Somalia has fewer national security competencies due to high rates of poverty and national economic crisis and that caused the failure of our government duties to defend the nation and its people from terrorism, organized crimes, political coercion, and foreign dictation.
Somalia doesn’t have the power to rely on a range of measures, including political, economic, and military capabilities, and as well as a strong diplomatic competence to safeguard the security of our nation. Hence, potential causes of national insecurity have evolved into disruptions from foreign interventions and neglection of the nation’s physical and territorial integrity and border security control, and failure to maintain its economic relations with its neighbors and the Gulf states. Our country’s physical security has deteriorated as the capacity of our nation has failed to mobilize its military forces to guarantee the safety of its borders and deter successfully defend its citizens against physical threats of foreign military aggression. The scope of our nation’s security incapabilities is greatly illustrated by Kenyan recurring military attacks on our soil and how that disdained the extent of our nation’s lack of ability to respond or resist such adverse external force aggression. Kenya began building a border of a long fence wall alongside its disputed border with Somalia that alienated by separating families and communities living on both sides of the barrier wall. The official reason for Kenya’s fence wall installation is to justify the ownership of a piece of Somali sea-land close to the disputed border with Kenya.
Kenya’s false claim was motivated by its saying that it does so to discourage the infiltration of terrorists into its country, but Somalia was unconvinced and the barrier remains a source of hostile tension. In that regard, Somalia as a nation recovering from a failed state has chosen to sacrifice its legitimate obligations and interests to avoid waging war with Kenya and submissively confirm that it is unable to maintain Kenya’s military aggression by war. We will establish a firm national security foundation that will restore the lost confidence of our weak nation’s security and implementing security policies and procedures that will perform reliable security measures as expected to protect our nation’s security assets, including internal security, physical security, economic security, energy security, environmental security, infrastructure security, and cybersecurity. We will formulate new security policies that are incorporated into the national security strategies and we will establish a national security council which is an executive agency headed by a national security advisor who feeds the head of the state on issues concerning national security and strategic interests and providing contingency security plans. Here are the following priority actions to tackle systematic drivers of our nation’s insecurities:
Ensuring that competent civilian rule of our defense ministry is essential to our civil governance. The role of the civilian leaders in the military and the national security is to set the policy-making strategies and control of the decision-making processes with the help of the appropriate incorporation of senior military advice
Promoting our military capabilities to be the most effective fighting force with the best training, best equipped, and having the modern transportation and logistical capabilities that allow them to operate in more challenging circumstances, and as well as willing to invest them with all necessary new technologies to improve repairing the poor civil-military relations
Rooting out our domestic terrorism to make Somalis feel safe at work and especially when they are asleep in their homes with their families. We will build up our defense capabilities to take care of our domestic insecurity with greater responsibility
Committing to making strategic political settlements that ensure using mixed diplomacy with force to contain extremist terror threats and not allowing them to grow but to die
Enforcing our counter-extremism strategies of deploying less costly diplomatic, intelligence, financial, and law enforcement tools to help remove the interests and intensification of terror threats on which extremists feed
Enforcing to enact government background check system that prohibits individuals who have been convicted of crimes, suspected of being a member of terroristic extremist groups or having mental health issues from possessing firearms, and as well as demanding license requirements for owning firearms
Rooting out systematic capital punishment from our military justice system where young member services are more likely to face court-martial. Likewise, we will safeguard the independence of the military justice system and as well as avoiding impunity, and not pardon war criminals
Taking shielding steps to protect the rights of individual privacy from data breaches and misuses of commercial purposes in its digital forms or physical contents
Embedding Somali intelligence communities in major government ministries, including independent national intelligence agency as the main central intelligence community for the whole country, defense intelligence agency in the defense ministry, intelligence and counterintelligence agency in the Ministry of energy, minerals, and water, Agency for intelligence and analysis in the interior ministry, intelligence and research agency in the ministry of foreign affairs, and financial intelligence agency in the treasury ministry
Endorsing governmental obligations for internal security to rest on the responsibility of the interior ministry and that the internal security will be maintained by police and security forces with the help of its security intelligence agency. Security intelligence pertains to domestic threats like terrorism and espionage
Involving foreign intelligence to collect information related to the political and economic conspiracies of adversary foreign states that may act as a threat to our internal security by either committing or sponsoring terrorism or rebellion, without actually declaring war
Providing the scope of the national intelligence agency to the responsibility for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, and foreign policy objectives, and as well as protecting sensitive information secrets, both of their own sources and activities, and those of other government agencies
Upholding internal security as an act of keeping peace within the borders of our sovereign nation by securing the rule of law and defending against the threats to the general peace such as civil disorder, violence, insurgency, political unrest, serious organized crimes, and domestic terrorism
Defending homeland with military protection of the Somali territory, sovereignty, domestic population, and critical infrastructure against external threats and aggression, and ensuring Somalia that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and the other hazards
Ensuring every municipality to provide protection of its citizens and their properties against threats to their well-being and the prosperity of their communities, and as well as maintaining the order of the public safety that might struggle with increasing challenges, including narcotic use, trespassing, burglary, harassment, juvenile delinquency, noise, littering, and inebriation, and other degrading quality of life issues
Emboldening country’s cybersecurity by protecting government’s computer systems and networks from information disclosure, theft, or damage to their hardware, software, or digital data, and as well as from the disruption or misdirection of the services they provide. Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important due to the increased reliance on all government services to the computer systems, the internet, and wireless network standards such as Wi-Fi, smartphones, and smart telecommunication devices. The national security agency is responsible to protect information systems and collecting foreign intelligence on cyberattacks, and as well as making a defense action of evaluating software security flaws and tackling to correct the flaws
Ensuring political security that depends on the stability of the social order and effective political inclusion of disaffected communities or groups, and ensuring their freedom from want and freedom from fear
Managing the security of critical infrastructure to limit the vulnerability of their structures and systems to sabotage, terrorism, and contaminations, and as well as providing dedicated transport and facilities police in all vital infrastructures such as airports, highways, rail transport, hospitals, bridges, transport hubs, network communications, media, electric grids, dams, seaports, power plants, oil refineries, and water systems
Securing the national resources that include water, sources of energy, land, and minerals, and as well as strengthening the nation’s power of its natural and social resources such as the powers of the nation’s geography, population, resources, economic, political, and military advancements. Adequate availability of those resources is important to develop the mighty of the national power
Ensuring energy security as energy plays an important role as a fuel to power the nation’s economic engine. Oil supplies are vulnerable to disruptions targeting the supply and transportation and as well as terrorist attacks of oil facilities, pipelines, tankers, refineries, and oil distribution stations. Threats to energy security fuel political instability of the country and instigate heavy reliance on foreign countries dominance for oil
Leading to strengthen comprehensive environmental security that soundly encompasses the integrity of the ecosystem and the biosphere capacity to sustain a diversity of life forms. Degradation of ecosystems, including soil erosion, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change due to global warming, induces failure of agriculture that causes migration that affects economic security. Migration is leading to increasing pressure on resources’ scarcity that instigates local conflicts on disputes over water and grazing
Maintaining strong economic security is necessary to sustain the ability of our nation to develop a sound national economy that can protect its market resources at home and its competitive access to international trade in foreign markets
Improving nation’s border control policies to monitor and regulate the movement of people, animals, and goods across the national borders. Security measures of border control aim to prevent the infiltration of foreign terrorists into our territories, to fight against unauthorized travel of wanted criminals, and to limit illegal trade across our borders
rof. Said Isse Mohamud
Chairman of the People’s Party and
a candidate for the presidency of Somalia
