Of Killer Seals, Twitter Blunders and Somalia in 2012

Somalia is a nation at odds!

For a country that has fallen into the lacklustre, with the daily monotony – sadly that is what it has become now– of killing, shelling, piracy, khat, al-Shabaab vs. AMISOM tumult, January has been an action-packed month for Somalia. A number of interesting developments that took place in the first month of 2012 shed light on how the country’s internal political and economic landscape might unfold in the next 11 months.      

1. Killer Seals vs. Slaying Pirates:

Minutes after he read the annual State of the Union address to millions of Americans, President Barack Obama picked up the phone and called a dismal, disgruntled father to tell him that he had some “great news” for him.

The person on the other end of the line was John Buchanan, father of Jessica Buchanan, the 32-year-old Danish Refugee Council worker who was held in Somalia since October by Somali pirates. Buchanan was rescued alongside 60-year-old Danish Poul Hagen Thisted by the U.S. Navy SEAL team, the same unit that killed Osama Bin Laden last year in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The lethal, well-trained unit parachuted into the area near Adado, moved fast on foot, killed 9 pirates, took away3 of them, and flew the duo to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, bringing to an end a debacle that lasted for over 3 months.

The news of the raid brought into the limelight the clandestine activities American intelligence and military offices have been conducting in Somalia over the last few years. It also brought forth the geostrategic importance of Lemonnier base in the Horn of Africa by reinforcing what the New York Times termed an “economy of force”: “missions that can preserve an American military presence and protect national security interests at relatively low cost.”

2. Britain’s shifting Somalia policy:

When Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s Department for International Development minister, visited Somalia in January, he signaled that his country will spend tens of millions of pounds to help improve health care for Somali women and children, remove landmines, and aid famine relief.

On the flipside, Mitchell, the first UK government minister to visit the country in years, also told Britain’s The Sun newspaper that there were “plans for a small team of UK military planners” to camp in the capital Mogadishu to help African Union forces battle insurgent groups like al-Shabaab. All this comes ahead of a major conference in London in February organized by Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss Somalia, with the United Kingdom’s center of foreign policy expected to shift to Somalia once its operations in Afghanistan come to an end.

“Reading a million words about the situation is no substitute for seeing it for yourself on the ground,” Mitchell told The Sun as he left Somalia.

3. The Kenya-Somalia War:

Kenya’s Somalia war took a turn in January as the battle moved to another sphere: social media. With al-Shabaab on Twitter since early December, Kenya’s military spokesperson, Major Emmanuel Chirchir, has been tweeting about the group’s withering structures and bizarre commands which has gained much interest from Kenyan audiences.

However, when Chirchir took the responsibility for posting old photographs which allegedly showed the stoning of a Kenyan spy by al-Shabaab militants, the extent that Kenya would go to win this war – at least in its propaganda part – came into the world’s attention.

With al-Shabaab getting more daring by the day – crossing seven kilometers into the Kenyan border, killing 7 people including three Administration Police officers and abducting two government officers in early January; with Kenyan officials stating that they will not move to capture Kismayo without adequate international support; and with Kenyan troops transforming into a peace keeping force, it will be interesting to watch how the Kenya-Somalia war unfolds in 2012.

4. The African Union at play:

As I write this, the African Union Summit is undergoing in Addis Ababa with the hunger in Somalia and the Sudan crisis expected to dominate the discussions.

The AU decisions have been significant to watch in Somalia over the last few years especially since the deployment of the AMISOM forces in 2007. In January, the AU extended the mandate of the peacekeeping force in Somalia by 12 months, and said that it expected to expand the mission’s numbers to 18,000 troops.

With Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Burundi, and Uganda already involved in the battle against al-Shabaab in Somalia, how much these forces on the ground are able to achieve will be a sure factor to consider with the Somalia constitution expected to be voted on in June and general elections being prepared for August 2012.

5. The killing of Hassan ‘Fantastic’:

The task of AMISOM seems complicated from the go as more people get killed in Mogadishu – the only location in south-central Somalia that the troops allege they have weakened and displaced al-Shabaab forces from.

However, when gunmen killed Hassan Osman Abdi, a senior journalist and director with Shabelle Network last week, it brought into fore how Mogadishu is still a dangerous enclave that hosts terrorists and gun-touting militiamen.

In December, Abdisalam Sheikh, a reporter with Horn Cable Television, was killed in Mogadishu, with reports stating that he was gunned down “by an armed man sporting Somali army uniform.”

With the abduction and killing of journalists, and with the daily harassment of reporters by both government officers in Mogadishu and al-Shabaab militant, Somali journalists are definitely held between a rock and a hard place. And the death of Hassan alias Fantastic in January, highlights how Mogadishu is still a death trap for many instead of the safe haven that it is touted to be.

6. Is Somalia’s first bank in the offing?

Somalia’s politics is hostage of the capital Mogadishu. even when former Transitional Federal Government president, Abdullahi Yussuf, camped in Baidoa and unilaterally declared it the ‘capital of Somalia’, he knew deep in his heart that he would have walk his way into Mogadishu if his government was to receive any popular legitimacy. And so it did happen in 2007, with the help of the Ethiopian army who had the backing of the United States government.

This week, Newsweek published an article discussing how the “mayhem has receded from Mogadishu – for the moment” and how Somalia’s countrymen are “gambling that the city’s newfound security will last.”  The brisk, peaceful turn Somalia has taken over the last few months since al-Shabaab was kicked out of the city seems like the de javu moments many enjoyed back in 2006 when the Islamic Courts Union ejected the warlords and brought the city under one control.

But this time round, businesspeople are going an extra mile, with proprietor Liban Egal venturing to establish the First Somali Bank, which reportedly is due to open in February. Sounds like a grand plan for a war-torn nation that has no functioning institution for over two decades.

If only it will work!

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