Connect with us

Published

on

President Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmaajo” arrives in Djibouti on an official visit and met with his counterpart Ismail Omar Guelleh.

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Briefing Room

Somalia: Al-Shabab Demanding Children

Published

on

(Nairobi) – The Islamist armed group Al-Shabab has threatened and abducted civilians in Somalia’s Bay region to force communities to hand over their children for indoctrination and military training in recent months.

Since late September 2017, Al-Shabab has ordered elders, teachers in Islamic religious schools, and communities in rural areas to provide hundreds of children as young as 8 or face attack. The armed group’s increasingly aggressive child recruitment campaign started in mid-2017 with reprisals against communities that refused. In recent months, hundreds of children, many unaccompanied, have fled their homes to escape forced recruitment.

“Al-Shabab’s ruthless recruitment campaign is taking rural children from their parents so they can serve this militant armed group,” said Laetitia Bader, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “To escape that cruel fate, many children have fled school or their homes.”

Over the past decade, Al-Shabab has recruited thousands of children for indoctrination and to become frontline fighters. Since 2015, the armed group has opened several large Islamic religious schools in areas under their control, strengthened indoctrination methods including by bringing in younger children, and pressured teachers to retrain and teach Al-Shabab’s curriculum in schools.

On a recent trip to Baidoa, the capital of Bay region, Human Rights Watch spoke to 15 residents from three districts in Bay region largely under Al-Shabab control – Berdale, Baidoa, and Burhakaba districts – as well as child protection advocates and United Nations officials. The findings match similar trends in other parts of the country since mid-2017.

Village elders said that in September Al-Shabab ordered them to go to Al-Shabab-controlled Bulo Fulay and to hand over dozens of children ages 9 to 15. A resident of Berdale district said: “They said we needed to support their fight. They spoke to us in a very threatening manner. They also said they wanted the keys to our boreholes [watering points]. They kept us for three days. We said we needed to consult with our community. They gave us 10 days.” Two other community residents said that they received threatening calls, including death threats, after the 10 days ran out, but as of late 2017 they had not handed over the children.

Three residents said that in September Al-Shabab fighters forcibly took at least 50 boys and girls from two schools in Burhakaba district and transported them to Bulo Fulay, which witnesses say hosts a number of religious schools and a major training facility. Two weeks later, a large group of armed Al-Shabab fighters with their faces covered returned to the village, entered another local school, and threatened and beat the teacher to hand over children.

“They wanted 25 children ages 8 to 15,” said the teacher, who resisted the order. “They didn’t say why, but we know that it’s because they want to indoctrinate them and then recruit them. After they hit me, some of the children started crying and tried to run out of the classroom. But the fighters were all around. They caned a 7-year-old boy who tried to escape.”

Residents from Berdale district said that in at least four villages, Al-Shabab abducted elders who refused to hand over children. In one village, three elders were released only after they agreed to hand over eight boys from their village.
In May, Al-Shabab pressured elders and other residents in villages in central Somalia’s Mudug and Galgadud regions – from which Ethiopian military forces had recently withdrawn – to hand over children ages 7 to 15. A boy who fled Middle Shabelle region without his parents said: “Our school wasn’t controlled by Al-Shabab. Six weeks ago [late June], they came to our school, took down our names, and took two boys. The teacher managed to escape. They threatened that next time they would come back for us.”

A woman in Burhakaba district said that her four children had witnessed 25 of their classmates being abducted from their school: “The four of them are now so worried about going to school. But if they don’t go to school, and get the fundamentals of the religion, they will go to waste.” Some local religious schools in Bay region are closing fearing further attacks, or because the teachers have fled or been abducted.

Some residents said that their only option to protect their children was to send them, often unaccompanied, to areas outside of Al-Shabab control – a difficult and dangerous journey given the threat of Al-Shabab abduction along the way. Community elders and local monitors said the recruitment campaign has forced approximately 500 people as of October, often unaccompanied children, to flee their homes to Baidoa.

