Source: Voice of America, 24 Dec 2007
Ethiopia marks yearlong occupation in Somalia
By Joe De Capua, Washington
It was Christmas Day a year ago that the situation in Somalia changed dramatically. That’s when Ethiopia invaded and drove out forces belonging to the Islamic Courts Union. However, Ethiopia’s initial, decisive military victory has turned into a yearlong occupation with no end in sight.
Among those who’ve been following developments of the past year in Somalia is Professor David Shinn of George Washington University. Dr. Shinn is a former US ambassador to Ethiopia. From Columbus, Ohio, he spoke to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about the events of 2007.
“I think a lot of people are surprised that the Ethiopians are still there and still trying to figure out how to get out of Somalia. I’m convinced they’d very much like to leave but feel they’re sort of stuck. And I’m almost certain they’re surprised at the situation that they are in. And I think a lot of other people are too, although frankly it should have been fairly predictable that this was not going to go very smoothly,” he says.
Shinn adds, “It’s a very difficult situation. The situation on the ground is still very difficult and has not really improved. And one still does not see a way out of this unless there’s going to be a political solution to the problem, which is really what is required.”
Ambassador Shinn has been calling for a political solution for the past year. Asked why one has not been achieved, he says, “Because I don’t think anyone has been very serious about trying to achieve a political solution on any side of the issue. In the past year, you would have to put most of the blame on the Transitional Federal Government for not making a significant enough effort. Because they have held most of the security cards so long as the Ethiopians have been there supporting them. So, it is really up to them to make the gesture to those who oppose them. And try to bring them into the government in order to create a government of national unity that would allow the opponents to rein in those who are fighting against the Transitional Federal Government. They have not made sufficient steps to do that. They still have an opportunity to do that and I think the naming of the new prime minister, Nur Adde, makes that a greater possibility. But he has to seize the initiative and really create a new government that will be acceptable to most of those individuals who now oppose the Transitional Federal Government.”
Shinn calls on the international community, including the Arab League, to do more to find a political solution, rather than relying on AU peacekeepers, who are very few in number.
BBC, 28 December 2007
Ethiopia in Somalia: One year on
By Martin Plaut
The Ethiopian decision to invade Somalia in December 2006 altered the balance of power in the Horn of Africa.
The Ethiopian army is now fighting on several fronts
On 28 December 2006, they helped government forces capture Islamists from the capital, Mogadishu, which they had controlled for six months.
Ethiopian forces, which had been facing Eritrea along their 1,000km border, but were otherwise confronting few security threats, are now engaged on three fronts.
The forces in Somalia are now bogged down and cannot withdraw, as Prime Minister Meles Zenawi recently acknowledged.
In addition to the conflict in Somalia they now also confront a growing rebellion in the Somali region of Ethiopia from the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
Knox Chitiyo, head of the Africa programme at the Royal United Services Institute in London, believes the Ethiopian military position is increasingly difficult.
"The government now has daggers pointing at it from all directions," he says.
"It is facing a multi-front war with no prospect of a military victory."
The invasion has:
- Left Ethiopia bogged down in Somalia
- Forced around 600,000 Somalis to flee their homes, in what the UN has described as one of the worst humanitarian situations in Africa
- Brought the United States into the conflict, allied to Ethiopia
- Left Eritrea even more isolated from the international community and threatened with being declared a terrorist state by Washington.
- The US says it opposed the Ethiopian invasion, although it certainly supplied assistance to the Ethiopian military once the invasion had happened, and used its AC-130 gunships to try to kill senior Islamists on at least one occasion in January 2007.
The US Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer said: "We urged the Ethiopian military not to go into Somalia."
This is acknowledged by Ethiopian officials, who say the then head of US Central Command, General John Abizaid told them the invasion would be a mistake, and warned that Somalia would become "Ethiopia's Iraq."
Others analysts are not so apocalyptic. Ethiopia argued it had no alternative but to confront the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) after it took power in Mogadishu in mid-2006, because of the Islamists' alleged links with al-Qaeda.
The declaration of a jihad against Addis Ababa by UIC leader Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys was seen as the last straw.
Human cost
But even if the UIC was routed, it has now re-formed and has banded together with other forces in the Eritrean-based Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia.
Sally Healy of the Royal Institute of International Affairs argues that even if Ethiopia has made some security gains, the suffering of ordinary Somalis has been disproportionately high. "The cost for the people of Mogadishu has been unacceptable," she says.
This reflects the view of the United Nations, which now considers Somalia the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa.
The conflict is taking a heavy toll on Somali civilians
Peter Smerdon of the World Food Programme says it will have to try to feed at least 1.2 million Somalis during 2008. "More than 600,000 people were forced from their homes in Mogadishu in 2007 by fighting and the worst cereals harvest in 13 years in Middle and Lower Shabelle, traditionally the most agriculturally productive regions of the whole country," Mr Smerdon says.
He warns the numbers needing food aid could well rise if there is continued insecurity and any kind of repeat of the floods and bad harvests seen in recent years.
New initiative
So how might the Somali crisis be resolved?
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced this year
Ethiopia has said it would consider withdrawing its troops if an international peacekeeping force were put in place, but UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said the situation in the country makes such a deployment "neither realistic nor viable".
The UN believes a new initiative is required, bringing together Somalia's Transitional Federal Government and the opposition.
This proposal was put forward by the UN's senior Somali official, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, when he addressed the UN Security Council earlier this month. "These discussions should preferably be held in a location close to Somalia or in one where most observers following the situation in the country are based," he said.
"I am preparing the agenda, identifying a possible list of participants, and the timing for this process."
Ms Healy says this is really the only way forward.
