Ceasefire has taken effect after five days of furious fighting in Marka town which claimed several lives and left dozens injured after two armed militiamen loyal to two warring tribes engaged in a bloody battle. After joint mediation efforts by respected clan elders and politicians, ceasefire was brought into agreement as the two warring clans embrace talks. The five day clashes between the two clans had started Saturday following a land dispute. The town has witnessed recurring scenes of infighting between clan based militias, which has left more than 10 people dead in the last two weeks.

Clashed Clans In Marka Accepted Ceasefire (Goobjoog News)
Offensives Launched Against Al-Shabaab In Galgaduud Region (Wacaal Media)
Somali Women Call For Education Reform In Countering Violent Extremism (Hiiraan Online)
Former Puntland MP Urges Heads Of Puntland And Jubbaland Administration To Withdraw From Mogadishu Consultative Forum (Wacaal Media)
Rapper K’Naan To Direct New HBO Series About Jihadi Recruitment (Digital Journal)
UPDATE: Suspect In Juba Restaurant Fire Arrested In Polk County (Grand Forks Herald)
Lexington's Communication Concerns (NTV/ABC)
Conflict Over The SSC Regions And Its Resources (Wardheer News)

NATIONAL MEDIA
Offensives Launched Against Al-Shabaab In Galgaduud Region

16 December - Source: Wacaal Media - 69 Words

The Somalia National Army and Ethiopian troops under AMISOM launched operations against Al-Shabaab militants in settlements under Elbur town of Galgaduud region. Elbuur District Commissioner Nur Hassan Guutale confirmed the operations to Wacaal media saying it was intended to clear the militants from areas they were hiding in the Galgaduud region. He pointed out that Elbuur and neighboring areas are the most targeted.
Somali Women Call For Education Reform In Countering Violent Extremism

December 16 - Source: Hiiraan Online - 267 Words

Somali women have called for education reform in Somalia to contain the spread of religious extremism to reduce the growing influence of the jihadist groups that continue to attract large followers throughout the African continent. The women from civil society, women’s rights organizations and government who are attending an African Union sponsored meeting on counter terrorism strategies in Djibouti’s capital argued that that the perceptions of neglect and lack of education reform are key factors driving youth to join Al-Shabaab, urging an extensive literature review on the education system.

The conference also seeks women’s partnership in the security sectors to participate efforts aimed at stabilizing the horn of Africa nation after more than two decades of war. During the conference, women have also called for wide range of Islamic political activities including awareness to stop youth from joining militants. The three day-conferences also called for more social engagements and building close working relations between security agencies and women. The opening day for the conference, also heard views from women on peacebuilding who also proposed a strategy of engagement and deliberative dialogue, a scenario they called the ‘most efficient strategy to combat terrorism’.
Former Puntland MP Urges Heads Of Puntland And Jubbaland Administration To Withdraw From Mogadishu Consultative Forum

16 December - Source: Wacaal Media - 121 Words

A former Puntland Member of Parliament, Said Diriye Mohamed wants Puntland Head of State Dr. Abdiweli Ali Gas and his Jubbaland Counterpart Ahmed Madoobe to withdraw from the National Consultative Forums on the 2016 elections. Mohamud says the Federal Government has trampled on the constitution by continuously fronting and pushing through the tribal system of 4.5 which was used to elect the current regime. He said the people of Puntland will not accept anything short of what they want and as a result urged Dr. Gas to withdraw from the conference which he said did not provide solutions to the current standoff. The former MP sent a similar request to the Jubbaland delegation led by Head of State Ahmed Madoobe.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Rapper K’Naan To Direct New HBO Series About Jihadi Recruitment

16 December - Source: Digital Journal - 231 Words

Rapper and poet K’Naan Warsame will direct a new HBO series about jihadi recruitment alongside Oscar winning director, Kathryn Bigelow.The Somali-Canadian rapper will write and direct the dramatic series, "The Recruiters" while Bigelow and former HBO president Carolyn Strauss will be executive producers.

According to the Hollywood Reporter the series which is set in Minnesota, "will draw open an iron curtain behind which viewers will see the highly impenetrable world of Jihadi recruitment." The war on terror has become increasingly important in a post 9/11 world. By 2014, as many as 40 other young men from Minneapolis joined terrorist groups after they were recruited and radicalized by jihadists via social media.

War and its effects hasn't escaped the attention of Warsame who is widely known for his 2009 hit single, Wavin Flag. In a 2012 New York Times piece he spoke of his need to explore social commentary in his music and the censorship his adult contemporary superstardom brought."I come with all the baggage of Somalia — of my grandfather’s poetry, of pounding rhythms, of the war, of being an immigrant, of being an artist, of needing to explain a few things. Even in the friendliest of melodies, something in my voice stirs up a well of history — of dark history, of loss’s victory," he wrote. A release date for the series has not yet been announced.

