AP: AP Exclusive: US company helps train African Union troops in Somalia, shares intel with FBI
On the front lines of Mogadishu's streets, Islamist militants battle African Union troops. Standing alongside the peacekeepers are members of an American-run team of advisers, former military men who play a little-known but key role in the war against al-Shabab.
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While troops struggle to get control of this shattered capital that has been filling with refugees fleeing famine in southern Somalia, The Associated Pressgot rare access to the military advisers, providing a first look into their work.
The men employed by Bancroft Global Development live in small trailers near Mogadishu's airport but often go into the field. It's dangerous work — two Bancroft men were wounded last month.
Among the advisers are a retired general from the British marines, an ex-French soldier involved in a coup in Comoros 16 years ago, and a Danish political scientist.
Funded by the United Nations and the U.S. State Department, Bancroft has provided training in a range of military services, from bomb disposal and sniper training to handing out police uniforms.
Michael C. Stock, the American head of Bancroft, said his men share information with the FBI about bomb materials and the DNA of suicide bombers, who sometimes turned out to be Somali-American youths from the Midwest. Stock said his company receives no recompense for sharing information with the FBI.
Stock strongly objects if "mercenary" is used to describe his men. Instead he describes Bancroft as a non-governmental organization dedicated to finding permanent solutions to violent conflict.
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At their beach-side camp in Mogadishu, diplomats, journalists and aid workers swap tip-offs by the bar. Stories fly through the air faster than the bats that hunt in the shadows, a way to unwind after a day of tense work.
Richard Rouget, a cigar-smoking, poetry-quoting, whiskey-drinking former big game hunter and right-hand man of French mercenary Bob Denard, has a long scar on his thigh from getting shot in Somalia last year. Another round slammed into the chest plate of his body armor.
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The Bancroft advisers camp out with AU soldiers on the front lines, training them to fight in urban areas and dispose of bombs.
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The U.S. State Department has funded the company's training in Somalia of soldiers from Uganda and Burundi, who comprise the AU peacekeeping force, in marksmanship and bomb disposal. Other funding has come from the U.N. The contracts have totaled $12.5 million since 2008, the year the company started working in Somalia, Stock said.
Earlier this week, Martinus "Rocky" Van Blerk swept the road to Mogadishu's port for bombs, blew up a grenade found in a newly taken al-Shabab base and answered two calls about suspected bombs. The defused mortar shells and bomb components lie rusting in a pile near the airport; interesting or unusual devices and remains from suicide bombers are sent to the FBI for analysis.
"That's where I blew up the bodies of those two suicide bombers last week," Van Blerk told AP at a newly taken al-Shabab base, pointing to a dip in the sand and a charred wall spattered with dark residue. The bombers were shot before they could detonate their suicide vests.
Wearing government uniforms, they had attacked with machine guns. They shot one of Van Blerk's South African Bancroft colleagues as well as a contractor from a demining company and 10 Ugandan soldiers trained in bomb disposal. The demining contractor and six of the Ugandans died. Dark trails of blood smear the floor inside the house where the trainer crawled for cover. Another Bancroft employee was shot in the stomach the day before but survived.
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The Bancroft team this week was discussing their marksmanship training program. Their idea was to encourage the peacekeepers to use sharpshooters instead of mortars, which sometimes hit residential neighborhoods and kill civilians. They train the Burundian and Ugandan soldiers in the AU force in marksmanship. Now a list of no-fire zones is pinned to the wall of their office.
"We had a problem with indiscriminate indirect fire, so we encouraged the AU to use snipers instead," said Rouget, referring to weapons like mortars. "It's discriminate, accurate."
Lt. Julius Aine, one of the Ugandan soldiers trained by Bancroft, said the training has helped his men be more professional.
"The major lessons have been about fighting in built-up areas," he said, looking out at the smashed ruins of houses so full of bullet holes they resembled concrete lace. "We are used to the bush, not fighting in the streets. This has really helped us."
NYT: U.S. Relies on Contractors in Somalia Conflict
Richard Rouget, a gun for hire over two decades of bloody African conflict, is the unlikely face of the American campaign against militants in Somalia.