Until an exit strategy can be achieved for Ethiopia, its troops will remain in occupation of the country - providing a cause around which the Islamists can rally. "The Somali people must create a situation that would allow the Ethiopians to leave," she says.
But 16 years after the country last had a functioning national government, there seems little prospect of President Abdullahi Yusuf asserting control of the whole country in 2008.
Source: Food Security Analysis Unit, 21 Dec 2007
Somalia: Food Security and Nutrition Quarterly Brief 21 Dec 2007 - Focus on Post Deyr Season Early Warning
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/DPAL-7A7EKV/$File/Full_Report.pdf
Source: Voice of America, Date: 19 Dec 2007
In Somalia, presence of Ethiopian troops fuels insurgency, humanitarian crisis
By Alisha Ryu, Nairobi
The end of 2007 will mark the one-year anniversary of an Ethiopia-led offensive that ousted Somalia's Islamist movement from power and helped install a secular interim government in its place. As VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu in our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi reports, the military action sparked a proxy war and an Iraq-style insurgency that have plunged Somalia into what the United Nations now calls the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa.
Ethiopian soldiers walk past a technical vehicle of the Islamic Courts movement in Mogadishu, 18 Jan 2007
Following Ethiopia's swift military victory over militiamen from Somalia's Islamic Courts Union in late December 2006, western nations urged Somalia's transitional federal government to initiate a genuine, broad-based national reconciliation process that could help end 16 years of war and lawlessness.
The United States, eager to keep radicals within the Islamic courts from making a political comeback, was especially vocal in calling for Somalia's internationally recognized-but-weak interim government to quickly work toward establishing grassroots support.
During a January press conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said the United States expected Somalia's transitional federal government leaders to do their best to heal and unite the country.
"We have made clear that we see a role in Somalia for all who renounce violence and extremism," said Jendayi Frazer. "Over the course of the last few days, I have encouraged the leadership to make clear through statements and actions their commitment to an inclusive process of dialogue and reconciliation. They should start with reconciliation amongst themselves."
Somalia's transitional federal government was formed in 2004, largely among rival factional leaders who had kept the country without a functioning government since 1991. By 2006, the transitional government was isolated in the provincial town of Baidoa, with the Islamic Courts Union having taken over most of south and central Somalia.
Many ordinary Somalis agreed that the transitional government, installed in the Somali capital Mogadishu in January 2007, would have to show unity and an ability to work together to gain public trust and confidence.
But soon after top government leaders took power in Mogadishu, clan divisions worsened as officials jockeyed for power and control over Somalia's finances, resources, and infrastructure.
At the same time, some of the ousted Islamic Courts leaders and other Somalis opposed to Ethiopia's intervention moved to Eritrea, Ethiopia's arch-rival in the region. In the Eritrean capital Asmara, they began forming an opposition with the backing of Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki.
The Asmara opposition group joined militant Somali Islamists in denouncing the transitional government and its chief backer, Ethiopia, which left tens of thousands of troops in Somalia to protect the fragile government.
The opposition vowed to fight the interim government until all Ethiopian troops leave Somalia.
In an interview with VOA earlier this year, a Somali political consultant working with the transitional government, Ali Abdullahi, said he was concerned that the Ethiopian presence in Somalia was damaging the credibility of the government.
"The biggest challenge is the Ethiopian presence in Somalia," said Ali Abdullahi. "They need to be replaced constructively by African Union forces. The time frame should be as quickly as possible."
The Ethiopian government in Addis Ababa had pledged to withdraw its troops once a full contingent of 8,000 peacekeepers from the African Union arrived in Somalia to take over security duties.
But by March, only 1,500 soldiers from Uganda were deployed. Meanwhile, a full-blown, Iraq-style insurgency against the government and Ethiopia ignited in Mogadishu.
The rising insecurity deterred other African Union members from contributing troops to the peacekeeping mission.
Militant Islamic fighters supported by disgruntled members of Mogadishu's most dominant clan, the Hawiye, targeted Somali government officials, security forces and Ethiopian troops almost daily with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs, and suicide attacks.
In response, the Ethiopian army conducted house-to-house searches for insurgents and weapons, and counter-attacked with tank fire on insurgent strongholds in heavily populated areas of the city.
Somali security forces made mass arrests and shut down businesses with clan ties to Islamists. They harassed journalists and media organizations, accusing them of siding with insurgents.
Meanwhile, a report issued in July by a U.N. monitoring group fueled fears that Somalia had become an Ethiopia-Eritrea war by proxy. The report accused Eritrea of secretly shipping weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, to radical Islamists in Somalia. Eritrea denied the report.
In a July interview with VOA, a Mogadishu resident, who identified himself as Nur, said many in the capital blamed the interim government and Ethiopia, not Eritrea, for causing chaos and suffering.
"Most of the people see the insurgents as freedom fighters," said Nur. "The problem of the government is that they might want to secure peace. But, on the other hand, they are creating more problems, more insecurity."
The violence in Mogadishu has killed and wounded thousands of civilians, and by November, more than one million Somalis had fled their homes.
The United Nations now believes that the conflict, combined with severe droughts and floods in other regions of the country, has created a humanitarian crisis that surpasses the disaster in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan.
A young Somali smokes and holds a weapon as he and his friends sit on a technical
A Horn of Africa researcher for the London-based Amnesty International human rights group, Martin Hill, adds that the situation in Somalia has something in common with Darfur: allegations of widespread human rights violations by all sides in the conflict.
"The question of war crimes was documented by Human Rights Watch," said Martin Hill. "But very recently, the U.N. Secretary General's new representative for Somalia mentioned that these were crimes that could be investigated by the International Criminal Courts. The crimes we are talking about are killing of civilians, which are arbitrary and disproportionate, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions, and disappearance of civilians."
