MUST-READS

• Somalia is fighting with Al Shabaab over control of the media

  At least 10 news websites, one television station, and 40 social media accounts have been banned from covering terrorist group Al Shabaab.

• Somalia is on the verge of famine while the world looks away

  More than 7.1 million people — roughly half of Somalia’s population — are in need of food assistance. One out of every five children in the country will face deadly forms of malnutrition by October should current conditions remain. Four failed rainy seasons have plunged the region into its worst drought in more than four decades, prompting roughly a million people in Somalia to leave their homes and trudge through the arid countryside in search for food and aid.

• Biden Orders US Troops Back to Somalia, Reverses Trump Withdrawal

  President Joe Biden has approved the return of several hundred U.S. troops to Somalia, reversing a late-term Trump administration order that withdrew America’s counterterrorism forces stationed there almost entirely. The Pentagon will re-establish a “small persistent” presence of fewer than 500 American troops in Somalia, a senior administration official said Monday.

• Pentagon May Boost Troop Presence In Somalia

  “My view is that our periodic engagement, also referred to as commuting to work, has caused new challenges and risks for our troops,” Townsend said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “My assessment is that it is not effective, it’s not efficient, and it puts our troops at greater risk.”

• Saudi Arabia Studies Fisheries Investment Project in Somalia

  The Saudi General Authority for Foreign Trade (GAFT) had filled in the Kingdom’s private sector on available opportunities in Somalia and provided it with a detailed study for fishery investments in the republic, sources added. For its part, Somalia reported that it has many comparative advantages, boasts the largest seacoast in Africa, and ranks first in exporting livestock and fish.

• War-Ridden Somalia Starts Payments System as It Rebuilds Nation

  The 13 lenders in the Horn of Africa nation can now “become inter-operable, connected to the clearing and settlement system of the central bank and able to transact with each other,” Central Bank of Somalia Governor Abdirahman M. Abdullahi said in an interview. The system will “facilitate transactions between vendors and their customers more efficiently.”

• US troops now ‘commuting to work’ to help Somalia fight al-Shabab

  “There’s no denying that the repositioning of forces out of Somalia has introduced new layers of complexity and risk,” Army. Gen. Stephen Townsend, AFRICOM’s boss, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. “... our understanding of what’s happening in Somalia is less now than it was when we were there on the ground, physically located with our partners. So we’re working to make this new mode of operation work.”

• US Navy Seizes Large Cache of Smuggled Weapons off Somalia

  Among the arms seized by guided-missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill in the Indian Ocean last week were thousands of Kalashnikov-style rifles, light machine guns, heavy sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and crew-served weapons, the Navy said.

• Somalia’s opposition cease recognising president as election row escalates

  An alliance of Somali opposition parties proposed the creation of a national council of lawmakers, opposition leaders and civil society to govern the Horn of Africa nation after the president’s term expired on Monday with no clear succession plan.

• Somalia’s Danab special forces fear politicization after U.S. troop withdrawal

  The United States has invested billions of dollars in Somalia over the past decade, in part to build and train Danab, the only effective, apolitical fighting unit in the country's war against al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabab.

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