Somalia News Gazette

GENEVA — The World Health Organization is warning of growing health risks in the Horn of Africa as acute hunger spreads there.

The World Health Organization’s incident manager for the Horn of Africa, Sophie Maes, says urgent action is needed to slow the health and hunger crisis that is sickening and killing increasing numbers of people in the region.

WHO has released $16.5 million from its emergency fund for operations there.

“Due to the acute food insecurity, malnutrition rates are getting higher and higher, and especially children and pregnant and lactating women are very, very vulnerable,” said Maes. “… There is this synergy between malnutrition and disease where malnourished children become more easily sick and sick children more easily malnourished.”

The World Food Program warns 20 million people are at risk of starvation as drought in the Horn worsens.

Speaking from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Maes says the priority is to ensure everyone has access to food. At the same time, she says it is important that’ health needs are not neglected.

She warns the risk of disease outbreaks is higher because of a lack of clean water. She says the drought has dried up water sources, forcing people to leave their homes in search of food, water, and pasture for their cattle. Consequently, she says people are more likely to get sick as their living conditions deteriorate.

“And we are seeing a spike in disease outbreaks. We are looking at measles in Djibouti, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, Sudan,” said Maes. “Cholera and acute water diarrhea in Kenya, in South Sudan and Somalia. Meningitis, Hepatitis E, to name but a few.”

Maes appeals for international support to help WHO provide needed care to severely malnourished children.

She says it is crucial to respond to disease outbreaks quickly, to have sufficient supplies of drugs and equipment available, and to ensure children receive needed vaccines.

Source: Voice of America

CAIRO — A senior U.N. official for Libya on Saturday condemned the storming of the parliament’s headquarters in the east of the oil-rich country as part of protests in several cities the previous day against the political class and deteriorating economic conditions.

Hundreds of protesters marched in the streets of the capital, Tripoli, and other Libyan cities Friday, with many attacking and setting fire to government buildings, including the House of Representatives in the eastern city of Tobruk.

“The people’s right to peacefully protest should be respected and protected but riots and acts of vandalism such as the storming of the House of Representatives headquarters late yesterday in Tobruk are totally unacceptable,” said Stephanie Williams, the U.N. special adviser on Libya, on Twitter.

Friday’s protests came a day after the leaders of the parliament and another legislative chamber based in Tripoli failed to reach an agreement on elections during U.N.-mediated talks in Geneva. The dispute now centers on the eligibility requirements for candidates, according to the United Nations.

Libya failed to hold elections in December, following challenges such as legal disputes, controversial presidential hopefuls and the presence of rogue militias and foreign fighters in the country.

The failure to hold the vote was a major blow to international efforts to bring peace to the Mediterranean nation. It has opened a new chapter in its long-running political impasse, with two rival governments now claiming power after tentative steps toward unity in the past year.

The protesters, frustrated from years of chaos and division, have called for the removal of the current political class and elections to be held. They also rallied against dire economic conditions in the oil-rich nation, where prices have risen for fuel and bread and power outages are a regular occurrence.

Protesters also rallied Saturday in Tripoli and several towns in western Libya, blocking roads and setting tires ablaze, according to livestreaming on social media.

There were fears that militias across the country could quash the protests as they did in 2020 demonstrations when they opened fire on people protesting dire economic conditions.

Sabadell Jose, the European Union envoy in Libya, called on protesters to “avoid any type of violence.” He said Friday’s demonstrations demonstrated that people want “change through elections and their voices should be heard.”

The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Richard Norland, urged Libyan political leaders and their foreign backers to work for a compromise to hold elections.

“It is clear no single political entity enjoys legitimate control across the entire country and any effort to impose a unilateral solution will result in violence,” he warned on Twitter following a call with Mohammad Younes Menfi, head of the Libyan presidential council.

Libya has been racked by conflict since a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The country was then for years split between rival administrations in the east and west, each supported by different militias and foreign governments.