The Washington Post newspaper reported earlier this month that a debate is taking place among decision makers in the Bush administration about whether to remain committed to Somalia's transitional federal government or to find another way to stabilize Somalia and the region.
Education champion in Somalia: One man has spent 14 years rebuilding the school system in a nation torn by civil war
Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2007, pA33
Jowhar, Somalia -- A nation overwhelmed by civil war, flooding and, most recently, the threat of starvation might be forgiven for overlooking the back-to-school season.
But Abdulkhadir Wasuge has devoted his life to making sure his corner of Somalia never forgets. For the last 14 years, Wasuge has emerged as a leading education advocate in this Horn of Africa country, one of the many unsung heroes who has stepped up to fill the void left by the government's collapse in 1991.
As he does each year, the father of eight recently made the rounds in Jowhar, 60 miles north of Mogadishu, the capital, collecting enrollment figures, assessing programs, and reminding parents and community leaders about the importance of putting children in school.
His Shabelle Educational Umbrella, which functions as a de facto school board, is largely responsible for rebuilding the region's education system, which has grown from a single schoolroom with 40 students in 1993 to 146 schools and 10,000 students today.
"Education is the light," Wasuge said. "I want to make sure young people don't miss out."
Early motivation
The 43-year-old attributed his motivation to overcoming personal challenges as a child. A bout with polio at age 5 left him without use of his legs.
"I've lived with a handicap myself, so I know what that's like," he said. "Lack of education is just another kind of handicap."
Aid groups say his efforts have pushed the primary school enrollment rate to 24 percent in the Middle Shabelle region, which includes Jowhar. Though still relatively low, that's the highest in southern Somalia, where only about 1 in 5 children attends school.
"He's someone who never gets tired of working for what he's committed to," said Marian Abkow, education manager in the Jowhar office of the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF.
Somalia's school system disintegrated in 1991, when the dictatorship of Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled and the country descended into clan-based civil war.
Aftermath of war
Government institutions were the first to collapse; schools were ransacked and teachers fled the country. Lack of education represents one of the country's biggest challenges as it tries to rebuild with a generation of youth who can barely read or write.
Drug addiction is high among young men, many of whom work as militiamen for warlords and are paid in khat, a narcotic-like plant.
Somalia went from one of Africa's most literate nations, with a rate of 60 percent in the 1970s, to one of the least, with about 25 percent today.
Wasuge said he got involved in education after losing his job as an accountant for the local sugar factory, which closed in 1990 amid Somalia's mounting clan-related clashes.
The collapse of the Jowhar factory left several thousand people unemployed and desperate. It was followed by a drought-related famine that killed hundreds of thousands. Wasuge and his wife lost their firstborn to disease before the boy turned 2. "I was practically begging for food," he recalled.
In 1993, community leaders reopened a local primary school and Wasuge found work teaching math. In the years that followed, he became more active in the school, eventually helping to establish the umbrella group, which organized the reopening of additional schools in Jowhar and surrounding villages. The group also established minimum academic standards, recruited teachers and raised money from foreign aid groups and local charities.
Wasuge became a fixture in the region, sometimes going door to door to convince parents, clerics and warlords of the importance of reopening schools. "I felt the community needed me," he said.
Mindful of the challenges he sometimes faced in school, Wasuge began a special class for disabled students, which he taught under a tree until funding was obtained in 2000 to build a classroom. Likewise, he added adult-education classes after discovering how many adults missed the chance to attend school.
"When I was young, girls were just ignored," said Fatuma Ali Abdulle, 46, who sells gasoline from plastic drums in Jowhar's main market.
She complained to Wasuge that her customers were defrauding her, and she was helpless to stop them because she could not read and write. "They would take 50,000 (shillings) in gas, but only write down 5,000," she recalled.
Success story
Wasuge enrolled her in one of 17 primary schools that cater to people older than 18. "It was a little embarrassing at first," Abdulle said, "but now I can even figure out my profits."
The school system survives today on student fees of about $1 per month. Humanitarian groups such as UNICEF provide books, teacher training and money to build new classrooms.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, donated solar-power radios so teachers can tune in to instructional programming. Somalian business owners and religious groups also provide funding.
The only government funding in the past 16 years came four years ago when the local warlord offered to pay teacher salaries at seven schools in the region. But the warlord, Mohammed Dheere, who is now Mogadishu's mayor, raised the money in part by taxing teachers' income.
Dheere, whose given name is Mohammed Omar Habeb, was ousted as a warlord last year by the Islamic Courts Union, which seized control of most of southern Somalia in June 2006.
Many refugees have settled around Jowhar, where Wasuge is attempting to organize classes in displacement camps.
In addition, floods are destroying local crops, leading aid groups to warn recently that more than 8,700 local children are malnourished and at risk for starvation.
It's not surprising that early enrollment figures at some schools were down when classrooms reopened in late September. Horseed Primary School in Jowhar admitted 150 kids during the first week of enrollment, compared with 318 last year.
That's unacceptable to Wasuge. He has kicked into gear, starting public-awareness campaigns to boost figures. Local radio spots feature students showing off their math and reading skills.
He's pushing Somalia's transitional government and the regional governor to make school attendance compulsory.
"If it will get kids back into school," Wasuge said, "we'll try whatever we can."
Dr. Hawo Cadi
SOMALIA: Practising medicine in the middle of violence, displacement and deprivation
Hawa Abdi is trying to help 12,000 people who have fled the violence in the Somali capital, Mogadishu
NAIROBI, 9 May 2007 (IRIN) - In the midst of Somalia's chaos and violence, mostly in and around the capital, Mogadishu, one woman has vowed to make a positive contribution. Hawa Abdi is a gynaecologist with a practice in a 26-hectare compound that has become a camp for thousands of displaced Mogadishu residents fleeing the fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces and insurgents.
