Islamic counter terrorism coalition launches Somalia programme with training for journalists

MOGADISHU (SONNA): The Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition has launched a programme of projects across Somali government institutions at a conference in Mogadishu, beginning with a three day training course for journalists and social media influencers on media and peace.

The conference drew representatives of 43 countries, more than 20 international embassies and 21 Somali government institutions that are to receive projects under the programme, according to Somalia’s Ambassador to the coalition, General Abdirahman Mohamed Turyare. The coalition’s Secretary-General, Maj. Gen. Mohammed bin Saeed al-Moghedi, arrived in the capital on Friday with a delegation and was received at Aden Adde International Airport by the Deputy Chief of the Somali National Army, General Madey Nureey Ufurow.

Opening the training, Defence Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi said the government has adopted a national approach to countering terrorism that links the military, security, ideological, media and economic fields while strengthening state institutions. He said Somalia has made measurable progress across those fields, citing military gains against armed groups, the drying up of their sources of finance, work against extremist thinking, and the closure of hundreds of websites and internet accounts belonging to them.

The figure on closures is the most specific claim made at the conference. The Minister did not give a period over which the closures took place, and did not say whether they were carried out by Somali authorities, by platforms acting on referrals, or with partners.

The coalition’s Secretary-General told participants that Somalia’s decision to carry out the initiative carries particular weight, and that the country has a young and active media sector able to build public awareness and strengthen a culture of peace. Informed words build awareness, he said, professional information counters disinformation, and responsible media protects a society from ideas directed at its security, its unity and its future. The coalition regards those working in the media as partners in the making of security.

He said the initiative is not confined to training. It is intended to leave a lasting effect on media practice, through developing participants’ skills in handling terrorism and extremism professionally, framing messages that carry, making use of modern media tools and digital platforms, and meeting extremist narratives with fact, awareness and professional standards.

Ambassador Turyare said the subject of the training is how the media of a country that has come through civil war and now confronts terrorism does its work, and how it operates on matters of security. Forty participants are taking part, drawn from government media, the media of the federal member states, private television and radio stations, and social media influencers. Further programmes are to follow addressing what the media needs in order to carry messages of peace.

The wider programme runs until 2027. Beyond the media project it is to cover the training and equipping of the armed forces, rehabilitation programmes addressing ideology, economic security, and the judicial handling of terrorism cases and money laundering, work involving the Military Court and the Ministry of Justice. Among the institutions receiving projects are the ministries of Defence, Internal Security, Information, Finance and Endowments, the Tubsan agency, the Stabilisation Fund, the National Security Office, Immigration and Communications.

The structure follows the coalition’s own. Established at Saudi Arabia’s initiative and announced in December 2015, and now comprising 43 member states with its headquarters in Riyadh, the coalition organises its work across four domains, being ideology, communications, counter terrorist financing and the military. It holds memoranda of understanding with the United States, the United Kingdom and France as supporting countries, and with the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism. The Somali programme applies all four domains to a single member state at once.

The visit falls within a widening of Somalia’s security cooperation with Saudi Arabia. The Ministry of Defence signed a memorandum of understanding on military cooperation with the Saudi Ministry of Defence in Riyadh in February, and the Saudi Ambassador called on the Speaker of the House of the People in Mogadishu this week.

What has been launched is a framework rather than its content. No budget has been published for any project, and no account has been given of how the forty media participants were selected or by whom. The programme names its institutions and its end date, which is more than most such initiatives set out at the start, and those are the terms on which it can be measured when 2027 arrives.