Somalia's prime minister expands, reshuffles cabinet

Abdiaziz Hassan

Reuters

NAIROBI, Kenya: Somalia’s Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke has reshuffled and expanded his cabinet in an attempt to end infighting as the government faces a stubborn insurgency, officials said on Tuesday. Ali Jama Ahmad and Abdalla Boss Ahmad were named as the new foreign and defense ministers respectively. Both men held these posts in the former transitional federal government.

In addition, the finance portfolio was split into two positions with Abdirahman Omar Osman, the former protocol chief in President Sheikh Sharif Ahmad’s office, being named treasury minister alongside Finance Minister Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden.

The impoverished Horn of Africa nation has been mired in civil war for 18 years, and the president’s administration controls only small pockets of the coastal capital Mogadishu.

It is fighting rebel groups including Al-Shabaab, which the United States says is Al-Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia, with the help of pro-government militia across southern and central regions.

One senior government official said Sharmarke looked to have heeded appeals from the president’s Abgal sub-clan for more influence.

“It seems the prime minister accepted their call and wants to reduce grievances between clans,” said the official, who asked not to be named. Abgal elders held talks with Sharmarke in Nairobi, capital of neighboring Kenya, late last month. The former foreign minister, Mohammad Abdullahi Omaar, was transferred to the Water and Mineral Resources Ministry. The new jobs take the number of cabinet posts to 39.

Mohammad Abdi Ghandi, the former defense minister, becomes Somalia’s new transport minister.

Western security agencies say Somalia has become a haven for Islamist militants plotting attacks in the region and beyond. Violence has killed more than 18,000 civilians since the start of 2007 and driven another 1 million from their homes.

Abdirasaq Adan, a Mogadishu-based analyst, said the reshuffle would probably change little on the ground. “It has fallen below the expectations of the tribes, the local people and the international donor community,” he said.

“The reshuffle we were waiting for was a kind of a fresh start with new faces, but this one is repeating the same faces,” he added.



Hundreds of Somali refugees in Kenya move to less congested camp

GENEVA: Hundreds of Somali refugees have started moving out of the world’s biggest refugee camp in Kenya in a bid to relieve pressure on the overcrowded complex at Dadaab, the UN refugee agency said Tuesday.

About 12,900 of Dadaab’s 289,500 inhabitants will be bused to Kakuma refugee camp over the next couple of weeks following an agreement with the Kenyan government, said Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The refugees face an arduous three-day bus journey across the north of Kenya.

“We have started relocating the first of some 12,900 Somali refugees from the overcrowded Dadaab refugee complex in northeastern Kenya to Kakuma camp in the northwest,” Mahecic told journalists.

“The first 311 refugees arrived in Kakuma this weekend after a three day journey by road,” he added.

About 43,000 Somali refugees have arrived at Dadaab since the beginning of the year, fleeing escalating violence, according to the UNHCR.

The sprawling 18 year-old camp complex houses three times more people than it was designed to hold. Work is also under way to improve water and sanitation there.

The UNHCR is helping some 510,000 Somali refugees who fled to Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Uganda.

“At the same time we are seriously concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Somalia,” said Mahecic. He warned that the wave of “abductions, killings and intimidation of aid workers, and pillaging” of relief supplies added to the difficulty of reaching some 1.3 million people who are displaced inside the country.

Security guards repelled an attack on a World Food Program compound in Somalia in Sunday, leaving three attackers dead after a gunfight, UN officials said.

An estimated 3.2 million people inside Somalia are rely on emergency urgent humanitarian aid, according to the UNHCR.

Source: The Daily Star.
Link: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=105447.