Deadly car bomb rocks Somali capital

At least eight people have been killed by a car bomb claimed by al-Shabab in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, police have said.

Monday's attack targeted Khalif Ahmed Ilig, the Mogadishu security chief, in one of the bloodiest assaults in the war-ravaged capital in recent months.

"We've counted at least eight dead so far. It was a car bomb attack near the National Theatre," said police official Mohamed Duale.

Al Jazeera's Peter Greste confirmed local sources had told him the target was the intelligence chief of the district controlling Mogadishu.

Quoting local sources, our correspondent said "at least six or seven - possibly eight - people have died in this explosion".

Hassan Salad, who witnessed the attack, said: "Many have been killed, some of them were in a minibus that was hit by the blast. This is a disaster, there is smoke and dead bodies thrown all around."

Fighters' threat

The anti-government fighters have vowed to topple President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who took office last year after being chosen by the country's new parliament.

While al-Shabab in recent months has been on the back foot in Somalia, having lost a string of key towns to a 17,000-strong African Union force fighting alongside Somali soldiers, the group remains a potent threat.

Large rural areas remain under its control and the group's fighters have carried out a series of guerrilla attacks in areas supposed to be under government control.

On Sunday al-Shabab retook the southern town of Hudur - the capital of Bakool region - after Ethiopian troops pulled out of the town.

The recapture of Hudur marks a sharp turnaround for al-Shabab as the first territorial victory for several months.
Mogadishu has been rocked by several small attacks - including both car bombs and suicide attackers - in recent months.

The last suicide attack in Mogadishu in September last year killed 18 people in a restaurant. 

Somalia forms new govt, woman named foreign minister: official

Somali Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon Said on Sunday announced the members of his new government, noting that a woman has been named as foreign minister for the first time in the country’s history.

“After long discussions and consultations, I have named my cabinet which consists of only ten members. Among them is a female foreign affairs minister for the first time in Somali history,” the prime minister said.

The new foreign minister, Fowsiyo Yusuf Haji Adan, hails from the self-declared independent state of Somaliland and lived for a long time in Britain. 

“My nomination as the foreign minister is historic for the Somali country and particularly for the women of Somalia, it turns a new page for the political situation of our country and will lead to success and prosperity,” she said.

Somalia has been in political chaos and deprived of a central government since the fall of President Siad Barre in 1991.

The new administration brings eight years of transitional rule by the corruption riddled and Western-backed government to an end.

Said himself was appointed in October.

His new cabinet will now have to be approved by the Somali parliament.

AFTER KENYAN ATTACK, SOMALI MILITANTS ABANDON CITY

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Al-Shabab rebels pulled out of a key port city in southern Somalia, the group said Saturday, a day after Kenyan troops invaded and marched toward the city center and seaside port that long served as the militants' key source of funding, officials said.

Residents in Kismayo said they woke to find police and government headquarters abandoned by the militants, sparking a looting spree of the government and police headquarters.

"They withdrew from here last night. The town is not under anyone's control now," Mohamed Hassan, a resident, said. "People feel some relief now. We hope no more fighting will take place."

The withdrawal came about 24 hours after Kenyan forces made a beach landing and as inland troops from Somalia and Kenya moved toward the port city from the west.

"Looting and chaos is going on here. Thugs are taking advantage of the vacuum," Maryan Hussein, another resident, said. "The abandoned houses are being ransacked and the streets are occupied by people carrying belongings."

Col. Cyrus Oguna, a spokesman for the Kenyan military, said five al-Shabab fighters were killed in a battle overnight. Two commanders were killed in the fighting, the military said.

He said the Kenyan forces are still verifying the reports that al-Shabab had pulled out of Kismayo. "For now we are treating it as a theory," he said.

The Kenyan troops landed by boats in the northern part of Kismayo on Friday and moved toward the port, he said. He said that al-Shabab lost "many, many militants, including some key commanders" during battles on Friday that involved helicopter gunships.

Al-Shabab used Twitter to announce the news it was leaving Kismayo.

"Last night, after more than 5 years the Islamic administration in Kismayo closed its office," the tweet said. "Kismayo shall be transformed from a peaceful city governed by Islamic Shari'ah into a battle-zone between Muslims" and invaders.

Al-Shabab found little popular support in Kismayo because of the conservative brand of Islam it tried to impose on residents. Al-Shabab carried out public executions, whippings and amputations as punishments, and enforced a conservative dress code.

