Nairobi, July 8, 2013–Two unidentified gunmen killed TV reporter Liban Abdullahi on Sunday evening in Galkayo, a central town in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, according to local journalists and news reports.

Liban, who was also known as “Liban Qaran,” had left his office and was headed to his home in Wadajir village in northern Galkayo when unidentified gunmen approached and shot him several times, according to Mohamed Gelle, an eyewitness to the attack, who spoke to Agence France-Presse. The assailants fled the scene before security officers arrived. Liban died from his injuries upon reaching a hospital, local journalists said.

Liban was covering the lead-up to the July 15 council elections as a correspondent for the newly launched, U.K.-based Kalsan satellite television station, according to news reports and local journalists. In Puntland’s first democratic council elections, four registered political associations will be competing for district council seats. Parliamentary elections will follow later this year, news reportssaid.

“The fatal attack on a journalist covering landmark elections in Puntland is alarming,” said CPJ East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes. “Authorities must do their utmost to investigate and apprehend the perpetrators.”

Liban had worked for a variety of broadcasters in the past 10 years, including Radio SBC (Somali Broadcasting Corporation), Radio Daljir, Codka Nabadda (“Voice of Peace”), and Royal Television, local journalists said. He is survived by a wife and five children.

At least two journalists were killed earlier in 2013 in direct relation to their work in Somalia, which CPJhas ranked the deadliest place in Africa to practice journalism. Twelve journalists were murdered for their work in the country in 2012, with none of the killings resolved, according to CPJ research. Somalia ranks second-worst on CPJ’s 2012 Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists are murdered regularly and killers go free.

·      For more data and analysis on Somalia, visit CPJ’s Somalia page here.

Mohamed Keita
Africa Advocacy Coordinator
Tel. +1.212.465.1004 ext. 117
Email: mkeita@cpj.org

Tom Rhodes
East Africa Consultant
Email: trhodes@cpj.org

The plane of Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud made an emergency landing in Mogadishu Monday after experiencing engine problems.

The president was unharmed in the incident, and there were no reports of any injuries.

Government spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman says the plane took off from Mogadishu’s airport at 9:00 a.m. local time but returned to the capital when, about 20 minutes into the flight, a technical problem developed in one of the plane’s two engines.

An airport official tells VOA’s Somali Service that the plane suffered a punctured tire on landing.  Airport officials deny media reports that the plane had caught fire.

The president and a delegation were traveling to South Sudan for celebrations marking that country’s independence day.  The group later boarded another flight and departed for South Sudan.

Source: VOA

8 July 2013 – The United Nations envoy in Somalia today underscored the importance of protecting journalists and defending press freedom, following the killing of a television reporter on Sunday.

Libaan Abdullahi Farah ‘Qaran,’ a reporter for Kalsan TV based in Gaalkacyo, the capital of the north-central region of Mudug, was reportedly shot dead while returning home from work.

Nicholas Kay, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and head of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM), expressed his heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the deceased, and to all media professionals in Somalia.

“UNSOM is dedicated to working with Somali authorities to strengthen the security and justice sectors in order to ensure that Somalia is safe and that perpetrators of violent crime are brought to justice,” he stated in a news release.

Mr. Kay also noted that this is a “politically tense” period in Puntland ahead of local elections, and he called for restraint on the part of all political actors.

UNSOM said the latest killing brings to five the number of journalists murdered this year in Somalia, which continues to be one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a media professional.

(Reuters) – At least four foreign crew members and seven Somali pirates died when a cargo ship that the pirates were holding to ransom off the Somali coast sank on Sunday, and 13 others were missing, a pirate who works with the gang said.

The Malaysian-owned MV Albedo cargo vessel and its crew were hijacked 900 miles off Somalia on Nov. 26, 2010 while sailing from the United Arab Emirates to Kenya.

“The ship has been gradually sinking for almost a week, but it sank totally last night,” the pirate said on Monday by telephone from Haradheere, Somalia’s main pirate base.

“We have confirmed that four foreign (crew) and seven pirates died. We are missing 13 in total,” said the pirate, who gave his name as Hussein. “We had no boats to save them.”

The Albedo had 23 crew from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Iran when it was seized.

Hussein said the captain had died earlier and four of the crew had previously been taken off the ship. With four dead, this would leave 14 to be accounted for, and it was not clear why there was a discrepancy with the pirates’ figures.

The EU Naval Force, a European Union anti-piracy unit that protects merchant shipping off the Horn of Africa, said the whereabouts of 15 crew were still unclear.

“EU Naval Force can confirm that the Malaysian flagged motor vessel MV Albedo, held by armed pirates at an anchorage close to the Somali coast, has sunk in rough seas,” a statement on the force’s website said.