A husky former French Army officer, Mr. Rouget, 51, commanded a group of foreign fighters during Ivory Coast’s civil war in 2003, was convicted by a South African court of selling his military services and did a stint in the presidential guard of the Comoros Islands, an archipelago plagued by political tumult and coup attempts.
Now Mr. Rouget works for Bancroft Global Development, an American private security company that the State Department has indirectly financed to train African troops who have fought a pitched urban battle in the ruins of this city against the Shabab, the Somali militant group allied with Al Qaeda.
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..over the past year, the United States has quietly stepped up operations inside Somalia, American officials acknowledge. The Central Intelligence Agency, which largely finances the country’s spy agency, has covertly trained Somali intelligence operatives, helped build a large base at Mogadishu’s airport — Somalis call it “the Pink House” for the reddish hue of its buildings or “Guantánamo” for its ties to the United States — and carried out joint interrogations of suspected terrorists with their counterparts in a ramshackle Somali prison.
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..thanks in part to Bancroft, the private security company, the militants have been forced into retreat. Several United Nations and African Union officials credit the work of Bancroft with improving the fighting skills of the African troops in Somalia, who this past weekend forced Shabab militants to withdraw from Mogadishu, the capital, for the first time in years.
Like other security companies in Somalia, Bancroft has thrived as a proxy of sorts for the American government. Based in a mansion along Embassy Row in Washington, Bancroft is a nonprofit enterprise run by Michael Stock, a 34-year-old Virginia native who founded the company not long after graduating from Princeton in 1999. He used some of his family’s banking fortune to set up Bancroft as a small land-mine clearing operation.
In recent years, the company has expanded its mission in Somalia and now runs one of the only fortified camps in Mogadishu — a warren of prefabricated buildings rimmed with sand bags a stone’s throw from the city’s decrepit, seaside airport.
The Bancroft camp operates as a spartan hotel for visiting aid workers, diplomats and journalists. But the company’s real income has come from the United States government, albeit circuitously. The governments of Uganda and Burundi pay Bancroft millions of dollars to train their soldiers for counterinsurgency missions in Somalia under an African Union banner, money that the State Department then reimburses to the two African nations. Since 2010, Bancroft has collected about $7 million through this arrangement.
Both American and United Nations officials said that Bancroft’s team in Mogadishu — a mixture of about 40 former South African, French and Scandinavian soldiers who call themselves “mentors” — has steadily improved the skills of the African troops and cut down on civilian casualties by persuading the troops to stop lobbing artillery shells into crowded parts of Mogadishu. One Western consultant who works with the African Union credits Bancroft with helping “turn a bush army into an urban fighting force.”
The advisers typically work from the front lines — showing the troops how to build sniper pits or smash holes in walls to move between houses.
“Urban fighting is a war of attrition, you nibble, nibble, nibble,” said Mr. Rouget, the Bancroft contractor. Last year, he was wounded in Mogadishu when a piece of shrapnel from a Shabab rocket explosion sliced through his thigh.
Still, he seems to thoroughly enjoy his work. “Give me some technicals” — a term for heavily armed pickup trucks — “and some savages and I’m happy,” he joked.
Some critics view the role played by Mr. Rouget and other contractors as a troubling trend: relying on private companies to fight the battles that nations have no stomach for. Some American Congressional officials investigating the money being spent for operations in Somalia said that opaque arrangements like those for Bancroft — where money is passed through foreign governments — made it difficult to properly track how the funds were spent.
It also makes it harder for American officials to monitor who is being hired for the Somalia mission. In Bancroft’s case, some trainers are veterans of Africa’s bush wars who sometimes use aliases in the countries where they fought. Mr. Rouget, for example, used the name Colonel Sanders.
He denies that he is a mercenary, and said that his conviction in a South African court was “political,” more a “regulatory infraction” than a crime. He added that the French government, which sent peacekeeping troops to Ivory Coast, was well aware of his activities there.
Mr. Stock, Bancroft’s president, also flatly rejects the idea that his employees are mercenaries, insisting that the trainers do not participate in direct combat with Shabab fighters and are supported by legitimate governments.
“Mercenary activity is antithetical to the fundamental purposes for which Bancroft exists,” he said, adding that the company “does not engage in covert, clandestine or otherwise secret activities.”
He did say, though, that there is only a small pool of people Bancroft can hire who have experience fighting in African wars.
