Ethiopia’s Deal With Somaliland Upends Regional Dynamics, Risking Strife Across The Horn Of Africa

BY ALAMEYAHU WELDEMARIAM

PH.D FELLOW

CENTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

INDIANA UNIVERSITY

The Horn of Africa ushered in the new year with news of a deal that would ensure that diplomatic relations in the region got off to a bumpy start in 2024. Ethiopia, it was announced on Jan. 1, had signed a memorandum of understanding with the breakaway region of Somaliland, opening the door to an agreement to exchange a stake in flagship carrier Ethiopian Airlines for access to the Gulf of Aden.

Such transactions of economic reciprocity are generally routine, as scholars of international relations and law like myself are aware.

But this deal has another element. It intertwined sea access with Ethiopia’s formal recognition of Somaliland – and this has sparked quite a diplomatic stir. Ethiopia’s neighbor Somalia has demanded that the agreement be immediately retracted. In Somaliland itself, the deal has been greeted by protest and the defense minister’s resignation.

Prior to the memorandum of understanding with Somaliland, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had signaled his intention to gain Red Sea access for his landlocked country – a bid observers warned could have a destabilizing effect in the region.

Ethiopia is reeling from an intense and bloody two-year war within its own borders, coupled with ongoing strife among different ethnic groups. As a result of the violence, Ethiopia is currently experiencing massive internal displacement and famine.

Geopolitical tensions created by the pact with Somaliland could serve to exacerbate Ethiopia’s problems – and that of the region. But despite the risk, both sides know they have much to gain.
Somaliland’s quest for recognition

Since declaring independence from Somalia in 1991, Somaliland has operated as a fully functional de facto state, boasting its own defined territory, population and government.

However, it still lacks the international recognition that would allow Somaliland full participation in the global community, such as membership in the United Nations. A formal nod would also unlock access to protections under international law and economic opportunities.

The agreement with Ethiopia would be a step toward providing that critical missing link.

Recognition of a new state under international law requires established nations to acknowledge the sovereignty and legitimacy of the territory. This can be achieved through either expressed or implicit means.

Expressed recognition takes the form of an official unequivocal declaration. In contrast, implicit recognition can emerge through bilateral treaties, alliances or diplomatic exchanges – essentially signaling acceptance of a country without making an official declaration of recognition. Implicit recognition often provides a strategic advantage, safeguarding a country’s interest without triggering regional discord.

Mastering the art of crafting treaties with implicit acknowledgments can be crucial to avoid overcommitting a country diplomatically. Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was expected by the international community to navigate this diplomatic tightrope, balancing a degree of acknowledgment of Somaliland with restraint. Doing so might avoid rupturing relations with Somalia and imperiling regional security dynamics.

An ambiguous deal

The specific details of the memorandum of understanding remain unpublished. So far, any insights gleaned stem mainly from a joint press conference held by Ethiopia’s and Somaliland’s two leaders in Addis Ababa and subsequent press releases.

Nuanced distinctions in each party’s priorities have emerged: Somaliland places emphasis on explicit recognition; Ethiopia directs its focus toward regional integration.

And some larger discrepancies in messaging pop out when you look closer. Both sides point to economic and security benefits. But Ethiopia’s Jan. 3 statement suggests only an “in-depth assessment” of the request for state recognition. This seems at odds with Somaliland’s claim of guaranteed recognition in exchange for sea access.

But because the actual text of the agreement isn’t publicly available, its implications remain shrouded in secrecy – further adding to the unease in the region over the deal.

Rising regional tensions

In the days since the memorandum of understanding was inked, tensions have deepened between Somalia and both Ethiopia and Somaliland. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud issued a stern warning against the agreement and threatened to defend Somalia through all available means.

He urged Somali civilians to stand united against potential incursions and cautioned Ethiopia against escalating the situation into armed conflict.

Mohamud has also been seeking support from allies. Already in 2024, he has traveled to Eritrea for security talks aimed at strengthening bilateral ties and addressing regional and international concerns. He also received an invitation from Egypt in an apparent show of support.

Ethiopia’s precarious situation

In a further sign of growing tensions, Ethiopia’s army chief of staff has engaged in talks with his Somaliland counterpart to discuss military cooperation.

Considering Ethiopia’s delicate situation with domestic secessionist forces, critics have been quick to note that Ethiopia may not be best placed to entertain the idea of recognizing Somaliland. Not only would it risk conflict with Somalia, doing so could also lead to the renewal of a breakaway push within Ethiopia itself.

Somaliland is situated to the south and east of Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State. The region is governed by the Somali branch of the Ethiopian Prosperity Party, whose legitimacy has long been contested by the Ogaden National Liberation Front, ONLF, a group demanding autonomy for Somalis in Ethiopia.

Until a peace agreement in October 2018, the ONLF had been engaged in a decades-long secessionist war with the Ethiopian government. More recently, in 2020, a push for independence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia resulted in a two-year armed conflict that displaced millions of people and forced hundreds of thousands into famine.

Meanwhile, the Amhara – an indigenous ethnic group in Ethiopia – have been resisting the federal government’s attempt to disarm their militia and regional special forces. And the state of Oromia also saw calls for independence before an Oromo prime minister, Abiy, was elected by parliament in 2018.

A renewed push for autonomy from Ethiopia’s Somali community could serve to reignite any number of these simmering internal conflicts and Somali irredentism.

Uneasy international response

Global attention to growing tensions in the Horn of Africa has been mounting: The U.S. has expressed serious concern, and the African Union has urged Ethiopia and Somalia to de-escalate the tensions in the name of regional peace.

Similar statements have come from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development — an African trade bloc — the European Union and the Arab League.
Widespread protests

Djibouti, which neighbors Somaliland to the northwest, has called for dialogue and a diplomatic solution.

But such calls – from both international and regional players – have done little to calm tensions.

In the days since the deal was announced, tens of thousands Somalis have protested in the streets of Mogadishu, calling the move an aggression against the nation’s sovereignty.

And while residents of both Somaliland and Ethiopia have largely supported the memorandum – hopeful in turn that it would lead to international recognition and economic uplift – not everyone is behind the deal. In Somaliland, Defense Minister Abdiqani Mohamud Ateye resigned on Jan. 8, stating that the handing over of access to the coast to Ethiopia represented a threat to Somaliland’s sovereignty.

It would seem that the memorandum of understanding has served to reopen old wounds across the region.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

United Nations Suspends Pullout Of African Union Troops From Somalia As Battles With Militants Rage

Djiboutian forces walk inline during their arrival in Mogadishu, Somalia, on December 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh,File)

BY EMMANUEL IGUNZA

NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) — The United Nations Security Council on Thursday suspended for a period of three months the pullout of African Union troop from Somalia, where fighting rages with al-Qaida’s affiliate in East Africa.

The decision follows a request by the Horn of Africa nation for the forces to remain in the country to help in the fight against the al-Shabab extremists.

Somalia’s request was supported by the African Union, all countries that contribute soldiers to the force and the council, which agreed to delay the pullout of the 19,000-strong AU force for 90 days.
Last year in April, the council unanimously approved a new African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, known as ATMIS, to support the Somalis until their forces take full responsibility for the country’s security at the end of 2024. ATMIS replaced the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, which has been in the Horn of Africa nation for 15 years helping peacebuilding in Somalia.

However, the new force was to be withdrawn in phases, starting last June, when 2,000 soldiers left Somalia and handed over six forward operating bases to federal security forces. The second part of the pullout began in September in line with the U.N. resolution which anticipates the withdrawal to be completed by December 2024.