“An EU Naval Force warship and Maritime Patrol Aircraft have closed the sea area and are carrying out a search and rescue operation to search for any survivors. The whereabouts of the 15 crew members from MV Albedo is still to be confirmed.”

Some hostages are held on land while pirates demand ransoms from ship owners, with some kept onboard to maintain the ships.

The number of attacks by Somali pirates has fallen over the last two years due to increased naval patrols and the presence of well-armed security teams on ships.

The local administration said the Albedo had been the last ship held off Haradheere, because it had convinced many pirates to quit the business and given them training in legal trades.

But piracy emanating from the lawless Horn of Africa may still cost the world economy about $18 billion a year, the World Bank said in a report in April. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu and Daniel Fineren in Dubai; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Nairobi -Kenyan politicians and khat traders are calling on the government to initiate talks with British officials to reverse the ban on khat and save the multi-million dollar agricultural sector from collapsing.

Kenyan farmers say the new British ban on the leafy stimulant, also known as “miraa,” will have a significant adverse impact their businesses and the nation’s economy. The plant, which grown in Kenya’s cooler central regions for export to several European countries and Somalia, is worth big money for Kenya.

According to Kipkorir Menjo, director of the Kenya Farmers Association, the ban threatens the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people.

“The miraa industry is going to face a serious challenge because they are people in the supply chain, the farmers who are planting the crop, fellows who have been distributing, fellows who have been exporting,” he said. “The whole industry is likely to collapse because this is a major market which has been earning this people good money, of course also earning the country foreign exchange.”

On Wednesday, British Home Secretary Theresa May banned the herbal stimulant, saying her country could become a transit route for illegal shipments into other European countries.

The head of the Global Miraa Industry Dealers Network, Jephat Muroko, calls the ban political.

“To me it’s a pure politics, and not only politics but also oppressive to the miraa industry traders,” he said.

“I think it’s part of the consequences,” he added, referring to Kenya’s election of President Uhuru Kenyatta, who faces trial at the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. “But I wonder about our government, why it’s quiet about this thing.”

Kenya’s khat traders once exported about 20 tons of the crop to the Netherlands each week, before that country joined several other European neighbors, including France and Germany, in banning the leafy stimulant.

Britain imported 36 tons each week prior to implementing its own ban.

Menjo says both khat farmers and traders need to start lobbying Britain to lift the ban or start planting other cash crops.

“If there will be no headway then they will have to think for other options, but I think for now I don’t want to conclude that nobody will listen to them,” he said. “Hopefully they will get some way out, but if it’s not possible they will have to think some other ways of getting their livelihood.”

As the farmers and traders digest the latest development from Europe, another battle awaits them inside Kenya: The National Authority for the Campaign against Alcohol and Drug Abuse is lobbying the government to have khat classified as an illegal drug.

Source: VOA

I am Somali boy in war-torn ravaged home,

where my people eradicate each other just for the throne.

Blood is way cheaper than water for them to spill.

With pernicious guns and grenades each other they kill.

My peers in other world are centuries ahead of me.

And I am here uneducated, striving to set me free.

My dear mother was hit by a huge blazing shell.

Our daily life was from the tomatoes she used to sell.

My sister got dismissed from school because of the fee.

She was intelligent but who spared moment to see???

My daddy was a drug-addict and robber in street.

When something went wrong he would torture us and beat.

In a faithful morning we were notified his death,

after fusillade of bullet riddled him below the head.

It was so tragic to me and so much worse than a thunder.

For, he’d at least sponsored me when no one didn’t bother.

As a poor unlearned Somali boy, I still polish the shoes.

I could have been a millionaire, a politician on the news.

My clan is better is what tore my great country apart.

And let predators towards them make a cunning dart.

We paid allegiance to tribalism which caused disarray,

and shrouded women and children in layers of dismay.

And, some of those fled, get discriminated every day.

Mercilessly stoned to death, on street, while they lay

We were once the Irish of East Africa and hope to be again.

Pick the threads of our life and from tribalism abstain.

I pray future generation won’t see the same years of pain.

The same anguish I suffered, the same scholars get slain.

BY: Abdifatah Sheik Ibrahim( Aw Daldale )

By Associated Press,

JOHANNESBURG — The chief executive of Somalia’s largest money transfer company warned Tuesday that funds wired into the country could “go underground” if Somalis aren’t able to send money to family members through banks.

Abdirashid Duale, the chief executive of Dahabshiil is asking Barclays bank to reconsider a decision announced last month to stop facilitating money transfers to some companies in Somalia. Banks worried about anti-terror regulations have grown wary of facilitating transfers into Somalia, where the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab still controls a wide region.

Somalia’s diaspora community sends $1.2 billion into Somalia annually, according to a study released this month by the U.N.’s food and agricultural agency. That money is desperately needed in one of the world’s poorest countries.

