"Even Somaliland’s year-long military exchange did not sound off
alarms of a possible arms embargo violation to Bryden, whose wife’s
family is coincidentally located in the Somaliland capital ... a large
number of the sources Bryden uses in the report lead to defunct
webpages, making verification impossible in several circumstances.
When reporting on Puntland’s anti-terror operations, he uses sources
like Galgala News, which was once the mouthpiece of Al-Shabaab weapons
provider Mohamed Said ‘Atom.’ Bryden also admits to using non-local
sources to report on Puntland, citing a lack of access to the region.
The monitoring group’s source of choice for Puntland is Somalia
Report, a small blog whose often dubious headlines have forced them to
pull stories and make numerous apologies. In one instance he condemns
the Puntland leader’s son for corruption yet uses a mouthpiece owned
by the same individual as his source–clearly, Bryden is desperate to
make any case he can"
http://dissidentnation.com/the-united-nations-bogus-monitoring-report-on-somalia/#more-3600
THE UNITED NATIONS’ BOGUS MONITORING REPORT ON SOMALIA
by DISSIDENT NATION on JULY 14, 2012 in POLITICS with 4 COMMENTS
In its latest monitoring report on the status of Somalia’s weapons
embargo, the United Nations’ task force for Somalia and Eritrea used
their time and resources to deliver a grossly biased and incomplete
report. At the head of this botched report is Matthew Bryden, a
partisan pseudo-authority on Somalia who holds a passport to the
unrecognized territory of Somaliland and serves as the coordinator of
the monitoring group.
The UN’s latest monitoring reports have been particularly tainted with
bias, but the newest offering takes the cake, and should be enough to
cast the mission aside as a joke.
A rabid bias
The latest monitoring report came to light just before its release
some weeks ago during an anti-piracy conference in Dubai, United Arab
Emirates. It was rumored at that conference that the upcoming
monitoring report on Somalia would be heavily biased against Puntland,
and for no particular reason. Coordinator Bryden is no friend of
Puntland, or Somalia, and it was hinted in Dubai that he would portray
Puntland as menacing as he could, even at the cost of the truth. By
the time of the Dubai-based conference in June, Bryden had already
found a way to place pressure on the UAE to pull funding to Somalia’s
only major internal anti-piracy program–the Puntland Maritime Police
Force (PMPF).
By June, Puntland had already cleansed most of its coastal communities
of its pirate plague and had launched the nation’s largest piracy
rehabilitation program. The anti-piracy program was so successful that
Fox News host and former US military man Oliver North traveled to
Puntland to survey the forces some consider to be Somalia’s only
answer to piracy.
To the luck of Somalis and the misfortune of pirates, Puntland was
able to bypass Bryden’s bias and has been promised further funding
from the UAE and the international community in its assault on piracy.
As I type, the PMPF are pursing the kidnappers of an NGO team in the
town of Galkayo. If Bryden had his way, the families of these NGO
workers would be waiting quite a while longer for relief.
After bypassing one stretched accusation after another against the
Somali anti-piracy program in Puntland, you will find not a single
damning criticism against Somaliland, not even so much as a word on
possible corruption. In the past year, Somaliland’s security forces
have engaged in repeated violent skirmishes against local militias in
the Sool and Togdheer provinces, with some attacks so intense that it
caught the attention of Amnesty International. Even Somaliland’s
year-long military exchange did not sound off alarms of a possible
arms embargo violation to Bryden, whose wife’s family is
coincidentally located in the Somaliland capital.
When the report named off the Somali figures accused of corruption,
the entire region of Somaliland was conveniently skipped over. Missing
in the report were any mentions to public mismanagement in Somaliland
despite a 2009 report by UAE’s The National newspaper that cited food
aid theft and diversion in Burao, Somaliland’s second-largest city.
Forgotten still, perhaps deliberately, was the recent court case in
the Somaliland capital Hargeisa that saw harsh execution sentences
handed out to 17 individuals belonging to the same marginalized clan.
Questionable sources
A large number of the sources Bryden uses in the report lead to
defunct webpages, making verification impossible in several
circumstances. When reporting on Puntland’s anti-terror operations, he
uses sources like Galgala News, which was once the mouthpiece of
Al-Shabaab weapons provider Mohamed Said ‘Atom.’ Bryden also admits to
using non-local sources to report on Puntland, citing a lack of access
to the region. The monitoring group’s source of choice for Puntland is
Somalia Report, a small blog whose often dubious headlines have forced
them to pull stories and make numerous apologies. In one instance he
condemns the Puntland leader’s son for corruption yet uses a
mouthpiece owned by the same individual as his source–clearly, Bryden
is desperate to make any case he can.
The truth
Somalia’s Puntland-based anti-piracy program is the most effective
tool yet in the fight against the criminal plague along Somalia’s
shores, and Puntland arguably faces the largest number of internal and
external threats from both militants and pirates today, and as such
needs a proper security force to tackle these issues. Since 2004,
Puntland has been the greatest sacrifice to the stabilization efforts
in Somalia, and without it the nation and the world would be in grave
danger from a myriad of threats now contained mostly to Somalia and
being squeezed out even more every day.
While this report may largely be toothless, at least we hope, it has
threatened both the sovereignty of Somalia as well as its security and
the security of the global community by scrutinizing Somalia’s defense
capabilities. While the embargo may still serve its use in this
transitional phase in Somalia, it should be used sparingly and only
against unruly factions–not the groups trying to stabilize Somalia.
DissidentNation.com
Received on Sun Jul 22 2012 - 20:41:24 EDT