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Unlike regular Somali government troops, the C.I.A.-trained Somali commandos are outfitted with new weapons and flak jackets, and are given sunglasses and ski masks to conceal their identities. They are part of the Somali National Security Agency — an intelligence organization financed largely by the C.I.A. — which answers to Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. Many in Mogadishu, though, believe that the Somali intelligence service is building a power base independent of the weak government.
One Somali official, speaking only on the condition of anonymity, said that the spy service was becoming a “government within a government.”
“No one, not even the president, knows what the N.S.A. is doing,” he said. “The Americans are creating a monster.”
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Over the past year, the American Embassy in Nairobi, according to one American official, has become a hive of military and intelligence operatives who are “chomping at the bit” to escalate operations in Somalia. But Mr. Carson, the State Department official, has opposed the drone strikes because of the risk of turning more Somalis toward the Shabab, according to several officials.
In a telephone interview, he played down any bureaucratic disagreements and rejected criticism that America’s approach toward Somalia had been ad hoc. It is a country with historically difficult problems, he said, and the American support to the African peacekeepers has helped beat back the Shabab’s forces.
And as for the rest of southern Somalia, still firmly in the Shabab’s hands?
“One step at a time, he said. “One step at a time.”
Mr. Stock, Bancroft’s president, said that bickering in Washington about how to contain the Shabab threat had made the American government even more dependent on companies like his.
As he put it, “We’re the only game in town.”
The UN Monitoring Group on Somalia's 2010 report limited it's acknowledgement of the company's activities in Somalia to a single, rather innoculous sentence:
Bancroft Global Development
221. Bancroft provides technical expertise to AMISOM, principally related to counter-improvised explosive device capabilities, and operates under the auspices of AMISOM.
In the 2011 report from this July, there are three sentences in appendix 6, 'Private security companies'
Bancroft Global Development
26. Bancroft provides technical expertise to AMISOM and, under its auspices, to the TFG military. They have assisted AMISOM in modernizing their sight system for mortar fire, and are taking an active part in the training of TFG soldiers, from infantry tactics to administration and accountability, and of the presidential guard in charge of the TFG President personal security details.
27. It is the understanding of the Monitoring Group that Bancroft's status as a contractor for AMISOM means that its activities are subject to the exemption to the arms embargo provided for in paragraph 11(a) of UNSCR 1772.
Bancroft Global Development was organized and filed as a non-profit 501(c)(3) public charity through 2009.
That appendix also lists nine PMCs working in Somalia as ISOA members. Bancroft is not.
7. Nine members of ISOA are currently or have recently been involved in Somalia: AECOM, Dyncorp, OSPREA logistics and PAE, contracted by the US Department of State to equip, deploy and train AMISOM [4], Agility and RA International, contracted by the United Nations also in support of AMISOM, International Armored Group, which provided Saracen International Lebanon with four B6-type armoured vehicles, Hart Security and Threat Management Group, a former branch of Agility...
[4] DynCorp International, AECOM and Pacific Architects & Engineers (PAE, a Lockheed Martin company) have signed in September 2009 a five-year contract with the US Department of State Africa Peacekeaping (sic) Program (AFRICAP) which includes provisions of logistics support, contstruction, military training and advising, maritime security capacity building, equipment procurement, operational deployment for peacekeepign troops, aerial surveillance and conference facilitation; in 2010, Dyncorp, in Somalia since February 2007 when AMISOM landed first in Mogadishu, was replaced by PAE and AECOM.
oh, and, big oops from last week...
Daily Monitor: UPDF dismiss al shabaab claims on dead soldiers
The army yesterday dismissed claims by the Somali insurgents that they killed 20 UPDF soldiers and three American snipers in Somalia on Monday.
Al Shabaab spokesperson, Sheikh Ali Mohamoud, said yesterday that they had carried out an attack inside African Union soldiers’ base in Wardhiigley District of Mogadishu, killing three American trainers, 20 UPDF soldiers, including eight commanders.
But the UPDF Spokesperson, Lt. Col Felix Kulayigye said Uganda lost two soldiers not 20 in the fighting that broke out in Mogadishu on Monday.
“We lost two soldiers and that was explained by Amisom. We are expecting their bodies today,” he said,adding “It’s a lie that there are American soldiers training UPDF soldiers in Somalia.”