Source: Voice of America

NAIROBI — As Kenya heads toward a highly contested presidential election, many are worried about a repeat of deadly violence seen in past votes. The Kenyan group Mothers of Victims and Survivors is calling for all sides to maintain peace during this year’s polls.

Benna Buluma, also known as Mama Victor, is clutching photos of her two deceased sons at her makeshift home in the Mathare section of Nairobi.

Election time brings painful memories to the 48-year-old widow.

On August 9, 2017, her sons; Benard and Victor Okoth, both young men, were shot dead following a police crackdown on election protests in the area, just a day after the presidential polls. Five years later, the killers still have not been held accountable.

If it was my sons who had killed someone on the road, they would have been arrested, says Buluma as she fights back tears. But the police who killed my sons have not been arrested to date, she says, and that is what pains me the most. I ask myself why, she adds. They are all human beings, and the law should serve everyone equally.

Mathare, one of the biggest slums in Africa, with some of the most densely populated poor neighborhoods in Nairobi, has remained a constant hotspot of election violence.

MarryAnn Kasina is the co-founder of Social Justice Center, an organization that advocates for social justice in Nairobi.

“Every time we have elections, they know what our issues are, but they have not actualized,” Kasina said. “So, bringing your manifesto, to say that you are bringing water, you’ll do this…it just brings horizontal violence because you are already living in poverty. It is violence already living in it, you know.”

Mama Victor founded the group Mothers of Victims and Survivors Network to help families seek justice.

The group is urging election authorities and participants in the August presidential election to refrain from violence.

We want a peaceful election, she says. And that’s not all – we, as mothers of victims, we want justice for our children, and compensation, she adds.

The Kenyan police have been accused of using excessive force in handling past election-related protests.

With just over a month to the general elections, the National Police Service says it is prepared to provide a secure environment for the polls to run peacefully.

In a statement to VOA, police spokesperson Bruno Shioso said steps have been taken to improve security, including new election security training and additional equipment for officers.

Past elections in Kenya have been marred by deadly violence. In the most notorious incident, more than 1,100 people were killed in riots and attacks after the disputed 2007 vote.

But, as the clock ticks toward this year’s balloting, observers are cautiously optimistic that the polls will be peaceful.

Source: Voice of America

President Joe Biden said Monday that a U.S. missile strike over the weekend has killed the leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.

For the past decade, al-Zawahiri headed al-Qaida, the Islamist terror group that spawned franchises around the world after the stunning attacks on U.S. soil on September 11, 2001.

“Now, justice has been delivered,” Biden said Monday night. “And this terrorist leader is no more.” He added: “We make it clear again tonight that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.”

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan shortly after the September 11 attacks, and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was the prime target. U.S. forces killed him in Pakistan in 2011.

Al-Zawahiri, born in Egypt to a wealthy family and trained as a surgeon, took over the terror group in 2011. Before that, he was said to be bin Laden’s personal doctor.

The confirmation of his death came more than an hour after the Taliban rulers in Kabul said a missile attack on Sunday against a residential compound in the Afghan capital was the work of an American drone.

Senior White House officials told reporters Monday night that the operation targeted a house in Kabul with an unmanned aerial vehicle, with no U.S. personnel on the ground. Administration officials also said they concluded with “high confidence” that only al-Zawahiri was killed, and that they were aware that senior members of the Taliban’s Haqqani network knew he was in Afghanistan. Officials said they did not alert the Taliban ahead of the strike.

A senior administration official said al-Zawahiri “continued to provide strategic direction to al-Qaida affiliates worldwide, calling for attacks on the United States.”

The Taliban were quick to share their ire.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly condemns this attack on whatever the pretext,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, using the official name for the Taliban government.

He denounced the strike as a “blatant violation of international principles and the Doha agreement,” referring to the 2020 talks that Taliban leaders held with the U.S. and Western leaders in Qatar over the withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops the subsequent year.

The Taliban took control of Afghanistan on August 15 as the U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew and the Western-backed government in Kabul as well as its security forces collapsed in the face of the stunning nationwide Taliban assault.

