Somalia: not piracy catch all thread

[davidbfpo]

The Somali militant group Al-Shabaab has developed an extensive financial infrastructure. Security actors seeking to disrupt and defeat the group must tackle the financial dimension of its activities.

The Role of Finance in Defeating Al-Shabaab offers detailed analysis of Al-Shabaab’s sources of revenue and recommends ways forward for using financial instruments to target and disrupt the group. As with Islamic State, undermining the financial management of Al-Shabaab and offering those people subject to its control better governance will be at the heart of the group’s ultimate failure and defeat.

Link:https://www.rusi.org/publications/wh...54A2A05DDC85F/

[davidbfpo]

Sometimes ostensibly sensible measures simply go wrong. I am sure the banks involved fear action by the USG if money transfers lead to Al-Shabaab getting money:

Somali families are panicking and businesses are running short of funds two weeks after the last major U.S. bank stopped transferring money to the fragile Horn of Africa country, development groups said. Somalia has no formal banking system due to decades of war, so Somalis living abroad use money transfer companies to send some $1.3 billion home each year - far more than the country receives in aid, Oxfam and Adeso said in a report on Thursday.

Link:http://news.yahoo.com/somalis-panic-...--sector.html?

[davidbfpo]

Spotted by Clints Watts:

In recent years, however, al Shabaab has turned on the foreign fighters in its own ranks, waging a brutal campaign to purge the perceived spies from its midst. An intimate account of the Shabaab civil war was provided to The Intercept in a series of interviews conducted with a current member of al Shabaab and a source who has maintained close contacts with the group.

(Citing the source) I want my voice to be heard. I don’t want others to make the same mistake I did. Especially to the youth who are in the West, I just want to tell them, don’t come to Somalia. This is advice from the bottom of my heart. You will not improve yourself, first of all, and you will not improve the Muslim Ummah in general

Link:https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2...n-fighter-cia/

[davidbfpo]

Yesterday an "insider" spoke and today the BBC has a - for them a quite long - report based on a defector:

One of the most senior figures to defect from Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab has urged his former colleagues to stop targeting civilians and to begin negotiations with the Somali government.

Forming an alliance with al-Qaeda "was a very big mistake. Our duty at that time was only to liberate Somalia - our interests were local." He added that it had a huge effect and diverted al-Shabab from is purpose.
"Now it turns to terror acts, organised crime... we were against all that. In late 2010/2011 there was a lot of misunderstanding within the core leadership of al-Shabab... in terms of these terrorism events.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-32791713

[davidbfpo]

There are a small number of posts on the Somali charcoal trade, which reportedly assists financing Al-Shabaab and the murky part of the Kenyan Defence Force who did control Kismayo port.

Al-Jazeera has a detailed report, mainly graphs and diagrams:http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/int...75925833.html?

[davidbfpo]

This week I listened to Mary Harper, the BBC World Service's Africa Editor at a conference, who is a SME on Somalia and she gave a grim picture of the chances of peace. Her personal website is:http://mary-harper.blogspot.co.uk/

If businessmen want peace in Somalia, it will happen tomorrow. For all the fighters, including ANISOM, it is a good war; the same applies to all the charities and NGO's present.

The refugee camps around Mogadishu are for the minority clans, who are seen as "lower than low" and are looked down upon by all the others.

Sadly all politics and business in Somalia is done by the gun.

Her talk was summarised as:

Notorious for piracy of its coast and the rise of Islamist extremism, Somalia is often considered the world’s most comprehensively failed state. A threat to itself, its neighbours and the wider world. At least, that’s how the country is presented by politicians and in the media. In this insightful talk BBC World Service Africa Editor Mary Harper presents an alternative perspective, explaining that though the country may be a failed state, it’s far from a failed society. In doing so, she reveals what viewing Somalia through the prism of Al-Qaeda obscures – that alternative forms of business, justice, education and local politics have survived and even flourished.
Until the international community start to get Somalia right the consequences will be devastating, and not just for Somalia and the region but for the world.

Link:https://rising.org/programme/getting-somalia-wrong/

[davidbfpo]

A headline that baffles me somewhat, stumbling along for a failed state means what?

This article is clearly a post-exit, maybe laudatory piece, as it is based on a British diplomat who quietly left his job as the UN secretary general’s Special Representative to Somalia from mid-2013 until December.
Link:http://www.theguardian.com/global-de...kay-al-shabaab

Just as baffling is what did happen last week when a Kenyan base was over-run?

al-Shabab was saying it had killed 100 Kenyan..whilst Kenyan admits four dead

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-35364593

Or the stinging attack on a beach restaurant @ Mogadishu:http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...ures-alshabaab