H.S.M. never claimed they were active US soldiers, rather they were acting as advisors and combatants.
A Somalia Report daily wrapup mentions that pro-Islamist media are reporting that U.S. and French military officials paid a visit to Mogadishu at the end of the week.
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More true than intended, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview on CBS
No matter what anybody says about us anywhere in the world, people have to admit that when there's trouble anywhere, Americans are there.-- -- --
Shabelle Media: AMISOM expands Al shabaab abandoned areas in northern Mogadishu
The African Union peacekeepers on Tuesday have established military bases in northern part of Mogadishu in an attempt to expand throughout Al shabaab abandoned areas.
Witnesses told Shabelle Media Network that they saw Africa Union infantry and their military vehicles settling in the districts of Shibis, Abdul-Aziz, and other neighborhoods in its vicinities.
During the expansionism move, no armed clashes were reported AMISOM to have with the remnants of Al shabaab.
Reports said that the AU forces are planning to move deeper into the north capturing Karan district, one of the key areas Al shabaab fled.
Shabelle Media: Residents flee Al shabaab abandoned Mogadishu districts
Some of the local residents started to flee from Al shabaab abandoned areas of Mogadishu after they failed to longer endure the heavy shelling landing there.
Mortar shelling pounded on some of Mogadishu neighborhoods after every battle between Somali forces backed by AU troops and Al shabaab took place in the capital.
Most of the locals fled from the neighborhoods of Towfiq, Jungal, Suq-Ba’ad, Jamhuriyah and others where civilians sustained causalities from the bombardments.
A resident in Yaqashid district told Shabelle Radio that most families there started to flee escaping with their lives.
Shabelle Media: Al shabaab says their fighters still in Mogadishu
The Al shabaab spokesman, Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage on Thursday disclosed their fighters are still in the seaside Mogadishu to keep on battling against the transitional federal government of Somalia and AU forces.
Rage made the comments while speaking to the local radio stations based in Mogadishu.
Shabelle Media: Al shabaab’s withdrawal precipitated by internal rift: An official
Hassan Dahir Aways, a high ranking Al shabaab official, on Friday proclaimed internal wrangle has precipitated the group’s unprecedented decision to retreat from the Somali capital Mogadishu completely.
Aways explained the rift undermined all cooperation and relations among the top Al Shabaab officials.
He said because the disagreement within the group, the commemoration of Osama Bin Laden’s death was several times postponed to be held in Afgoye town, about 30 kilometers south of Mogadishu.
“We tried to persuade to change our fight tactics by abandoning Mogadishu to launch Taliban Style attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but some top leaders in the movement refused the plan” said the official.
He admitted some of Al shabaab fighters remained in the capital and are still continuing clashes with the government forces and AMISOM troops.
Mareeg Online:
Dahir said, “We don’t [have] tanks and it’s wrong to have face to face fighting with troops armed with tanks”.
Somalia Report:
"Conflict is nature, and I believe this dispute will make easier more difficulties and misunderstandings between leaders and some officials," Aweys told Radio Kulmiye. "I can tell you there is a dispute between me and Abu-Zubeyr ... I hope this will be solved."
"We are going to talk to reporters and media to admit and finalize any problem inside the al-Shabaab leadership; this step will cause more changes in the group."
Al-Shabaab pulled its forces out of Mogadishu on Saturday, and part of the reason was believed to have been the internal disputes. Somalia Report was told that al-Shabaab held a closed-door meeting in the capital last week, during which Robow and Aweys called for Godane to go, and demanded that humanitarian aid be allowed into al-Shabaab-controlled areas.
According to reliable sources, Godane and foreign fighters rejected the suggestion, prompting Aweys and Robow to withdraw their forces. Robow’s forces have reportedly withdrawn to his stronghold of Baidoa, which has been hit badly by the drought.
In the speech on Radio Kulmiye, Aweys said that al-Shabaab had not been able to continue waging conventional warfare in Mogadishu in face of advances by the African Union peacekeeping mission (known as AMISOM).
"We were not able to face AMISOM battle wagons during Mogadishu fighting, so we decided to change our military tactic," he said. "We will do as our brothers in Afghanistan do: we will increase hit and run attacks."
