There must be thorough accountability for what has happened in BOSASO Prison attack last night. Attack of this severity and magnitude clearly shows not only lack of preparations, adequate security response, but also unprecedented failure of intelligence.

According to preliminary reports on the attack, militants had staged an attack on the main Bosaso Prison at around 11 PM local time by blowing up the doors to free some of their colleagues, who were convicted with death penalty pending for the heinous crimes they had committed. The inmates included the man, who had murdered the P&O Ports manager, Paul Anthony Formosa, one year ago. The militants had succeeded not only freeing their colleagues, but also had caused considerable damages in lives and properties. They said, many inmates have lost their lives in the crossfire and others had fled in all directions. According to people in the know, the militants whose main focus was on the Bosaso Prison, had had simultaneous plans to distract and confuse Puntland security response by attacking a security check-point and Bosaso airport as well.

It is important to note here that with all high tech and sophisticated weaponary available, the world couldn’t replace the need for human intelligence on the ground. This is where Puntland hadn’t built intelligence capacity to counter the security threats of extremism. This blog has been warning President Deni’s Administration of the importance of security sector reforms in Puntland. Although acknowledging that some progress in that regard has been made, the inadequate security response to BOSASO ATTACK last night demonstrates that Puntland State is not yet ready to handle such destabilizing security threats.

It looks that Puntland State wrongly understands intelligence as Counter-Terrorism. Intelligence is collection, analysis, processing of data to make good judgement of what to do with the information. The State needs human intelligence operators on the ground, competent intelligience analysts and adequate resources to do the job.

(This article has been updated since posting).

Postscript. According to unconfirmed preliminary reports from Bosaso, a hot pursuit of the militants by Puntland security forces, following Bosaso attack, resulted in the killing or capturing some of them. Puntland President now seems to be on war-footing with the militants hiding in eastern mountains of Bari Region.

This article had been published in March 2, 2019.

Welcome to a country where people drive right-handed vehicles on right-hand side of the roads, where there are no rules of the road and pestetrians walk along in the middle of road, where extremely only slow driving speed saves lives and minimize road accidents, where there is no need for traffic police and not necessarily a driving license and therefore no age limit to drive a vehicle.

You guessed. It is the new Somalia emerging from the ashes of the Civil War. Guess how long it will take to bring that country back on track, how much rehabilitation works to be done on youth, regulations, institutions and infrastructure?

But, don’t despair. There is light at end of the tunnel. It is just digging it out of the deep hole.