Somali Presdient Hassan Sheikh Mohamud speaking to residents of the central Somalia town of Jowhar, Middle Shabelle province on Sept. 9, 2013. Somali’s are disillusioned by the continued terrorists attacks and lack of service delivery here. Credit: Ahmed Osman/IPS

By Muhyadin Ahmed Roble and Yusuf Ahmed
MOGADISHU/NAIROBI, Sep 12 2013 (IPS)

After his first year as president of the world’s most dangerous and failed state, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is still grappling with limited financial resources, corruption, a lack of service delivery, and the ongoing assassinations of government officials, including attempts on his own life.

The Somali president, who on Tuesday Sep. 10 celebrates 365 days of being voted into office by legislators, has had a difficult first year of his four-year term.

Analysts say that not only has Mohamud had to contend with the Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab, which has waged a number of recent terrorist attacks on the capital Mogadishu despite being ousted from key cities across this Horn of African nation, and an increasing number breakaway states, he also faces a growing and deep disillusionment among Somalis.

Abdi Aynte, the founder and executive director of the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies (HIPS), the country’s first think tank, said that Mohamud’s Six Pillar Policy to bring security, stability, justice, economic recovery, and service delivery to Somalia was ambitious.

“The Six Pillar Policy has been ambitious, but public service delivery is practically non-existent,” Aynte told IPS in Nairobi.

“It’s therefore no surprise that no noticeable progress has been made towards achieving any of it.”

However, he added: “The government seems to be taking important steps to defuse tensions, address shortcomings and widen consultations with the public. The ‘Vision 2016’ conference was a positive step.”

Somalis have lived through almost 20 years of war, poverty and displacement following the ouster of dictator and former president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The country had no central government until 2000, after which a series of interim governments were elected.

There are also few essential services or healthcare facilities in the country, with most being provided by NGOs. For over 20 years Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, was one of the few providers of essential healthcare in Somalia. But in August it pulled out of the country after the murder and harassment of their staff made it increasingly impossible for the organisation to operate.

But Mohamud’s aides are quick to defend the former university professor and civil society activist, who survived an assassination attempt while travelling to the southern Somali town of Merca on Sep. 3. Presidential spokesman Abdirahman Omar Osman told IPS in Mogadishu that while the country had critical financial constraints, progress had been made in a number of areas.

“The government, for the first time, engages with communities on key decision-making process. We hold national reconciliation conferences on judicial reform on political vision, on education and how to tackle religious extremisim.”

He said that the government’s record speaks for itself.

“We have maintained security in all territories capture from Al-Shabaab, we are stabilising all regions in Somalia that we ousted Al-Shabaab [from].

“We pay our soldiers regularly, we pay our MPs and civil servants regularly. We have implemented public financial management that is sound. The parliament functions properly and ratified many key legislations,” Osman said.

He said that for the first time in Somalia the government “was able to reach most regions and districts [and] this was a historic achievement.” He added that Mohamud was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 key influential leaders and that the government had gained the recognition of its international partners including the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan, among others.

He added that “the government doesn’t have enough money to do everything.”

“The government’s monthly revenue is roughly three million dollars from [income from] Mogadishu’s seaport and the airport, and yet the budget we need to execute our daily activities is at least 20 million dollars each month,” he said.

However, Mogadishu’s seaport deputy director Abdiqani Osman Kabareto told local Radio Ergo in August that the seaport generates between four and five million dollars a month. However, Mogadishu’s Airport officials were not available to comment on their monthly revenue.

“Imagine a government with such limitations of budget trying to rebuild and create its institutions from scratch. That is where the problem lies. It’s financial shortage,” Osman said.

Mohamed Ali, a university graduate of Simad University, which Mohamud helped found, told IPS that although he supported Mohamud’s election, he feels that there is not much to celebrate a year later.

“I felt he was one of us and the only one who understood our needs, our suffering, our importance more than any,” said Ali.

Ali, who graduated three years ago with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, is still struggling to find a job, and he has given up hope that the president will deliver on his promises of job creation.