“I heard that children were being captured in neighboring villages and so got very scared,” said a 15-year-old who fled by foot with his 9-year-old brother to the nearest town. “My parents gave me money to come to Baidoa. My brother and I were very scared of being captured along the way, since we went through the bush.”

In August, an official from Adale in Middle Shabelle told the media that his community was hosting approximately 500 children ages 10 to 15 who had fled forced recruitment in Galgudud, Hiran and Middle Shabelle districts. Some children have fled to towns where they have relatives, others end up in dire conditions in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. Local groups estimate that over half of the children recently displaced to Baidoa now live in IDP settlements. But unaccompanied children, especially those in informal camps, are unlikely to find security or schooling and may be forced to work to survive.

“The government with UN agency assistance should ensure that displaced children, including those without adult guardians, receive protection and appropriate schooling,” Bader said. “Children should not flee one danger zone for a new one.”

The UN Security Council’s Somalia Eritrea Monitoring Group (SEMG) reported that in June, Al-Shabab detained 45 elders in El Bur who refused to provide them with 150 children and only released them on the condition that the children would be handed over. The SEMG found that 300 children were abducted from the area during this period and taken to an Al-Shabab school.

In April Al-Shabab announced over its radio station that it was introducing a new curriculum for primary and secondary schools and warned teachers and schools against “foreign teachings.” A Bay region resident said that Al-Shabab took a dozen teachers for “retraining” around April, and they were only released after paying about US$300 per person. In certain areas, Al-Shabab ordered schools to shut down and communities to send their teachers to Al-Shabab curriculum training seminars, SEMG reported.

Human Rights Watch did not find clear evidence that children abducted in recent drives were taken directly for military training, but interviewees repeatedly raised the concern. The UN monitoring group reported that some of the schools set up by Al-Shabab were linked to military training facilities. Child abductions, notably from schools, and children’s use as fighters by Al-Shabab significantly increased in the second quarter of 2017, the UN monitoring group said. Boys who had been associated with Al-Shabab since late 2015 said that the religious schools and teachers were often used to recruit boys as fighters. These boys said their military training included a mixture of rudimentary weapons training and ideological indoctrination.

The Somali government has taken some steps to protect schools and students, Human Rights Watch said. In 2016 it endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration, an international commitment by countries to do more to ensure that schools are safe places for children, even during war. Somalia has signed but not yet ratified the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on children in armed conflict, which states that armed groups “should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of 18 years.”

The government, with the help of international donors, should wherever possible identify Al-Shabab recruitment drives, including their location, scale, and use of educational institutions, that could inform protective measures, Human Rights Watch said. Doing so would also help efforts to assist displaced children, such as addressing their health, shelter, and security needs and providing them free primary education and access to secondary education, as well as appropriate psychosocial support.

“Al-Shabab’s campaign only adds to the horrors of Somalia’s long conflict, both for the children and their families,” said Bader. “The group should immediately stop abducting children and release all children in their ranks. The Somali government should ensure these children are not sent into harm’s way.”

Continue Reading

Briefing Room

Kenya: Cost of the war in Somalia

Published

on

THE STAR — We may never know the human or financial cost of the war in Somalia. The Kenyan government, which at the end of 2011 placed its soldiers under the African Union Mission to Somalia (Amisom), has never made public the number of its troops killed or amount of money it has spent on the war.
Key among the numbers which remain a military secret is how many soldiers died in the twin Kulbiyow (2017) and El Adde (2016) attacks. A tally from various media reports show at least 1,000 Kenyans have died since Operation Linda Nchi was launched in 2011 over the abduction of two French tourists

Meanwhile, hundreds of families of soldiers killed in the battle field continue languishing without their key breadwinners, some still awaiting compensation. Military insiders say it costs about Sh7,000 a day to keep a soldier in Somalia. This covers food, transport, medical care, communication and water expenses, which translates to Sh210,000 a month and Sh2.52 million a year.

here are at least 4,000 Kenyan soldiers in Somalia, meaning it would cost Sh10.08 billion a year to keep them in a war that has no end in sight, at least according to President Uhuru Kenyatta. The war has become a hot political potato and one of the key issues in the last two presidential elections.

