International Crisis Group
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Back to the future: the challenges facing Somalia’s returning diaspora | Samira Shackle
“Whenever you move around, you worry about what will happen to you,” says Abdullahi Nur Osman, who recently moved back to his home country, Somalia. “The security situation is a big worry.”
For the past 20 years, Somalia has been a byword for chaos. In 1991, after the central government fell, the entire economy and political system collapsed. Anarchy and civil war ensued. For years, the capital Mogadishu – once a vibrant seaside resort – has been home to bombed-out facades of buildings. Houses and shopfronts, though painted in bright colours, are pocked with bullet holes.
However, if Somalia’s government is to be believed, the country long known as the world’s most failed state is making tentative steps towards recovery. A permanent federal government has been in power since autumn 2012, and the country is gearing up for democratic elections in 2016. Al Shabab, the hardline Islamist rebel group, no longer controls Mogadishu, although terrorist attacks are frequent. Government buildings are the main focus – recent incidents included an attack on the intelligence headquarters and a major prison, and the president’s residence is often targeted. Foreigners and wealthy citizens face the risk of kidnap by terrorists or armed groups.
FULL ARTICLE (The National - UAE)
Photo: Charles Roffey/flickr
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U.S. cracks down on Somalia militants with strike on Shabab leader | W.J. HENNIGAN
A U.S. airstrike intended to kill the leader of Somalia’s Al Qaeda-affiliated Shabab group illustrated the Pentagon’s determination to take down militants responsible for a wave of bombings and suicide attacks throughout the Horn of Africa.
The Pentagon on Tuesday did not confirm whether the operation — which took place late Monday — killed Shabab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, 37. But the special-forces strike against a militant encampment in the town of Barawe, south of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, was seen by U.S. officials as a setback for the Islamic militant group, which has struggled in recent years with leadership disputes, military defeats and questions about its direction.
“We are assessing the results right now,” said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby. “We certainly believe that we hit what we were aiming at.”
FULL ARTICLE (LA Times)
Photo: DoD Photo by Glenn Fawcett/flickr
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Somalia: Más Que Mogadiscio | Esglobal
Por Cedric Barnes, director director del proyecto Cuerno de Africa
En los últimos seis meses, las noticias de Mogadiscio han sido esperanzadoras. Los titulares apuntan a un aluvión de retornados y de nuevas inversiones que están ayudando a reconstruir la capital. Pero Somalia es mucho más que Mogadiscio y los desafíos a los que tiene que hacer frente el resto del centro y el sur del país –que permanece en su mayor parte bajo control de Al Shabab– siguen siendo tremendos. Y mientras la atención internacional se centra en la ciudad recuperada (y con razón, dada su importancia), zonas antes estables, especialmente la autoproclamada República de Somalilandia y la autónoma Puntlandia, parecen más vulnerables.
Es comprensible que gran parte de la energía inicial del nuevo Gobierno Federal de Somalia (GFS), liderado por el presidente Hasan Sheij Mahamud se haya invertido en la consolidación del apoyo internacional. El reconocimiento por parte de la Administración de EE UU fue un gran premio (aunque siempre había reconocido al país como una entidad estatal) y animará a otros Estados, incluidos grandes actores árabes, como Arabia Saudí, a hacer lo mismo. En el viaje de regreso de su viaje a Washington, el nuevo presidente realizó una visita a Riad -fructífera, según las informaciones disponibles. El nuevo Ejecutivo se siente seguro y ese apoyo externo ayuda a contrarrestar la fuerte influencia de sus vecinos más próximos.
Foto: UK DFID/Flickr
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Al-Shabab losing ground in Somalia
Al Jazeera’s Nazanine Moshiri reports from Afgooye, in Somalia.
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AllAfrica | Somalia: Mogadishu On the Up
Mogadishu — It is Friday morning in Mogadishu and Lido beach presents a scene reminiscent of seaside towns around the world. At the top of the beach, women sit with their wares, selling water and ice-lollies from cool-boxes.
The middle-beach is dominated by young men playing football using driftwood as goalposts. At the water’s edge, boys and girls, the latter heedless of their long flowing garments, hurl themselves into the waves or bob on the surface like apples.
“We’re on holiday”, says Ibrahim, a Londoner in his twenties who was born in northern Somalia. Ibrahim is travelling in a group of 20, all from the UK. “We came here for the beaches”, he said. On the road behind him, blue lettering advertises the Indian Ocean Star, a new beach-front restaurant and bar.
Bashir Osman has facilitated journalist visits for years and now plans to capitalize on the swelling ranks of visitors like Ibrahim who are choosing, for both business and personal reasons, to come to bullet-ridden Mogadishu. Osman has purchased 500-metres of beachfront land a few kilometres south of the international airport compound, where he hopes to open a restaurant and eventually a hotel. His infectious fondness for Mogadishu belies a strong philanthropic streak.
