SOMALIA, Kismayo — Soldiers serving with the Kenyan Contingent of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) stand infront of a mosque in the grounds of Kismayo University in the southern Somali port city of Kismayo, approx. 500km south of the country’s capital Mogadishu. AU-UN IST PHOTO / STUART PRICE
NAIROBI — Kenyan troops in the UN-backed Africa Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said on Wednesday that relative peace is steadily returning to the port city of Kismayo once the bastion of Al-Shabaab.
Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) spokesman Colonel Cyrus Oguna said more militants are still surrendering to AMISOM forces as the troops mull ways of setting up an inclusive administration that will run the port city.
“The security situation in Kismayo is steadily improving with more militants surrendering to AMISOM forces,” Oguna said.
“Movement in and out of the town continues to be monitored at control points erected outside the town,” he added.
The port city of Kismayo, Al-Shabaab’s only remaining stronghold, was captured by Kenyan soldiers and other allied forces on Sept. 28 after a spirited gunfire between the insurgents and AMISOM forces.
The militant group has also come under pressure from soldiers from Uganda, Burundi and Sierra Leone who recently pushed them out of the outskirts of Somali capital Mogadishu and other key regions they used to control two years ago.
Analysts said the loss of the seaport is a major blow to the Al- Shabaab who once extorted much of their revenue from traders and businesses utilizing the facility.
Kismayo, with a population of about 200,000 people, is the third largest city of Somalia which is considered the hub of the militant group which formally merged with the dreaded global terror network, the al Qaida, after several years of pledging loyalty and ideological similarities.
Oguna said KDF, Somali National Army (SNA) and Raskamboni Brigade held a meeting on Wednesday to mull the way forward on Kismayo administration. According to Oguna, the meeting resolved for establishment of a two tier administration.
“In that, tier One will comprise of the chair, his deputy and 10 assistants,” Oguna said.
Two of the 10 assistants will be in charge of a department, he said, adding the departments including security, economics, justice, social and relief.
Oguna said the tier Two will comprise of working parties, each having five personnel in the departments of security, economic, justice, social and relief, bringing the working number to 25.
“It was unanimously agreed that leadership would be rotational after 20 days,” said Oguna as the AMISOM and SNA continue with their pacification of the Horn of Africa nation.
He said the meeting further agreed the findings of the Inter- Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) meeting taking place in Nairobi will supersede any arrangements that may be existing in Kismayo presently.
“The working parties will be meeting every alternate day to brief the committee on the situation progress,” Oguna said.
Kenya blames Al-Shabaab for the kidnappings of foreigners, and fears its tourist andbusiness economy will be destroyed if it allows the insurgents to go on unchallenged.
Kenya has appealed to Somalis and those in the Diaspora to embrace peace, say no to agents of terror and prepare for the hard work of national reconstruction.
Kenya has also put security in key towns on a high alert following Kenya’s military operations in Somalia which sparked threats from the Al-Shabaab group that it will retaliate deep in Kenya.
MOGADISHU — The property market in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, has boomed since the government pushed out al-Shabab fighters.
The most peaceful period in the city in over two decades has brought thousands of Somali expatriates back to their homeland.
But with speculators hoping to turn a profit behind most of the investments in new properties, prices are skyrocketing while hundreds of thousands of internally displaced, only kilometres away, live in poverty.
Al Jazeera’s Nazanine Moshiri reports from Mogadishu.
Somali government forces backed by African Union (AU) peacekeeping forces are spreading their control over territory run by Al-Shabaab rebels in the south of the Horn of Africa country.
The allied forces this week consolidated their control over the Wanla Weyn town, 93 km south of the Somali capital Mogadishu, as well as a former Somali air force base, 15 km away from the Wanla Wein.
The newly taken areas are strategically located along the main corridor linking Mogadishu to the southern town of Baidao, which is also under the control of AU and Somali government forces.
Wanla Weyn falls at a strategic junction linking the two Shabelle regions to Baidoa in the south and Beletweyne in the north of Somalia.
