Piracy of People and Guns leads to power control in the Horn

www.eastafricaforum.net http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=28317 Reporters Without Borders, France August 28, 2008 Newspaper editor freed on bail

Reporters Without Borders has learned the good news that Amare Aregawi, the editor of the privately-owned Amharic-language weekly Reporter, was released yesterday evening.

The press freedom organisation calls on the Ethiopian government to amend the newly-adopted media law in order to eliminate prison sentences for press offences. It also urges the Ethiopian courts to ensure that the law is strictly respected, and thereby guarantee the rights of citizens.

Amare was released in the northern city of Gondar (750 km north of the capital) after paying bail of 300 birr (23 euros). Journalists in Addis Ababa told Reporters Without Borders they believed he was on his way back to the capital.

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http://africa.reuters.com/country/ET/news/usnWAL757940.html

U.N. official freed in Somalia but MSF closes clinic
Wed 27 Aug 2008Daniel Wallis

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kidnappers freed the head of the U.N. refugee agency's office in Somalia on Wednesday but rising insecurity forced Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to close a clinic in Mogadishu that provided essential health care to hundreds of women and children.

The capital of Somalia is one of the most dangerous places in the world for aid workers to operate. More than 8,000 civilians have been killed in the Horn of Africa nation in fighting since the start of last year.

In a rare piece of good news, gunmen released Hassan Mohammed Ali, a Somali who was in charge of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) local office, on Wednesday after holding him captive for more than two months.

"This afternoon I joined my family and colleagues after being absent for a long time," Ali told Reuters by telephone.

"I was slightly injured in the kidnapping, but I recovered. No ransom was paid. I was released after they became convinced of my humanitarian work. They treated me well."

But MSF said the risks to its patients and staff were now unacceptable and it was closing a clinic.

"The closure comes following a further deterioration of the situation in the area where the clinic is located," MSF said in a statement issued in neighbouring Kenya.

"There has been a notable increase in violence, including mortars landing close to the clinic," it said.

In May and June of this year the centre had been treating an average of 300 out-patients and 35 in-patients each day. MSF continues to run two other clinics in Mogadishu, as well as several other projects in central and southern Somalia.

The violence pitting the country's interim government and its Ethiopian military allies against Islamist rebels has also uprooted 1 million people, triggering a humanitarian crisis that aid workers say is the worst in Africa.

A report this week said the number of Somalis needing aid had leapt 77 percent since January to more than 3.2 million, or more than a third of the population.

The study by the Food Security Analysis Unit, set up the United Nations, said the situation had been worsened by failed rains, rising food prices, inflation and the worst insecurity in the country since the early 1990s.

Aid agencies say the violence, including abductions and attacks on their staff, has made it harder and harder to reach the rapidly growing numbers in need of help.

"Until now, the world's response to the catastrophe has been massively inadequate," Robert Maletta, policy advisor for Oxfam International, said in a separate statement on Wednesday.

"All parties to the conflict have a responsibility to ensure that the millions of Somalis in need of emergency aid have access to it," he said. "Those parties that block access and assistance delivery must be held accountable."

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http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-08-27-voa36.cfm

VOA

Pirate Ransom Helped Somalia Islamist Militants Seize Port

Alisha Ryu

27 August 2008


New details are emerging of a link between rising piracy off the coast of Somalia and insurgent activities on shore. A Kenyan piracy expert says a prominent Somali factional leader turned Islamist helped the country's militant Shabab group seize the key southern port of Kismayo last week with weapons he bought with ransom payments. VOA correspondent Alisha Ryu has this exclusive story from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi.

During the first half of this decade, factional leader Yusuf Mohamed Siad, better known by his nickname Inda'ade, was notorious in Somalia for engaging in pirate activities and running a lucrative drug and weapons trafficking operation from the city of Merca, the provincial capital of the Lower Shabelle region.

Inda'ade joined the country's Islamist movement in early 2006 and late that year he gained international attention when, as the chief of security for the ruling Islamic Courts Union, he urged foreign fighters to come to Somalia to carry out a holy war against troops from Ethiopia.

After Ethiopian troops ousted the Islamists from power, Inda'ade made his way to Asmara, Eritrea, where he joined the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia group and cast himself as a hard-line spokesmen for the violent Islamist-led insurgency in Somalia.


Kismayo, Somalia
The head of the Mombasa-based Seafarers' Assistance Program, Andrew Mwangura, tells VOA that Inda'ade is now the new Islamist leader in Kismayo.

"Inda'ade is a member of al-Shabab, the one who has taken over Kismayo and is the most powerful person," Mwangura said.

Kismayo, a strategic southern port city that had been under the control of local clan militias, fell to the radical Islamist Shabab group last Friday after days of fighting that killed more than 70 people.

Mwangura, whose group has been involved in securing the release of 90 percent of the vessels hijacked by Somali pirates in recent years, says Inda'ade still controls a personal militia of about 200 fighters and pirates, and is involved in the trafficking of drugs and guns.

Somalis say the factional leader has long wanted control of Kismayo and its port, and may have seen an opportunity to take the city through the Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliated organization that has successfully re-established Islamist control in many parts of southern and central Somalia in recent months.

Mwangura says Inda'ade expanded his relationship with other established pirate groups, particularly in the northern Puntland region, and used his share of the ransom money to buy, among other things, weapons used in the Islamist battle for Kismayo.

"So, they are working together. Now, they see one way of getting money for terrorist activities (is) through gun-running and drug trafficking," Mwangura said. "Or maybe al-Shabab is using him because he has fire-power and heavy military equipment."

Piracy has been rampant in Somalia since factional leaders overthrew the government of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and plunged the country into a civil war.

It reached unprecedented levels last week, when pirates seized three vessels in one day. Seven ships and their crew are being held with ransom demands exceeding $1 million for each vessel.