In
Mogadishu,
40% of Casualties Due to TFG & AMISOM, Old UK
General In
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
June 29 -- In Somalia
as elsewhere, the UN counts casualties
but doesn't say, at least on the record, who is responsible. The most
recent
UN report on Somalia says that “during the period of 1-19
June, [the UN / World Health Organization] reported 973 casualties
from weapon-related wounds treated in the three main hospitals in
Mogadishu.”
Inner
City Press
asked for the breakdown between those caused by Al Shabab and those
caused by the Transitional Federal Government or AMISOM troops.
Officially, there is no answer. On background, the UN estimated 60%
caused by Al Shabab, 40% by the government or peacekeepers.
The
latter
percentage is higher than the UN says publicly. Now the UN mission
UNSOA has brought on board a retired UK general to try, it's said, to
minimize civilian casualties from the AMISOM peacekeepers to which
the UN provides logistical support.
At
least this shows
a plan. When Inner City Press has asked UN spokespeople on the
record, they say it is entirely up to AMISOM, despite the UN
assistance and payments provided to AMISOM. It leads some to
question how
the new mission in Sudan's Abyei region, UNISFA, will be
run, and how it will monitor for human rights as “requested” in
the Security Council's resolution.
Ban and Mahiga in Naibori, protests from Somalia not
shown or answered
Elsewhere
in the
UN, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's adviser on Children and
Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, if her office is in any way
engaged with the UN's work through UN Office of Drugs and Crimes and
the Office of Legal Affairs under Patricia O'Brien in setting up
courts for piracy off the coast of Somalia.
Coomaraswamy
said
that while in Somalia - the TFG has been accused of recruiting child
soldiers, as well as Al Shabab - she spoke with some underaged
pirates, but that beyond that there has been little engagement.
A
professor she
had invited, Joseph Rikhof, told Inner City Press that while what
happens “on land” in Somalia constitutes armed hostilities, the
piracy does not. He called youths' participation voluntary, and said
they could be prosecuted. So continues the UN's engagement in
Somalia.
* * *
On
Somalia,
As
UN Dodges on Mahiga Meeting in Kenya,
Calls for Firing
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
April
7 -- On April 6 Inner City Press asked
UN
Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky to respond to
criticism from Somalia of Ban's envoy Augustine Mahiga scheduling a
consultative meeting on Somalia this month not in that country, but
in Nairobi, Kenya:
Inner
City
Press:
on Somalia, there is quite a lot of protest within the
country about a supposed consultative meeting that Mr. Mahiga is
organizing in Kenya and there have been calls to boycott it. The
Government has also asked that the UN move its offices to Mogadishu.
So, what’s the UN’s response to these two critiques, both from
clan leaders and from the TFG?
Spokesperson
Nesirky:
Well,
Mr. Mahiga extended this invitation to various
parties there to take part in some discussions and we are aware of
the report or the reports that you refer to about the presence of UN
offices in Somalia; we’re aware of that report. I don’t have
anything further on that at the moment, simply to say that the people
who work for those offices are regular visitors to Mogadishu. Indeed
Mr. Mahiga was briefing the Secretary-General last week when we were
in Nairobi, within hours of having just returned from Mogadishu.
On
April 7 Nesirky
read out a statement that Mahiga will proceeding with the meeting in
Nairobi, and has gotten many commitments to attend,
summarized by the
UN in this way:
Augustine
Mahiga,
the
Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Somalia,
said today that the High Level Consultative Meeting will take place
as scheduled on the 12 and 13 April in Nairobi. He said that he has
received positive responses to the conference from Somali parties and
officials who are willing to participate in strengthening the
dialogue between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and its
partners.
What
Nesirky,
who
more and more limits questions at his noon briefing while refusing to
answer the vast majority of e-mailed Press questions, did not
mention is that the
Somali Transitional Federal Government's prime
minister himself has opposed the Kenya location, and has gotten Raila
Odinga's support on this:
“The
Kenyan government will back efforts by the Somalia Transition Federal
Government (TFG) to host an impending high-level peace meeting to
resolve the crisis in the strife-torn country. Prime Minister Raila
Odinga assured his Somalia counterpart Mohamed Abdullahi the
government would back their bid to convince the United Nations and
the African Union to hold the peace meeting in Mogadishu.”
Now, a major
Somali cleric -- Sheikh Ahmed Abdi Dhi’isow, the chairman of the
Somali religious assembly -- has
asked
for Ban Ki-moon to fire
Mahiga:
“'Mahiga
disregarded all of our requests and suggestions and he continued
organizing the meeting in an attempt to divide Somalis, so we are
calling on the U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon to dismiss Augustine Mahiga
from United Nations Political Office for Somalia,' he said.”
What
do
Ban and
Nesirky say to that? The UN of late has been bragging about "its"
Djibouti process. And it's come to thise? Watch this site.
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