President Kenyatta, who is serving his second term, has consistently said the Kenyan troops will remain in the war torn nation until the threat level posed by Al Shabaab is brought down. On the flip side, the Opposition insists Kenyan soldiers are better off defending Kenya from within its borders.“The threat remains and therefore we will continue our mission in Somalia,” President Kenyatta said on the campaign trail. “Even as we recognise the sacrifices made so far, we appreciate that this war is not yet won. I urge you all to stand firm in the support of our men and women as we continue our critical mission in Somalia,” he said.

According to a survey done last year by Ipsos Synovate, majority of Kenyans (68 per cent), want KDF pulled out of Somalia. Another survey by Twaweza East Africa done after the Kulbiyow attack at a similar time last year said 70 per cent of Kenyans want our troops withdrawn, with 40 per cent saying KDF’s presence in Somalia was increasing the Al Shabaab threat level.
For the Opposition, every attack in Kenya has given them an opportunity to reignite the debate on withdrawing troops from Somalia. None of the Opposition figures has offered an alternative strategy of combating Al Shaabab once the troops are recalled. The Al Shabaab has maintained that the continued stay of KDF in Somalia is the key reason it continues to mount attacks in Kenya. So many have been the Al Shabaab’s attacks on Kenyan soil since 2011 that the police and media stopped keeping track of casualties.

The Westgate, Mpeketoni and Garrisa University College attacks remain the hallmarks of Kenya’s war in Somalia. Sixty eight people died in the Westgate attack in 2013, 148 students at Garissa University massacre in the 2015 and 128 people in the three weeks of terror in Mpeketoni, Lamu County.

“What is clear from the sustained Al Shabaab attacks in Kenya is that they have been significantly weakened inside Somalia and these attacks are meant to scare the Kenyan government through propaganda,” says Patrick Kamau, who teaches International Diplomacy and Peace Studies at the United States International University (USIU).

“Kenya’s greatest problem is that none of the countries who have donated troops to Amisom share a border with Somalia. But then again withdrawing the troops may still expose Kenya to terror and that is the dilemma we are facing,” Kamau says. Amisom soldiers are drawn from Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Sierra Leone and Kenya. Kenya joined the Amisom troops in 2012 after a year of going it alone through operation Linda Nchi.

Soldiers allowances Amisom’s funding comes from multiple sources, including AU member states, the AU Peace Fund, the UN Trust Fund for Amisom (and, later, the Somali National Army), the UN Trust Fund for Somali Transitional Security Institutions, UN assessed peacekeeping contributions, and a range of AU/Amisom partners, including the EU.

Soldiers allowances are paid by their governments. The EU then compensates the respective Troop Contributing Countries (TCCs) through Amisom on an annual basis. The funds are only released to Amisom once accounts from the previous payment are signed off.

EU provides $1,028 (Sh102,800) for each Amisom soldier each month. Their respective governments then deduct about $200 (Sh20,000) for administrative costs, meaning the soldiers take home about $800 (Sh82,800). Above this, the TCCs still maintain their soldiers on their payroll when they are in Somalia. An MoU between the African Union and Amisom states that families of killed soldiers are entitled to $50,000 (Sh5 million) compensation.

Continue Reading

Briefing Room

Why grassroot reconciliation can speed up rebuilding of Kenya’s neigbour Somalia

Published

on

I was at a restaurant in Mogadishu in 2014 when a man approached me and unexpectedly confessed to having been part of the gang that attacked my home in Mogadishu in 1992 in which my 18-month-old daughter, Yasmin, was brutally killed.