Officials say the capture of Wanla Weyn facilitates the aim of connecting Mogadishu to Baidoa.
Somali Defense Minister Hussein Arab Isse was among officials who paid a visit to the regained military base near Wanla Weyn. He said the capture of the town was a victory for Somalia and called on Al-Shabaab fighters to join the government troops.
“To Al-Shabaab fighters I call upon them to lay down their arms and join the ranks of their brothers. This is your country; these are your brother’s welcome to open arms. There is no other door open for you. Somalia is sovereign nation so come and join in building the future of your country,” the Somali defense chief said in the newly taken area.
AU and Somali government officials say the advance would to deny fleeing Al-Shabaab insurgents from seeking refuge and destabilizing other regions of Somalia.
The officials believe that the capture of this town denies Al- Shabaab another source of illegal income after a string of defeats and the loss of other major sources of revenue in a number of seaports along the coastal towns.
Al-Shabaab has lost a number of key towns in central and southern regions, in particular, the port city of Kismayo, the stronghold of the rebels.
NAIROBI (Reuters) – Somalia does not plan to nullify oil and gas exploration contracts made in recent years in favour of those that were signed prior to the toppling of the government in 1991, a senior state official said on Friday.
There are concerns by investors that deals signed by companies in Somalia could be affected now that it has a new government, after electing a new permanent president for the first time in over 20 years.
When the government of the Horn of African nation fell in 1991, around a dozen companies, including many multinational oil and gas majors, had licences to explore Somalia.
Abdullahi Dool, Somali’s deputy energy minister, said it was too soon for the country to decide how it would handle a tangle of exploration licences, which grant various companies rights to explore overlapping areas.
Dool said the country would not only honour contracts signed prior to 1991 with oil majors including Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Chevron, but also new ones.
He criticised comments by Abdullahi Haider, a senior adviser to Somalia’s Ministry of Energy, that only oil licences agreed before 1991 would be upheld.
“I don’t know why Mr. Haider is making these noises … Government makes the policy, not advisers,” Dool told Reuters via telephone from Mogadishu.
Though interest in exploring for hydrocarbons in east Africa has been high recently, as a result of big oil and gas discoveries in neighboring Kenya and other regional countries such as Uganda and Tanzania, Somalia has had a complicated relationship with companies looking to cash in on the boom.
In the past two decades, two semi-autonomous regions Puntland and Somaliland, have cropped up in the northern part of Somalia, and granted their own licences to explorers.
In some cases, they have awarded exploration contracts to separate companies to search the same swath of land.
Dool said any conflicting licence awards would be settled once a new Somali cabinet is in office by November 6.
“I’m sure all of this will be reviewed,” said Dool.
Independents, who have a high-risk tolerance and are small enough to cope with rapid change, such as Africa Oil and Horn Petroleum believe their contracts with regional Somali authorities will still remain valid.
“Horn Petroleum remains confident that our oil agreements continue to be valid,” said Keith Hill, chairman and CEO of Africa Oil and chairman of Horn Petroleum.
I thank Allah(SWT),our donors and the community that run the projects that Amoud Foundation supports. For the past twenty years, brothers and sisters stay behind and sacrifice everything they have.
Trip Summary:
On my most recent trip, I have noticed the food prices have skyrocketed. The Horn of Africa per capita income is less than $200 a year and a family cannot make less than ten days. Mogadishu security is much better now than a year ago.
Mogadishu IDP is still over crowded. The young boys, girls and women have to travel and stay in line for hours to get some water. Amoud Foundation arranged emergency water trucks and this will benefit several IDPs. We provided emergency water trucks for 16 IDP camps. We will continue until rain season starts, inshaAllah. We ask your continued support.
I traveled by road from Galcakayo to Borama through Puntland and Somaliland. The last time was back in 1976. The impact of drought and civil war are everywhere. You don’t see any green until you reach Hargeisa which is half of the country.