Somalia’s government last year launched a “total war” on the al-Qaida-linked terror group al-Shabab, which controls parts of rural central and southern Somalia. The group has for more than a decade carried out devastating attacks while exploiting clan divisions and extorting millions of dollars a year in its quest to impose an Islamic state.

The current offensive was sparked in part by local communities and militias driven to the brink by al-Shabab’s harsh taxation policies amid the country’s worst drought on record.

Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has made the fight against al-Shabab one of his key priorities since being elected in May last year. Federal troops backed by local militias, African Union Forces and U.S drone strikes, have helped the central government recover swaths of territory previously been held by the Islamic extremist group.

But al-Shabab continues to carry out attacks in Somalia, including in the capital of Mogadishu, and in neighboring countries like Kenya, where its fighters have targeted civilians and security officers along the border towns with Somalia.

‘They Are On The Run’: Somalia Leads Fight Against Al-Shabab

Residents and officials lead a demonstration supporting the government at Banadir stadium, Mogadishu, Thursday Jan. 12, 2023. The government rally encouraged an uprising against the al-Shabab group amid a month long military offensive. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh

BY OMAR FARUK

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (AP) — Enough was enough. For 13 years, extremists with al-Qaida’s East Africa affiliate had controlled Mohamud Adow’s village in central Somalia, imposing harsh ideology and arresting local teachers and traditional leaders.

Then, word came that Somali forces in a surprising national offensive had expelled the fighters from nearby villages.

A small group of residents sneaked out one night in August to meet with Somali troop commanders and invited them into their village of Rage-El. The 80-year-old Adow was among those taking up arms, joining a local militia fighting alongside Somali forces in rural battles with battered guns.

“The people were living in agony,” said Adow, one of several witnesses interviewed by The Associated Press.

In what is being called “total war” by the government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s that was elected in May, Adow and others across the Horn of Africa nation are being encouraged to stand up to the al-Shabab extremists who have long embedded in Somali society, exploiting clan divisions and extorting millions of dollars a year from businesses and farmers in their quest to impose an Islamic caliphate.

On Thursday, Somalia’s government announced a “people’s uprising” as it seeks to pressure al-Shabab from all angles, including financial ones.

It’s being described as the most significant offensive against the al-Shabab extremist group in more than a decade. And this time, Somali fighters are in the lead, backed by U.S. and African Union forces.

Al-Shabab’s thousands of fighters have held back the nation’s recovery from decades of conflict by carrying out brazen attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere. Over the years, countries from Turkey to China to those in the European Union have invested in military training and other counterterrorism support.

Last weekend, the U.S. made a small but symbolic donation of $9 million in heavy weapons and equipment to the Somali National Army, whose abilities have long been questioned as it prepares to take over the country’s security from an African Union multinational force by the end of next year.

“We cheer the success achieved by Somali security forces in their historic fight to liberate Somali communities suffering under al-Shabab,” U.S. Ambassador Larry Andre said.

Somalia’s government has claimed more than 1,200 militants have been killed since August, according to a database kept by International Crisis Group analyst Omar Mahmood. Such claims can’t be verified.

One key to the offensive’s progress is a population pushed to the brink by a historic drought. As animals and crops wither and die and millions of people go hungry, Somalis who flee al-Shabab-held communities have described the extremists’ harsh taxation demands.

“They are being rented out like houses; they are telling you that their animals are being taken away without permission,” said Gen. Abdirahman Mohamed Tuuryare, a former director of Somalia’s national intelligence agency who leads the offensive against al-Shabab in the Middle Shabelle region. “Even the child born tonight will be required to pay.”

Residents have also described al-Shabab forcing sons to become suicide bombers and killing people at will.

Tuuryare described a bloody battle last year over the Masjid Ali-Gadud community in which he estimated 200 al-Shabab fighters and “many” soldiers were killed. It took time to persuade wary residents to return to a community so tightly controlled that even Quranic schools were closed. Only centers for training bombers and fighters functioned.

After 15 years under al-Shabab indoctrination, Tuuryare said, residents found it hard to grasp that fellow Somalis had come to help them.

One resident, Ibrahim Hussein, was still adjusting. Al-Shabab fighters forcibly recruited teenage boys and forced women into marriage, he told The Associated Press, and people found guilty of adultery would be stoned to death or publicly flogged.

Still, security was good: “For instance, when a prayer is called, everyone goes toward the mosque without closing their properties. Nobody can touch them. If anyone is found stealing, he or she will face amputation of a limb or limbs,” Hussein said.

Winning over such communities, and holding them with effective administration, are major challenges to the Somali government’s goal of eliminating al-Shabab this year. Another is preventing the local militias working with Somali forces from amassing power in a country awash with weapons and turning into a new threat.

“Local forces shouldn’t fight among themselves, shouldn’t turn into thugs,” Tuuryare, the general, said, adding that the government supports training and local security positions for militia members.

“If all this goes wrong and happens to come back, it won’t be easy to reorganize,” Tuuryare said. He expressed his wish for more U.S. military support, including further drone strikes against al-Shabab, and a U.S. campaign at the U.N. Security Council to lift an arms embargo on Somalia for easier access to heavy weapons.

In an analysis for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, former Somali government security adviser Samira Gaid warned the offensive’s success could be fleeting if Somalia’s still-fragile government doesn’t focus on winning hearts and minds and address the clan rivalries al-Shabab has long used to its advantage.

“This is still a remarkable offensive as, for the first time, we see a citizen awakening that is supported by the federal government,” she told the AP. For years, Somalis have seen the fight against al-Shabab as led by outsiders like the African Union force or troops from neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya.

Now Kenya is increasing security along the border to find extremists on the run, and the United States this month announced million-dollar rewards for al-Shabab leaders accused of major attacks.

Under pressure, al-Shabab has lashed out, killing at least 120 people at a busy intersection in Mogadishu in October.

But for Somalis long separated from loved ones by the extremists, there is hope.

Hassan Ulux is a 60-year-old traditional elder who left his community of War-isse a decade ago and feared to return until it was recently taken from al-Shabab.

“Praise be to Allah,” he said, finally home. “Now they are on the run. Now we can talk about education and normalcy.”

___

Associated Press writer Cara Anna in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed.

UN: At least $1 Billion Needed To Avert Famine In Somalia

Maryan Madey, who fled the drought-stricken Lower Shabelle region, holds her malnourished daughter Deka Ali, 1, at a camp for the displaced on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Somalia Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. Millions of people in the Horn of Africa region are going hungry because of drought, and thousands have died, with Somalia especially hard hit because it sourced at least 90 percent of its grain from Ukraine and Russia before Russia invaded Ukraine. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

BY EDITH M. LEDERER

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. humanitarian chief predicted Tuesday that at least $1 billion will be needed urgently to avert famine in Somalia in the coming months and early next year when two more dry seasons are expected to compound the historic drought that has hit the Horn of Africa nation.

Martin Griffiths said in a video briefing from Somalia’s capital Mogadishu that a new report from an authoritative panel of independent experts says there will be a famine in Somalia between October and December “if we don’t manage to stave it off and avoid it as had been the case in 2016 and 2017.”

The undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs told U.N. correspondents that more than $1 billion in new funds is needed in addition to the U.N. appeal of about $1.4 billion. That appeal has been “very well-funded,” he said, thanks to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which announced a $476 million donation of humanitarian and development aid in July.

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network, created by USAID, said in a report Monday that famine is projected to emerge later this year in three areas in Somalia’s southeastern Bay region, including Baidoa without urgent humanitarian aid.

Up to 7.1 million people across Somalia need urgent assistance to treat and prevent acute malnutrition and reduce the number of ongoing hunger-related deaths, according to a recent analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification or IPC, used by the network to describe the severity of food insecurity.