Abdi was one of the few female professors in the Medical School of the University of Somalia, before the collapse of the Somali state in 1990. She attributes her achievements to her father. "I was blessed with a very progressive father who put a lot of emphasis on education," she says.
Abdi opened her practice - 20km south of Mogadishu - in the 1980s with in-patient and out-patient facilities. The civil war began in the 1990s and with it the crumbling of her successful practice. "Back then [before the civil war] every one of my patients could afford to pay for the services. Now it is a different story," says Abdi. "I even worked normal hours and had time for rest and relaxation."
She now cares for thousands of internally displaced people who cannot afford to pay for her services and need constant care. “Most of the people in my compound could not afford to pay for their lunch, so how can I ask them to pay for my service?
"Most days, I work 15 hours and sometimes more, but I am thankful that my daughter [also a doctor] is with me and has been by my side through it all."
Abdi has another daughter who is also a doctor but lives abroad. Her son, who was studying medicine, was killed in 2005.
Safe haven
Abdi says running the practice and helping people has been satisfying both "personally and professionally". She says her compound has not been targeted and is "respected by all sides throughout the civil war as a neutral zone where anyone can seek help".
The main challenge remains finding supplies, "whether it is medicines, food or water. It is a constant struggle to provide the basics, even for my staff." I am not very optimistic. It is almost as if peace is getting farther and farther away from us
Abdi says the compound has a staff of 72 - mostly volunteers. "Sometimes they are lucky if they are paid once a week."
Aid agencies have helped but they had to increase their activities, she says. The United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) have assisted the displaced, but "we need the agencies to scale up much more seriously - and soon".
She says children are the most affected and they should concentrate on them.
Despite enjoying her work, Abdi says she is growing physically and mentally tired and is losing hope of the situation improving. "When you are hopeful that things will improve, you can go on but when you lose hope then you cannot go on.
"I see nothing but hopelessness in the faces of the people in the compound."
Abdi says she is not optimistic that peace will ever come to Somalia. "I am not very optimistic. It is almost as if peace is getting farther and farther away from us."
Somalia: Turning Trash into Cash
November 05, 2007
By Abdallah Okao and Deman Mahamoud
Bakool, Somalia--Four years ago, 27-year-old Aisha Abdirahman had a vision: she signed up for a tailoring workshop, planning to sew clothes and sell them at the local market in order to support her family of eight. After completing the course, she purchased a sewing machine, but she did not have enough money left over to buy cloth. “It seemed like the end of my tailoring dream,” says Aisha.
Photo: IMC
Aisha and four of her six children. Until she attended IMC’s beekeeping course, she was barely able to put food on the table for her family.
After that, life was rough for a while. Aisha and her husband have six children, and with little reliable income and no future job prospects, taking care of their large family was tremendously stressful. “Many a time, we went without food,” she says. “One of my children became severely malnourished.”
Malnutrition and food insecurity are major problems throughout south-central Somalia where Aisha and her family live. The drought of 2005-2006 resulted in crop failure and, consequently, acute food shortages and a significant spike in the malnutrition rate. Cattle deaths due to lack of water were estimated at 80 percent; for many families, household assets plummeted.
In addition to responding with emergency interventions, International Medical Corps began strategizing about long-term projects that would enable Somalis to survive the inevitable future droughts without taking a heavy toll on their health and livelihoods.
Studies suggest that projects that help women become self-sufficient, acknowledging their role as caregivers, food producers and bread winners, can also help mitigate food insecurity and malnutrition. With that in mind, International Medical Corps created two livelihood projects aimed at providing income-generating opportunities to vulnerable women with malnourished children: one that gave them seed vouchers so they could grow their own food; and another that taught them beekeeping.
In 2006, Aisha attended a beekeeping workshop conducted by International Medical Corps. The course dramatically changed her life. Participants were trained in beekeeping, honey production, honey processing and marketing. They were also taught how to process and market wax from honeycombs, and how to use wax to produce candles and petroleum jelly, a product used to soften dry skin.
Aisha was particularly interested in producing petroleum jelly. After the training, she shared the concept with her husband. He was very supportive and agreed to collect honeycombs thrown away by other beekeepers for her so she could process them into wax, then transform them into petroleum jelly. Aisha sold her first products in the market town of Hudur. News of Aisha’s product, which was significantly cheaper than commercial varieties, spread rapidly. Soon, people from the neighboring El-Berde district were buying Aisha’s product in large quantities.
Now Aisha has a considerable market for her product in both districts. Once customers try it, they always come back for more. Each month she earns at least $200 from petroleum jelly sales alone; in Somalia, even an educated civil servant only earns about $30 a month. .
“My days of worrying about money are long gone,” says Aisha. “I now have sufficient income to look after my family. I’m able to provide them with food, clothes, medicine and other basic necessities.”
Using the income from the petroleum jelly business, Aisha has finally been able to realize her tailoring dream. “I can now afford to buy cloth and make clothes, which I sell at the market in Hudur,” she says. “I was also able to purchase a small quantity of gold as an investment for the future, and as my business grows, I intend to continue investing.”
In fact, Aisha has enough economic stability that she can now comfortably give back to the less fortunate, which is one of the fundamental teachings of Islam. She has trained three other women how to produce petroleum jelly, and she is committed to continuing to share her knowledge with other women in need. “I want a chance to help transform other people’s lives, just as IMC has transformed mine.”
http://www.imcworldwide.org/content/article/detail/1465
Public Library of Science, 10-Dec-2007
Substance abuse in Somali combatants; and more
Two insurgents hide behind a wall in Fagah neighbourhood, north of Mogadishu, where Ethiopian troops and Islamists are fighting. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
An alarming rise in drug-related problems amongst militia in southern and central Somalia, which has not been under the control of any type of government for more than a decade, is reported in a study published this week in the open access journal PLoS Medicine.