The United Nations Development Programme estimates that 67 percent of the youth in Somalia are unemployed. More than half of Somalia’s 10.7 million people are under the age of 30.

“He became like any other politician who delivers nothing of what they promised after getting into office. I saw him as the candidate of hope and change, but the only thing that has changed so far is the name of the government from the Transitional Federal Government to the Federal Government of Somalia.”

In August 2012, the Federal Government of Somalia succeeded the interim Transitional Federal Government.

Professor of economics and vice president of the Horn of Africa University in Mogadishu, Yahye Sheik Amir, said limited financial resources were not Mohamud’s only problem. He said that the endemic corruption within governmental institutions undermined the possibility of any economic recovery and development here.

“The government also lacks strategies that can help generate money beyond the airport and seaport in Mogadishu,” Amir told IPS.

“The government could collect millions of dollars through taxation and business licence and registration fees for companies working in the country, only if it expands its administration beyond the capital and also develops transparent and accountable institutions for managing the revenue,” he noted.

Aynte urged the government to declare war on corrupt syndicates and to exercise the utmost transparency. He said that improved security was needed in order to generate additional revenue.

The government recently began collecting taxes in some areas of the capital city but a number of its tax collectors have been attacked. At least five taxmen have been killed this year, while more than 10 were gunned down last year, according to sources in Mogadishu’s local administration.

Osman promised that a year from now, Al-Shabaab will be defeated and security and stability will return to the country, and that hopefully the government will be capable of providing public services.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Osman said, adding that the Somali government was happy with its progress to date.

HIPS’s Aynte was hopeful about the year ahead. “I’m optimistic that by [the end of next year] there will be enough impetus to move the country to the right direction, even if it is slow.”

* The story that originally moved on Sep. 10, incorrectly quoted Abdi Aynte and Abdirahman Omar Osman as saying that Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud failed to make progress in his first year in power. This story contains further comment from Osman about the government’s successes in its first year.

As the Somali government announced it would set up a coastguard to combat piracy in this Horn of African nation, insecurity is emerging as the biggest challenge that the government faces – and it is only getting worse.

Osman Aweis Dahir, director of the local Dr. Ismail Jimale Human Rights Organisation, said that the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab has renewed its campaign to bring instability to the country’s capital Mogadishu.

“The little stability that the city had experienced since the Al-Shabaab withdrawal appears to have been broken,” Dahir told IPS from Mogadishu. The Islamist extremist group was forced out of its bases in Mogadishu on Aug. 6, 2011 by Somali and African Union peace-keeping forces. Until the withdrawal, the government only controlled half of the city.

But in recent weeks there has been a rise in the number of ambushes, assassinations and suicide bombs in Somalia’s capital.“The city is like an open shop in a market which its owner has left [unattended].” -- Jama Ahmed Siad, local security expert

“The city has experienced its deadliest attacks in recent times during the past two weeks,” said Dahir. More than 60 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in several incidents across Mogadishu. This is a setback to the rising hopes of a return to relative security.”

On Tuesday, Jul. 30, an officer from Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) was assassinated by Al-Shabaab. His name was added to the growing list of government officials killed over the last three weeks. Included on that list is female deputy commissioner of Mogadishu’s Yaqshid district, Rahma Dahir Siad, who was killed outside her home on Jul. 17.

Even foreign diplomats are not safe in the city. On Jul. 27, Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack on the Turkish embassy that killed three people.

It was the second that day. A few hours earlier a bomb planted inside a member of parliament’s vehicle exploded in the north of the city.

On Jul. 24, Sheikh Abdu Aziz Abu Musab, Al-Shabaab’s military spokesman, said that his group carried out over 100 attacks between Jul. 10 and 24. Half of these, he said, occurred in Mogadishu.

“If anything, the sharp rise in such coordinated attacks is a clear testament to the strength of the Mujahidin and their operational capacity,” he told a pro-Islamist radio station in Somalia.

Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdoon acknowledged his disappointment at the government’s weak handling of the security situation in the country. “We are very concerned [about] the security matter and it was not handled the way we wanted,” Shirdoon told reporters in Mogadishu on Jul. 18. He promised to improve the city’s security.