Al-Shabab was forced out of Mogadishu in August 2011 and lost one of its major sources of funding when it could no longer tax businesses in the city's main market. Since then the taxes al-Shabab charged on goods coming into Kismayo's port were seen as its last major funding source.

As it no longer holds any major cities in Somalia, al-Shabab is expected to operate more as an insurgent force that carries out suicide and roadside bomb attacks.

Outsider Hassan Mohamud wins Somali presidential race

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a 56-year-old university lecturer chosen by lawmakers Monday as Somalia's new president, is something of an unknown quantity.

"We don't know much about him at all," a western diplomat told AFP as voting in the presidential poll drew to a close.
"He comes from Somali civil society and he has links to Al Islah, the equivalent of the Muslim brotherhood. It's only in the past two days that we've been hearing a lot about him," the diplomat said.
In academic and NGO circles Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the co-founder of the Somali Institute of Management and Administrative Development (SIMAD), is said to be a respected and influential figure who specialises in education.
In the streets of Mogadishu news of his election was met with residents firing into the air to express their joy.
SIMAD was set up to ensure that war-ravaged Somalia got its fair share of managers and administrators.
Born in 1955 in Jalalaqsi in the central Hiran region, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is, like the outgoing president Sharif Sheikh Ahmed whom he beat in Monday's poll, from the powerful Hawiye, the majority clan in Mogadishu.
According to the website of the political party he set up last year, the new president has two decades of experience behind him, both in education and in conflict resolution.
Few people if indeed any in the international community that has been backing the political transition in Somalia, guessed Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who studied at Somalia's national university before the civil war started in 1991 and then at Bhopal University in India, would win the top job.
He did stints with the UN children's agency UNICEF in the first years after the 1991 ouster of Mohamed Siad Barre.
In 2009 he co-authored a report for the UN Development Programme in which he underlined the importance of the huge but politically fragmented Somali diaspora, arguing that it should play a more "systematic" role in peacebuiding in Somalia.
Unlike many Somali political figures, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is not part of the diaspora.
The new president has never served as a minister, nor, up until the past few days, as an MP. In his party's manifesto he said he wanted to "build a society free from the demons of clan politics, from fear and from internal conflicts."
Laura Hammond, a British academic who worked with SIMAD, said Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had managed to hold talks with the extremist Shebab, who, even after they chased other groups out of the areas they control, allowed SIMAD to remain.
"I think he will be a moderate," Hammond told AFP Monday evening, just before the official announcement of his election.
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud's party describes him as the architect of Somali civil society.
Others say it is too difficult to get an accurate idea of the new president and predict his political programme or form an idea of how capable he is of getting Somalia back on track.
"There are quite a lot of unknowns, starting with who is this new president who appeared from nowhere a few days ago and who has no political experience," the western diplomat told AFP.

SOMALIA LAWMAKERS SELECT NEW SPEAKER

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Somalia's parliament Tuesday elected former labor minister Mohamed Osman Jawari as the new speaker, a key step toward the election of a president and the country's transition from a failed state to a nation with an effective government.

The process to select Somalia's next government has been criticized for corruption and threats of violence, international observers say. Nonetheless, some praise it as a watershed moment in the Horn of Africa nation's road to peace and stability.

While Somalia has had transitional administrations since 2004, it has not had a functioning central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew a longtime dictator and turned on each other, plunging the impoverished nation into chaos.

The last day of the eight-year U.N.-backed transitional government was Aug. 20 and the U.N. wanted a new president in place by then. But political bickering, violent threats and seat-buying schemes delayed progress toward the selection and seating of 275 members of the new Parliament that will select a president.

Jawari was elected the speaker of Parliament on Tuesday by just 228 legislators.

A group of Somali elders has been tasked with selecting the full list of 275 parliamentarians, but the election of the speaker went ahead without the complete number.

Jawari was challenged by Ali Khalif Galaydh, who had been Somalia's prime minister in 2000-2001 but led in the first round of voting. Galaydh pulled out in the second round, saying he favored Jawari for the post and Jawari was then declared the winner.

The U.N. special representative for Somalia, Augustine Mahiga, called Tuesday's election of a speaker "a moment of progress and optimism" and "an important step on the road to restoring accountable and participatory governance."

He said that some 260 members of Parliament have either been sworn in or are pending imminent ratification, and he urged that the 15 remaining lawmakers be selected and seated quickly so the election of a new president can take place "within 10 days."

Mahiga said the election of deputy speakers of Parliament will take place in the immediate future.

