MOGADISHU (HAN) November 18, 2015. Public Diplomacy & regional Security. Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, in an interview he made in the wake of the attacks on Paris at the African Global Business Forum in Dubai on Tuesday (November 17, 2015) said that al-Qaida and the Islamic State group constitute the same “evil force” and must be confronted.
President Mohamud stressed the need for Western countries to embrace both military and economic measures to derail extremists. Acknowledging that some al-Shabab militants have pledged their loyalty to the Islamic State group, President Mohamud said: “They’re just rebranding, nothing more than rebranding,” adding that “Their actions, their ideologies are all the same – (though) maybe one is more brutal than the other.”
“Ideologies have no citizenship and no borders. They move around the world wherever they can sneak in,” he added. President Mohamud repeated that Somalia was on the cusp of winning the war against Al-Shabaab even though the security situation, combined with the ongoing review of the country’s laws and electoral system, meant that a planned one person one vote for the presidency would not take place in 2016. MFA
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