Dear Readers,
Despite much of the
world's attention riveted on Arab Spring, Financial Falls and Fashion Week,
rest assuredthat even without celeb-journos in Mogadishu patching in rock
stars, the wheels of misery still grind hard. This week the news is chock full
of feuds, fundies, fighting and famine with pirates, predators and privation
filling out the rest of the slots.
The biggest story, as
always, iswhat isnotin the news. The famine and
displacement continue and the efforts to meet Somalis needs are growing, but
the crop for next year is not going in. According to Google Trends,Somalia news coverage(along with the resultant public
interest) peaked in August and has been plummeting ever since. In a desperate
attempt to stay in the news, Somalia racked up added another "worst"
this week, this time forchild deaths.
The top local
development was a series of arrests, shootings and assassinations in and around
Puntland's port city of Bosaso as pirate money used to influence a judge went
wrong. In this case the judge refused to release the clan member (arrested for
killing another person) and was protected by the clan from the Minster of
Ports. Then when leaned on by clan elders to release him, thejudge refused and died for his moral stand.
Byzantine enough? The bottom line is that the new effort by Puntland to stamp
out piracy is having ugly side effects. We will write more on this but for now
it could be a weekly soap opera.
We had an inordinate
amount ofcoverage on Puntlandprobably because the past media focus
on the famine in the south has been written up in every possible permutation
with little effect on the world's attention. So we are drilling down on
un-randomizing what appears at first to be a constant series of random killings
but are actually linked.
On a less lethal
level, politicians threw insults and accusations and the pirates were no pikers
in adding to the chaos. The recent pushback by President Farole against the
pirates has also inspired another group to criticize him fornot fighting against the pirates enough. Somalia
politics at it's finest.
We revealedwhy pirates just can't get alongand in
excruciating detail, "Why pirates don't get along with mariners"
could be the title of our must-readweekly piracy report. The kidnapping of 56 year old
Judith Tebbutt and the murder of her husband in Lamu is a grim reminder of how
desperate and dirty the business of piracy has become. We tracked her movements
and can confirm that she is now being held by the lesser of two of Somali
evils. The bigger evil was also busted bySomalia
Reportwhen we foundal-Shabaab's plan to disrupt the Kenyan tourism
industry.
As all news
organizations must, we covered a fire, except this was at sea andcaused by pirates.
We also covered the
war on terror with a world exclusive photo ofAmerican
contractors training CIA funded intelligence security forcesand yet another airstrike splattering
an al-Shabaabie convoy. Jihadi social events may be cancelled for the
foreseeable future.We explained in a nice little filler piece about why
youcan't use that green Somali passportyou
bought for twenty bucks.
Al-Shabaab is cleary
sulking that ever since it bailed out of Mog, it has been out of the
media spotlight so they held one of their classic press conferences in an old
spaghetti factory (we do not make this up) displaying three terrified AMISOM
soldiers. Theypledged
to take back Mogadishustarting with the northern districts.
It doesn't help that
al-Shabaab keepspicking on Somalisincluding farmers and you would think
that ASWJ would seize the moment but they seem to use the lull in fighting tofight among themselves.They apparently
kissed and made up and began to march around in circles insisting this behavior
willrid Somalia of al-Shabaab.Our famous and
ubiquitous "unnamed sources" suggest the reason for the change was
that it was close to payday.
I would like to
spotlight our invaluabledaily media roundup. Our Somalia media condensed
read now features commentary on Islamic websites, radio reports, print, internet
and op eds - a life savior when your internet service works as efficiently as
the TFG.
We have received a lot
of input for our upcoming maritime security report (and some silly backchannel
poo throwing over oursecurity contractor piece). Rest assured we will be
contacting people as soon as I am finished my pirate cruise across the Gulf of
Aden. And for any pirates (those that can read I guess) that apprehend our
massive vessel loaded with plunderable goodies... for the record all the mean
spirited quips I publish are all in good fun. Once I am finished with my famous
ground (sea?) reporting on maritime security, I will commence with the industry
interviews.
In any case, please tell your friends aboutSomalia Report. We have been growing
steadily and we encourage you to tell your friends to check in while it is
still free.
By Robert Young Pelton
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Somalia Report Weekly Newsletter-Volume 19
Issue 1, Volume 19