The Horn of Africa region has seen four straight failed rainy seasons for the first time in over half a century, endangering an estimated 20 million people in one of the world’s most impoverished and turbulent regions.

Griffiths said meteorologists have predicted the likelihood of a fifth failed rainy season from October to December, and a sixth failed rainy season from January to March next year is also likely.

“This has never happened before in Somalia,” he said. “This is unprecedented.”

“We’ve been banging the drum and rattling the trees trying to get support internationally in terms of attention, prospects, and the possibilities and the horror of famine coming to the Horn of Africa -- here in Somalia maybe first, but Ethiopia and Kenya, probably they’re not far behind,” Griffiths said.

He said the U.N. World Food Program has recently been providing aid for up to 5.3 million Somalis, which is “a lot, but it’s going to get worse if famine comes.” He said 98% of the aid is given through cash distributions via telephones.

But many thousands are not getting help and hungry families in Somalia have been staggering for days or weeks through parched terrain in search of assistance.

Griffiths said a big challenge is to get aid to people before they move from their homes, to help avoid massive displacement.

Many Somalis raise livestock, which is key to their survival, but he said three million animals have died or been slaughtered because of the lack of rain.

“Continued drought, continued failure of rainy seasons, means that a generation’s way of life is under threat,” Griffiths said.

He said the international community needs to help Somalis find an alternative way of life and making a living, which will require development funding and funding to mitigate the impact of climate change.

Griffiths, a British diplomat, said the war in Ukraine has had an impact on humanitarian aid, with U.N. humanitarian appeals around the world receiving about 30% of the money needed on average.

“To those countries, which are traditionally very generous, my own included, and many others,” he said. “Please don’t forget Somalia. You didn’t in the past. You contributed wonderfully in the past. Please do so now.”

Al-Shabab Kills At Least 20, Burns Food Trucks In Somalia

Al-Shabab of Somalia

BY OMAR FARUK

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (AP) — Somali state media and residents say the extremist group al-Shabab killed at least 20 people and burned seven vehicles transporting food in the Hiran region Saturday morning, and the government’s drought envoy called it “devastating” for communities in the grip of a severe drought.

Residents said the attack was in retaliation for a local mobilization against the al-Qaida-affiliated group that holds significant parts of central and southern Somalia. The extremist group’s presence complicates an already challenging response to the drought that has killed thousands of people. Some areas are on the brink of famine.

Drought envoy Abdirahman Abdishakur noted that al-Shabab also had blown up wells for water in Hiran in recent days.

“The victims were drivers and passengers transporting food supplies from Beletweyne to Mahas and a total of seven trucks carrying food and vehicles used by the passengers were set ablaze,” resident Hassan Abdulle told The Associated Press by phone.

The attack came a day after government forces destroyed landmines that al-Shabab had planted on the busy road connecting Beletweyne and Mataban with the intent to target travelers.

Al-Shabab confirmed the attack and claimed to have killed 20 locally mobilized militia members.

The Somali government has condemned the “barbaric” attack and reiterated its support for local mobilization against the extremist group.

You Can’t Grow Food In This Country And Children Are Dying

Severe drought in Somalia. Image: ICRC

BY ALEC LUHN

DOLOW, SOMALIA (VICE) -- While all eyes are on the brutal war in Ukraine, twice as many children in Somalia have died during an intense drought – and few countries seem to care.

As the wails of emaciated babies filled an infant care ward in western Somalia, one bed was silent.

Staff pulled a grey blanket over Someye Isak, who had just died of hypoglycaemia arising from severe malnutrition. She was two years old. Her relatives buried her in the red sand and thorn bushes outside the aid camp they fled to after their crops dried up.

“I fear for the lives of my family,” her grandfather Isak Abdi told VICE World News. “There's another child who is sick now with malaria, typhoid and diarrhoea, and I don't have the funds to buy him medicine. I'm asking God to help us.”

The brutality of Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shocked the world, with at least 362 children among the civilians killed. Meanwhile, at least 730 children have died in nutrition centres in Somalia this year amid a record drought, according to UNICEF, and doctors say several times more have died at home or on the road. Thousands are suffering measles, acute watery diarrhoea and other illnesses typical of malnutrition.

People can't grow food, and it’s hard to buy as well. The war in Ukraine has driven up already high prices. Over 50 million in the Horn of Africa could go hungry by the end of the year.

But while Western countries have promised $100 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, the United Nations is struggling to raise $1.46 billion from them to keep people from starving in Somalia.

If the high-income nations responsible for the lion's share of carbon emissions don't invest to help low-income ones adapt to global warming with improvements like drought-resistant crops, children will continue to starve to death in climate disasters. That’s a point Somalia and others will try to make in November at Egypt’s COP27, the first-ever UN climate conference to be held in Africa.

“The least polluting countries are the ones that are bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Adam Abdelmoula, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia. “It makes absolute sense for the countries of the south… to see some sort of conversation that would enable them to implement climate adaptation measures that would make them just survive.”

Somalia has been here before, when a drought and famine killed 260,000 people in 2011-12. To stop it happening again, Barack Obama and other G8 leaders announced an initiative to encourage public-private investment in Africa’s agriculture and reduce its reliance on imported food.

The initiative fell short of its goals, though, and Somalia is now in the grip of an even worse drought after four failed rainy seasons in a row. Fields of sorghum and maize have withered in the dry heat. Although a nationwide famine hasn't yet been declared, 17 districts are at famine levels of hunger.

Dead goats and donkeys litter the ground in the parched countryside south of Dolow, bones poking through their desiccated skin. The clouds are tinged with red dust. Inside the thatched hut of herder Mohamed Omar Guuleed and his family, the wheat sack is empty, and the rice is almost gone, too.

“We call this a nightmare,” he said.

Even a half-litre bottle of cooking oil costs twice what it did a year ago at the dusty bazaar in Dolow. Global food prices that started going up during the pandemic reached record levels after Russia's invasion trapped 25 million tons of grain in Ukraine. Exports have started to trickle out again thanks to a shipping corridor agreement, including the first humanitarian grain shipment to the Horn of Africa, to Ethiopia via Djibouti, in August. But the number of ships would have to double to make a dent in the food crisis.

On top of this, al-Shabab, an Islamist insurgency affiliated with al-Qaeda, has been blocking humanitarian aid in the roughly 25 percent of the country it controls. Its fighters killed 21 people at a hotel in Mogadishu last weekend, the biggest attack since US special operations troops returned to the country in May.

A million people have fled to cities in search of food. At a Dolow aid camp, Bilaay Salaad Ibrahim, a blunt 65-year-old in a purple shawl, had just come more than a hundred miles from al-Shabab territory in a column of donkey carts with her two- and ten-year-old granddaughters. Her two other grandchildren had died of malnutrition after her sorghum crop failed and her livestock starved. Another newly arrived woman and child were drinking acacia thorns boiled in water.

“We were travelling to this area for 10 days. Up to now we haven't had any food to eat. I'm still in pain,” Bilaay said. “The reason why the children are crying is because of hunger… I don’t have anything to give them.”

Droughts in Somalia are becoming more frequent and intense. Sixteen of the past 25 spring rainy seasons have seen below-average precipitation, in part due to the warming of sea temperatures in the western Pacific Ocean, according to Chris Funk, head of the Climate Hazards Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Combined with periodic La Nina cooling in the eastern Pacific, this strengthens a circulation pattern in which warm, moist air rises and rains over Indonesia, then descends over Somalia to create a dry high-pressure system. There's a 70 percent chance this fall's rainy season will fail as well.

But while climate change sets the stage for catastrophe, “humanitarian disasters are made by humans,” Funk said.