Shabelle Media: Al shabaab denies infighting within the group
The Al shabaab movement on Friday strongly denied there is infighting and wrangle within the group.-- -- --
Speaking at BBC Somali Service, Sheikh Ali Mohamoud, the spokesman of Al shabaab said the group’s leaders are religious men and if they disagree they will revise back to the holly Kuran and Hadhith, the prophet’s examples (May blessings and peace of Allah be upon him).
He said the group has only one adversary which is the transitional federal government of Somalia.
The spokesman noted the government is the one which accustomed to disagree and speak about it publicly.
His comments came hours after Hassan Dahir Aways, a high ranking Al shabaab official, proclaimed internal wrangle has precipitated the group’s unprecedented decision to retreat from the Somali capital Mogadishu completely.
Daily Monitor: Uganda to send 2,000 more troops to Somalia
President Museveni has pledged to send an additional 2,000 Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers to beef up security in the war torn Somali capital Mogadishu.
The offer comes a week after the Islamic militants, al Shabaab, withdrew from areas they held in the capital.
Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda, the spokesperson for the African Union peace keeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM), told Saturday Monitor that the increase in troop levels is intended to consolidate security in the capital and plan for phase two of the military assault against the al Shabaab.
“UPDF will instead increase the number of troops in Somalia. President Museveni has already pledged additional 2,000 soldiers,” Lt. Col. Ankuda said, adding, “UPDF will not withdraw because the mission to liberate Somalia has just started. (Getting al Shabaab out of) Mogadishu was Phase One, there are two more phases.”
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AMISOM commander, Maj Gen. Fred Mugisha told journalists earlier this week that the militant al Shabaab group still threatened stability in Mogadishu and troops were needed to protect food aid. The group is blocking distribution of food aid to those affected by famine.
Gen. Mugisha, said the AU should immediately deploy about 3,000 troops to fill in the gap left by the al Shabaab.
Pana: More financial logistical support to stabilise Somalia
PANA learnt that the AU also planned to expand the mission to the south and to the borders of Kenya and Ethiopia and to the town of Kismayo, areas still controlled by Al-Shabaab and other militant groups.-- -- --
Inner City Press:
On August 9, Inner City Press asked [this month's UNSC President, Hardeep Singh Puri of India], "Is Saracen on your radar?" Puri replied:
"I've seen some correspondence. My radar is a little diffuse. In Navy there is something called... the lazy eye -- I used to be secretary for the navy once -- if you fire a missile which is skimming the water, in air you can catch it, radar doesn't know if missile is skimming the water or play of light on the surface... The radar does a flip flip, like a lazy eye."
Inner City Press:
[Mahiga, in a video conference briefing from Mogadishu,] said he visited Puntland and Saracen is mostly gone, it "trained trainers" who themselves remain.
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Inner City Press three times asked Mahiga what message the UN had for the Transitional Federal Government about it human rights record. The first two times he did not answer -- on the second, he diverged into a description of Al Shabaab "foreign fighters from Chechnya, Waziristan and Yemen."
The third and final time, he said that the TFG is improving, and of course these things happen in war. He said he didn't know if the TFG was involved in shooting into a crowd of aid-seekers in Mogadishu on August 5.
Shabelle Media: Somali military charges Benadir admin with bothering IDPs
The military commander of Somali transitional federal government on Thursday charged the soldiers of Benadir administration of bothering the drought displaced people in the capital.
In an interview with BBC Somali Service, Gen. Abdikarim Yusuf Adam, the military commander of Somali government said the Benadir and some districts administrations were behind the deadly event at Mogadishu’s Badbado camp, where several drought hit people, died and dozens more injured after some soldiers plundered and robbed food aid opening fire to the IDPs.
He said that every administration has its own soldiers who can not be described as the Somali national army soldiers.
BBC: PM Ali sets up aid protection force
Somalia's prime minister has announced the creation of a special force to protect convoys delivering aid to people affected by drought and famine.-- -- --
Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said the force would comprise 300 trained men, helped by AU peacekeepers who are currently providing security in Mogadishu.
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Mr Ali said the force would have two main jobs: "Number one is to secure the convoys and to protect food aid, and also to protect the camps when food is distributed," he said.
"Second is to stabilise the city and to fight banditry and looting and any sort of untidiness."