Schools and Orphanages:
Al Basiir School of Blind is looking to build a bigger campus. They can only accommodate 29 students right now and there are 295 students on the waiting list. They have the land, which was donated, but need a new facility to house the students. They also need special calculators, audio books and watches specifically for blind.
We were impressed by the Galcakayo Orphanage Center, where they have an education facility up to high school and a boarding school of 180 students, 80 girls and 100 boys. By far, this is the best well run center in our program. We thank our donors and the team of management who runs the center. They also have other orphanages in Mogadishu and Benderadleh.
Amoud Foundation and the Diaspora Group bought land that can accommodate the need of the growing campus. They need to start building phase one which is a water well, masjid, dorms and classrooms.
All Amoud Foundation Support Centers are over populated because of the years of civil war, drought and the change of lifestyle. So many families are leaving nomadic way of life when the livestock is gone and moving to the villages and towns.
Hospital Visits:
Al Medina Hospital needs immediate renovations on the women’s wing after over years of destruction and lack of maintenance.
A team of 20 medical staff from the Amal Group came from Kuwait to Al Hayatt Medical Center for four days. They have seen firsthand the state of their brothers and sisters and witnessed the conditions. Individuals traveled from Central Somali , Mogadishu, Gedo and deep Ethiopia land to seek medical attention.
The medical staff saw 970 patients and operated on 97 patients. We ask Allah(SWT) to bless this group and appeal to our medical community to come forward and travel Al Hayatt Medical Center. The medical students and new doctors also get the benefit of learning new skills by working side by side with the visiting doctors. The hospital is still in need of ENT specialization and eye surgeons.
The future:
I visited with a blind Imam who is in his second year of high school. He attends a regular high school although he is blind. He is leading the salat and he is a hafiz. His goal is to graduate from high school and then attend college. Through our donor program, Amoud Foundation bought him a computer and necessary software so he can take notes during class and work on his assignments and home work.
Appeal:
The drought is still persistent in Awdal, Salel and Sahal region of Somaliland. There are around 150,000 individuals at risk and need food assistance. They have lost all the livestock they have and it will take time to find new stock or find new ways of life. Please continue your support and donate to provide assistance to our brothers and sisters who still need our help.
Nairobi, October 9, 2012-Security agents in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland shuttered private broadcaster Horseed FM on Saturday morning and ordered Internet service providers in the region to block the station’s website, according to local journalists.
“The strength of a free and democratic state lies in its diversity of information and its tolerance for critical views,” said CPJ East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes. “We call Puntland authorities to recognize these principles and immediately reverse their decision to silence Horseed FM and its website.”
Officials raided Horseed FM in the port city of Bossasso and forced it off the air without specifying whether the closure was temporary or permanent, local journalists told CPJ. Police Chief Osman Afdalow showed Horseed FM Director Abdikani Hassan an unsigned and unstamped letter ordering the closure that he said came from the police chief of operations in Garowe, the capital, local journalists and news reports said.
No official reason was given for the closure, Mahad Mussa, executive director of the station’s parent company Horseed Media,told CPJ.Mohamed Abdirahman,the president’s press adviser, told CPJ he was not aware of the closure but would be investigating.
According to local journalists, authorities also ordered local Internet service providers to block Horseed Media’s website, the first time such a directive has been issued. The site is currently blocked in Garowe, but is available in other areas of Puntland, Mahad told CPJ.
Local journalists told CPJ they suspected that a series of critical broadcasts Horseed FM had aired in September could have triggered the closure. Horseed FM had claimed that President Abdirahman Mohamed Farole was considering postponing the presidential elections scheduled for January 2013. According to local reports, Farole plans to extend his leadership for an additional year, corresponding with a new draft constitution that allows elected leaders a five-year presidential term.