U.S. officials have been in contact with Pakistani leaders to seek an “over-the-horizon” facility to conduct counterterrorism operations in landlocked Afghanistan after American troops left the country and the Taliban took over.

The U.S.-led military coalition invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and dislodged the then-Taliban government in Kabul to punish it for harboring the al-Qaida terror network. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri escaped the international military action.

The U.S.-Taliban agreement also required the Islamist group not to allow any terrorist organization, including al-Qaida, to pose a threat to the security of the United States and other countries from Afghan soil.

But recent United Nations assessments suggested that al-Qaida, boosted by leadership stability and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, appeared to be positioning itself to once again be seen as the world’s preeminent terror group and as the greatest long-term threat to the West.

Intelligence shared by United Nations member states and published in a new report earlier this month found al-Qaida was enjoying a degree of freedom under Taliban rule, allowing its leadership to communicate more often and more easily with affiliates and followers. The report further concluded that al-Zawahiri, long rumored to be in ill health or dying, was “alive and communicating freely.”

The U.N. report similarly cautions that while al-Qaida may be better positioned, it is likely to refrain from launching external attacks in order to not embarrass Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and because the al-Qaida core still lacks “an external operational capability.”

Analyst Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said it is important for the U.S. to cut out terror groups at their roots.

“The goal is to keep pressure on terrorists over there so they don’t have the ability to kill us here,” he said. “Every policy decision in Washington should be judged, at least in part, by that metric.”

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz praised the operation.

“This is an important accomplishment,” the Texas senator said in a statement. “All Americans will breathe easier today knowing Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda, has been eliminated. This strike should be a message to terrorists near and far: if you conspire to kill Americans, we will find and kill you.”

Biden said the killing could lead to a new era.

“Now we have eliminated the emir of al-Qaida,” he said. “He will never again – never again – allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he’s gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens. You know, it can’t be a launching pad against the United States. We’re going to see to it that won’t happen.”

Meanwhile in recent years, al-Qaida has continued to expand, launching violent affiliate groups in the Middle East, West and East Africa, and South Asia.

Source: Voice of America

Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeded Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida leader after years as its main organizer and strategist, but his lack of charisma and competition from rival militants Islamic State hobbled his ability to inspire spectacular attacks on the West.

Al-Zawahiri, 71, was killed over the weekend in a U.S. drone strike, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday.

He had watched in dismay as al-Qaida was effectively sidelined by the 2010-11 Arab revolts, launched mainly by middle-class activists and intellectuals opposed to decades of autocracy.

In the years following bin Laden’s death, U.S. airstrikes killed a succession of al-Zawahiri’s deputies, weakening the veteran Egyptian militant’s ability to coordinate globally.

Despite a reputation as an inflexible and combative personality, al-Zawahiri managed to nurture loosely affiliated groups around the world that grew to wage devastating local insurgencies, some of them rooted in turmoil arising from the Arab Spring. The violence destabilized a number of countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

But al-Qaida’s days as the centrally directed, hierarchical network of plotters that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, were long gone. Instead, militancy returned to its roots in local-level conflicts, driven by a mix of local grievances and incitement by transnational jihadi networks using social media.

Al-Zawahiri’s origins in Islamist militancy went back decades.

The first time the world heard of him was when he stood in a courtroom cage after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

“We have sacrificed, and we are still ready for more sacrifices until the victory of Islam,” shouted al-Zawahiri, wearing a white robe, as fellow defendants enraged by Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel chanted slogans.

Al-Zawahiri served a three-year jail term for illegal arms possession but was acquitted of the main charges.

A trained surgeon — one of his pseudonyms was The Doctor — al-Zawahiri went to Pakistan on his release, where he worked with the Red Crescent treating Islamist mujahedeen guerrillas wounded in Afghanistan fighting Soviet forces.

During that period, he became acquainted with bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi who had joined the Afghan resistance.

Taking over the leadership of Islamic Jihad in Egypt in 1993, al-Zawahiri was a leading figure in a campaign in the mid-1990s to overthrow the government and set up a purist Islamic state. More than 1,200 Egyptians were killed.