UPDATE: Suspect In Juba Restaurant Fire Arrested In Polk County

16 December - Source: Grand Forks Herald - 374 Words

The suspect in last week’s arson attack on a Somali business in Grand Forks has been arrested. Polk County Sheriff’s deputies arrested Matthew William Gust, 25, East Grand Forks, late Monday night at a Super 8 Motel in Fosston, according to a news release from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. On Friday, Grand Forks County prosecutors charged Gust with arson, a Class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, after they say he threw a 40-ounce beer bottle filled with gasoline through the windows of Juba Coffee House and Restaurant on Dec. 8, starting a fire that caused an estimated $90,000 in damages. No one was injured in the fire.

The motive in the arson attack still is unclear. Grand Forks Police Lt. Derik Zimmel said Tuesday detectives had not had the opportunity to question Gust. Zimmel previously told the Herald police would not speculate on a motive before questioning Gust. Kyle Loven, a spokesman for the Minneapolis Division of the FBI, which includes North Dakota, said Tuesday the FBI is still investigating the fire to see if any federal laws were broken. Loven declined to say whether FBI detectives have questioned Gust.

There has been widespread speculation the attack was racially or religiously motivated, as it occurred just days after the words "go home” were spray-painted on the restaurant’s exterior below a Nazi-like symbol. However, police have not yet linked the two incidents.
Lexington's Communication Concerns

16 December - Source: NTV/ABC - 368 Words

More than a thousand people from Somalia live in Lexington and many say they feel like the city isn't treating them like real members of the community. They wish leaders would do more to reach out. Many Somali people feel like they haven't been given the opportunity to really learn English and wish the city, government or someone would help. They say 80 percent of those from Somalia who live in Lexington don't speak or read English.

Many coming to work in the Tyson plant are refugees and have been here for over a decade. "We are law abiding citizens people we get our citizen and we get our green card and we are citizens at least a hundred or three hundred are citizen now," explained Somali Community Chairman Shukri Abdi. Like Halima Alas she simply memorized the citizen test, but still isn't fluent. She thinks the mayor could do more for her people. "We brought him here to this place we talked to him,” Alas said. "We went to his office so many times, he doesn't put any effort he doesn't see us as a part of the community."
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE

"Preoccupied with their personal political and pecuniary pursuits, their vision does not go beyond what they call the 2016 vision which in essence is all about fixing their personal aspirations by whatever mean. As has been clear for a long while, Somalia in their scheme of things is simply no more than the South. The north (former British Somaliland) is out of sight, out of mind and out of all deliberations, plans and actions. For Hassan Sheikh and company, the unity of the country counts for little apart from the occasional lip service to be politically correct.”
Conflict Over The SSC Regions And Its Resources

16 December - Source: Wardheer News - 1,753 Words

Clan warlordism may be dead or dying in its birthplace in southern Somalia but it is riding high in northern Somalia where two better armed and funded one clan-based regional entities, Somaliland and Puntland, are preying on the weak in the region- claiming and occupying their territory, stealing their resources and pilfering any humanitarian and development aid from the international community meant for them.

The unionist regions of Sool, Sanaag and Cayn (SSC) in northern Somalia, nationally and internationally recognized as part and parcel of Somalia, should have had all the rights that all other regions and clans in Somalia take for granted. Instead, they find themselves the exception and the prey of two predatory regional enclaves who claim it for their different reasons. On one side, is the one-clan secessionist enclave calling itself Somaliland which bases its claim on the ludicrous justification that they and the SSC regions were once part of a bygone British colonial rule and that this historical fact trumps all other subsequent national acts.

On this basis, the secessionists consider the union with former Italian Somaliland after independence, and all its embodiments, reversible and hence judge their unilateral declaration of secession in 1991 as making the union null and void. Their reborn Somaliland, they argue ad nauseam, would automatically reclaim its former colonial borders in line with the Charter of the African Union, when everyone else knows that the only borders recognized by the African Union and the wider international community are those of its members, and in this case those of Somalia of which the secessionist enclave is part.

In pursuit of their separate independent Somaliland, and in order to prevail over the recalcitrant unionist SSC regions and exploit their resources, the secessionists felt obliged to invade and occupy them. And as occupiers, they cast themselves as the sole authority and arbiter of all matters relating to all the regions in the north (former British Somaliland), regardless of the opposition of the unionist regions to be part of their secession. It is as if the British colonial rule of the SSC regions – the only people who resisted that rule – is to be replaced by a one-clan colonial rule in the 21 Century!!

The other predator is Puntand whose claim to the SSC regions is no less absurd than that of Somaliland: for them, the SSC regions and those neighbouring regions/clans across the old colonial border were co-founders of Puntland and hence consider the ad hoc transitional common defence arrangement adopted in the wake of the collapse of the Somali State as an open-ended binding obligation on the SSC people unless Puntland decides otherwise.