The president threatened to prosecute the critical media last month after hundreds gathered in the streets to protest the postponement plans, according to news reports. In a meeting last month, the president announced that he would not tolerate “so-called websites and media who are supporting Puntland’s enemies,” news reports said. This week, Mohamed Aidid, the newly appointed Information Minister, warned the media against interviewing opposition leaders who were critical of the government’s policies, Mahad told CPJ
Authorities in Puntland have harassed Horseed FM in the past. In August 2010, Abdifatah Jama, the station’s deputy director, spent two months in prison for airing an interview with the head of an insurgent group. Two months later, unknown assailants threw a grenade at the office, injuring one of the station’s technicians, news reports said.
· For more data and analysis on Somalia, visit CPJ’s Somalia page here.
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CPJ is a New York-based, independent, nonprofit organization
Reports from the self-clan regional administration of Puntland in Somalia say plans are underway to deploy 2000 militants from Majerten clan to Kismayo to help the Ogadeni militants, who recently captured the city with the support of Ogaden men in Kenyan army.
Following an emergency cabinet meeting chaired by Puntland President, Abdirahman Mohamed Farole, the administration decided to implement the deployment plans as soon as possible. Farole told the meeting that the Majerteh clan interest in Kismayo cannot be protected fully by the Ogaden militants in Kismayo, so the suitable way will be military involvement.
The cabinet has unanimously agreed the military operation in Kismayo, which will be followed by another programme of settling thousands fof Majerten clan members from Boosaaso, Garow, Gaalkacyo and other towns to Kismayo.
The Majerten clan is among the clans that claim the ownership pf Jubbaland, despite the fact their number in Kismayo city does not exceed 20 to 30 families.
Jubbaland has been in crisis in since 1960, when some Somali leaders launched programs to settle their clan members in the region, and displacing the indigenous people.
In 1991 the Darod clan members led by their warlords committed genocide against the indigenous people that killed thousands of people and displaced many of them.
A trainee at a camp in Somalia in October 2010. The camp was run by Saracen International, a South African military firm.
WASHINGTON — It seemed like a simple idea: In the chaos that is Somalia, create a sophisticated, highly trained fighting force that could finally defeat the pirates terrorizing the shipping lanes off the Somali coast.
But the creation of the Puntland Maritime Police Force was anything but simple. It involved dozens of South African mercenaries and the shadowy security firm that employed them, millions of dollars in secret payments by the United Arab Emirates, a former clandestine officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, and Erik Prince, the billionaire former head of Blackwater Worldwide who was residing at the time in the emirates.
And its fate makes the story of the pirate hunters for hire a case study in the inherent dangers in the outsourced wars in Somalia, where the United States and other countries have relied on proxy forces and armed private contractors to battle pirates and, increasingly, Islamic militants.
That strategy has had some success, including a recent offensive by Kenyan and African Union troops to push the militant group Al Shabab from its stronghold in the port city of Kismayu.
But with the antipiracy army now abandoned by its sponsors, the hundreds of half-trained and well-armed members of the Puntland Maritime Police Force have been left to fend for themselves at a desert camp carved out of the sand, perhaps to join up with the pirates or Qaeda-linked militants or to sell themselves to the highest bidder in Somalia’s clan wars — yet another dangerous element in the Somali mix.
A United Nations investigative group described the effort by a company based in Dubai called Sterling Corporate Services to create the force as a “brazen, large-scale and protracted violation” of the arms embargo in place on Somalia, and has tried to document a number of grisly cases in which Somali trainees were beaten and even killed. In one case in October 2010, according to the United Nations group, a trainee was hogtied with his arms and feet bound behind his back and beaten. The group said the trainee had died from his injuries, an accusation disputed by the company.
Sterling has portrayed its operation as a bold private-sector attempt to battle the scourge of piracy where governments were failing. Lafras Luitingh, a senior manager for the project, described the October 2010 occurrence as a case of “Somali-on-Somali violence” that was not indicative of the overall training program. He said that the trainee had recovered from his injuries, and that “the allegations reflect not the professional training that occurred but the fact that professional training was needed,” he said.
A lawyer for the company, Stephen Heifetz, wrote an official response to the United Nations report, calling it “a collection of unsubstantiated and often false innuendo assembled by a group with extreme views regarding participants in Somali politics.”
