Highlights:
Somali’s Prime Minister Omar Sharmake in a recent trip to UN Headquarters in New York said that ending the crisis in the Gulf of Aden and especially Yemen is not only crucial to the Yemeni people but also to his country.
He also urged increased support from the member states of the UN Security Council in the fight against the Somali homegrown terrorists and their recent plans to expand and join the Islamic State.
Summary:
Somali’s Prime Minister has expressed concern over the war in the Gulf of Aden and especially Yemen in his recent trip to the UN headquarters in New York during a recent Security Council meeting. Yemen and Somalia are technically neighbors only separated by the gulf which serves as a route that connects Africa to the Middle East.
Somalia which has been battling Al Shabaab militants that have recently experienced a divide with a faction pledging allegiance to the Islamic State movement while the other maintaining their loyalty to al Qaeda.
Yemen on the other hand has a direct route to Somalia through which the IS jihadis could possibly use to access and establish a workable strong cell in Somalia. They could use the Gulf of Aden to bring in reinforcement and weapons to al Shabaab militants and in turn undermining the significant mileage that has been achieved by the African Union troops.
Sharmake urged the UN Security Council to not only increase support to end the terror reign of al Shabaab but to also tackle the immediate and long term repercussion of the Yemeni crisis and the danger it poses not only to Somalia but the entire region.
Additionally, he appealed to the council to garner international efforts to take out the al Shabaab leadership that will decapitate the organized planning and progress of the terror activities both in Somalia and the East African region.