"The new federal Parliament must be allowed to exercise its authority with independence, transparency and free from undue influence and coercion," he said in a statement.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council circulated Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the final months of the transitional government were "fraught with setbacks" but also characterized by formidable Somali and international efforts to establish "a more legitimate and representative government with new leadership and representative government with new leadership and institutions."

He said the election of the speaker, deputy speakers and a president "will offer Somalia a leadership with a new mandate to continue working on the peace process and the reconstruction of the country."

But Ban predicted "a rough and unpredictable road ahead" and expressed serious concern at reports of "corrupt practices and intimidation by those seeking to influence the political process."

The secretary-general warned that "establishing and maintaining stability and security in Somalia will not be easy."

"Many spoilers fear that an orderly society with established institutions of governance and rule of law will compromise their ill-gained privileges," he said.

Ban urged Somalis "to rise up to the challenge and, jointly with their leaders, start building a peaceful and prosperous country."

Somali president ‘very confident’ of new term

The head of Somalia’s corruption-riddled government said Monday he expects to be re-selected as president of the war-torn Horn of Africa nation when his current mandate expires next month.

“I am a strong candidate and I am very confident that I will win,” President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed told reporters.

Somalia’s Western-funded Transitional Federal Government (TFG) ends its mandate next month after years of infighting and minimal political progress.

Transitional institutions, including the presidency and the parliament, were set up in 2004 but must be replaced by permanent institutions by August 20.

Somali elders are due to designate members of a new parliament which will choose the new president by August 20.

Sharif, who faces competition for the presidency from parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Adan, was linked to alleged graft in a U.N. report leaked earlier this month that called for corrupt leaders to face Security Council sanctions.

Sharif called the allegations “absolutely false” and said that he was unconcerned about the possibility of U.N. sanctions.

“The U.N. will look at this and make their own conclusions, but for me my conscience is clear,” Sharif said.

Billed as the key to lifting anarchic Somalia out of two decades of civil war, the end of the transitional period comes at a time when regional forces have wrested a series of key strongholds from the Islamist Shebab insurgents.

Somalia has been without a stable central government since the ouster of former president Siad Barre in 1991.

Somali car bomb kills parliamentarian and wounds five others

A police commander says a remotely detonated car bomb blast in Somalia’s capital has killed a member of parliament.

Gen. Garad Nur Abdulle, a police commander, said the body of Mohamoud Ibrahim Garweyne was burned beyond recognition. Garweyene was previously the trade and industries minister in the Somali government.

Nor Abdi, a Somali police officer, originally said the explosives-ridden car prematurely exploded in front of a hotel, killing the driver of the car bomb. That account turned out to be wrong, according to The Associated Press.

Abdi said five civilians were wounded in the blast.

“The explosion was very heavy,” Hassan Muhidin, a witness, told AFP. “The front part of the car was totally destroyed and the severed dead body of the driver is still lying there.”

Some witnesses said the explosion could have been a bomb attached beneath the driver’s seat -- a tactic reportedly used previously by the al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab insurgents -- as the front of the vehicle was worst hit.

“My sister, who was selling tea near the scene of the explosion, was seriously injured,” said Farhiyo Ahmed, another witness. “I saw several other bleeding people who were injured.”

Such attacks are typically carried out by al-Shabaab, Somalia’s most dangerous militant group.

Security in Mogadishu has improved dramatically over the last year, after African Union and Somali troops kicked al-Shabaab out of the city last August.

AP Exclusive: How Somalia famine aid went astray

 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- A large amount of food sent by the U.N. to the Somali capital during last year's famine never reached the starving people it was intended for, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Some of the World Food Program supplies went to the black market, some to feed livestock. One warehouse full of rations was looted in its entirety by a Somali government official. And across the city, feeding sites handed out far less food than records indicate they should have.

The British government estimates between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in Somalia's famine, and the U.N. has requested $1.5 billion for Somalia this year, partly to prevent a return of famine.

The World Food Program provides much of Somalia's food aid, and the U.N. says donations of food and cash saved half a million lives in the second half of last year. In the chaos of a civil war, with the aid effort's own personnel at mortal risk merely for being associated with the West, orderly, corruption-free food distribution could never be guaranteed.

But AP's three-month investigation into sites providing hot meals to families in government-controlled Mogadishu reveals various shortcomings, some of which WFP says it is already addressing by changing procedures.

A critical problem was keeping track of supplies: WFP knew how much food was being shipped to the capital, but not how much was being cooked or how many people were showing up to eat it.