But Jama Ahmed Siad, a security expert based in Mogadishu, said the government was negligent and lacked a clear strategy to counter the Islamist extremist group’s switch to guerrilla-style warfare.

“Security is the key to all problems in Somalia and when you solve it, you have solved half the problem,” Siad told IPS, adding that the government is yet to understand that.

“For instance, the NISA agents have reduced their presence on the roads entering Mogadishu for the past three months. They used to inspect the vehicles and people entering the city at these checkpoints, where they previously captured members of Al-Shabaab trying to infiltrate the city,” Siad added.

A senior officer at NISA told IPS that the agency had handed the control of these checkpoints to the Somali police and military “but there is a plan to deploy NISA’s agents back there very soon.”

Mohamed Elmi, a civil society activist in Mogadishu, said the government’s main challenge was how to combat the suicide car bombings. He told IPS that government forces did not have the advanced weaponry, technology and training for this.

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told journalists on Monday, Jul. 29: “The security forces are at war…but it is not easy to find a suicide car moving around in a city of two million.”

The presidential spokesman, Abdirahman Omar Osman, and the prime minister’s spokesperson, Ridwan Haji Abdiweli, refused to comment to IPS on the security situation in the city.

But one government official told IPS that the government had, on the day of the Turkish embassy bombing, deployed a 1,000-strong counter-terrorism force on the streets in Mogadishu. “The elite force with unique uniforms armed with advanced weapons and their vehicles painted in a distinctive colour are assigned to cleaning up the city of Al-Shabaab members,” said the officer who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Siad said such a force was unlikely to counter the Islamists’ increasing terror attacks. “There is no single Islamist base in the city, but several secret bases that they use. Therefore, such deployment is unhelpful,” he said.

He said the government needed to concentrate efforts on gathering intelligence relating to these secret Al-Shabaab bases and the organisation’s leaders in the city.

Dahir said the government’s weak handling of the country’s internal security casts doubt on its ability to deliver its Six Pillar Policy – a policy framework that aims to secure progress in the areas of security, stability, justice, economic recovery, peace-building, and service delivery.

In a policy brief released in April, the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies (HIPS), the country’s first think tank, praised the government’s foreign policy and diplomatic successes.

Somalia has been gaining more visibility in the international arena, with Mohamud paying high-level visits to Washington, London, Ankara, Brussels, Cairo and several other countries to build his government’s image.

“However, there are disturbing signs of an imbalance between foreign policy priorities and domestic achievements,” the HIPS report said.

And until the issue of domestic security is resolved, Mogadishu’s occupants will remain vulnerable.

“The city is like an open shop that its owner has left,” Siad said.

Former Al-Shabaab combatants who handed themselves over to the Somali government. Defections by Al-Shabaab members were rising dramatically, with many more expected in the coming months. Credit: Abdurrahman Warsameh/IPS

By Muhyadin Ahmed Roble and Yusuf Ahmed
MOGADISHU/NAIROBI, May 8 2013 (IPS)

At 18, Farah Osman should not be a battle-hardened soldier. He should not have spent the last seven years fighting for the Somali Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab, or have been trained by foreign jihadists in handling and repairing weapons and improving his shooting skills.

But he has. And now he is also a deserter. The tall, slim teenager is one of about 800 former Al-Shabaab fighters staying at Mogadishu’s Sarendi Rehabilitation Centre. He hopes he will soon be integrated back into society and into the Somali Armed Forces.

Osman cannot recall the exact month he was recruited as a fighter by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab, but it was near the end of 2006, the year when United States-backed Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia to prop up the Somali Transitional Federal Government.

He was walking home from school on a steaming hot day when his former teacher from a local dugsi or religious school stopped him and took him to an Al-Shabaab base.

Osman sat panicked and alone under a tree in the base for a while, then the teacher returned with a group of men and bottles of mineral water and dates which they distributed to the young boys. Preachers then spoke for hours about the holy war, animosity with Ethiopia, and the importance of defending the country.

It was the year he turned 11.

“Heaven, money and prestige were convincing incentives. Their promises were irresistible,” says Osman.