Egyptian authorities mounted a crackdown on Islamic Jihad after an assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak in June 1995 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The graying, white-turbaned al-Zawahiri responded by ordering a 1995 attack on the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. Two cars filled with explosives rammed through the compound’s gates, killing 16 people.

In 1999, an Egyptian military court sentenced al-Zawahiri to death in absentia. By then he was living the spartan life of a militant after helping bin Laden to form al-Qaida.

A videotape aired by Al Jazeera in 2003 showed the two men walking on a rocky mountainside — an image that Western intelligence hoped would provide clues on their whereabouts.

Threats of global jihad

For years al-Zawahiri was believed to be hiding along the forbidding border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He assumed leadership of al-Qaida in 2011 after U.S. Navy Seals killed bin Laden in his hideout in Pakistan. Since then, he repeatedly called for global jihad, with an AK-47 as his side during video messages.

In a eulogy for bin Laden, al-Zawahiri promised to pursue attacks on the West, recalling the Saudi-born militant’s threat that “you will not dream of security until we live it as a reality and until you leave the lands of the Muslims.”

As it turned out, the emergence of the even more hardline Islamic State group in 2014-2019 in Iraq and Syria drew as much, if not more, attention from Western counter-terrorism authorities.

Al-Zawahiri often tried to stir passions among Muslims by commenting online about sensitive issues such as U.S. policies in the Middle East or Israeli actions against Palestinians, but his delivery was seen as lacking bin Laden’s magnetism.

On a practical level, al-Zawahiri is believed to have been involved in some of al-Qaida’s biggest operations, helping organize the 2001 attacks, when airliners hijacked by al-Qaida were used to kill 3,000 people in the United States.

He was indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The FBI put a $25 million bounty on his head on its most wanted list.

Prominent family

Al-Zawahiri did not emerge from Cairo’s slums, like others drawn to militant groups who promised a noble cause. Born in 1951 to a prominent Cairo family, al-Zawahiri was a grandson of the grand imam of Al Azhar, one of Islam’s most important mosques.

Al-Zawahiri was raised in Cairo’s leafy Maadi suburb, a place favored by expatriates from the Western nations he railed against. The son of a pharmacology professor, al-Zawahiri first embraced Islamic fundamentalism at the age of 15.

He was inspired by the revolutionary ideas of Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, an Islamist executed in 1966 on charges of trying to overthrow the state.

People who studied with al-Zawahiri at Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine in the 1970s describe a lively young man who went to the cinema, listened to music and joked with friends.

“When he came out of prison, he was a completely different person,” said a doctor who studied with al-Zawahiri and declined to be named.

In the courtroom cage after the assassination of Sadat at a military parade, al-Zawahiri addressed the international press, saying militants had suffered from severe torture including whippings and attacks by wild dogs in prison.

“They arrested the wives, the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and the sons in a trial to put the psychological pressure on these innocent prisoners,” he said, firing up a wild-eyed man beside him and other militants.

Fellow prisoners said those conditions further radicalized al-Zawahiri and set him on his path to global jihad.

Source: Voice of America

New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency Monday over the spread of monkeypox.

“This order will bolster our existing efforts to educate, vaccinate, test, and treat as many New Yorkers as possible and ensure a whole-of-government response to this outbreak,” Adams said in a statement released with the executive order.

The order allows Adams to suspend local laws and temporarily impose new rules to control the spread of the outbreak.

Similarly, Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state disaster emergency last Friday. She previously announced that over the next four to six weeks, the federal government would distribute 110,000 vaccine doses to the state in addition to the 60,000 already distributed.

As of Monday, New York City has reported 1,472 cases, according to monkeypox data on the NYC Health website. Most cases worldwide have affected men who have sex with men.

In an announcement Saturday declaring a public health emergency in the city, Adams and Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan estimated that about 150,000 New Yorkers may be at risk of monkeypox infection.