The problems mainly relate to the excessive use of khat, a plant whose leaves have been traditionally chewed as a stimulant in Somalia. The leaves contain the amphetamine-like cathinone—a potent central stimulant that is dependence-producing and can induce psychotic symptoms, like paranoia. But the intake of other drugs was also perceived to be prevalent by participants in the study. These alterations in patterns of drug use imply potential threats for the peace-building process in general and the re-integration of former combatants—who may have severe dependence on drugs and related psychiatric problems—in particular.
Studies on drug use by former combatants in Western countries have supported the hypothesis that drugs are consumed to suppress traumatic war-related memories but little is know about substance abuse in post-conflict zones in Africa. This new study by Michael Odenwald (University of Konstanz, Germany) and colleagues was initiated by peace talks in 2003 and was one detail of an initiative that was meant to prepare the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) program in Somalia.
Local interviewers conducted 8,723 interviews of armed personnel in convenience samples—groups chosen to participate rather than randomly selected from the whole population. The interviewers asked the combatants about their own use of khat and how much they thought that others in their military units used it and other drugs (including cannabis, tranquilizers, alcohol, solvents and hemp seeds, the use of which is not generally acknowledged). They found that khat use is prevalent across the whole of Somalia: more than a third of respondents said they’d used khat in the week prior to the interview. The highest level of self-reported khat use was in southern/central Somalia where up to two-thirds of combatants used it, a dramatic rise considering that only one in five adult males used khat in these regions in 1980. More respondents in southern/central Somalia also reported using an excessive amount of khat—consuming more than two bundles per day over a week—and having sleepless nights as a side-effect. In some regions of southern/central Somalia there was a unanimous perception of higher consumption of other drugs amongst combatants, especially cannabis and psychoactive tablets, implying that the previously unacknowledged use of multiple drugs seems to exist in militia units.
The authors suggest that the use of convenience samples, necessary because of the political conditions in Somalia, could mean that the numerical values of these findings may be inaccurate. The overall perceived use of khat was higher than the self-reported use and the authors suggest that this discrepancy is because self-reporting actually produces underestimates of the real figures. The authors warn that future DDR programs will have to be prepared to deal with drug abuse on a scale formerly unknown in the country.
The implications of the study are discussed in a related Perspective article by Kamaldeep Bhui and Nasir Warfa (The Centre for Psychiatry, Barts and The London, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London), who were not involved in the study. “The challenge facing Somalia and other conflict zones,” say the authors, “is that it is young people who are most vulnerable to developmental insults, which can lead to long-lasting and, in some instances, permanent mental health and physical health problems. Yet it is these very people who are likely to be recruited for warfare and are active in conflict zones; specifically young men exposed to drug use and violence, who will then have the most difficulty adjusting to a life free of violence.”
Citation: Odenwald M, Hinkel H, Schauer E, Neuner F, Schauer M, et al. (2007) The consumption of khat and other drugs in Somali combatants: A cross-sectional study. PLoS Med 4(12): e341. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040341
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/plos-sai120507.php
In Somalia, a different kind of medicine
Doctors tend patients ravaged by civil war, traditional healers and poverty
Anna Badkhen, SFGate
Doctors working in poverty-stricken Somalia face daunting challenges as they tend patients suffering after years of civil war. Mohamed, 8 months old, is being treated at a feeding center in Galkayo. Chronicle photo by Michael Macor
(04-09) 04:00 PST Galkayo, Somalia -- "Allah, Allah!" the woman moaned, writhing in pain on her cot in the tuberculosis clinic. One hand clutched the metal railing of the headboard; the other shielded her eyes against the blinding sunlight seeping through the open window.
Dr. Geraldine O'Hara, a British tuberculosis specialist at the clinic run by the French relief agency Doctors Without Borders, leaned over her. "Sweetheart, can I look at your tummy, please?" O'Hara asked. The woman let go of the railing, clasped the traditional Somali dress the doctor was wearing, and started to cry.
"Can you let go of my dress for a second, darling? What is it? Same place it always hurts?"
O'Hara has come here to help people ravaged by civil war being waged by rival clans. Each day, she and 10 other workers from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning medical aid group in this dusty town in west-central Somalia find their efforts thwarted by the lack of equipment to diagnose and treat patients; the archaic, often brutal remedies used by local traditional healers; and the abject poverty that perpetuates disease.
Somalia hasn't had a national government in 15 years, and thus there is no public health system. It has some of the worst health statistics in the world: Every fourth child dies, according to the World Health Organization, and only Afghanistan has a higher child-mortality rate. Out of every 1,000 women, 16 die in childbirth. The average life expectancy is 43 years for men, 45 for women. And the country is affected by the worst drought in decades to hit East Africa, which threatens about 1.5 million Somalis with even more hardship because aid is exceptionally difficult to deliver to those in the most need.
O'Hara ran her fingers over the woman's stomach. Five other patients, sweating in the 104-degree heat, watched from their flimsy beds along the ward's chipped, dark-blue walls. Swarming flies flew through the room, landing on the unpainted concrete floor, on bits of unfinished food, on patients' faces. O'Hara straightened up and turned to her translator, Aden Barkadle.
"It's not something I can deal with in the TB clinic," she said softly. To the woman on the cot, she said, "Safia, I'm so sorry. We're doing our best to help you."