Barey Muse, a mother of three, illustrated the frustrations.

"My children are hungry but when I go here for food I must return empty-handed," she said last month, holding two large bowls outside a feeding site called Hodan.

The WFP had to design a flexible program so that families could use the nearest hot-meal center as they moved between neighborhoods to avoid fighting. The price of flexibility was less control over theft, officials acknowledge.

The AP, along with a network of seven Somali observers who for their safety cannot be identified, conducted more than 60 visits to 13 of the 21 sites where hot meals are prepared. From those visits, interviews with aid recipients and internal reports, it emerges that:

- Somali aid groups would cook and distribute at least 30 percent more food when expecting visits by journalists or WFP officials.

- Some food was trucked directly from an aid agency warehouse to the market to be sold for profit.

- WFP's independent monitors repeatedly sounded the alarm, saying relatives of Somali aid workers would receive large handouts while others went without. One of their reports spoke of supplies being fed to livestock.

- A Somali government official stole 74 metric tons of food, according to an internal WFP report obtained by AP.

Stefano Porretti, head of WFP's Somalia program, said feeding programs in Mogadishu were expanded rapidly in emergency conditions, and from October to January, WFP's independent monitoring was suspended.

"Changes to it (WFP procedures) are now being made," he said.

He said AP's research was done in that time frame, and that after AP's findings were shown to WFP, the U.N. body's new third-party monitor watched the sites closely for a week.

"The amount of food delivered is what is expected, and it is being cooked," Porretti said. "There is no diversion at the sites."

Somalia is perhaps the most dangerous country in the world for aid workers, who face kidnappings, suicide bombings and assassination. The hot meals program amounts to 8 percent of WFP operations in Somalia, and 17 of its staffers and partners, all Somalis, have been killed since 2008. Two were shot dead in December when they found a "ghost camp" which was said to have been set up to fool aid agencies into delivering food there.

Islamist insurgents from the group al-Shabab still held part of Mogadishu last July, when the U.N. announced that parts of Somalia were suffering from famine. The hunger crisis was blamed on a combination of drought, warfare and a refusal by the insurgents to grant some aid groups access to areas it controls.

By September, the U.N. said more than 100 children were dying every day. WFP was already working to protect its aid from thieves, partly by delivering hot meals that were difficult to resell and less likely to spark violent looting than large-scale distributions of dry rations. But while WFP knew how much food was being given to the hot meals program, it did not track how many people were receiving it.

When foreigners visit a WFP hot-meals site, the pots are always full and the centers teem with people. Once the visitors leave, things change, as the experience at a feeding center called Hodan illustrates.

During an official visit, Sorrdo, a local aid group acting for WFP, made 20 large pots of porridge for lunch. But a Somali woman with whom the AP kept in touch said that on ordinary days only nine to 13 pot loads were made. WFP said the Hodan site was feeding 7,000 people a day. But when the AP made an unannounced visit last month, a flustered supervisor said only 3,000 were being fed.

Another Somali woman, Halimo Mukhtar, said she sometimes saw supervisors at Hodan selling cart loads of supplies to traders to feed to livestock.

"Why do they say they give us food every day?" asked the mother of six, whose youngest child was strapped to her back. She had received nothing, she said, and her children would be hungry that night unless she went begging.

"The food we share between six people is not even enough for two," she said. "They sell our food to people to feed animals."

Another site, Wadajir, sits less than 200 yards (meters) from the airport base where WFP's international staff stay, and bustles with hundreds of people during official WFP visits. But when the AP visited the site run by Jumbo Peace and Development Organization last month, it was nearly deserted. Somali aid workers there appeared caught off guard. Two workers contradicted each other about how many people were being fed there, claimed a metal pot that could only hold about one bag of food held three bags, and that people usually came at 5 p.m. to be fed.

The site had closed at 1:30 p.m. on the previous day.

An AP translator overheard a worker named Sharif on a frantic phone call to his superior.

"Have they taken pictures?" the manager asked.

"No, no, we stopped them," said the worker, glancing over nervously as a journalist snapped photos of the almost empty site.

Keep the journalists outside and stop them from taking photos, the manager yelled; he was coming right over.

At another site an observer who tried to take pictures for the AP was immediately ejected, and staff insisted he delete the images. At some sites, an observer reported, cooked food was sold to livestock traders, sometimes directly by staff, and other times by recipients.

