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MONDAY, MAY 23, 2016 • T H I S D AY
INTERNATIONAL
UN, Western Donors Urge Somalia to Speed up Election Process The U.N. Security Council and Western donors have urged Somalia’s parliament to speed up approval of new election rules to ensure an August vote is held on time, saying delays put recovery from conflict at risk. Somalia,
slowly rebuilding after decades of violence and still battling an Islamist insurgency, is due to elect a new parliament, whose members will in turn pick the president. “The United States is increasingly concerned about delays
in the 2016 Somali electoral process,” the U.S. State Department said on Friday, adding the “legitimacy of Somali federal institutions” depended on a transparent and timely transition. It urged parliament “to act swiftly” to enact the
Algeria Troops Kill Six Armed Islamist Militants Algerian troops killed six Islamist fighters during a large-scale military operation in a forested area east of the capital, the ministry of defense said on Saturday. Attacks and bombings are rare now since Algeria emerged from its 1990s war with armed Islamists, but small groups of fighters allied to al Qaeda’s North Africa branch are active in remote areas to the east and the south. The six were killed during an army sweep through the d’Errich forest in Ain Turk in the Bouira region, the ministry said in a statement posted by APS state news agency. The army said it had killed eight and captured one in total during the operation
Iraqi Forces Prepare Offensive on IS-held Falluja Iraq’s military said yesterday that it was preparing to launch an offensive to retake the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja and told residents to get ready to leave before fighting started. Families who could not flee should raise white flags to mark their location in the city 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad, the military’s media unit said in a statement on state television. Falluja, a long-time bastion of Sunni Muslim jihadists, was the first city to fall to Islamic State, in January 2014, six months before the group swept through large parts of Iraq and neighbouring Syria. The Iraqi army, police and Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias, backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition, have surrounded Falluja since late last year. The jihadists have been preventing residents leaving for months. The army“is asking citizens that are still in Falluja to be prepared to leave the city through secured routes that will be announced later”, the statement said, without spelling out when any offensive might start. Deputy district council chairman Falih al-Essawi said three corridors would be opened for civilians to camps west, southwest and southeast of the city, and a subsequent military statement said some residents had begun to flee. Residents told Reuters about 20 families had set out from a southern front-line neighbourhood overnight, but only half of them made it out. Some were intercepted by Islamic State, while others were killed by explosives planted along the road by the jihadists.
which began on May 17. Last week the army also killed seven suspected Islamist fighters in Lakdaria, also in Bouira province. More than 200,000 people died in Algeria’s civil
war with armed Islamists in the 1990s, until President Abdelaziz Bouteflika negotiated an amensty deal with several fronts of fighters, leaving others in the mountains.
new rules. The process to be approved by the outgoing parliament falls short of one-person-one-vote, which diplomats say would be too tough to stage because of the insurgency. But the process will expand the number of people picking the lawmakers. In 2012, just 135 elders selected members of the lower house. Under the new rules, 13,750 people from across federal states will chose 275 members of the lower house. A new 54-seat upper house will also be created to represent the states. The European Union, another major donor, said a parliamentary failure to act
quickly “will jeopardise the Somali political process and set Somalia several years back.” A delegation U.N. Security Council diplomats echoed the comments in talks with Somali leaders in Mogadishu this week. Egypt’s U.N. ambassador, Abdellattif Aboulatta, told a news conference in Nairobi on Friday that the delegation had urged Somali officials to approve the process “as soon as possible.” Privately, diplomats have said the election process might slip by a few weeks, but it must maintain momentum because any political vacuum could be exploited by al Shabaab Islamists or clan warlords who tore the nation apart in the 1990s.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was elected in 2012, is expected to run again. Several corruption scandals have frustrated donors. Officials say they have worked hard to respond to criticisms. The new election process aims to consolidate a federal structure, which includes recently created regional states in a nation where politics is still largely driven by clan loyalties. But the government of Somaliland, a self-declared independent state in the north, will not take part in the election process although seats will be allocated on its behalf, diplomats and officials say.