"She has intestinal TB, possibly," O'Hara explained later, washing her hands in a clinic sink brown with grime and wiping them on a towel black from weeks of use. "We don't know for sure. We don't have the diagnostics."
Doctors Without Borders operates two general hospitals as well as a therapeutic feeding center for malnourished children and the tuberculosis clinic in Galkayo. There is no shortage of drugs, which are flown in from Kenya on a small Cessna passenger plane. But often the doctors simply don't know which medicine to prescribe because exact diagnosis is so difficult.
The tuberculosis clinic, which treats more than 200 patients daily, operates a primitive sputum laboratory. The 105-bed general hospital next to it has a lab that does the most basic blood tests -- for malaria, hepatitis B, HIV. There are no X-ray machines, no dialysis equipment for kidney patients. The only pieces of medical equipment in sight are rusted IV stands, on which some patients hang their belongings to thwart scorpions -- frequent night visitors. There is no air conditioning, not even fans to beat away the oppressive heat.
"It's a little different from San Francisco," said Ramesh Dahal, a cardiologist from Nepal.
Dahal, who trained in cardiovascular medicine at California Pacific Medical Center from 1999 until 2003 and lived in Daly City, was racing between the general hospital's outpatient and medical wards, across an unpaved yard strewn with used surgical gloves and syringe wrappings. "It's the cleanest we can get," Dahal said. "I've seen worse."
Some patients lay on straw mats in the dusty shade outside: a man half-paralyzed by a stroke, another man attached to a colostomy bag. The hospital was overflowing with patients, and cots lined dim hallways. In February, after two warring clans clashed over land outside Galkayo, the hospital admitted 100 men with gunshot wounds in one day, putting them in hallways and in the yard. Fourteen are still recovering in the surgical ward.
Without proper equipment, Dahal often half-guesses the diagnosis. Fatha, 22 -- who, like many Somalis, goes by only one name -- has frequent seizures and paralysis on her right side since she endured a head trauma years ago. "She has epilepsy -- well, we don't know that it's epilepsy," Dahal said. "All we can do is look after this patient, give her medicine (to prevent seizures) and hope for the best."
Around the corner, in a hallway lit by a single bulb, Maxed Xarsi, 50, was slowly recovering from what Dahal thought was a stroke with left-side paralysis.
"We don't have equipment to do further testing," the doctor said.
"Let me show you the magnitude of what we're dealing with here," he said, sprinting into a room where the blue walls were streaked with something brown and yellow. Aden Chama Yusuf, 30, lay on a bed, his skeletal wrists twisted in a spasm, his face half-concealed by a soiled scarf. The hospital had admitted him two years ago. "No one knows what to do with him. He has some sort of neurological disorder. It's like a hospice for him," the doctor said.
On an average day, after her morning rounds to check on patients staying at the tuberculosis clinic, O'Hara sees between 10 and 20 patients at the clinic's outpatient consultation room. "Sometimes the things you can't treat are the really awful things," she said.
Tuberculosis is one of the main killers in Somalia, international relief workers say, but no one has researched the scope of the disease. For researchers, travel is too dangerous in a country that rival warlords have split into dozens of fiefdoms since the last national government collapsed in 1991.
Another obstacle is poverty. The standard TB treatment period is six months, but many Somalis -- who may travel hundreds of miles on foot or riding buses or donkeys along perilous roads to the only clinic in this third of the 1,000-mile long country -- cannot commit to the regimen. They are too poor to stay in Galkayo, where they get treated for free, but also too poor to buy the full course of medicine, which is available at Somali markets.
Often, feeling their health improve after a month or two, patients leave, creating a strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis that is much harder to treat, said Colin McIlreavy, head of the Doctors Without Borders' mission in Somalia. No one knows how widespread drug-resistant TB is here.
Similarly, no one knows the number of malnourished children, said Hamza Atim, a doctor from Uganda who runs Galkayo's only therapeutic feeding center. His 150-bed center admits between one and 10 new patients daily, brought by worried mothers. Most of the malnutrition cases Atim sees are caused by diseases with symptoms including diarrhea and vomiting, which prevent nutrients from staying in children's bodies.
"Because of security constraints, we are unable to physically look for these patients," Atim said, stepping through a crowd of squatting mothers holding quiet, skeletal babies. "I feel that we don't know the real problem."
Many children in Atim's center are covered with scars from the most widespread form of traditional treatment in this part of Africa -- healers burning patients' skin with coals or making tiny cuts to release blood. Burns and cuts usually heal quickly, leaving ugly marks, but sometimes they cause inflammations and abscesses.
"Sometimes the mothers claim they didn't know where to go (for treatment), so they go to traditional healers" instead of the hospital, Atim said. "We have really horrible traditional healers here."
Some patients arrive too late. One day last week, when Canadian nurse Naomi Fecteau returned to the hospital after lunch break, she came upon a man carrying a tiny body wrapped in cloth across the hospital yard.
"That would be a little one who just died," Fecteau said quietly, and kept walking.
Some cases have happy outcomes. Last week, a mother of one of Atim's recovered patients gave birth to a healthy girl. She named the child Hamza, after the male doctor.
At the end of a long workday, the doctors and nurses sit in the yard of their heavily guarded compound, reflecting on their successes and failures. Slumping in a canvas chair one day last week, O'Hara dragged on a cigarette and thought about all the patients she had helped -- and all the patients she couldn't.
"The day that it doesn't upset me, the day I go to bed without thinking about it -- that'll be the day I need to give it a rest," she said.
Where only the strong and well-armed prosper
After 15 years of anarchy, Somalia is a failed state with no government, no police, no safety for civilians and no aid groups to distribute food
Anna Badkhen.