People are returning and reconstruction is under way. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 3,800 people returned to Mogadishu in March alone. From afar the city glints with shiny new tin roofs dotted among dust-covered ruins and camps. Private operators are offering electricity in the old town for US$30 a month. Fishermen are enjoying a healthy demand for shark-fins from Dubai and the Middle East, with a shark fetching as much as $500. Building materials lie in piles on street corners, where camel’s milk and cappuccino vendors ply their wares.
Photo: _gee_/Flickr
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Toronto Star: In Somalia the solutions are in the details
By Michelle Shephard
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA—The famine is not about the lack of food.
Not here anyway, in the capital, where markets are crowded with bananas, bags of flour and sugar, and fish, hauled in from the Indian Ocean each morning.
Food aid continues to arrive by air and sea from humanitarian organizations and start-up charities responding to this year’s crisis.
The city is a high-risk famine zone because more than 100,000 came looking for help but couldn’t find it. Not quickly enough and not in the way aid should have been available.
“Mogadishu is a city that needs to be rebuilt from scratch. It has been destroyed for the past 20 years, a battleground for warring factions,” says Abdirashid Salah, a city project manager for the Benadir district.
The most recent fight has featured the militant Islamic group, Al Shabab, which retreated south this August.
“It really needs a huge reconstruction like the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe,” says Salah, referring to the U.S.-led efforts after World War II.
Britain may be taking a step in that direction. This week, the government announced that Prime Minister David Cameron will host a Feb. 23 high-level conference to tackle Somalia’s instability and economy.
There is the physical devastation of the country after two decades of war — damaged roads, buildings, schools and hospitals. But Salah and other leaders say the real need is to repair the city’s psyche and revamp how it operates, targeting corrupt leaders and inept bureaucrats.
Fixing walls and potholes will be easy. Stopping corruption and conquering the Shabab will not.
Al Shabab
Mogadishu is calm compared with the south, where nearly 10,000 Ugandan and Burundian forces with the African Union mission are fighting the Shabab with the help of thousands of troops from Kenya, and smaller contingents from Ethiopia and Djibouti. It is the latest chapter in the Shabab’s war against the internationally-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
Neither is popular.
The Shabab’s Al Qaeda doctrine goes against traditional Somali lifestyle where women are powerful community leaders, watching soccer is a national pastime and chewing the leafy stimulant qat is a guilty pleasure. By imposing a law that includes public amputations and assassinations, as well as suicide bombings that kill civilians and young students, the group has been able to reign with terror.
The Shabab has recruited desperate Somalis who distrust the corrupt TFG. Many joined because the Shabab provides protection, weapons and a salary — something the TFG cannot.
American analyst Ken Menkhaus has called on Islamic scholars and clerics worldwide to condemn the Shabab’s tactics and message that they are fighting foreign powers on behalf of Muslims. “Al Shabab’s leaders must be left with no doubt that they are viewed by the entire Muslim world as un-Islamic war criminals,” Menkhaus said recently.
Some Somalis once regarded the Shabab as a patriotic force that repelled Ethiopian forces in late 2006. But it lost popularity during a recent campaign of terror, including an Oct. 4 bombing in Mogadishu that killed 70, mainly students applying for scholarships to Turkey and Sudan.
The combined AU, Kenyan and TFG forces are reportedly gaining ground against the Shabab, but the fighting is forcing thousands from their homes and hampering famine aid delivery.
International Crisis Group analyst Rashid Abdi said with so many in the south still at risk of starving, immediate intervention must be the priority, even if it means negotiating with Shabab leaders.
“It just makes moral sense. How many times have we negotiated with people we don’t like? History is replete with instances where we’ve negotiated with the Pol Pots of the world, to cut a deal, or to achieve some short-term objective,” said Abdi. “You can never have a global agreement with Shabab, something that’s binding. You cut local deals with key commanders in the field to allow humanitarian supplies. We just need to be circumspect.”
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Economist: Hope is four-legged and woolly
WHERE there are beasts, there is life, goes a saying in Somalia. Half of its people depend on livestock for their survival. This year they will export record numbers of animals. That seems improbable given that a famine is raging in south Somalia, which has seen over a million animals die of hunger and thirst. But the grazing in other parts of Somalia, especially the north, has been excellent and demand for livestock from abroad has never been higher. After banning Somali sheep and goats for many years, for allegedly being diseased, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia has once again declared them welcome. […]
The International Crisis Group, a research and lobby group, argues that a “European style centralised state, based on Mogadishu, is almost certain to fail”. Somali elders talk of free-spirited nomads “vomiting up” orders made far away. Devolving power to towns and clans—the linchpin of Somali society—would be better. But that too is risky. South Somalia has several separatist groups and Puntland has at least three separatist insurgencies which result in almost daily assassinations of officials and an indefinite delay in potentially lucrative oil exploration. Somaliland in the far north is different again. Despite a dependency on qat, a mild stimulant imported from Ethiopia, which accounts for a third of imports, or $160m a year, it has a maturing government and four successful elections behind it. Many Western diplomats now think it deserves full independence. Ethiopia might agree. It needs a stable Somaliland to pipe gas from a newly found field in the east to the coast.
Photo: Flickr/ CharlesFred