“It's hard to get people to pay attention to sequential droughts,” he said. “There's a lot of inaction related to what's going on.”

While the US has donated more than $700 million, the UN's drought response plan to provide emergency food, water, medicine and cash transfers in Somalia is still hundreds of millions of dollars short. That forces international agencies to “take food from the hungry to feed the starving,” as World Food Program director David Beasley put it.

Preoccupied with the bloody war in Ukraine, major European donor countries like Germany have given only a fraction of the aid to Somalia that they gave last year, although the German foreign office said “further funding is being processed.” Italy, Somalia's former colonial ruler, has only donated about $500,000 to the response plan, according to the UN's financial tracking service, with €3 million approved for other emergency NGO work.

Abdirashid Omar Jambukila, project manager at Gedo Women Development Organisation in Dolow, has watched UN funding for his NGO dwindle. He compared Europe to an intensive care doctor who abandons an older patient, Somalia, to focus on a new patient, Ukraine.

“You have to continue supporting this one and find another support for the new patient,” he said.

Aid funding for climate disasters isn't charity.

Since the industrial revolution, North America and Europe have emitted an estimated 20 times more carbon dioxide than Africa, which is now heating up faster than the global average and suffering increasing droughts, floods, cyclones, wildfires and locust infestations. The most vulnerable continent, it's at the bottom of what David Wallace-Wells has called the "climate caste system." At least 700 people have died this year in unprecedented storms and flooding in Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Uganda.

High-income countries admitted they should be doing more to help low-income countries adapt to climate change way back in 2010, when they promised to give $100 billion a year to the newly created Green Climate Fund by 2020. They still haven't hit that target.

Somalia’s adaptation plan under the Paris climate accords requires $5.5 billion annually – almost five times more than all the humanitarian funding it’s been given this year.

African countries will demand more climate adaptation funding – and less red tape to obtain it – at the COP27 conference in Cairo, according to Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, Somalia's special envoy for drought response. Some in the global south want to go further and discuss compensation for climate change “loss and damage” at COP27, but wealthier nations have resisted making that a focus.

The US and Europe are being urged to invest more in long-term fixes. Expanding cash transfers via mobile phones could allow more people to remain on their farms rather than flee to aid camps. Drought-resistant crops, wells, dams and irrigation and vocational training could help prevent repeat disasters. And debt relief from international agencies and hedge funds could free up tens of billions for climate spending in Africa.

Otherwise, most of Somalia will become uninhabitable, Abdelmoula said, with average temperatures predicted to rise 3 to 4 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080.

“This is Einstein's definition of insanity,” he said. “We have been dumping resources in Somalia and other similar situations for decades, and we've been expecting different results… These countries need to be helped to do proper climate adaptation.”

When VICE News returned to the Dolow aid camp the next day, Bilaay had managed to cobble together a tent of rags and branches for herself and her granddaughters. They still hadn't been given any food aid, though.

“There is no one standing over me yelling or pointing a gun at me,” she said. “But I am hungry. And the children are crying for lack of food to eat.”

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Gunmen Storm Hotel In Somali Capital, Leave 20 Dead

Soldiers patrol outside the Hayat Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, Saturday Aug, 20, 2022. At least 10 people were killed in an attack by Islamic militants who stormed the hotel in Somalia's capital late Friday, police and eyewitnesses said. Several other people were injured and security forces rescued many others, including children, from the scene of the attack at Mogadishu's Hayat Hotel. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

BY OMAR FARUK

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (AP) — Islamic militants have stormed a hotel in Somalia’s capital, engaging in an hours-long exchange of fire with the security forces that left at least 20 people dead, according to police and witnesses.

In addition, at least 40 people were wounded in the late Friday night attack and security forces rescued many others, including children, from the scene at Mogadishu’s popular Hayat Hotel, they said Saturday.

The attack started with explosions outside the hotel before the gunmen entered the building.

Somali forces were still trying to end the siege of the hotel almost 24 hours after the attack started. Gunfire could still be heard Saturday evening as security forces tried to contain the last gunmen thought to be holed up on the hotel’s top floor.

The Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, which has ties with al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest of its frequent attempts to strike places visited by government officials. The attack on the hotel is the first major terror incident in Mogadishu since Somalia’s new leader, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, took over in May.

In a Twitter post, the U.S. Embassy in Somalia said it “strongly condemns” the attack on the Hayat.

“We extend condolences to the families of loved ones killed, wish a full recovery to the injured, & pledge continued support for #Somalia to hold murderers accountable & build when others destroy,” it said.

There was no immediate word on the identities of the victims, but many are believed to be civilians.

Mohamed Abdirahman, director of Mogadishu’s Madina Hospital, told the AP that 40 people were admitted there with wounds or injuries from the attack. While nine were sent home after getting treatment, five are in critical condition in the ICU, he said.

“We were having tea near the hotel lobby when we heard the first blast, followed by gunfire. I immediately rushed toward hotel rooms on the ground floor and I locked the door,” witness Abdullahi Hussein said by phone. “The militants went straight upstairs and started shooting. I was inside the room until the security forces arrived and rescued me.”

He said on his way to safety he saw “several bodies lying on the ground outside hotel reception.”

Al-Shabab remains the most lethal Islamic extremist group in Africa.

The group has seized even more territory in recent years, taking advantage of rifts among Somali security personnel as well as disagreements between the government seat in Mogadishu and regional states. It remains the biggest threat to political stability in the volatile Horn of Africa nation.

Forced to retreat from Mogadishu in 2011, al-Shabab is slowly making a comeback from the rural areas to which it retreated, defying the presence of African Union peacekeepers as well as U.S. drone strikes targeting its fighters.

The militants in early May attacked a military base for AU peacekeepers outside Mogadishu, killing many Burundian troops. The attack came just days before the presidential vote that returned Mohamud to power five years after he had been voted out.

Somalia’s al-Shabab rebels attack African Union base

BY OMAR FARUK

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (AP) — Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamic extremist rebels have attacked a military base of the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, witnesses told The Associated Press.

The attack started early Tuesday when a vehicle rammed into the fence surrounding the base and exploded in El-Baraf, a strategic town 150 kilometers (93 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu in the Middle Shabelle region, residents said.

Residents said they heard massive explosions at the base followed by gunfire.

“While we were preparing to perform the dawn prayer, we heard two loud explosions that hit the base ... followed by a heavy exchange of gunfire between the militants and Burundi troops that lasted for almost an hour,” Abshir Ali, a resident of El-Baraf said by phone.

Somalia’s state media confirmed the attack and said the Burundi soldiers at the base repulsed it. Officials have not given an estimate of the numbers killed in the battle.

Plumes of smoke rose from the camp during the fierce gun battle that forced some residents to flee the town, said residents. Helicopters from the African Union force were used to help the Burundi soldiers maintain control of the camp, they said.

Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamic extremist rebels claimed responsibility for the attack.

Diaspora Has Big Role As Somalia Rebuilds Economy, Global Ties - Finance Minister

A general view shows traffic along the road in Dhusamareb, administrative capital of Galmudug state, in central Somalia December 23, 2019. Picture taken December 23, 2019. REUTERS/Feisal Omar/File Photo

BY ANDREA SHALAL

WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - Somalia’s 2-million strong diaspora has a huge role to play as the Horn of Africa country rebuilds its economy and resets ties with major international institutions after three decades as a “failed state,” Somalia’s finance minister said.

Long saddled with $5.3 billion in debt, Somalia is in the process of inking debt forgiveness deals with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other big institutions after nearly three decades of clan warfare, famine and sporadic terror attacks by al Qaeda-linked militant group al Shabaab.