Many of the AP witness observations are corroborated in reports by Pbi2, the company that previously carried out independent monitoring for WFP.

A July report obtained by the AP said that at several sites run by Saacid, a Somali aid agency, "you will see good-looking beneficiaries ... who give the food to their animals and they are the ones who get served first and they are relatives of management."

"They load donkey carts of cooked food each day because they receive extra ratios and even sometimes they come back several times while they know that others don't get their ratio," the report said.

Tony Burns, Saacid director of operations, said it was "impossible" for cart loads of food to be carried off, though he acknowledged a small amount may have been used as animal feed. He said that once food was given away no one could control what became of it and that the problem has "never risen to serious levels."

Saacid is the biggest Somali aid agency in the capital. Until this month, it ran 16 out of 21 of WFP's hot-meal centers for families in partnership with the Danish Refugee Council. Saacid says it left the program because it was "inefficient."

One Pbi2 report alleges that Saacid brought extra people from another center to bump up the numbers when a WFP delegation visited the Howl-Wadaag center in July. Burns denied such an event ever happened. In Bondere, also run by Saacid, some people got 10 times their ration and others got nothing, the report said. Burns said some favoritism takes place in the lines and the group cannot curb it.

Saacid says that due to complex clan politics, visitors cannot visit sites unannounced. The AP, each time it tried a surprise visit, was quickly told to leave, and staff declined to give any information.

Pbi2's contract was not renewed in early October for reasons that neither it nor WFP would disclose. The company declined an interview.Following an August AP report about aid theft, when a journalist photographed convoys of trucks unloading food aid at the market, WFP assigned two investigators to look at the issue of food diversion. They have not yet issued a report.

The Somali government fired and jailed two district commissioners, one of whom was accused of looting the 74 tons of food from the warehouse. Both were later pardoned and freed.

Some critics of the overall aid effort go so far as to claim that it does more harm than good, because the influx of food and the associated looting feed Somalia's black-market war economy. The powerful in Somali society have little incentive to stop the suffering that brings in the aid - or to stop the violence that prevents it being monitored, said Linda Polman, author of "War Games," one of a growing number of books critical of aid dispensation in combat zones.

"The solutions are not easy," said Polman. "Aid organizations have a problem. It is difficult for them to be honest (about theft) because they will be punished. Donations will go down and donor governments will be angry. So it stays a well-kept secret," she said. "To change this you would have to change the whole aid system."

Porretti said that WFP did its best to keep donors updated about the risks of working in Somalia.

"Donor governments are updated regularly on the challenges we face working in complex and insecure places like Somalia," he said. "They are aware that WFP has to weigh these risks carefully against the danger that lives may be lost if we stop providing life-saving food assistance to vulnerable women and children in places like Mogadishu."

Leaders gather in London for Somalia talks

World leaders are meeting with members of the Somali government to co-ordinate efforts against piracy, poverty and famine, and to discuss the country's civil war.

Forty countries are represented at Thursday's conference in London, and attendees include Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.

Other participants at the conference include representatives from the European Union, the African Union and the Arab League, as well as the head of the breakaway Somaliland region.

Opening the meeting, David Cameron, the British prime minister, said that Somalia's problems affected the entire world.

"If the rest of us just sit back and look on, we will pay a price for doing so. So as an international community, it is in all our interests to try and help the Somali people address these problems," he said.

Al-Shabab, a group of fighters who are fighting the Somali government, are not represented at the conference, and Abu Omar Abudurehman, an Al-Shabab commander, told Al Jazeera that if the conference results in "unwanted interference in Somalia" then it will lead to "an ugly turn of events".

Clinton said that Somalia was at a "critical" moment, and that international community must step in to support the establishment of a stable central government, beyond its current transitional authority.

Gatherings similar to Thursday's meeting in the past 20 years have resulted in many foreign commitments of aid, but in little progress on the ground, sceptics say. Cameron referred to past engagement as "sporadic and half-hearted".

Britain, the country organising the conference, says the aim of the event is to galvanise policymakers' attention and to better co-ordinate a sometimes disjointed international response to Somalia's many challenges.

The conference will not be examining the clan-based politics which affect several aspects of Somali life and play a role in everything from business and piracy to the distribution of humanitarian aid.

Nevertheless, some analysts say that Somalis are expecting real progress to be made during the talks in London.

Get involved in the conversation on Somalia's crises  on AJE's special Somalia Speaks page

Expectations 'huge'

"The expectations that Somalis have are huge," Jabril Ibrahim Abdulle, a Mogadishu-based civic activist with the
Somalia Center for Research and Dialogue thinktank told Reuters.

