A district official has reported that several Al-Shabaab combatants were killed in a firefight with Somali National Army (SNA) soldiers near Elbur Airport in central Somalia on Wednesday. Confirming the incident, Elbur administrator Nur Hassan Gutale said an unspecified number of Al-Shabaab fighters were killed during a gun battle outside a military camp at the city's airport. He explained that SNA soldiers repelled Al-Shabaab after the armed militants attacked their military base:."SNA killed several Al-Shabaab fighters in the botched attack. The area is firmly under our full control," said the District Commissioner. By the time of going to the press, members of the militant group had not commented on the attack.
National Consultative Forum(NCF) officially convened today in the city of Kismayu. The opening ceremony was presided over by the President of the Federal Republic of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and attended by Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, and the presidents of the various regional states, among other political leaders.
The meeting is currently underway and leaders who gave initial speeches have stressed the importance of Somali leaders agreeing to a united election model. The National Consultative Forum has previously been hosted in the capital of Mogadishu and this latest meeting in Kismayu is expected to be the last in a series of such meetings. The National Consultative Forum is expected to come up with an agreed mode of the electoral process.
Somalia Seeks Turkey’s Assistance In Rebuilding Police Force
14 January - Source: Hiiraan Online - 230 Words
Currently experiencing a series of attacks from the Al-Qaeda linked militant group, Al-Shabaab, Somalia is seeking greater support to upgrade its police force. Already many countries including Turkey, US and the European Union (EU) are providing support to the Somali police, which has exhibited great signs of recovery.This week Somalia’s Police Chief Gen. Mohamed Sheikh Hassan, who is in Turkey for an official visit, held high-level talks with top Turkish security officials, where he urged the Turkish counterparts to help rebuild Somalia’s army.Turkey is a major ally for Somalia and continues to undertake major projects in the country in a bid to jumpstart the Somali economy that was shattered by the decades of civil conflict.
Somali police lack basic equipment like cars, effective laws to enforce in a battered country, which has not had a stable government since 1991 after warlords overthrew the central government and plunged the country in a deadly civil war.Turkish officials expressed support to the request by the Somali Police chief,’after the two sides agreed to cooperate militarily to ward off attacks by Al-Shabaab militants.
Somalia Welcomes Appointment Of New US Envoy To Mogadishu
14 January - Source: Wacaal Media - 56 Words
The Federal Government of Somalia has welcomed the nomination of Mr. Stephen Michael Schwartz as the US ambassador to Somalia. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry of Somalia said the two countries share good relations spanning decades and the appointment is a step in the right direction. The US has recognized the Hassan Sheikh led administration.
INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
Six Al-Shabaab Fighters Arrested In Security Swoop In S. Somalia
14 January - Source: Xinhua - 197 Words
African Union peacekeepers and Somalia government forces on Wednesday arrested six Al-Shabaab fighters in a joint security operation at Lego neighborhood in lower Shabelle region, southern Somalia.
Somali's government official in Lego, Abukar Isak said the operation was conducted in Jame'o, Yakbari-weyne and Lego regions, adding that it was not clear whether key leaders of the Islamist group were killed during the operation."Somali National Army with support from AMISOM conducted a joint security operation against Al-Shabaab terrorist group here in Lower Shabelle region earlier today. We arrested six suspects and recovered weapons during the operation, we believe they are Al-Shabaab fighters," Isak said.
He said the suspects who are being held in custody will be interrogated with a view to getting more information from them that may lead to the arrest of their colleagues still at large in the region.The Al-Qaida-linked group has engaged the AU peacekeepers and the Somali government in near daily attacks especially in Mogadishu and regions bordering Kenya.The group has lost key towns in the south and central Somalia in the past three years, but still carries out deadly bomb attacks in the main towns including the capital of Somalia-Mogadishu.
Eight Al-Shabaab Suspects Arrested In Ongoing Security Operation In Mandera County
14 January - Source: Daily Nation - 612 Words
Eight Al-Shabaab suspects have been arrested following a security operation that started on January 1, 2016 in Mandera, County Commissioner Fredrick Shisia has said. Mr Shisia said the eight have since been arraigned in court and were on Monday sentenced to five years in prison or a fine of Sh400,000.
"We don’t intend to end the operation any time soon,” Mr Shisia told journalists in his office in Mandera Wednesday before heading to Elwak to oversee the exercise. The operation followed fresh Al-Shabaab attacks in Mandera during the December 2015 holidays that targeted motorists and security personnel through grenade attacks and road ambushes that left a number of people dead and others injured.