Somali Finance Minister Abdirahman Duale Beileh, a longtime member of the diaspora himself, will finalize a debt forgiveness agreement on Monday with the African Development Bank in Abidjan, another milestone as Somalia normalizes ties with the rest of the world.

He signed the first of several such deals with the World Bank on Thursday in Washington, paving the way for Mogadishu to receive deeper and broader financial and technical support, and expects the IMF to follow suit later this month.

“It’s a historic moment,” Abdirahman told Reuters in an interview on Friday. “I’m really happy I get to participate in the renaissance, the rebirth of Somalia.”

On March 31, Somalia officials will meet with Paris Club creditors, with non-Paris Club creditors to attend as well.

He said he hoped the creditors would agree to cancel about 75% or 80% of Somalia’s debt, with the remainder to be repaid on strict and closely supervised terms over the next few years.

Those agreements will pave the way for Somalia to receive grants and concessional financing to build new water and energy infrastructure, fund education and expand fisheries and other potential sources of revenue, Abdirahman said.

But he said he is also relying on help from Somalis living in the United States, Canada and elsewhere, who contribute about $2 billion or 40% of Somalia’s gross domestic product in remittances each year, to shore up trust in the government, invest in businesses and move the country forward.

“We need a big perception change, a big cultural shift,” he said, noting that 75% of Somalis were under 30 years old and had no memory of more normal times before 1991. “It is totally a shift of paradigm, a shift of attitude.”

Educated and working in the West, he said he was counting on diasporan Somalis to change the attitudes of their clansmen back home, and support a range of reconstruction projects. Women also had a huge role in rebuilding the economy, he said.

To guide its work, Somalia is now building a database of potential donors and investors among diasporan Somalis.

Abdirahman, who also holds a U.S. passport, plans to do his own outreach during a visit to one of the biggest communities in Minneapolis in May.

“You can’t imagine the feeling of being reclassified from a failed state to a normal country,” he said. “To be classified as a normal country is a blessing for us.”

Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Daniel Wallis

Truck Bomb In Somalia's Capital Kills At Least 61 People

A civilian who was wounded in suicide car bomb attack is helped to be taken to hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia, Saturday, Dec. 28, 2019. A police officer says a car bomb has detonated at a security checkpoint during the morning rush hour in Somalia's capital. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsame)

BY ABDI GULED

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (AP) — A truck bomb exploded at a busy security checkpoint in Somalia’s capital Saturday morning, killing at least 61 people, authorities said. It was one of the deadliest attacks in Mogadishu in recent memory.

The toll was likely to rise as scores of people were rushed to hospitals, government spokesman Ismail Mukhtar told The Associated Press. Abdiqadir Abdirahman, the director of the Aamin Ambulance service, confirmed the 61 dead and said more than 50 others were wounded.

Civilians who were wounded in suicide car bomb attack are helped at check point in Mogadishu, Somalia, Saturday, Dec, 28, 2019. A police officer says a car bomb has detonated at a security checkpoint during the morning rush hour in Somalia's capital. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsame)

Mayor Omar Mohamud Mohamed, speaking at the scene, said university students were among those killed. Police said the dead also included two Turkish nationals.

Capt. Mohamed Hussein said the blast targeted a tax collection center during the morning rush hour as Somalia returned to work after its weekend. Images from the scene showed the mangled frames of vehicles and bodies lying on the ground.

A large black plume of smoke rose above the capital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab often carries out such attacks. The extremist group was pushed out of Mogadishu several years ago but continues to target high-profile areas such as checkpoints and hotels in the seaside city.

Al-Shabab was blamed for a devastating truck bombing in Mogadishu in October 2017 that killed more than 500 people. The group never claimed responsibility for the blast that led to widespread public outrage. Some analysts said al-Shabab didn’t dare claim credit as its strategy of trying to sway public opinion by exposing government weakness had badly backfired.

A civilian who was wounded in suicide car bomb attack is helped to be taken to hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia, Saturday, Dec, 28, 2019. A police officer says a car bomb has detonated at a security checkpoint during the morning rush hour in Somalia's capital. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsame)
The latest attack again raises concern about the readiness of Somali forces to take over responsibility for the Horn of Africa country’s security in the coming months from an African Union force.

Al-Shabab, the target of a growing number of U.S. airstrikes since President Donald Trump took office, controls parts of Somalia’s southern and central regions. It funds itself with a “taxation” system that experts describe as extortion of businesses and travelers that brings in millions of dollars a year.

Daughter hoping to see father again praises gov's decision

In this Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019 photo Fartun Abdi, a 25-year-old Somalian sits at work in Nashville, Tenn. Abdi arrived in the U.S. as refugee with her mother and two step-siblings. She now works as a refugee case assistant for Catholic Charities. Abdi said she voted for Lee and prayed over his refugee decision. Tennessee won't stop resettling refugees, Republican Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2019, rejecting the option offered to states by President Donald Trump's administration. (AP Photo/Jonathan Mattise)

BY JONATHAN MATTISE

NASHVILLE, TENN. (AP) — Fartun Abdi last saw her father face-to-face when she was about 1 year old living in Somalia, just before her family separated to flee fighting in the country.

For most of her life, she wasn’t sure her father was alive.

Now a mother of five, Abdi lives in Nashville and works with the Catholic Charities of Tennessee, helping refugees like herself make new homes in America. The future of those efforts was uncertain until Wednesday, when Republican Gov. Bill Lee pointed to his own faith when he rejected an offer by President Donald Trump’s administration to let states halt resettlement.

Abdi found out her father was alive five years ago, and he and several of her siblings remain in Africa amid Trump’s tightened immigration restrictions. Those include substantially lower caps on refugees and a travel ban that blocks citizens of five Muslim-majority countries, including Somalia, and their immediate families from traveling or immigrating to the United States.

Lee’s decision doesn’t dissolve those hurdles to make it to the U.S. as refugees. But Abdi, who said she prayed over Lee’s refugee decision, said she now knows he was listening to her community.

“I’m speechless and very happy with the outcome,” said Abdi, who said she voted for Lee in 2018. “We are happy that Gov. Lee listened and heard the concerns and wishes of refugees. We are glad to have Lee as our governor.”

Lee’s decision put him at odds with top Republicans in the Legislature, who had sued the federal government over its refugee resettlement program and hoped Lee would accept Trump’s offer. Acknowledging pressure from fellow Republicans, Lee put a time limit on his initial approval, saying it was only valid for a year. He even said he supports the lawsuit effort.

“I certainly know there’s disagreement on this subject, but there’s disagreement around most subjects,” Lee told reporters Wednesday. “You agree to disagree and move forward. But I think it’s the right decision and we’re moving forward on it.”

So far, no states have said they plan to reject refugees. About half the states have given written consent to continue resettling refugees.

In September, Trump slashed the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. and authorized state and local governments to refuse to accept them. An executive order says that if a state or a locality has not consented to receive refugees under the State Department’s Reception and Placement Program, then refugees should not be resettled within the state or locality unless the secretary of state decides otherwise.

Some resettlement groups have sued to block Trump’s order.

If a state opts out under Trump’s order, refugees could still move there, but they’d miss out on key aid. For example, they wouldn’t get funding for medical assistance and screenings, employment, social adjustment services and English language training.

More than 2,000 refugees resettled in Tennessee during the 2016 budget year. That number dropped to 478 in 2018 under Trump and and has hit 692 in 2019.

In the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, lawmakers forged ahead with their lawsuit over the refugee program with the help of a third-party legal outfit, since Attorney General Herbert Slatery declined to take the case. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the lawsuit, which claims the program improperly forces the state to spend money on additional services for refugees, including health care and education. Lawmakers haven’t said whether they’ll ask the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton and Senate Speaker Randy McNally said Wednesday they would’ve preferred to “hit the pause button on accepting additional refugees in our state.”