Reuters:
"In their tactical retreat, so to speak, al Shabaab seemed to have fragmented into three columns," Mahiga told reporters via video link from the Somali capital.
"One column going southwards, another going westwards and another going northwards," he said. "And they're still on the move. This already weakens their consolidated strength."
Before al Shabaab's decision to leave the city, Mahiga said, the group's funding sources had been drying up. He said that al Shabaab has been "starved of financial support."
"Most of it was coming from the Gulf and from the Middle East, not from states but from benefactors, and the events in those regions seem to have had a negative impact on their sources of financing," Mahiga said.
"And there's also financing locally, like in Bakara market, which has also been taken by AMISOM and the TFG forces," he said, referring to an African Union peacekeeping force and Somalia's Transitional Federal Government.
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"It may regroup," he said. "It may melt into the population. It may go into what they're worst at doing -- terrorist tactics. This cannot be ruled out."
Earlier, Mahiga told the 15-nation Security Council that the United Nations intended to accelerate the expansion of its presence in Mogadishu.
He said the TFG, which is also struggling to deal with the influx of victims of a famine that has hit the Horn of Africa this year, needed to act quickly to prevent an administrative and security vacuum in Mogadishu.
"Without immediate action to fill this gap, a real danger exists that the warlords and their militia groups will move forward to fill the vacuum created by al Shabaab's departure," he said.
He reiterated that AMISOM needed increased financial and military support from the Security Council.
CSM:
Matt Bryden, a veteran Somalia analyst and co-author of the Monitoring Group report, says the current situation does provide “an opportunity,” however.
The mandate of the transitional federal government (TFG), which is accused of deep corruption and is not popular in Somalia, expires in 11 months.
Several smaller armed groups have successfully repulsed Al Shabab and are beginning to run their territories with some level of success and peace, Mr. Bryden says. While the international community may be tempted to reinforce the unpopular TFG, that's not the right course, he says.
“What they should be doing is distancing themselves from the TFG, and working with other armed groups, and any more moderate split-off from Al Shabab, to create an open political framework ahead of next year.”
This would “accelerate” the separation of Al Shabab’s radical commanders from its more “pragmatic” leaders, he says.
The Star: Shabab will return to Mogadishu, analysts warn
“When it’s put in context, it’s just not necessarily all that important,” said Matt Bryden, the former coordinator of the UN Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group. “It still leaves Al Shabab in a position of relative strength.”-- -- --
Among the findings in a 417-page July report on the Shabab, co-authored by Bryden, is the surprising wealth of the organization. Bryden says the group collects as much as $100 million per year in “taxes,” if not more.
The Shabab does not have widespread ideological support in Somalia, but operates much like the mafia, in collecting funds through extortion and intimidation. The problem, says Bryden, is that many Somalis do not see the internationally supported, but notoriously corrupt, Transitional Federal Government as a viable alternative.
IRIN: Number of drought-displaced arriving in Mogadishu "dropping"
Humanitarian officials say the number of drought-displaced families arriving in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, has dropped in the past two weeks as more and more families cross the border into neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, while others go to the Al-Shabab-controlled town of Baidoa, in the south-central Bay region.
"Between 15 June and 15 July, we had about 500 families reaching Mogadishu every day but the number has since decreased to about 250 families daily," said Ahmed Abdi Muhumed, a programme manager for Muslim Aid in Somalia, a UK-based NGO.
Muhumed said Baidoa, 250km northwest of Mogadishu, was now home to between 6,000 and 7,000 drought-displaced families. Baidoa, capital of the Bay region, is the third-largest town in south-central Somalia, after Mogadishu and Kismayo.
So far, Muhumed said, the NGO Islamic Relief and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) were the only two aid organizations active in Baidoa. He added that Muslim Aid would begin operations there this week.
Shabelle Media: Kenya forces blocks famine hit Somalis from reaching at refugee camps
The Kenyan border guards have started blocking famine hit Somalis from reaching refugee camps just northeastern Kenya.
Reports say that many Somalis who run away from the drought and famine that hit south-central Somalia are stranded in the border areas.
The displaced people wanted to be part of the refugees who entered Kenya in search of food and water for the last few months.
Some of the blocked refugees commenced to return to parts of Lower Jubba region, Dhobley border town in particular.