“What’s the alternative? The alternative is that people will go underground, and then the regulators won’t see who is sending money,” Duale told The Associated Press by telephone. “Money will go on flights and be transported in pockets.”

Dahabshiil is one of Somalia’s rare business successes. Started in 1970 by Duale’s father, the company says it employs more than 5,000 people in 150 countries. The company helps transfer money for such humanitarian groups as the U.N., Oxfam and Save the Children.

Duale says Dahabshiil is in compliance with all international banking regulations. He shared a portion of a letter from Barclays that said the decision to sever ties “is not a negative reflection of your Anti-Money Laundering standards, nor a belief that your business has unwittingly been a conduit for financial crime,” but rather is because of the risks “of the sector in which you operate.”

That risk, Duale argues, is in inherent in all money transfers. He noted that the 9/11 commission that investigated the 2001 attacks in the United States found that the attackers used Western banking institutions to transfer money.

“We have our compliance system to follow. We ask people for ID. There is a database we can check if they are a member of al-Shabab or not,” he said. “The risks are always there. The risk is not unique for a specific company.”

Barclays said in a statement last week that as a global bank it must comply with rules and regulations in all the jurisdictions in which it operates.

“It is recognised that some money service businesses don’t have the proper checks in place to spot criminal activity and could unwittingly be facilitating money laundering and terrorist financing,” it said. “Abuse of their services can have significant negative consequences for society and for us as their bank.”

Barclays said it is happy to maintain a relationship with businesses that have anti-financial crime controls. Western Union operates in Somalia but does not have a presence in many places, including the capital, Mogadishu.

Aid groups that work in Somalia are worried about the possible impact of Barclays’ decision. A coalition of aid groups said that one study of financial transactions in Somalia found that 73 percent of remittance recipients said that they use the money they receive from relatives — an average of $2,040 per year — to pay for basic food, education, and medical expenses.

By Associated Press

Sisters of Somalia is now available to watch on YouTube after screening on Monday, 1 July 2013 on Witness, Al Jazeera’s flagship documentary strand.

Asha Hagi Elmi is a humanitarian and peace activist, internationally recognised for her work helping to build peace in Somalia and defending the rights of women. In August 2012, just months before her husband Abdi Farah Shirdon became prime minister of Somalia, Witness journeyed with Asha to the refugee camps of Mogadishu, swelled to bursting from 2011 by tens of thousands of Somalis fleeing drought and the threat of famine.

Asha, her sister Amina and other women from the NGO she founded, SSWC (Saving Somali Women and Children), distribute food, clothing, medical and practical aid, lend an ear to the refugees’ stories and, most of all, attempt to restore dignity to the lives of the often traumatised and very vulnerable women and children they meet in the camps.

Asha has since become a legislator in the Somali Federal Parliament.

Watch and embed the full episode at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzW6OSU-Tq0.

For more information, visit http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2013/07/20137112549633235.html.

Regards

Kevin Kriedemann

+27(0)83 556 2346

For a variety of reasons, it is an uphill task to revive the collapsed state of Somalia.  Yet, the current Federal Government of Somalia (SFG) stood the best prospect for restoring the failed political institutions of Somalia. President Hassan got a golden opportunity to pull this war-torn nation out of the black hole into which it has fallen in 1991.  He was given a chance to turn the page on the past and start writing history in a new chapter.

I am afraid President Hassan squandered an opportunity to become a national icon.  Remember how Nelson Mandela became a hero. Unlike the painful struggle of the South African’s great statesman, President Hassan – through luck and little efforts – met his ‘stroke of luck’ at the doorstep.  But I think it takes more than mere luck to become a hero. It requires intrinsic heroic trait.

If you objectively appraise the opportunity given to President Hassan against his achievements, you will sadly conclude that the man is an underachiever. Let me refresh your memories.

The successful closure of the protracted and painful transitional period to permanent Federal institutions has set off a spat of renewed hope, international attention and interest.

The diplomatic compassion  which President Hassan’s government obtained from the international community has been immensely overwhelming. The recognition and support given to the Federal Institutions by the member states of the European Union, Norway, the United States, Japan and other global and regional bodies including the Bretton Wood institutes (the World Bank and the IMF), the UN, the Arab Leagues, the OIC and the AU have been particularly very impressive.

Many trustingly believed that the international legitimacy of the government would usher in a new political dispensation that could take this war-ravaged nation across the bridge.

Unfortunately, this optimism is quickly ebbing out of sight. The enthusiasm and confidence people had in the new SFG leadership is undermined by the injudicious policies of the President. Misguided policies are escalating conflict and division among Somalis along tribal lines. Although the government is gaining a foothold in the diplomatic space, it is terribly – very terribly – failing to win the hearts and minds of its people.

Put differently, President Hassan is widely alleged to be a man pressing lopsided tribal agenda, rather than national goals.