"You have so many external actors driving different agendas that it would be a success to have a unified stance. Above all we need implementation of what's agreed, as disappointed hopes will only bring more radicalisation and hostility."

Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, the prime minister of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG), insisted on the eve of the conference that his country was "moving into an era of peace, stability and normalcy".

"The focus of the meeting will very much be on security issues, piracy, recent famine, but the crucial point of the conference is what is going to come next. After the end of the TFG's mandate in August. That is important because this country has not had a functioning government in decades, and without it there will be no progress here at all," reported Al Jazeera's Nazanine Moshiri from Mogadishu.

Clinton said that she would not back the extension of the TFG's mandate beyond August.

History of violence

Somalia collapsed into civil war between rival warlords, clans and factions after Siad Barre, the country's former military dictator, was overthrown in 1991. Up to a million people have been killed since then, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Moses Wetangula, foreign minister of neighbouring Kenya, told Reuters he wanted to see "a renewed and reinvigoratedCurrently, the weak Western-backed TFG, which controls only a limited area, is fighting a revolt by fighters belonging to the al-Shabab group. Al-Shabab recently announced that it was merging with al-Qaeda, and various countries' intelligence agencies say it harbours fighters who could be a threat to their nations.

international commitment to Somalia".

"We hope it's not going to be the usual talking shop where we make flowery speeches and get clapped and go away without caring whether it will be followed up or not," he said. 

Kenya deployed troops across the border with Somalia last year, aiming to target al-Shabab fighters, who were attacking Kenyan targets.

Somalia's TFG got a boost on the eve of the London conference when the UN Security Council voted to increase an African Union peacekeeping force by nearly half, seeking to press home gains made in a military offensive against al-Shabab.

The resolution increased the AMISOM force to 17,731 troops, from 12,000.

The UK Foreign Office said Thursday's meeting could build on "this good news, setting out a comprehensive international approach to Somalia covering politics, development, security, as well as our work to combat terrorism and piracy."

Ongoing offensive

The military offensive against the rebels is ongoing, and on Wednesday, Ethiopian and Somali forces captured the al-Shabab stronghold of Baidoa in the south, the country's prime minister said.

The TFG's mandate ends in August, by which time it is to have enacted a new basic constitution and held an election.

Peter Pham, an expert on Somalia with the Atlantic Council, said that similar conferences in the past had pretended that "Somalia is still a state when it has long ceased to be one".

"The only result this has produced is to incentivise the rent-seeking behaviour and corruption of so-called officials incapable of restoring a modicum of security and governance ... What is needed is a 'bottom-up' approach."

Al-Shabab, meanwhile, has rejected the conference.

"Somalia is a country blighted by all these years of foreign interventions and the London Conference would simply be another futile attempt to brush up the impotency surrounding the corrupt TFG," said Abudurehman.

"The London Conference is simply one of the many conferences held by the so-called international community, sort of to bring about an illusory stability to a country that's already under the governance of Islamic Sharia. And also an attempt ... to carve up Somalia and plunder its resources."

British PM says Somalia should be enjoying its own Arab Spring

Somalia should be enjoying an Arab Spring of its own but its al-Shabaab insurgents are fomenting jihad both in and out of the country, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday.

Speaking on the eve of an international conference on Somalia being held in London, Cameron said the terror threat emanating from the Horn of Africa country “if we are not careful, could get worse.”

World powers gather in London on Thursday for the conference, with recent glimmers of hope overshadowed by a litany of woes including al-Qaeda-linked militants, piracy and famine.

“Al-Shabaab has just taken the step of linking itself specifically with al-Qaeda: that is a desperately backward step,” Cameron told the BBC’s Somali service.

“Clearly there are young people who take up arms in Somalia. We need to say to those people, ‘don’t do that, give up that path.’ You are joining an organization that is now an international terrorist organization.

“Instead, let us give this country and its young people the hope of a job and a voice.”

“We could see it all across north Africa, the prospects of an Arab Spring, where people actually start to have more of a say in their country and how it’s run, and that should be the case in Somalia as well as in the Arab world.”

A British fighter with Al-Shabaab was killed last month during a drone attack in the capital Mogadishu. The Royal United Services Institute think-tank estimates that around 50 Britons are among their ranks.

Speaking of the danger posed by al-Shabaab, Cameron said: “The security threat is real; it is substantial.”