Lee took office in January after a rough GOP primary in which he and his opponents echoed Trump’s tough talk on immigration.

He also went to great lengths to bring up his Christian faith while campaigning. He invoked his beliefs again in his refugee decision.

“The United States and Tennessee have always been, since the very founding of our nation, a shining beacon of freedom and opportunity for the persecuted and oppressed, and particularly those suffering religious persecution,” Lee wrote to the legislative leaders. “My commitment to these ideals is based on my faith, personally visiting refugee camps on multiple continents, and my years of experience ministering to refugees here in Tennessee.”

Advocates have said the program includes rigorous vetting and introduces refugees as reliable members of the workforce.

Abdi spent three years in a refugee camp in Kenya as a child, then came to the U.S. with her mother and two step-siblings. She had been living here for years when she found out that her father was alive in 2014. She said she made the discovery when she saw a man who resembled her in a video, then made calls until she confirmed it. She’s since talked with him on video chats.

Abdi said she might be a stronger person for making her own way in the United States. But at some point, everyone needs family, she said.

“There are certain times when my father would say, ‘I wish I could just hold one of my grand-kids,’” Abdi said. “Certain things like that get to me.”

Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Julie Watson in San Diego and Anita Snow in Phoenix contributed to this report.

11 Killed, 25 Hurt As Explosions Rock Somalia's Capital

Security forces stand near the wreckage of three-wheeled vehicles destroyed in a bomb attack in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Saturday, June 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

BY ABDI GULED

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA(AP) — A pair of explosions rocked Somalia’s capital and left 11 people dead, the country’s police chief said Saturday, as the al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility.

Another 25 people were wounded, Gen. Bashir Abdi Mohamed told reporters in Mogadishu. He said the first car bomb went off near a security checkpoint for the presidential palace and was responsible for nine deaths.

The second car bomb killed the driver and his accomplice near a checkpoint on the road to the heavily fortified airport, he said.

Al-Shabab, which often targets the capital, said the blasts were meant to strike the first line of security checkpoints for the airport and palace. The airport is home to a number of diplomatic offices. The palace is a frequent al-Shabab target.

“I was at a short distance from the blast and I saw several people dead including two women, a passenger and two men, some of whom were elderly,” witness Hussein Mohamed told the AP. “This is really very terrible.”

Al-Shabab was responsible for the horrific truck bombing in Mogadishu in October 2017 that killed more than 500 people in one of the world’s deadliest extremist attacks since 9/11 .

The United States military has dramatically increased the number of airstrikes against al-Shabab in the past couple of years, seeking to limit the territory the group controls in central and southern Somalia and make it more difficult for fighters to circulate.

In a report to the United Nations Security Council circulated last month, U.N. chief Antonio Guterres noted an increase in security operations “and a large number of airstrikes targeting al-Shabab training bases and assembly points” that were deemed to have degraded its operating capability and freedom of movement.

“They have also led, however, to increased al-Shabab movement into urban centers, in particular Mogadishu, where their forces are less likely to be targeted from the air,” he said.

Guterres added that Somalia is making progress toward building a functioning state after three decades of civil war, extremist attacks and famine but that insecurity, political instability and corruption remain major challenges.

The multinational African Union force in Somalia continues to gradually withdraw personnel in preparation for Somali government forces to assume responsibility for the country’s security. Those forces, however, have been described by U.S. military officials and others as not yet ready for the job.

Associated Press video journalist Mohamed Sheikh Nor in Mogadishu contributed.

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

UN Document Shows Kenya Seeking To Close Somali Refugee Camp

In this Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2017 file photo, some of around 20 Somali refugee families wait to be flown to Kismayo in Somalia, under a voluntary repatriation programme, at the airstrip of Dadaab refugee camp, hosting over 230,000 inhabitants, in northern Kenya. An internal United Nations document obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, March 29, 2019 says Kenya again seeks to close the Dadaab camp that hosts more than 200,000 refugees from neighboring Somalia. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

BY TOM ODULA

NAIROBI, KENYA(AP) — An internal United Nations document says Kenya again seeks to close the Dadaab camp that hosts more than 200,000 refugees from neighboring Somalia and is one of the largest such camps in the world.

The U.N. refugee agency document obtained by The Associated Press says it “appreciates” Kenya’s suggestion, made on Feb. 12, to close the camp within six months. But it notes that security remains “precarious” in Somalia, where the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group is based, and says returns must be voluntary.

Kenya calls the refugee camp near the Somalia border a source of insecurity. Some officials have argued that it has been used as a recruiting ground for al-Shabab and a base for launching attacks inside Kenya, but the officials have not provided conclusive proof.

A Kenyan court in 2017 blocked the closure of Dadaab, however, saying it was not safe for refugees to return home.

A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue, confirmed Kenya’s latest plan to close the camp.

The decision followed the deadly al-Shabab attack on a luxury hotel complex in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, in January, he said.

The senior official said plans for the Nairobi attack were made at the Dadaab camp. In the government’s previous attempt to close the camp, it said plans for the 2013 attack on the Westgate mall in Nairobi that left 67 people dead had been made in Dadaab, but it offered no proof.

The internal U.N. document says Kenya suggested alternatives including moving the camp to Kakuma, away from the Kenya-Somalia border. The document also notes Kenya’s national security concerns.

The first settlement in Dadaab was established in 1991, when refugees fleeing conflict in Somalia started to cross the border into Kenya, according to the U.N. refugee agency.

The document says that more than 82,000 refugees had been assisted to return to Somalia under voluntary repatriation as of the end of 2018.

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Extremists Attack Somalia Govt Office, Minister Among 5 Dead

A woman stands behind wreckage left from a suicide car bomb attack on a government building in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Saturday, March 23, 2019. Al-Shabab gunmen stormed into the government building following a suicide car bombing at the gates on Saturday, a police officer said, in the latest attack by Islamic extremist fighters in the Horn of Africa nation. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

BY ABDI GULED

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (AP) — Gunmen set off a suicide car bombing and then stormed a government building in Somalia’s capital Saturday, killing at least five people including the country’s deputy labor minister, police said. It was the latest attack by Islamic extremists in the troubled Horn of Africa nation.

After an hours-long gunbattle, Somalia’s security forces took back control of the building in Mogadishu on Saturday afternoon from at least five attackers who forced their way into the government building that houses the ministries of labor and public works, police Capt. Mohamed Hussein told The Associated Press.

Saqar Ibrahim Abdalla, Somalia’s deputy minister of labor and social affairs, was killed in his ground-floor office shortly after gunmen entered the building, he said.

Hussein said at least 10 other people were wounded in the attack, which the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group has claimed responsibility for.

Dozens of people were inside the building at the time since Saturday is a working day in Somalia. The building is not far from the headquarters of the Somali intelligence agency.

As the attack unfolded, gunfire could be heard from inside the building. White smoke billowed from the scene, according to witnesses.

A similar attack targeting a busy area in Mogadishu at the end of February killed at least 24 people.

Al-Shabab, Africa’s most active Islamic extremist group, has been fighting for years to take power and create an Islamic state in Somalia. It frequently carries out suicide bombings targeting public places, hotels and government offices despite being pushed out of Mogadishu. It mostly operates from rural areas in the country’s south.

African Union peacekeepers stationed in Mogadishu and elsewhere in the country have helped Somali forces to keep al-Shabab fighters at bay.

The extremist group has also carried out many deadly attacks in neighboring Kenya in retaliation over the country’s deployment in 2011 of peacekeepers in Somalia.

The U.S. military has carried out a number of deadly airstrikes in recent months against al-Shabab.

