Mogadishu bombings, terrorism kill university, school students

Ahmed Adel

Somalia is preparing for general elections in 2020, the nation’s first one-person-one-vote elections since the country experienced a military coup in 1969.

Somalia has been in a state of war and upheaval since 1991, when former ruler Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown, leaving the country without an effective government and vulnerable to Islamic radical militants, warlords, and criminal armed groups.

A truck bomb exploded at a busy security checkpoint in Somalia’s capital Saturday morning, killing at least 60.

Abdiqadir Abdirahman, the director of the Aamin Ambulance service, said that at least 125 were wounded. Children and students were among those wounded.

Al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab often carries out such attacks. It was blamed for a devastating truck bombing in Mogadishu in October 2017 that killed more than 500 people, though the group never claimed responsibility for the blast.

James Swan, the United Nations envoy in Somalia, said last month that the nation is looking ahead toward 2020 elections and the adoption of a federal constitution by June, but significant barriers to success remain.

“After more than a year without effective cooperation between the Central Government and key Federal Member States, this situation has become an obstacle to improving and achieving important national priorities,” said Swan, speaking to the United Nations Security Council as he delivered a three-month progress report. “Somalia’s leaders must act urgently to break this stalemate between the Center and the Federal Member States in the interest of the nation.”

Formed in 2006, al-Shabaab, who were the armed militia for the Islamic Courts Union, Somalia’s one-time rulers, it has been fighting the country’s Western-backed government and its allies in a war to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Conflicts between Somalia’s federal states and the federal government of Somalia escalated after Qatar’s inside man in Somalia, Fahad Yasin, took over Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) in August 2019.

Yasin, a former senior Al-Jazeera Network correspondent and member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Somalia and the Islamic Courts Union, is considered the link of communication between Qatar and armed militias in Somalia, especially al-Shabaab, which Doha supports to increase its influence within the country.