Sterling officials have pointed out that in March, a United Nations counterpiracy organization — a separate entity from the investigative group that criticized Sterling — praised the semiautonomous Somali region of Puntland for creating the program. Moreover, the company argues, Somalia already is a playground for clandestine operations, with the C.I.A. now in the midst of an extensive effort to arm and equip Somali spies. Why, they ask, is Sterling Corporate Services singled out for criticism?
Concerned about the impact of piracy on commercial shipping in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates has sought to take the lead in battling Somali pirates, both overtly and in secret by bankrolling operations like Sterling’s.
American officials have said publicly that they never endorsed the creation of the private army, but it is unclear if Sterling had tacit support from parts of the United States government. For instance, the investigative group reported in July that the counterpiracy force shared some of the same facilities as the Puntland Intelligence Service, a spy organization answering to Puntland’s president, Abdirahman Farole, that has been trained by C.I.A. officers and contractors for more than a decade.
With the South African trainers gone, the African Union has turned to a different security contractor, Bancroft Global Development, based in Washington, to assess whether the pirate hunters in Puntland can be assimilated into the stew of other security forces in Somalia sanctioned both by the United States and the African Union. Among those groups are a 10,000-man Somali national army and troops of Somalia’s National Security Agency, based in Mogadishu, which is closely allied with the C.I.A.
Michael Stock, Bancroft’s president, said a team of his that recently visited the camp where the Puntland force is based witnessed something out of the Wild West: nearly 500 soldiers who had gone weeks without pay wandering the main compound and two other small camps, an armory of weapons amassed over two years at their disposal.
Although the force is far from the 1,000-man elite unit with helicopters and airplanes described in the United Nations report, Mr. Stock and independent analysts said the Puntland soldiers still posed a potential threat to the region if left unchecked.
“Sterling is leaving behind an unpaid but well-armed security force in Puntland,” said Andre Le Sage, a senior research fellow who specializes in Africa at the National Defense University in Washington. “It’s important to find a way to make them part of a regular force or to disarm them and take control of them. If that’s not done, it could make things worse.”
Mr. Stock, whose company trains soldiers from Uganda and Burundi for counterinsurgency missions in Somalia under the African Union banner, said Bancroft would not take over Sterling’s counterpiracy mission.
The Sterling operation was shrouded in a degree of secrecy from the time Mr. Luitingh and a small group of South Africans traveling in a private plane first touched down in Bosasso, Puntland’s capital, in 2010. The men worked for Saracen International, a South African private military firm hired by the emirates and composed of several former members of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, the feared paramilitary squad during the apartheid era.
The following year, after The New York Times wrote about the operation, Saracen hired a prominent Washington law firm to advocate for the mission at the State Department and the Pentagon, and a rebranding campaign began. A new company, Sterling Corporate Services, was created in Dubai to oversee the training in Puntland. It was an attempt to put distance between the Somalia operations and Saracen’s apartheid-era past, but some of the officers of the two companies were the same.
Two well-connected Americans were also involved in the project. Michael Shanklin, a former C.I.A. station chief in Mogadishu, was hired to tap a network of contacts both in Washington and East Africa to build support for the counterpiracy force. More significant was the role of Mr. Prince, who had become an informal adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Former company employees said Mr. Prince made several trips to the Puntland camp to oversee the counterpiracy training.
At the time, Mr. Prince was also involved in a project to train Colombian mercenaries at a desert camp in the emirates to carry out missions at the behest of the Emirati government.
But the emirates’ refusal to publicly acknowledge their role in the operation, or to make a formal case to the United Nations Security Council to receive permission to build the army under the terms of the Somalia arms embargo, drew the ire of United Nations arms monitors, who repeatedly pressed the emirates to shut down the mission.
Lawyers for Sterling gave extensive briefings on the program to the State Department, the Pentagon and various United Nations agencies dealing with piracy.
Yousef Al Otaiba, the emirates’ ambassador to Washington, declined to comment for this article.
