Former Somali Defense Minister Named President of Jubaland.

[Kamaavi]

 

Former Somali Defense Minister Named President of Jubaland.

April 04, 2011, 7:27 AM EDT

 

By Sarah McGregor and Hamsa Omar

 

(Updates with details of Jubaland Initiative in third paragraph.)

 

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Former Somali Defense Minister Mohamed Abdi Mohamed said he has been named president of Jubaland, a proposed semi-autonomous region in the southwest of the country currently controlled by an al-Qaeda-linked militia.

 

“I have been elected as the president for Jubaland,” Mohamed said by phone today from Nairobi, the capital of neighboring Kenya. Mohamed said he couldn’t immediately comment further as he was in transit.

 

The so-called Jubaland Initiative seeks to partition the regions of Gedo, Lower Juba and Middle Juba and their 1.3 million people from Somalia. The process, first proposed by Kenya, aims to create a neutral area along the two nations’ border to stop the effects of conflict in Somalia from spreading to Kenya, said Barako Elema, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a Cape Town-based research group.

 

“The plan is to create a buffer zone to stop the current refugee crisis, piracy money and arms flow into Kenya; to contain it in Somalia,” Elema said in a phone interview from Nairobi.

 

Kenyan security forces were involved in at least two clashes with members of Somalia’s al-Shabaab militia last month, the Standard newspaper reported on March 31. In one incident, a police station at Liboi, about 500 kilometers (342 miles) northeast of Nairobi, was attacked by militants using a rocket- propelled grenade. In the second, 12 al-Shabaab militants were killed in a cross-border raid, it said.

 

Insurgency

 

Al-Shabaab, which the U.S. accuses of having links to al- Qaeda, has taken control of most of southern and central Somalia after it began an insurgency against the nation’s Western-backed government in 2007. The country hasn’t had a functioning central government since the ouster of Mohamed Said Barre, the former dictator, in 1991.

 

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki said last week the Somali conflict is increasing the threat of regional instability and appealed for aid from the international community to head off a humanitarian catastrophe. The East African nation hosts more than 500,000 Somali refugees, he said.

 

Mohamed was chosen as Jubaland’s leader at a meeting held last week in Nairobi involving members of the six-nation Inter- Governmental Authority on Development, Somali lawmakers, African Union officials and Western diplomats, Elema said. Jubaland will model Somaliland and Puntland; the two breakaway regions in northern Somalia that declared autonomy after the fall of Barre.

 

Ethiopian Resistance

 

The Jubaland Initiative has been resisted by the Ethiopian authorities, Elema said. They are concerned that the move may stoke secessionist sentiments among rebels in Ethiopia’s southeastern ****** region who are clansmen of residents of Jubaland, he said.

 

“Ethiopia has opposed the resolution to establish a semi- autonomous state,” he said. “The ****** are already fighting for secession from Ethiopia so that is a very precarious situation.”

 

The proposal to form Jubaland would first require resuming control of the territory from al-Shabaab, Elema said. Somalia’s interim government troops are supported by an African Union peacekeeping mission, known as Amisom, which is made up of soldiers mainly from Uganda and Ethiopia.

 

Under the 2008-09 Djibouti Peace Process, which established Somalia’s government, neighboring countries including Kenya and Ethiopia cannot contribute troops to the mission, even though the two nations help train Somali government forces, Elema said.

 

“Kenya can’t directly intervene with its military,” he said. The proposal to form Jubaland “is to protect its own territory.”

 

--Editors: Paul Richardson, Alastair Reed.

 

To contact the reporter on this story:

 

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-04/former-somali-defense-minister-named-president-of-jubaland.html

[Kamaavi]

 

A former Somali Defence minister has been sworn in as the president of the newly created semi-autonomous region of Jubaland.

 

Prof Mohamed Abdi Gandhi was sworn in at a meeting of Somalis in Nairobi.

 

The longtime anthropology professor in France will be in charge of the area near the border between Kenya and Somalia.

 

The region includes the three sub-regions of Lower Juba, Middle Juba and Gedo and is estimated to have a population of 1.3 million.

 

The appointment followed a week-long conference that brought together representatives of the civil society, Somali youth, elders and members of the Transitional Federal Government.

 

Prof Gandhi had been spearheading the breakaway. But an official in charge of organising the conference said participants decided to elect Prof Gandhi because “he is the face of Jubaland in the eyes of the international community”.

 

The official, who requested anonymity because he is not the official spokesman, said: “Panellists viewed Prof Mohamed Gandhi as a punctual and flexible person. They thought it wise to have him lead them.”

 

Prior to the swearing in, Prof Gandhi had indicated he would love “to liberate Jubaland from extremists”.

 

The idea to create an autonomous region near the Kenyan border is hinged on the reason that it will prevent the movement of al Shabaab extremists within the region.

 

As the conference ended on Sunday, it was not clear whether the Kenyan Government supported the election but recent WikiLeaks revelations showed that the country supported the creation of an autonomous region near its border with Somalia to prevent the flow of illegal arms.

 

The meeting had been opposed by both Ethiopia and Djibouti, who argue that creating autonomies in the war-torn country could inspire further insurgency by other regions or degrade the gains made by the TFG.

 

The official said the election of the president was only the initial stage of making Jubaland autonomous.

 

The region will have to create a parliament and the president will appoint the cabinet.

 

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Somalis+swear+in+the+president+of+Jubaland+/-/1056/1138186/-/m66vqdz/-/