been retracted.”After wide consultations, the summons have been cancelled,” said the official, who was not authorised to speak to the media. “The journalists and their CEO are not required to record statements anymore.” Neither police nor the reporters, Mohammed Ali and Allan Namu, could immediately be reached for comment. Kenyan media reported widely on the ransacking of the upmarket shopping centre as soldiers battled Islamist gunmen in the siege in which at least 67 people died.
Norway’s Somali community rattled by reports of young members joining jihadist groups
24 Oct – Source: AP – 136 words
Somali immigrants in Norway fear that violent extremism is taking root in the community after reports of young Somali-Norwegians traveling abroad to join jihadist groups. One of the gunmen in a Nairobi mall attack that killed 67 people last month has been identified in Kenya as Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow, a 23-year-old Norwegian citizen who returned to Somalia in 2010. Norway’s Somali community was still coming to terms with that news when they were struck by another startling development: Two teenage sisters — 16 and 19 — had left their family in Norway to join the civil war in Syria. “It is very shocking,” said Mohamed Hussein Gaas, a Somali-born East Africa expert at the Fafo research foundation in Oslo. “No one thought two young girls would travel to a place where they don’t have any connection.”
SOCIAL MEDIA
CULTURE / OPINION / EDITORIAL / ANALYSIS / BLOGS/ DISCUSSION BOARDS
“The rentier political marketplace is an organizing principle to describe and explain how political power functions in these orders. This is specified by four main characteristics.”
Somalia: The Logic of a Rentier Political Marketplace?
24 Oct- Source: World Peace Foundation Blog-2137 Words
In this posting, I sketch an approach for understanding Somalia, based on the framework of the “rentier political marketplace,” which is a political-economic analysis structured around the dynamics of bargaining over rental resources by intermediate elites, both inside and outside the state. I outline how this may also help in understanding patterns of violence over the last thirty years. My main argument is that the Somali state, along with a number of other countries in Africa and the greater Middle East, underwent a profound structural transformation in the 1980s, and that we have been living with the under-recognized consequences ever since.