Al-Shabaab “encourages violent jihad not just in Somalia but also outside Somalia.”

“And there is a very real danger of young British Somalis having their minds poisoned by this organization. So there is a terrorist threat that is current today, and if we are not careful, could get worse.”

Meanwhile Oxfam, the British-based aid and development agency, called on the conference participants to meet immediate needs rather than focusing on anti-terror concerns.

In its report entitled “A Shift in Focus -- Putting the Interests of Somali People First,” the non-governmental organization said state-building and military interventions had been exacerbating the country’s humanitarian crisis.

“It is time for a new vision of engagement that meets Somalis’ immediate and future needs, while providing the space for a negotiated peace process that puts Somalia on the road to recovery,” said Oxfam chief executive Barbara Stocking.

“Those attending the London Somalia conference must seize this opportunity and help start the process to address the causes of the conflict in Somalia and put the interests and aspirations of the Somali people center stage.”

al-Zawahiri says Somali militant group joins al-Qaeda ranks

Somalia’s militant group al-Shabaab have joined ranks with al-Qaeda, the terror network’s chief Ayman al-Zawahiri announced in a video message posted on jihadist forums on Thursday.

“Today, I have glad tidings for the Muslim ummah (nation) that will please the believers and disturb the disbelievers, which is the joining of the al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement in Somalia to Qaedat al-Jihad to support the jihadi unity against the Zionist-Crusader campaign and their assistants amongst the treacherous agent rulers,” said a bespectacled Zawahri in the video

“The jihadist movement is with the grace of Allah, growing and spreading within its Muslim nation despite facing the fiercest crusade campaign in history by the West,” said Zawahiri in the video released by al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab.

The video also featured al-Shabaab’s leader Ahmed Abdi Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubair. He addressed Zawahiri, saying: “We will move along with you as faithful soldiers.”

“In the name of my mujahedeen brothers, leaders and soldiers... I pledge obedience,” Zubair said.

“Lead us on the road of jihad and martyrdom, in the footsteps that our martyr Osama bin Laden had drawn for us,” he added, referring to al-Qaeda’s former leader who was killed last year in a covert U.S. raid on his hide-out in Pakistan.

“Our brothers in the al-Shabaab al-Mujahedeen, were the rock... that stood in the face of the joint American-Ethiopian-Kenyan-crusade attack on Islam and Muslims in Somalia,” said Zawahiri.

Links between al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab have in the past been mainly ideological. While counter-terrorism experts say al-Shabaab has received advice and training from some members of the transnational network, it has tended to see itself more as an ally of al-Qaeda than a direct outpost of the core organization.

Security analysts say the move could be a public relations gambit by an al-Qaeda leadership severely weakened by drone strikes in its Pakistan mountain bastions and its failure to carry out a major successful attack in the West since 2005.

“Al-Qaeda needs to project power and influence, particularly given its own operational impotence. A merger with al-Shabaab gives it the means to do so and it is a low risk, resource cheap solution for al-Qaeda’s central leadership,” Australian al-Qaeda scholar Leah Farrall told Reuters.

“It stamps Zawahiri’s authority on al-Qaeda and allows him to reinforce al-Qaeda’s preeminence at a time when it has been waning. Al-Shabaab’s acceptance under the al-Qaeda umbrella probably came with permission from Zawahiri for the group to launch external operations against the West,” he added.

A new wave of recruitment in the Somali group could also be inspired by al-Shabaab’s new association with al-Qaeda.

Al-Shabaab is fighting the Western-backed government in Somalia, a country which descended into chaos in 1991 after dictator Siad Barre was overthrown.

Zawahiri urged the al-Shabaab to treat Somalis with “leniency” and “humility” and to help them “solve their problems and fulfill their demands, especially those in need such as widows, orphans, the ill, the elderly and the poor” and to “spread justice.”

He also appealed to the Islamist group “not to forget their imprisoned brothers and sisters held in the jails of the corrupt and oppressive crusaders and to capture crusaders and Zionists wherever they can to exchange them with Muslim prisoners.”

On Jan. 24, an al-Shabaab suicide bomber blew himself at an Ethiopian army base in the central Somali town of Beledweyne.

Hardline al-Shabaab officials said 33 Ethiopians were killed in the blast in Beledweyne, a town about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Ethiopian border, but the claims could not be verified.

Somalis flee famine to find hunger, sickness in camps

When Somali refugee Madina Ali escaped harsh drought and famine in Somalia, she hoped to find a better life in Ethiopia’s Dolo Ado camp.

