By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/unsc7somalia011410.html
UNITED NATIONS, January 14 -- Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, in control of just a small part of Mogadishu, is contracting with Sudan to print new Somali shillings, UN envoy Ahmedou Ould Abdallah acknowledged to Inner City Press on Thursday. Video here.
Ould Abdallah had just told the UN Security Council that it should further back the TFG. Inner City Press asked about opposition by Somali MPs to the TFG's finance minister Sharif Shaykh Hasan Shaykh Adan cutting a deal with Sudan. Ould Abdallah said that new shillings were needed, because the previous bill were counterfeited, on "photocopy machines" and otherwise.
Inner City Press asked how wide or small an area these new bills would be used it. Ould Abdallah claimed all over the country, but for the dollarization of the economy. But with Al-Shabaab controlling whole swaths of Southern Somalia, one wonders if this currency contract is even practical.
With the European Union bragging about escorting from Kenya to Mogadishu a ship chartered by the UN's UNSOA, and reports that the ship contained arms and tanks for the TFG, Inner City Press asked Ould Abdallah about it.
For the record, it has been reported that
[T]he TFG had imported a large shipment of arms, including tanks—the latter representing a considerable escalation from the "technicals," improvised battle wagons constructed by mounting a machine or anti-aircraft gun on a pickup truck or four-wheel drive vehicle, which have been ubiquitous in the Somali conflict. It later emerged that the shipment came on Sierra Leonean-flagged vessel, the MV Alpha Kirawira, which, according to a press release by the European Union Naval Force (EU NAVFOR) Somalia's Operation Atalanta, was chartered by the UN Support Office for AMISOM (UNSOA) and escorted out of the Kenyan port of Mombasa by the Spanish frigate SPS Navarra and accompanied all the way to Mogadishu by the French corvette FS Commandant L'Herminier.
Ould Abdallah said he hadn't heard of the ship, then added that heavy equipment is needed in Somalia, including APCs. His spokeswoman urged him to leave the stakeout, again without herself agreeing to provide any answers.
Ould Abdallah, as he left, said he would look into the ship. His deputy, who previously a serious humanitarian, seemed to indicate the same. We'll see.