The man then fervently and remorsefully begged for my forgiveness, saying the matter had troubled him for many years. Initially, I felt so much anger with memories of my lifeless daughter flooding back to my mind. I felt like killing him on the spot to revenge my daughter’s death.

But after some moments of silence, I felt some calm return to my heart. I then told him I had forgiven him. The man hugged me and we both couldn’t hold back tears. Immediately after the incident, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt whole again. This personal incident, if nothing else, strengthened my conviction about the need for reconciliation to heal Somalia.

No doubt, Somalia is making modest progress in rebuilding itself from the destruction wrought by decades of catastrophic civil war but the crucial agenda of grassroots truth, justice and reconciliation is not receiving the attention it desperately deserves.

The civil war not only precipitated the meltdown of state institutions and destruction of infrastructure and the economy, but also the unravelling of the social and cultural fabric of the country. Without deliberate efforts to rebuild the shattered trust and goodwill and address deep-seated grievances between individuals, families and communities at the grassroots level, reconstruction efforts will not be sustainable and durable.

Somalia is one of the few countries in Africa with a homogenous population that shares language, religion, bloodlines and culture but the widespread violence, human rights violations and injustices during the civil war exacerbated social divisions and disharmony mainly along clan lines.

Until now, not much has been done to repair those relationships, build bridges and address underlying grievances thus eliminating common spaces for dialogue, accommodation and coexistence. There have been many conferences since the early 1990s ostensibly to bring about reconciliation between various segments of the Somali population but they have hardly had any impact in the grassroots.

This is partly because the initiatives have largely been dominated by politicians and clan leaders, including warlords, without much involvement of the people in the grassroots who should be the main drivers of such initiatives in a bottom-up way. In fact, the conferences have been more about power-sharing between clan leaders than fostering genuine grassroots truth, justice and reconciliation.

Searing

The searing impact of the Somali civil war has been so widespread that it is difficult to find a Somali national who is not nursing deep-seated grievance and trauma due to the killing of loved ones or loss of property or dignity. That’s why the time for Somalia to have its own indigenous process of truth, justice and reconciliation is long overdue.

The process will give space to the people to explore the full extent of the crimes and violations that occurred in the civil war and continue to occur; come to terms with the pain, anger and grief as well as look into appropriate avenues of justice, compensation, forgiveness and reconciliation.

‘When the incident was reported by local media, similar incidences also emerged in various parts of the country. That’s why since then I have been keen to use that personal story with a hope of promoting grassroots reconciliation in Somalia. However, there is a pressing need for a more structured process so that the Somali nationals can explore the dark past together and come to terms to it.

Somalia can benefit from the experiences of countries such as Rwanda which deployed traditional methods of justice and reconciliation to address the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. Somalia too has rich traditional and religious systems that can be tapped to successfully address to rebuild the shattered social fabric in the war-torn country.

Before Somalia can take its rightful place in the community of nations, it must bravely face and address the horrors and dark corners of its history during the civil war through a grassroots truth, justice and reconciliation process.

By Ambassador Mohamed Ali Nur

Ambassador Nur (Americo) is a former Presidential candidate in Somalia (2017) and former Somalia envoy to Kenya (2007-2015) [email protected]

Continue Reading

TRENDING

  • Terrorism Watch11 hours ago

    Somali Jihadist Killed in Syria

  • Puntland20 hours ago

    Somalia military working to push terrorists out of Puntland

  • KENYA21 hours ago

    Two years after El Adde, kin of missing soldiers tell of misery

  • KENYA11 hours ago

    Somali militants “lecture” frightened Kenyan villagers before escaping

  • Canada21 hours ago

    Canada failed Abdoul Abdi but it’s not too late to do the right thing

  • Turkey10 hours ago

    Plane dangles off cliff after skidding off runway in Turkey

  • Briefing Room20 hours ago

    Kenya: Cost of the war in Somalia

  • Diaspora20 hours ago

    Lewiston makes strides towards embracing its immigrant population