He says everyone seemed ready to sacrifice their lives to defend their religion and their country.

His trainers were all Somalis, including Adan Hashi Farah “Eyrow”, a war veteran who founded Al-Shabaab, the armed wing of the Union of Islamic Courts. Farah was killed by a U.S. airstrike on his house in the town of Dhuusomareeb in central Somalia in May 2008.

“They offer a mobile phone and a monthly salary of 50 dollars,” Osman says. But he adds that this was not the only thing that pushed him to join the organisation. “I wanted to seem powerful and to be a respected man, and people (at that time) respected a man with a gun.”

For five years, Osman moved through the war-scarred buildings in Mogadishu, around the forests near the Kenya-Somalia borders and in southern Somalia on his mission to kill Somali and Ethiopian forces and African peacekeepers in the hope of going to heaven after death.

Then in October 2011, Al-Shabaab carried out a suicide attack on the education ministry in Mogadishu. More than 70 people were killed, most of them students checking their scholarship status.

“This is when I realised that Al-Shabaab was no longer fighting for religious or jihad reasons,” Osman tells IPS in a restaurant close to Villa Somalia, the country’s White House. “That is not what jihad is meant to represent.”

Osman is not the first or last Al-Shabaab fighter to desert the organisation. Hundreds of fighters across southern Somalia have turned in their guns and surrendered since 2010, when the government offered them amnesty, protection and a better future.

With Al-Shabaab under financial strain because of multiple frontlines and the loss of strategic towns in the country, many more fighters are expected to turn themselves in to the government, which has offered former fighters accommodation and job opportunities.

On one single day in September 2012, in the town of Jowhar, some 80 km from Mogadishu, 250 Al-Shabaab fighters became the largest number to surrender in a single day to Somali forces and the African Union Mission in Somalia.

Mogadishu intelligence chief Khalif Ahmed Ereg told reporters at a press conference in February that defections by Al-Shabaab members were rising dramatically, with many more expected in the coming months. However, the country’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) first investigates defectors before allowing them to join rehabilitation programmes.

Critics have raised concerns about the vetting process for defectors, claiming that many of them still have close ties to the extremist organisation.

Ibrahim Sheikh Hassan, an analyst and former professor of political science at Mogadishu’s pre-war Strategy College, tells IPS that NISA’s screening process is weak and insufficient and that Al-Shabaab are taking advantage to carry out a “planned infiltration” of the government’s security forces.

“They offer some accurate information to make their ‘sham’ defections appear genuine while planning destruction operations within the government,” Hassan adds.

It is a claim that NISA denies, but many of the recent killings, including a bomb blast and suicide attacks in the capital, have been blamed on sham defectors.

In January, an Al-Shabaab member who claimed to have defected from the group tried to kill the prime minister in a suicide bombing at the presidential palace. One government soldier was killed and several others were wounded.

“The agency should come up with another strategy of using the defectors as an asset without officially incorporating them into the agency. Their long-term effect should be a matter of concern.”

The Sarendi Rehabilitation Centre in Mogadishu, where Osman resides, is currently the only one of its kind in the country. But speaking to the national assembly in March, Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdoon said his government planned to open 10 centres to accommodate and rehabilitate Al-Shabaab deserters and soldiers captured in the war.

An official from the government’s rehabilitation programme, who asked to be referred to only as Ahmed, told IPS that there were currently another 800 Al-Shabaab defectors in southern and central regions of Somalia.

Ahmed told IPS the interior ministry was planning to open other rehabilitation centres in south and central Somalia – in Kismayo, Balad Weyne, Baido, Garbaharey, Jowhar, Marka and Guriceel – to accommodate the defectors.

The Sarendi Centre, which opened in March 2012, is run by Somalia’s interior and national security ministry and financially supported by Norway’s foreign ministry. It provides skills training, including football, driving and fishing lessons, and also teaches technical skills.

“Everyone is taught what he has an interest in,” says Osman.

But his interests remain centred on war. He wants to finish his mission of killing the “bad guys” – but as a soldier wearing a government uniform.