Cases are continuing to rise across the country. New York currently has the highest number of recorded monkeypox cases among the 50 states, followed by California with 799 cases as of Friday, the CDC reports. San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency on Thursday.

Though California has distributed more than 25,000 vaccine doses, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a KTVU-TV interview last week that the state is “not even close to where we need to be.”

The rapid spread of monkeypox worldwide has sparked alarm over the past few months. Since May, more than 22,000 cases have been reported in 80 countries, despite the virus naturally occurring only in Central and West Africa.

The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over monkeypox on July 23.

Source: Voice of America

The Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made earlier today a demarche to the Russian Ambassador in Athens over the expulsion of eight Greek diplomats from the diplomatic and consular authorities in Russia.

He underscored that the Russian reaction was disproportionate compared to the measures announced by our country against certain Russian diplomats who had been declared as personae non gratae for demonstrably engaging in actions inconsistent with their diplomatic status, in accordance with the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963.

On the contrary, the expulsions of Greek diplomats have no justification whatsoever, other than being disproportionate reprisals. It was also underlined that the above-mentioned Greek diplomats had in no way violated the Vienna Conventions.

Lastly, the Greek side protested against the content of recent statements by Russian officials and emphasized the importance of avoiding generalizations and accusations against our country that cannot be verified.

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic

In the context of my regular contacts with the parliamentary parties, the parties that are represented in the Hellenic Parliament, I briefed them on the major foreign policy issues.

First of all, I informed them about the NATO Summit in Madrid, where Greece was represented by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

And I provided the representatives of the parliamentary parties with a copy of the Agreement between Finland, Sweden and Turkey. I also had the opportunity to explain to the representatives of the parliamentary parties that this Agreement does not create excess benefits for Turkey, as part of Greek public opinion appears to believe. On the contrary, Turkey did not even succeed in designating the YPG or ‘FETO’ as terrorist organisations in this agreement; or, as it could not possibly have happened, to place the extradition procedure under a special regime other than the European Convention on Extradition.

Regarding the issue of PESCO, [Turkey’s] participation in these programmes, Greece and Cyprus have the relevant veto right within the framework of the Council of the European Union.

Therefore, I think that what is being said in Greece regarding Turkey’s “excess benefits” and “triumph” does not really reflect reality.

Of course, I had the opportunity to discuss all this with my two counterparts from Sweden and Finland, whom I met at the NATO Summit.

There was another noteworthy event in Madrid: the new Strategic Concept was adopted, and I believe it merits more attention. In this Strategic Concept, particular reference is made to the values of International Law and good neighbourly relations between countries, as well as to the overall framework of values and principles that Greece believes in and stands for. And which, if implemented, will resolve a huge number of problems in our wider region.

We also had the opportunity to discuss the escalation of Turkish rhetoric and the various violations on the ground. I informed the representatives of the parties about the perfectly clear Greek position. First of all, provocative conduct is not accepted and will be answered. But, beyond that, Greece will not be entangled in an ongoing escalation. On the contrary, Greece is seeking de-escalation; it believes that rhetorical outbursts from the other side of the Aegean cannot result in positive developments regarding Greek-Turkish relations. I also told them clearly that Greece has no intention of going down the path of this ongoing escalation. Instead, it always maintains a serious stance that is compelled by our own belief in and commitment to International Law and the International Law of the Sea, as well as international human rights law.

As we enter the last year of the government’s term of office, I would like to conclude by making a broader request. My request is that national issues be kept out of the realm of partisan politics, as has largely been the case to date. That is, we need to maintain the maturity and concord that have gotten us to this point.

Because I believe it is right to always remember that Hellenism has been historically divided over foreign policy issues. And we should keep in mind that this year, 2022, marks 100 years since the national catastrophe of 1922. A national catastrophe largely brought on by the National Schism.

We should not forget that we are facing a national threat and we can face this threat if we are united, that is, if we are united together.

Therefore, upon the instructions I have received from the Prime Minister, I will continue to serve this priority of concord and unity of the Greek people.

Thank you.

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic