The Real “Dirty Wars” in the Horn of Africa

by Thomas C. Mountain

 

"250,000 dead in Somalia from starvation equals 10,000 dying a month, 300 or more dying a day on average.”

When award winning journalist Jeremy Scahill landed at Mogadishu’s International Airport in the summer of 2011 Somalia was in the midst of its worst drought and famine in 60 years. Yet when Mr. Scahill reported on his visit he seemed blissfully unaware of the hundreds of Somalis that were starving to death every day not very many miles from the hotel where he was staying.

He also didn’t write about the food and medical aid blockade being imposed on Somalis next door in the Ogaden by the western supported Ethiopian regime, something the International Federation of Jurists (IFJ) has called “a genocide” and demanded the ICC prosecute.

The UN has admitted that at least 250,000 Somalis in Somalia proper starved to death during the famine Jeremy Scahill landed in the midst of, something I had predicted when I exposed that the UN, knowing full well the extent of the drought, had budgeted less then 10 cents a day for food to feed the starving.

The Great Horn of Africa Famine stared at the beginning of 2011 and lasted about 2 years. 250,000 dead in Somalia from starvation equals 10,000 dying a month, 300 or more dying a day on average. And this just in Somalia where there was aid being distributed. Next door in the Ogaden, with a population of almost as many as in Somalia the same famine was raging and no aid what so ever was being allowed.

"Genocide or drones, what’s more important?”

Even Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the Red Cross (ICRC) had been expelled from the Ogaden by the Ethiopian Regime, the Prime Minister of which was later eulogized at his funeral by none other than Susan Rice, presently National Security Advisor to Barack Obama.

If Jeremy Scahill didn't know about the hundreds that were dying from starvation every day all around him when he was carrying out his “investigative journalism” in Mogadishu in the summer of 2011 than the question has to be asked “Why not?”

If he knew about this enormous crime against humanity and instead chose to write about “secret CIA prisons” and the murder of several hundred via the USA’s drone assassination program in the Horn of Africa, a much “sexier” topic, shouldn't other investigative journalists be questioning his priorities? Genocide or drones, what’s more important?

Today Mr. Scahill picks up a paycheck signed by Pierre Omidyar who persists in trying to rape the lush tropical hillside overlooking Hanalei Bay on Kauai, Hawaii by developing multimillion dollar estates for his fellow 1%.

The real dirty wars in Africa remain unknown to the worlds peoples, thanks in part to a smokescreen, how ever blissfully ignorant or well intended, about drones and high tech murders that diverted attention from the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Africans, whose “expiration by starvation” was sanctioned by the highest levels of the Obama White House.

Thomas C. Mountain is a life long revolutionary activist and educator who has been living and writing from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at g mail dot com.

Somalia: Al-shabaab is History, Warlords are Next

 

Somali security forces has launched a new disarmament campaign that has netted some 500 guns and sparked gun battles in a capital that is awash with weapons, said officials who want to get rid of the weapons before they fall into the hands of al-Qaeda-linked fighters.

When Somali national Army (SNA) and African Union troops(AMISOM) started gaining ground in Southern Somalia cities and villages, Islamic Militants of Al-Shabaab fighters turned their war strategy to other areas like Somaliland, Puntland, Khatumo and Kenya.

ON TRAIL OF THE AL-SHABAAB TERRORIST GROUP IN KENYA

Somali National security (NSS) forces shot and killed Nour Barahow, a senior commander of Al-Shabaab’s intelligence unit leader in Mogadishu.

There are numerous intelligence reports of foreign jihadists in Somalia are leaving from Somalia to Iraq, Yemen and Syria to the new Islamic State in Iraq, and Al-shabaab remaining forign jihadist has again claimed to be allied with new Islamic state of Shaam (Lebnon, Syria, Iraq and Palestine).

Elements of Somali militants of Al-shabaab are moving from Somalia to neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, accrding to sources close to AMISOM military intelligence unit. Al-shabaab was banned as a terrorist group Worldwide is believed its stronghold and fighters is decreasing, it have between 2,000 and 3,000 young teen-age fighters in Somalia.

According to Geeska Afrika Online security reporter, Business, government schools, churches, police stations, refugee camps, bus stations, hotels, night clubs and a shopping mall have been mostly targeted by Al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya, to damage Kenyan economy and tourism industry, that is why Most of western countries including Russia, japan and China have issued travel advisories to their citizens visiting Kenya and Uganda.

Al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Godane also Known as Abu-Zubair, Godane comes from Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, several of his close allies have been assasinated or killed in Southern Somalia.

To empower Somali national Army and intelligence units, the Danish trade and development minister, Mogens Jensen, has send 19 million kroner in a special account to Somalia to aid the government and African Union troops in their struggle against Al-Shabaab terr tactics.

The Mogadishu Gun markets (Bakaaraha) have a long history in Mogadishu, a city once ruled by clan warlords. Disarmament campaigns, run both by weak Somali governments and by the U.S. military in the early 1990s, have had limited success. But the government is trying again.

Troops raided a military official’s home tied with Warlords and discovered guns that authorities said were going to be sold to Al-Shabab rebels. The official was arrested after a heavy firefight, said Mohamed Yusuf, the spokesman for Somalia’s national security ministry. Security forces also raided a garage belonging to the former anti-U.S. warlord Osman Atto, who died last year, seizing rocket-propelled grenades and bombs, Yusuf said.

Raids over the last week have netted some 500 guns and hundreds of boxes of ammunition, he said.

Two more night raids followed against a former U.S.-backed anti-Islamist warlord, Abdi Nurre Siad, who escaped during a firefight at his home. Troops also raided a home belonging to a Somali member of parliament who is the son of a former warlord. No weapons were found, Yusuf said.

“So far we have made good progress in the disarmament plan,” said Yusuf. “This plan is to ensure the stability of Mogadishu.”

One Somali intelligence official was killed during the operations, according to Yusuf.

But even as officials seek to remove weapons, others still come into the Horn of Africa country.

The Small Arms Survey, a research project based in Switzerland, says world governments in recent years have covertly delivered “tens of thousands of small arms and light weapons to various armed groups in Somalia despite a long-standing U.N. arms embargo.” The group said those weapons range from assault rifles to third-generation SA-18 MANPADS, a portable air defense system.

Somali civilians own more than 500,000 guns, the group estimates.

During the early 1990s, U.S. Marines fighting warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid tried to carry out a disarmament campaign. It had only limited success. One challenge the government faces is locating buried weapons. Mogadishu gun runners have long buried their caches to avoid detection.

Some Somalis believe the campaign is a political witch hunt aimed at weeding out rivals of the country’s leadership as the country gears up for a proposed 2016 national election. Whether that planned election happens will depend on the state of security in Somalia, specially, Puntland-Khatumo issue or Somaliland policies of secession.

Dahir Amiin Jesow, a Somali legislator who heads a security committee in the parliament, said the disarmament campaign should be done according to the law. A proposed disarmament law has been approved by the government’s cabinet but hasn’t yet been voted on by parliament.

“Somalia disarmament is a good solution for stability in Mogadishu. However, negotiations and even buying the weapons from its Warlord owners would help to avoid certain grievances in Mogadishu Somalia,” according to Mahad Awad, deputy House speaker.

Source: http://www.geeskaafrika.com/somalia-al-shabaab-is-history-warlords-are-next/5028/

AMISOM to leave Somalia in 2016 - envoy

Acting Special Envoy to Somalia Lydia Wanyoto (right) talks to Somalia Ambassador to Uganda Saidi Dahir centre) while Omar Alasow looks on, during the International Human Rights ToT workshop for senior Somalia army officers at Commonwealth Speke Resort Munyonyo. PHOTO/Kennedy Oryema

By David Lumu

The African Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), a peace keeping mission operated by the African Union would be leaving Somalia in 2016, according to the latest assessment by stakeholders.

Lydia Wanyoto, the Acting Special Envoy of the African Union to Somalia and Eng. Sheik Sayid Ahmed Dahir, the Somalia ambassador to Uganda say that the roadmap of 2016 would be adhered to and that by that time the federal Government would have developed capacity to independently run the affairs of the war-torn state.

Sayid Ahmed said that Somalia is on the right path and thanked regional Governments, especially Uganda for ensuring that the conflict is subdued.

“Somalia will have no more conflict in the coming years; and with the help our friendly countries, we are now ready to take full control. We welcome the capacity building trainings that our partners are conducting and I urge our countrymen to enforce what they have studied for the betterment of our country,” he said.

Acting Special Envoy to Somalia Lydia Wanyoto (2nd right) talks to Somalia Ambassador to Uganda Saidi Dahir (centre) while Omar Alasow (right) and Somalia army officers Head of Delegation Ali Abdulle Jelle (2nd left) looks on, during the International Human Rights ToT workshop for senior Somalia army officers at Commonwealth Speke Resort Munyonyo, August 20, 2014. PHOTO/Kennedy Oryema

According to Wanyoto, the process of Somalia becoming autonomous is almost achievable and that the only roadblock is the complete “flush out of Al-Shabaab” from the sea.

“Going by the current projections, we are almost certain that we shall see take off in 2016 and according to our roadmap, AMISOM would be leaving Somalia in 2016. The target is achievable. So, as we clean out Al-Shabaab, we have the mandate to build capacity and this is a process we have embarked on,” she said.

The two envoys were commenting on the AMISOM deployment in Somalia during the international humanitarian law training on Wednesday at Munyonyo Commonwealth Resort hotel yesterday where over 30 officers from Somalia National Army were equipped with techniques on how to handle civilians.

In 2013, the United Nation Security Council extended the mandate of AMISOM to 2016. In preparation to leave Somalia in 2016, Wanyoto said that AMISOM has embarked on the third phase of training the national army with modern professional army strategies, especially changing their mindset from conflict-occupied to be more mindful of the human rights. 

These efforts are part of preparations for the 2016 general elections in Somalia. Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Ethiopia are the AMISOM troop contributing countries.

However, before the training started yesterday the thirty Somalia soldiers staged a brief protest demanding the organizers of the training to sort out their challenges related to travel, accommodation and other allowances.

The soldiers briefly engaged the Somalia ambassador to Uganda in a two-hour closed meeting demanding that before he leaves the training, he should first sort out their demands.

Later, Wanyoto and Sheik Sayid Ahmed told New Vision that the soldiers had “administrative” problems that they wanted addressed urgently.

“There were administrative issues that we have resolved. Some faced challenges during their travel from Nairobi to Kampala. Their history is that of conflict, they are very sensitive people and dealing with them is not business as usual but we know how to handle them,” she said.
  

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Biometrics expert is helping to ensure an honest election in Somaliland

by William G. Gilroy 

Mention the name Somaliland, and most people will have images from the movies "Black Hawk Down" and "Captain Phillips" spring to mind. However, those images are more correctly associated with Somalia, not Somaliland, which is an independent state that is internationally recognized as an autonomous region of Somalia.

Somaliland declared itself independent in 1991 and has been transforming itself into a rare, multiparty democracy in the Horn of Africa. University of Notre Dame biometrics expert Kevin Bowyer and his Ph.D. students Estefan Ortiz and Amanda Sgroi are playing a critical role in that process.

"One goal of the Somaliland government is to have honest, respected elections," Bowyer said. "Toward this end, they want to create a fraud-free voter registration list. They have turned to biometrics as a means to generate such a list."

A biometric is a stable and distinctive physiological feature of a person that can be measured and used to identify them. The fingerprint is probably the most familiar example. But iris recognition is proving to be more powerful than fingerprint in some important applications.

"Fingerprint might seem like an obvious choice for biometric verification of a voting register, but it runs into problems with the percentage of the population for which an acceptable quality image can be obtained," Bowyer said. "Given the state-of-the-art in fingerprint sensors, in a country like Somaliland, a sizeable fraction of the population may have trouble using the sensors reliably. And this weakness can be exploited by people who want to commit voter fraud by registering more than once. In fact, Somaliland conducted a biometric voter registration exercise in 2008-09 using fingerprints and facial recognition, and a good deal of effort was devoted to using biometrics to clean the voting register. However, a report done in 2010 by Electoral Reform International Services for the Somaliland National Electoral Commission concluded that 'this register is known to contain a large number of duplicates, possibly around 30 percent, and the existing biometric systems could not identify these with the data available.' The problems with this voting register motivated the need for a new register."

As an alternative to fingerprinting, the Somaliland government, through its election experts, contacted Bowyer's research group for help in exploring the use of iris recognition. The Bowyer group's publications on iris recognition technology contributed significantly in convincing the National Election Commission that iris recognition, done with the right equipment and procedures and with a focus on data quality, was a viable solution. The only Password Manager with wor ld-leading Voice Biometric access.

The voter registration is by law required to be complete by the end of 2014. Somaliland officials asked Bowyer's group to conduct a trial voter registration project using iris recognition that would be completed before Ramadan started on June 28.

"Data acquisition for the field study was conducted over a five-day period in two registration centers: one in the Somaliland capital, Hargeisa, and one in Baki, a small town about 60 miles from Hargeisa," Bowyer said. "The data was transferred electronically to our research group at Notre Dame, where we performed the iris recognition analysis, and then reported our results back."

The Notre Dame researchers analyzed 1,062 trial voter registration records. The number of duplicate records seeded into the dataset in order to test the power of iris recognition was unknown to the Notre Dame team. Each record contained two iris images, for the left and the right eye. Using automatic matching of the set of 2,124 iris images, the Notre Dame team was able to quickly identify a list of 450 duplicate registrations. A duplicate registration is an instance of two different voter registration numbers that iris recognition indicates belong to the same person. The Notre Dame team then performed manual inspection of a small number of results that were ambiguous based on the automatic matching, and this identified another seven instances of duplicate registration.

The list of 457 instances of duplicate registration was reported to the Somaliland National Electoral Commission, along with a technical report that describes how the Notre Dame team performed its analysis and makes recommendations for maintaining and improving image quality. Elections specialist Roy Dalle Vedove, working with the Somaliland NEC on the effort for a new and more accurate voting register, replied that "analysis of the results from our data confirm the accuracy of your results. … Overall we are very pleased." Mohamed Ahmed Hirsi Gelleh, the chairman of the NEC, said, "We are very grateful for the great work you have done for us."

Somaliland will proceed to create a new national voting register to be used in the next elections. Its biometrically validated voting register will be one of the most technically sophisticated voting registers of any country in the world, and a model for others. 

Researchers hope it will lead to election results that are transparent and believable, and to greater international recognition of the Somaliland government.

Source: phys.org

Postcard from... Hargeisa A week-long international book fair that attracted writersfrom Africa, Europe and North America

by HARVEY MORRIS

A week-long international book fair that attracted writersfrom Africa, Europe and North America has just wound up in Somaliland, an arid and sparsely populated statelet on the Horn of Africa that has struggled unsuccessfully  to gain world recognition  since declaring independence in 1991.

It was the seventh book fair to be held in the capital, Hargeisa, a bustling if tumbledown city where locals compete for space on dusty roads with armies of itinerant goats. 

Hay-on-Wye it isn’t. However, in a region better known for piracy and Islamist terrorism, the country has remained relatively stable since it broke away from its dysfunctional neighbour, Somalia, following a civil war. What the city lacks in book fair chic was more than made up for by the enthusiasm of the hundreds who crammed the venue for daily discussions and readings. The literacy rate has risen from one-in-five to one-in-two since independence.

The fair showcased local writers – the country has a strong poetic tradition – and those from the Diaspora, such as South Africa-based Nuruddin Farah, a regular nominee for the Nobel Prize for literature, and Londoner Nadifa Mohamed, 32, whose second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls, came out last year.