___

Associated Press writer Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, contributed to this report.

U.S. Africa Policy Cannot Afford To Ignore Somaliland

Image via The National Interest

BY MICHAEL RUBIN

HARGEISA, SOMALILAND (THE NATIONAL INTEREST)—“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” President Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address, even as he redoubled his commitment to “focus on counterterrorism.” While many commentators describe Afghanistan—the war against which Trump railed—as America’s longest war, the battle against terrorists and warlords in Somalia has now run even longer .

Alas, even as Trump talks about scaling back the U.S. military footprint abroad, his willingness to follow the State Department’s lead in Somalia threatens to embolden radicalism and revive piracy in the Horn of Africa. At issue is Somalia, where the State Department’s embrace of false unities and antipathy toward change has led it to double down on its support for Somalia’s symbolic government in Mogadishu.

At first glance, Trump’s cynicism looks warranted. After years of civil war, Somalia has a provisional constitution and a government. Elders have appointed a parliament, which in turn has elected a president. But the federal government’s control is largely illusionary. Most diplomats and non-governmental organizations are sequestered inside the international airport, which makes Baghdad’s old Green Zone look permissive. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), encompassing troops from five African countries and police from an additional three, provides basic security. The president holds little sway outside his palace and a few square blocks around his palace, while Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda, continues to strike in the city and across the country.

Fictions are expensive. The United Nations and aid organizations are seeking upwards of $1 billion in aid this year just to provide immediate relief, and that figure is even greater when the price tag for AMISOM is factored in. Much of the aid, however, never reaches Somalis; Transparency International now ranks Somalia as the world’s most corrupt country. Rather than help Somalis, donations to Mogadishu often fuel factional fighting and drive Somalis into the arms of radicals and yet, despite his promise to turn Washington’s old ways on their head, the Trump administration policy in effect remains to throw good money after bad. In effect, Somalia has joined Pakistan and Egypt in an extortion racket whereby it demands endless aid to fight radicalism, but never defeats it for fear of losing an annual windfall which elites siphon for personal interests.

Not all of Somalia, however, embraces this cycle. As Somalia descended into civil war in 1991, Somaliland, ground zero for Somali dictator Siad Barre’s reign of terror, declared itself independent. Its claim was solid: during the colonial era, it was a British protectorate, distinct from the rest of Somalia, with internationally-recognized borders. All five UN Security Council members recognized its 1960 independence. To Somalilanders, its subsequent union with Somalia was voluntary, as was its exit against the backdrop of Somalia’s descent into chaos. Residents of the region also point out that the State Department’s traditional antipathy toward border changes rings hollow given Washington’s, the African Union’s and the broader international community’s recognition of South Sudan and Eritrea. True, neither of these countries is a success, but Somaliland already promises to be. Today, Somaliland includes twenty-eight percent of Somalia’s area and one-third of its population. Unlike Somalia proper, Somaliland has denied Al-Shabaab access to its territory. Hargeisa, its capital, is among the safest cities in Africa. Somaliland has contested elections , secured via biometric iris scans , and has had five peaceful transfers of power amongst rival parties. While Somaliland has its own currency, its economy is increasingly cashless : organic innovation and permeation of cell phones has allowed even its rural citizens simply to trade digital money by cell phone. Americans might still think “Black Hawk Down” when they think of Somalia, but Somaliland has become more like Sweden and Estonia in its e-practices.

In effect, Somaliland does everything right. So why does the United States ignore it? In the era of budget cutbacks, the State Department refuses to even put an office in Hargeisa akin to what it has in Iraqi Kurdistan or Taiwan. The Pentagon, for its part, has no regular liaison with their Somalilander counterparts, even though both counterterrorism missions and the war in Yemen enhance Somaliland’s strategic importance.

Here’s the problem: Somaliland’s ability to stand up to radicals and Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists may not be endless. Somaliland spends one-third its budget on security, but Somalia refuses to provide it with any international funds channeled through Mogadishu. The situation is now so dire that Somaliland’s army and coast guard recruits must purchase their own guns in order to conduct the patrols which stabilize its 460-mile coastline, prevent weapons smuggling from Yemen, and deny Al-Shabaab access to its vast rural areas. While the UN has eased its arms embargo on Somalia in order to allow AMISOM to operate and to supply Somali government forces (who more often than not sell their weapons to the radicals for some quick cash), it continues to enforce an arms embargo on Somaliland that is an artifact of the situation in Somalia three decades ago.

Trump and National Security Advisor John Bolton are right to question foreign aid. Sponsoring parades in Bulgaria or art workshops in Central America have limited utility. But, every million dollars invested in Somaliland’s security could offset defense needs with a price tag several orders of magnitude higher. Somaliland seeks not tanks and modern fighter jets, but simply small arms and more patrol boats. The region’s willingness to invest more than fifteen-times proportionately what America’s NATO allies do in defense shows it is serious and not simply seeking subsidy for what it could otherwise achieve on its own. Somalia’s government might complain, but Washington need not kneel to Mogadishu. If Trump truly wants to end endless wars and American engagements abroad, perhaps it is time to embrace rather than ignore allies, bolster democracies and recognize that even at the height of its greatness, America has never truly gone it alone.

US Airstrike In Somalia Kills 35 Al-Shabab Extremists

OHANNESBURG (AP) — The United States military said Monday that its latest airstrike in Somalia killed 35 fighters with the al-Shabab extremist group not far from the Ethiopian border.

The U.S. military command for the African continent said Sunday’s airstrike targeted the al-Qaida-linked fighters as they were traveling in a rural area about 23 miles (37 kilometers) east of Beledweyne in central Hiran region.

The U.S. has dramatically increased airstrikes against al-Shabab since President Donald Trump took office. Its military has carried out 22 such strikes this year, including four on Saturday that eliminated checkpoints used by al-Shabab to collect taxes to fund its violent campaign to establish an Islamic state in the long-chaotic Horn of Africa nation.

The U.S. carried out nearly 50 strikes in Somalia in 2018. A small number of strikes have also targeted fighters pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group, who have been warring with al-Shabab in recent months.

Authorities and experts acknowledge it will take more than airstrikes to defeat al-Shabab, which continues to hold large parts of rural central and southern Somalia and to carry out deadly attacks in the capital, Mogadishu.

The group, which claimed the deadly attack on a luxury hotel complex in the capital of neighboring Kenya last month, was also behind the deadliest attack in Somalia’s history, a massive truck bombing that killed well over 500 people in Mogadishu in October 2017.

The U.S. military is one of several security actors in Somalia, along with a multinational African Union mission and troops from Kenya and Ethiopia.

The United States says it acts in coordination with Somalia’s government, whose military is expected to take over primary responsibility for the country’s security over the next few years.

The African Union mission has begun a step-by-step withdrawal of forces, but some in the U.S. military and elsewhere warned that Somali forces were not yet prepared.

A United Nations panel of experts monitoring sanctions on Somalia has described the country’s troops as largely poorly equipped and underpaid, conditions that cause some personnel to sell their weapons or uniforms for a little cash.

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Victory Offers Muslim Candidate New Platform To Oppose Trump

In this January 5, 2017, file photo, state Rep. Ilhan Omar is interviewed in her office two days after the 2017 Legislature convened in St. Paul, Minn. Somali-American legislator Ilhan Omar made history Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2018, by winning the Democratic congressional primary in a Minneapolis-area district so reliably liberal that her victory is likely her ticket to Congress. (AP Photo/Jim Monem File)

BY STEVE KARNOWSKI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — President Donald Trump, meet Ilhan Omar.

Just two years ago, the Minnesota Democrat became the first Somali-American elected to a state legislature. Now she’s likely to become one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. And she says one of her top priorities will be resisting the Trump administration, which would forbid her from entering the U.S. if she were attempting to immigrate today.