(04-07) 04:00 PST Galkayo, Somalia -- An invisible border splits this town in two. It runs east to west through a maze of narrow, rubble-strewn streets pockmarked with bullets and shrapnel.
No member of the Darood clan dares cross into the southern part of town; no member of the Saad clan ventures north. The price for violating the boundary can be death. Gunmen from the two clans, prowling Galkayo's streets in Soviet-era armored personnel carriers and trucks fitted with antiaircraft guns, are ready to dole it out.
This so-called "green line" dividing Galkayo is emblematic of the internal wars that have devastated Somalia since the regime of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre collapsed in 1991.
After 15 years of anarchy, Somalia is a failed state, carved into dozens of fiefdoms by competing warlords. It has no police force, no government schools or hospitals; its coastal waters teem with pirates who routinely attack passing ships. Two corners of the 1,000-mile-long country, Somaliland and Puntland, have declared themselves independent.
In the rest of the country, including the capital, Mogadishu, gunmen fight pitched battles over grazing land and spheres of influence, setting up checkpoints on dusty roads that they use to extort money from travelers. Civilians are routinely caught in the crossfire resulting from tit-for-tat killings. U.S. officials and Western analysts are fearful that Somalia has become a haven for international terrorists.
The violence and instability have greatly complicated efforts to bring aid to Somalia, where about 1.5 million of the nation's 9 or so million people are suffering from the worst drought to hit East Africa in decades.
"If the rains don't come within a week or two, there's gonna be a serious catastrophe," said Stephanie Savariaud, a local official with the U.N. World Food Programme, which is trying to distribute food aid to 102,000 Somalis in the south, the region hardest hit by the drought.
Getting food into the country is almost impossible because of regular attacks on ships and at checkpoints, according to aid officials. Two of the World Food Programme's ships carrying food have been hijacked in recent months, Savariaud said.
Across the south of the country, which Savariaud visited recently, roadblocks have increased substantially, "with just kids with guns" manning them, she said.
A failed relief effort by the United Nations during the last major drought, in 1993, was followed by "Operation Restore Hope," the disastrous U.S. military attempt to secure the environment for the delivery of aid. That collapsed when Somali fighters shot two U.S. helicopters out of the sky with rocket-propelled grenades. Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed, and one body was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Hundreds of Somalis died and many more were wounded.
When the Clinton administration withdrew U.S. forces several months later, so, too, did most international relief agencies, and few have returned. In Galkayo, a city of some 85,000 people, the only operating international agency is Doctors Without Borders, which operates several hospitals across the country.
"There's not any kind of administration, and very little respect for any humanitarian (organizations), which makes it a very difficult place to work," said Colin McIlreavy, head of the Somalia mission of the French-based agency.
To provide treatment for the town's population, the group had to set up two hospitals: one in the north, Darood territory, and one in the Saad land in the south. Its teams live in heavily protected compounds behind barbed wire and never step outside without armed guards. Periodically, death threats force them temporarily to evacuate from the country.
Last week, the worst fighting between militias in several years erupted in Mogadishu, killing 80 to 140 people, wounding 300, and displacing thousands of families, according to Somali news accounts.
"Most people who are dying are civilians, because bullets are flying everywhere," said Mandela, an emergency room nurse at the south Galkayo hospital, who was in Mogadishu during the fighting. Mandela, like many Somalis, does not have a last name.
Thirteen attempts to form a national government have only led to renewed violence. In the latest, 14th effort, a transitional 275-seat parliament convened last weekend in Baidoa, a western Somali town. The embryonic government -- appointed by a prime minister named by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the former leader of Puntland -- consists mainly of warlords and clan leaders.
The parliament, which was formed in exile in Kenya 18 months ago and lives off international handouts, controls virtually nothing in Somalia. Last Saturday, for example, gunmen temporarily surrounded the converted, bombed-out food hangar where the parliament is convening, halting the session for several hours.
In the absence of a united security force and a stable government, Somalia has become home to hundreds of members or sympathizers of al Qaeda, according to State Department reports.
"The threat has been growing slowly over the years," said David Shinn, a former U.S. ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. "It is certainly not a replacement for Afghanistan" -- where Osama bin Laden was based and al Qaeda set up training camps during the hard-line Taliban regime -- "but it does pose a problem."
Observers here say there is little support among Somalis for extremist Islamic groups. However, some are turning to conservative Islamic courts, which operate their own militias and have been gaining control of parts of Mogadishu and increasing their influence in the provinces.
"People feel that Islamic courts are creating safety," said Mohammed Abdi, 46, director of the Mudug Development Organization, a Galkayo-based civil rights group funded by Somalis living overseas.
"In areas run by Islamic courts, people can walk with their money in their hands without being afraid of being robbed; they can walk at nighttime without being afraid of being killed," he said.
But the gun culture runs deep in the country where almost all men over 20 years old own their own weapons. The north Galkayo hospital is still treating 14 of the 100 patients who arrived with bullet wounds sustained in a land dispute that erupted into a gunbattle five weeks ago between rival groups within the Darood clan.
One of the injured, Ahmed Hashem, 25, who still has a bullet embedded in his skull, said the battle was "worth every wound."
"We will look for peace in any way we can," he said, sitting on a creaky hospital cot. "But if anyone tries to slight us, we will fight back."
SOMALIA-YEMEN: Deadly migration to Yemen continues, despite risks
Would-be Ethiopian migrants sleep outside a building in Bosasso
NAIROBI, 21 December 2007 (IRIN) - Somali and Ethiopian migrants continue to set out to Yemen from Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, despite the deadly risks and warnings from aid agencies, local sources told IRIN on 21 December.