Shabelle Media: Somali forces, Al shabaab clash in southern town
Heavy clashes and bombardments between Somali government forces and fighters loyal to Al shabaab movement on Tuesday night took place in the town of Afmadow in Lower Jubba region of southern Somalia.
The armed confrontation started after Somali forces, which moved from the border town of Dhobley, reached at the village of Hawina in Afmadow where they had a combat with Al shabaab.
Somali troops have launched mortar attacks on the village of Takta, where Al shabaab have main military bases.
However, reports said that the fighters responded with mortar shells.
At least one person has been killed and two others were wounded, according to witnesses and local residents.
Local inhabitants have expressed a deep anxiety about the bombardments and armed clashes there.
Shabelle Media: Military officer: Somalia govt soldiers making advances in south
A military officer on Thursday said the Somali government soldiers made huge gains after heavy battles with Al shabaab fighters in parts of southern Somalia.-- -- --
Mohamed Farah Dahir, Lieutenant-colonel, said the fighting on Wednesday Somali soldiers attacked the village of Hawina, about 20 kilometers north of Dhobley town which is very close to Kenyan border with Somalia.
The official stated the forces of the government have established main bases in the village, adding that they are ready to counter and prevent any offensive from the fighters of Al shabaab.
From an op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: U.S. in Somalia: Compassion and aggression define Obama's policy
U.S. policy toward Somalia contains a shameful contradiction between compassion for the famine its population is suffering and an aggressive, militarized approach to its contesting governments.-- -- --
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The sharp conflict between U.S. humanitarian and military goals in drought-ridden Somalia is too much for a country of that size in that situation to bear. U.S. policy needs more oversight to resolve these contradictions promptly.
IRIN:
As aid agencies attempt to scale up assistance to thousands of people in south-central Somalia, controlled by Al-Shabab militia, IRIN asked the Somali Red Crescent Society, which has been active in the region for the past four decades, how it operates.
“The thing is to be absolutely transparent in your dealings with Al-Shabab and other organizations [Al-Shabab is not a monolithic entity] and not politicize your work in any way," said Abdulkadir Ibrahim of the society. “That is the advice we would like to give to other NGOs who want to work here.”
The Somali Red Crescent, helped by more than 4,000 volunteers, runs operations in south and central Somalia. “We have been running OTP [outpatient therapeutic feeding programme] centres there for two to three years.”
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..said Ibrahim. “We have never been asked to pay anything; we do not even pay tax for transporting aid on the roads.”
Before each aid consignment is transported outside Mogadishu, the Somali capital, Ibrahim said, the organization makes contact with whatever faction controls the route they intend to ply. “They go through all our papers and we explain what we are doing and why we are doing it and we are given the go-ahead.”
Ibrahim said because they had been around since 1963, survived the civil war which began in 1991 and the last big famine in 1991-92, they were “part of the community and much-respected and we believe in dialogue. We have constant dialogue with whoever is in charge in the areas we operate about the people’s needs and what we are doing.”
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The Red Crescent is feeding about 160,000 people a month's supply of rice, oil and pulses across Somalia, said Ibrahim. “A Land-Cruiser takes about a day-and-a-half to travel a distance of 300km from Mogadishu; a truck laden with food aid takes about three to four days.”
The organization prefers to fly aid directly to Mogadishu as it then has to deal with fewer lines of authority. “We don’t like the overland route from the Kenyan border as we have to travel from Transitional Federal Government-run areas along the border into Al-Shabab areas. Crossing the lines from a TFG area into an Al-Shabab area is very difficult [involving a lot of negotiations at both ends].”
The UN Monitoring Group report noted: “The principal impediments to security and stabilization in southern Somalia are the Transitional Federal Government leadership’s lack of vision or cohesion, its endemic corruption and its failure to advance the political process. Arguably even more damaging is the government’s active resistance to engagement with or the empowerment of local, de facto political and military forces elsewhere in the country.”
At the moment, aid could do with some coordination in Somalia, said Ibrahim.
"We have so many NGOs, including a lot of Arab ones, coming into Somalia to help but no one seems to know where they should focus, where the needs are - they are all in Mogadishu trying to link with local NGOs - this is an emergency, we need the help but someone must coordinate," Ibrahim said.
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