“I myself would have been part of the travel ban,” Omar said on the campaign trail.

Her victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for a House seat from the immigrant-rich Minneapolis area depended heavily on support from people who feel persecuted in Trump’s America and voters who empathize with them.

No Republican has won the heavily liberal district since 1962, making the primary the de facto election, though Omar will face Republican candidate Jennifer Zielinski in November.

Winning the seat will position her as a new national voice against administration policies. The seat opened up when Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, launched a last-minute bid for attorney general after serving six terms.

Omar’s victory over a crowded field marked the latest milestone in the meteoric political rise of a woman who spent her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp and immigrated to the United States at age 12. She won her seat in the state House in 2016.

On Tuesday, she defeated two more experienced candidates — former House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and state Sen. Patricia Torres Ray — as well as another Somali-American.

During the campaign, Omar often addressed the country’s divisions.

“There is a clear and dangerous crossroads to where our country finds itself,” she told a group last month at a coffee shop. “You can see the politics of fear and scarcity that’s led us to the current administration we have.”

Omar was not giving interviews Wednesday, her campaign said.

Supporters cheered on the hijab-wearing candidate when she took the stage Tuesday night to claim victory. She recalled how she was just 8 when her family fled the civil war in Somalia and described what her win would have meant to that 8-year-old girl in the refugee camp.

“Today I still think about her, and I think about the kind of hope and optimism all of those 8-year-olds around the country and world get from seeing your beautiful faces elect and believe in someone like me,” an emotional Omar told the jubilant crowd.

The other Muslim woman who is likely to join Congress in January is former Michigan state Rep. Rashida Tlaib , a Palestinian-American who won a Detroit-area Democratic primary last week and is running unopposed in November.

Tlaib came to Minneapolis to campaign for Omar at a Middle Eastern restaurant last weekend at an event that was disrupted by conservative provocateur Laura Loomer.

Energized by the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump and his supporters, as many as 90 Muslims have run for national or statewide offices in this election cycle, including at least 15 in Minnesota.

They include Mohamud Noor, who won Tuesday’s primary in Omar’s state House district and will likely become the first Somali-American man elected to the Legislature; Hodan Hassan, a woman who won in a neighboring legislative district; and Fardousa Jama, a woman who advanced to the general election in a Mankato City Council race.

“I think it sends a strong message for inclusion,” Noor said Wednesday of the victories. “Our win didn’t come just from the Somalis. We built a coalition, and that sends a message that people are sick and tired of the politics of fear. ... People want to include us in the political process, and they welcomed us into their homes.”

The victories reverberated beyond Minnesota, Noor said.

“It’s not just a celebration here. It’s a global celebration. I’ve been getting calls from all over the world,” he said, citing Somalia and countries of the Somali diaspora as far away as Australia.

Because Omar was in the Democratic minority in the Minnesota House, she has few legislative accomplishments. But she brought undeniable star power to the race, riding the fame from her history-making election to a spot on the cover of Time magazine. She also had a cameo in a recent Maroon 5 music video for “Girls Like You,” a song that played through the loudspeakers as Omar entered her victory party.

Among those celebrating was Khalid Mohamed. The Star Tribune reported he wore an American flag draped around his shoulders while holding a Somali flag in hand.

“This is back home,” the 25-year-old told the newspaper as he gestured to the small light blue flag with a white star. “And this is home now,” he added, wrapping the U.S. flag tighter around his chest.

Sign up for “Politics in Focus,” a weekly newsletter showcasing the AP’s best political reporting from around the country leading up to the midterm elections: http://apne.ws/3Gzcraw .

Kenya, Tanzania Mark Bombings Which Introduced Al- Qaeda

20th anniversary of the attacks against US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania

20th anniversary of the attacks against US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998. Image: Kun Tian/AFP

BY FRAN BLANDY

NAIROBI, KENYA (AFP) - Kenya and Tanzania on Tuesday mark 20 years since the devastating US embassy bombings that thrust Al-Qaeda onto the global stage and went on to shape how a generation thinks about personal security.

It was mid-morning on August 7, 1998, when the first massive blast hit the US embassy in downtown Nairobi, followed minutes later by an explosion in Dar es Salaam, killing a total of 224 people and injuring around 5,000 -- almost all of them Africans.

With two monster bombs loaded onto the back of trucks and a trail of carnage in east Africa, the world was introduced to Osama bin Laden three years before the September 11 attacks in New York would make him a household name.

"It wasn't the first time Al-Qaeda had carried out an attack, but in terms of the spectacular, catastrophic nature of the incident, they really announced their entry onto the world stage," said Martin Kimani, head of Kenya's National Counter Terrorism Centre.

"When 9/11 happened it was shocking and surprising, but a precedent had been set here in east Africa."

According to "The Looming Tower", a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the rise of Al-Qaeda, bin Laden gave various reasons for targeting the embassies, such as the deployment of American troops to Somalia and a US plan to partition Sudan, where he had lived for five years until being expelled in 1996.

However, author Lawrence Wright concluded that the main goal was to "lure the United States into Afghanistan".

- Boosting Al-Qaeda's image -

This aim was achieved, in the aftermath of the attacks, with the US launching strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan that were "largely seen as ineffective", said Daniel Byman, a counterterrorism expert at the Brookings Institution.

The strikes led the Taliban in Afghanistan to "embrace the group more closely", he said, and also boosted the image of a group seen as standing up to the United States in the Muslim world.

Byman said the attack was the first to show that Al-Qaeda "had tremendous reach and it can do sophisticated operations".

"It showed Al-Qaeda that international terrorism could generate tremendous attention, and not just attention from its adversaries... it was a form of advertising in a way."

The years since 9/11 have been shaped by the so-called "war on terror" and the proliferation of American military operations -- notably in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

At the same time, Al-Qaeda went on to inspire affiliates around the globe, carrying out attacks across the Middle East as well as from Bali to Madrid, London and Paris.

Islamist insurgencies have wreaked havoc in the Sahel, Nigeria and Somalia, and -- on several bloody occasions since the 1998 bombings -- Kenya.

"Kenya itself was not primarily the target but of course we ended up with the majority of fatalities and consequences of that attack," said Kimani.

"We continue to be on the frontlines of this struggle."

- 'Dealing with terrorism' -

Two years after Kenya sent troops across the border into Somalia to fight the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab -- which had been carrying out attacks on its soil -- the group killed 67 people in an attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi in 2013.

Then in 2015, a Shabaab attack on the Garissa University in eastern Kenya left 148 dead.

However, Kimani said counterterrorism efforts by Kenya had proved successful, confining Shabaab attacks to remote areas in recent years as a result of new anti-terror legislation and improved co-ordination between different security forces.

He said efforts to build trust with communities where jihadists hide out, and understanding how recruitment happens to nip it in the bud has also been key.

"The threat is still there, believe me, but 20 years later we have become much better at dealing with terrorism than we used to be," he said.

"Globally terrorism has left a deep, deep social imprint. It has changed the way people think about security. Here in Kenya there are guards at malls and hotels and that is replicated in many parts of the world."

Kimani said governments need to focus on improving livelihoods and providing basic services to erase the "pockets of desperation" that prove so fruitful for recruitment.

In recent years, attention has swung away from Al-Qaeda to its rival Islamic State (IS) group which formed in 2013, captured swathes of territory and inspired numerous so-called "lone wolf" attacks from afar.

However, experts warn that while IS has since lost its territory and reach, Al-Qaeda has been quietly rebuilding.

"Their ideological ability to be grafted onto local grievances continues to make them a threat," said Kimani.