American officials said they had urged Sterling’s lawyers, from the firm of Steptoe & Johnson, to have the operation approved by the Security Council. Mr. Heifetz, the company’s lawyer, said Puntland and other Somali authorities did receive permission to build the police force. A spokeswoman for the State Department said the United States government never approved Sterling’s activities.
“We share the monitoring group’s concerns about the lack of transparency regarding the Saracen and Sterling Corporate Services’ train-and-equip program for the Puntland Maritime Police Force, as well as the abuses alleged to have occurred during the training,” said Hilary Renner, a State Department spokeswoman, referring to the United Nations Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, the investigative arm.
For Sterling, the beginning of the end came in April, when one of the South Africa trainers, Lodewyk Pieterson, was shot dead by one of the Somali men he had been training to chase pirates. Sterling said in a statement that the death was an isolated occurrence and that the trainee accused in the killing had been arrested. “The murder was an aberrational incident involving a particular trainee who was not well suited” to the police force, the statement said. After the death, it said, Sterling tightened its screening of applicants for the Puntland force.
But there would be no need for that. By the end of June, Sterling whisked the rest of its trainers and their equipment out of the country, and the Puntland force was left on its own.
MOGADISHU — An attempt by CIA-connected trainers to create a sophisticated counter-piracy force in Somalia turned into hundreds of half-trained and well-armed Somali mercenaries being left to their own devices in the desert, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times report.
The Puntland Maritime Police Force, trained by dozens of South African mercenaries from sometime in 2010 to June 2012, was run by a Dubai-based company called Sterling Corporate Services that seems to be connected to the CIA.
The Times reports that in July a United Nations investigative group uncovered that the force shared some facilities with the Puntland Intelligence Service, a spy organization that answers to the president of the semi-autonomous Somali region of Puntland and has been trained by the CIA for more than a decade.
Michael Shanklin, a former C.I.A. station chief in Mogadishu, was reportedly hired to work his contacts both in Washington and East Africa to build support for the force while Erik Prince, the founder of the private security firm Blackwater, made several trips to the Puntland camp to oversee the training of the counter-piracy force.
The Times notes that Prince, a former U.S. Navy Seal who had become an informal adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, was simultaneously “involved in a project to train Colombian mercenaries at a desert camp in the emirates to carry out missions at the behest of the Emirati government.”
(Sidenote: According to leaked emails from the private U.S. security firm Stratfor, during this time period the former director of Blackwater, former CIA officer Jamie F. Smith, was aiding the Libyan opposition and subsequently sent to contact Syrian rebels in Turkey at the request of a U.S. Government committee.)
The South African trainers bailed in June 2012 after one was shot by a Somali trainee, and recently about 500 former trainees—unpaid for weeks—were seen wandering the Puntland Maritime Police Force desert compound with two-years worth of weapons.
The Times notes that the options for the armed and semi-trained mercenaries included joining up “with the pirates or Qaeda-linked militants or to sell themselves to the highest bidder in Somalia’s clan wars.”
MOGADISHU – Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has named Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid as the country’s new prime minister, diplomats and a government source said, the first major decision by an administration installed after over 20 years of conflict.
Saaid, a political newcomer, has been a prominent businessman in neighboring Kenya and is married to Asha Haji Elmi, an influential Somali peace activist.
A Western diplomat said Saaid had a reputation for being above Somalia’s notoriously volatile clan politics, similar to the new president, and the news of his appointment would be welcomed by foreign governments.
“Like all the decisions the new president has made so far, this is a good one, and Somalia is on a bit of a roll with the election of (Mohamed Osman) Jawaari as parliament speaker and Mohamud as president,” the diplomatic source told Reuters.
Mohamud, a former academic and a political newcomer himself, was elected president in a secret ballot on September 10, a result hailed by his supporters as a vote for change in the Horn of Africa state ravaged by war and anarchy since 1991.
Saaid’s appointment as the prime minister will have to be approved by Somali legislators, diplomatic sources said.