Mr Shisia said three of the eight who were convicted on Monday were aiding detectives in nabbing more suspects within and outside the country:"We have enough intelligence that the three have more information that will lead to the arrest of more terror suspects in the ongoing security operation since they have already assisted in arresting two sympathisers who have been providing food to them,” said Mr Shisia.
"Our operation is intelligence-led as we do not want to victimise innocent citizens. I call on the community to assist in information gathering,” he said. He said the military police and officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations were still investing the December 28, 2015 incident in which military officers shot dead two people and injured others, sparking demonstrations in Mandera Town.
He said the government believes the December series of attacks was in retaliation to the mysterious killing of Ms Isnina Mohamed Sheikh whose body was discovered buried in a shallow grave at Lathe, some 42 kilometres from Mandera Town, days after she was picked from her food kiosk by people alleged to be security officers.
Witness Somalia’s Resilience After Decades Of War
14 January - Source: TIME - 745 Words
The sunbathed half-mile stretch of road that links the Aden Adde International Airport and the Peace Hotel in Mogadishu, once named by TIME the "best hotel in hell,” is interrupted by at least seven security checkpoints: four at the airport, sporting metal detectors and concrete barriers, and three at the hotel – such are the measures taken to prevent Al-Shabaab’s assaults threatening Mogadishu every day.
War-torn Somalia is still a hostile place for reporters. Twenty five years of cruel civil war between military groups and terrorist organizations have torn apart this country located on the Horn of Africa between the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.
Photographer Marco Gualazzini is very familiar with this territory and its past. He visited Africa for the first time in 2009, working in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, returning over the years for more coverage in Somaliland – for the 20th anniversary of the self-declared state – and has toured Mali, Nigeria, and Sudan, to name a few. Still, for Gualazzini, Somalia remained an unexplored and fascinating territory, his interest with the Sub-Saharan region fueled by Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning movie Black Hawk Down as well as the work of one of his maestri and sources of inspiration, James Nachtwey.
What led him to Somalia was a series of fortuitous events, particularly his encounter with Italian photographer Franco Pagetti, who covered the area extensively. Pagetti encouraged the photographer but also warned him of the difficulties of working in such a place "because ‘you can’t hide there.’”
When he entered the country in 2012 for one week, Gualazzini’s experience was very different from his previous visits to the continent. "Somalia is in a post-war situation. For the Western mentality, if someone doesn’t witness it directly, it is something hard to imagine, it is a world completely destroyed, overturned,” he says. "But somehow there are signs… I would call them ‘attempts at life’ – [to call them] rebirth would be an overstatement.”
OPINION, ANALYSIS, AND CULTURE
"Indeed, Hadraawi’s lines, as in his own words are "as striking as the stripes of an oryx/as visible and as lovely.” But it’s the publication in 1972 of The Killing of the She-Camel where Hadraawi calls the plunderers "aardvark” that the discredited political regime is alerted to a dissident voice,”
Hadraawi: Celebrating The Great Somali Poet
14 January - Source: The Star, Kenya - 546 Words
Legend has it that in early 1970s, renowned Somali female singer Magool gave a concert in Khartoum, Sudan. Magool returned home leaving behind an enchanted man: a Sudanese man had fallen in love with the Somali nightingale! But she was gone.The man decided to write her a love letter which he then posted. Unable to read this letter because it was written in Arabic, Magool sought the help of Hadraawi, the celebrated Somali poet, who spoke the language. The letter was presumably written in red ink, but as Hadraawi read it he discovered that the love-stricken man had used blood drawn from his veins which he had put into a fountain pen and poured his heart out! Hadraawi, the great poet that he is, had his imagination soaring.
To come to terms with what he’d just encountered, Hadraawi wrote the famous poem, Has Love Ever Been Written in Blood.Hadraawi’s greatness as a poet lies with his vision of reality, his masterful use of language, his stunning imagery and metaphor, his remarkable deployment of juxtapose, his affirmation that poetry has an element of absolute beauty! There’s something else: his association with the vulnerable, the downtrodden, the afflicted. Like most of Hadraawi’s love poems, this poem transcends intimate relationship between man and woman. The poet is telling us to be wary of deception, of politicians who "lack in purpose” but who will come at election time as "amazing gladiators/dressed in white frock/strumming the guitar” as we’ve written in Smiles in Pathos and Other Poems!
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14 January 2016 - Daily Monitoring Report, Official: Several Militants Killed In Firefight Near Elbur Airport
A district official has reported that several Al-Shabaab combatants were killed in a firefight with Somali National Army (SNA) soldiers near Elbur Airport in central Somalia on Wednesday. Confirming the incident, Elbur administrator Nur Hassan Gutale