But her son’s health has deteriorated since arriving over two months ago, and she is worried it will only get worse.

“Since we came here, he keeps getting sick every three days,” she said, cradling her frail nine-year old son, Ibrahim Abdirahman.

“When he falls sick he starts vomiting, and then he gets diarrhea. He doesn’t eat properly, and in this place there is no milk, there is no sugar,” she added.

Aid workers say malnutrition rates among children under five at the Dolo Ado camp are alarming.

“Malnutrition rates are still very high ─ this is still an emergency situation,” said Voitek Asztabski, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in the camp.

“It’s not over, and it could continue for several months before we reach the control level,” Asztabski added.

Over 50 percent of children in Dolo Ado’s Hilaweyn camp and nearly half of all children in Kobe camp are suffering from malnutrition, according to a preliminary health survey from the United Nations refugee agency.

The World Health Organization says conditions are “critical” when the rate is above 15 percent.

Severe drought, famine and conflict forced 300,000 people to flee Somalia this year, according to U.N. figures.

Many have streamed into Ethiopia, which continues to receive hundreds of refugees every day as fighting rages between al-Qaeada-linked Shabaab insurgents, government troops and regional armies.

Poor sanitation and hygiene, overcrowding and meager food intake mean malnutrition rates have not improved since the height of the influx of new refugees in July, when up to 2,000 were arriving every day.

Conditions are worse in the transit center, where some refugees are forced to stay for months because construction of a new camp is delayed.

“The living conditions are appalling, there is not enough shelter, there is not enough food, there is not enough water,” Asztabski said.

Some refugees are selling their basic food rations for other goods they need, or to swap wheat provided for the rice or pasta many prefer.

“The refugees are selling part of their food to have access to other commodities, to other goods, things like clothes and types of foods that they want,” said Ted Chaiban, U.N. children’s agency country director.

The bustling markets in the camp are lined with stalls offering sacks of wheat and rice, as well as packs of a special food supplement for children.

Fartoum Iman Ibrahim admits she sells part of her food ration, which earns her about 12 dollars per week.

“If I get a sack of wheat, I sell half of it. I buy clothes, shoes and milk,” she said, standing outside her tent under the scorching midday sun.

She said her child would rather drink milk than eat wheat and said she would rather get spaghetti, rice, sugar and oil.

“The children are suffering from lack of milk,” she added, holding her one-year old son.

U.N. agencies visited the camp this month to try to combat the high malnutrition rates, but World Food Program country director Abdou Dieng admitted that even if different foods are introduced, those too might be sold.

“We expect that if we give them rice, then we may find the rice in the market,” Dieng said.

However, despite poor nutrition levels, mortality rates have plummeted in recent months.

Deaths among children were above emergency levels in July, with 4 deaths per 10,000 people, but have decreased to below one, according to MSF.

UNICEF hopes to increase health services including reaching out to “individual households so that they are encouraged to come in when their child is ill,” said Chaiban.

Somali refugee Fatuma Abdille said she needs better access to medicine for her youngest son, who has diarrhoea and a fever.

“My son has been sick for the last three months,” said Abdille, who arrived five months ago. She said her son became ill only after they settled in Dolo Ado.

“There is nothing apart from the food rations that we get,” she added.

Somali PM accuses UN of holding back aid

The UN is preventing aid from reaching victims of Somalia's drought, the country's  prime minister has said.

Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said on Thursday the world body was hoarding supplies and failing to distribute them to those in need.

The comments came as the UN World Food Programme airlifted tonnes of emergency supplies to Mogadishu, the capital, to feed malnourished children in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa nation.

Amir Mahmoud Abdallah, the chief operating officer of the World Food Programme, said the food in the warehouse "looks like a lot but actually it's not a lot of food".

"The food in the warehouse would actually feed a million people for one day," he told Al Jazeera from Rome, Italy.

"To somebody who is just sort of maybe not as familiar with food distribution, it may look like stockpiling ... There have been some unfortunate media portrayals of this as if it was stockpiling.

"I can assure you there would be no purpose for stockpiling in a situation like this.

"The World Food Programme takes this function very, very seriously. We are basically the life line and food that we have in our supplies we'll get to people wherever we can."

Challiss McDonough, a WFP spokeswoman, said:"We are distributing food in Mogadishu, we are doing it everyday, we are feeding over 300,000 people in Mogadishu including feeding centers around the city."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/07/201172810315207360.html