Consequently, his government seems to have lost both legitimacy and momentum. Like this proverbial ‘headless chicken’, government ministers are moving all over the country to cause havoc. It is sad to know that a SGF minister has deliberately orchestrated the recent tragic incident in Kismayo – that saw the death of more than 50 civilians and innocent teenagers.

Let me tell you where the rain started beating the SFG. I don’t think the problem is the president per se. It is only the buck stops at him. The problem lies with the sad lot that forms his inner circle.

I think, dark forces within his political organisation are trying to manipulate ‘his’ opportunity to externalise the cost of a ‘tribal warfare’.

That is why President Hassan should be wary of what is going in Villa Somalia. He should act firm and fast to dismantle and distance himself from these dark forces. He should do something to redeem his tainted national image.

Just reflect how the pattern of politics in Somalia was taking shape since Mr. Hassan was elected president late last year. Dangerous tides of tribalism have gone up in the sky. Tribal figureheads, who purport to speak for “the government”, took centre stage of the national policies. Why president Hassan accepted such myopic groups to usurp his political agency is beyond me. But that is not all, there is more.

The government’s strategy of ‘political conflict’ is also increasingly motivating infamous warlords to return in the public sphere.  Some of the most notorious warlords have resuscitated from the political oblivion. I think they have smelt blood.

The SFG made several strategic blunders that led to the prevailing political tribalism and warlordism.  But none was more hurting than the government’s casual argument against the formation of Jubbaland. I will leave here why the casual argument of the SFG against the formation of regional administrations is untenable political hubris.

First, President Hassan’s reluctance to the formation of regional administration are not in consistency with the commitments made by Somali participants of 2004 Reconciliation Conference in Nairobi – which is the reference point of the current political settlement. Neither is it consistent with the decentralised governance structures enshrined in the provisional Constitution of Somalia.

Political rhetoric aside, senior aides that command the ears of the President do not believe – and will not allow for that matter – federalism to take effect in Somalia. They are hell-bent on reversing the political consensus – federalism on which the current political set up is anchored.

As they say actions speak lauder than words. All their actions are biased towards reviving highly centralised governance structure in Somalia. Even the executive powers which are – by design – expected to be shared between the President and the Prime Minister are concentrated in the office of the president. President Hassan’s grip on power is absolute. That is why he is the centre of gravity.

Of course, the President and his political ‘cogs’ are entitled to their opinion. And the applicability of federalism in the context of Somalia is legitimately debatable. But they should not try to force their opinion down the throat of the ‘rest’. That would be a risky strategy – one that can slide the country back into bloodshed. Of course, we have been there before. It is a no-go territory. We still bear the scars.

Secondly, notwithstanding the absence of a ‘central government’ is ultimately at the root of the crisis in Somalia, it is the revival of a ‘central authority’ that lies at the heart of the conflict. This is paradoxically puzzling – as ‘central government’ is both a solution to the crisis and the most obvious obstacle that makes a solution to the crises a bridge too far. Let me expound this a bit.  .

The bitter experience of the Somali people from dysfunctional and often predatory ‘central governments’ instilled them with profound suspicion of the state’s ‘monopoly on the means of violence’. History has it that the state has long being used as a tool to dominate and maltreat political opponents in Somalia.

Examples abound. Late dictator General Mohamed Siyad Barre’s ‘reign of terror’ effectively utilised the state apparatus to humiliate and abuse the human rights of his political nemeses. His shock troops committed one outrage after another to destroy property and restrict the political freedom of their people.

President Abdikasim Salad Hassan misused the mandate of his Transitional National Government to settle political scores with his opponents. He sponsored his own clan militia to expand the influence of his government, to loot, destroy property and use violence to inflicted significant pain on those who contested his rule.

The power struggle between President Abdillahi Yusuf’s Transitional Federal Government and the Islamic Courts Union – compounded with the proxy war between Eretria and Ethiopia – almost sent the country to hell in a handbasket. President Sharif Sheik Ahmed found himself in a minefield, planted by his “own men”. History has nothing significant to write about him.

But this is not the time and place to unpick all historical events. The point here is that those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it. Put it differently, the bitter experience of the Somalis from the state’s ‘legitimate monopoly on the means of violence’ makes the revival of a ‘central authority’ a ‘zero-sum game’ – one that has winners and losers. None of the main political antagonists – or rival clans – is willing to lose the control of the state apparatus to a rival. That is why all previous efforts for restoring a ‘central authority’ in Somali have failed.

The intention of this article is not to proscribe a formula for success; it is rather to define the problem that impedes a solution for our political conundrum. However, once the problem is identified, the remedy suggests itself.

For that matter, I will end where I started. The restoration of centralised authority in Somalia is an act in futility. We can’t just keep repeating the same mistake. We need to learn from our past – and correct our pitfalls. Time has come to it let go.

Said Faadi

Email: said.faadi@gmail.com