"As we speak, there is a boat getting ready to depart for Yemen with about 200 migrants," said Abdirazaq Omar Osman, a journalist in Bosasso, the Puntland commercial capital.
He said the boat would most likely leave on 21 December "if it has not already left."
A week earlier at least 100 migrants died trying to reach Yemen.
"There were two boats that left Puntland on 9 and 10 December. Both capsized and many, if not most, of those on board perished," said Osman, who visited one of the beach ports used by the smugglers.
He said reports reaching Bosasso indicate that 60 passengers in one boat and 50 in the other had died, "with many missing and presumed dead."
He said the smugglers were using bigger but older boats from Yemen. "These are boats owned by Yemenis but operated by their Somali partners."
Each migrant is charged US $70 for the trip.
On 19 December, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said: "One out of every 20 people who set out in rickety boats across the Gulf of Aden this year has perished."
These are desperate people who will do anything to better their lives
The agency said at least 28,000 people had made the perilous voyage to Yemen in 2007. Of that number, "more than 1,400 have died, killed by smugglers or drowned at sea."
UNHCR has begun an advocacy campaign in the Horn of Africa region to inform potential migrants about the perils of crossing illegally into Yemen.
Osman said awareness-raising campaigns for potential migrants were useful but would not deter many.
"It may work with Somalis from the south, who are more likely to stay in Somalia if they get some help, but I doubt very much if it will have any effect on the more desperate ones from Ethiopia," he said. "These are desperate people who will do anything to better their lives. They listen to the odd ones who makes it to Saudi Arabia and think they also can make it."
Since Yemen itself offers few job prospects for the migrants, most head on to Saudi Arabia or other Gulf states, where the demand for menial labour is much greater.
Top Story Somalia descends into Africa's worst crisis
By Shashank Bengali, December 13, 2007
AFGOYE, Somalia — A year after the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army toppled a hard-line Islamist regime in Somalia, the country has become Africa's worst humanitarian catastrophe.
Some 200,000 refugees, mostly women and children, have fled from a pro-government offensive to makeshift camps along a 10-mile stretch of sun-baked asphalt that leads from the seaside capital of Mogadishu toward the inland town of Afgoye.
The crisis is brutal on young people.
One night last month, Fatima Sheikh Ali awoke to the deafening crash of mortar rounds on her neighbor's roof. Shrapnel blasted through Ali's tin-walled home in Mogadishu, and sent her 13-year-old daughter, Muna, into her arms, quaking.
Sometime in the chaos of that night, Muna stopped speaking. In an overcrowded encampment of sand and scrub a few miles from the capital, where the family now lives among thousands made homeless by the war, Muna silently collects firewood and looks after her siblings, a worried gaze fixed in her almond eyes.
"She is traumatized," her mother said, and a warren of women who'd gathered around her murmured sympathetically. A nurse with the Somali Red Crescent Society said, "There is nothing to be done. It is a very sad story."
The conflicts in Sudan's Darfur region and in eastern Congo may have displaced more people, but international relief efforts in Somalia have faltered in the face of violence that's emptied entire neighborhoods in Mogadishu.
Most displaced Somalis, such as Muna's family, live in dome-shaped huts fashioned out of spindly tree branches and covered with tattered swatches of fabric or plastic. They sprout from the sand like multicolored mushrooms along the road from the capital.
The United Nations Children's Fund said last week that one-quarter of the refugees around Afgoye were younger than 5. Both sides are using older boys as combatants, and girls who venture out of the camps risk being raped by freelance militias, the agency said.
"Things are now getting absolutely worse," said Christian Balslev-Olesen, the UNICEF representative for Somalia. "There is a dirtiness to this war. Children are a real target."
Fewer than 1 in 10 Mogadishu children attends school now. Muna and her siblings aren't among the lucky ones. Their southern neighborhood of Hodan has seen near-daily fighting as Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies hunt for insurgents amid the low, whitewashed storefronts.
The restaurant where Muna's father worked as a waiter has been closed since March, when its owners fled the city. Most of their neighbors also have left.
"There is no movement in the streets, no work, hardly any food," said Ali, Muna's mother, who has six other children. "The only sound is the whistling one," she said, a term that Somalis sometimes use to describe the rockets that whiz over their rooftops at night.
Local groups estimate that 6,000 people have died in the fighting this year.
Traveling Somalia's roads is fraught with danger once again. Aid groups and former residents say that Somali government forces, far from ending militia rule, are starting to behave like militias themselves.
Checkpoints have popped up throughout southern Somalia, with government soldiers and allied militiamen demanding payments and harassing civilians and relief workers. According to UNICEF, sick children and pregnant women often are turned away at checkpoints. In some areas, trucks carrying food and other humanitarian aid have to pay tolls of $500 each, U.N. officials said.
Last week, Somalia's internal security chief closed airstrips and ports outside Mogadishu for several hours, leaving nearly 4,000 tons of emergency food aid stuck aboard U.N.-chartered ships floating in the sea.
"There is complete chaos and lack of coordination," said Eric Laroche, the head of the U.N. relief effort.
By making the payments, Laroche acknowledged, "we are creating rich people who are going to be warlords in the future. But that is the tradeoff." Amid one of the poorest harvests in southern Somalia in years, he said, the influx of food aid over the past month seems to have forestalled widespread malnutrition in the camps.
For ordinary Somalis, the government checkpoints are often scenes of terror.
Shukri Mohammed, a weary-faced woman who walked three days on bare, swollen feet to reach the safety of a camp last week, said she was stopped as she left Mogadishu with her seven children.
The poor widow had nothing in her pockets, not even a cell phone. That seemed to annoy the uniformed men at the roadblock.
"Because they didn't get any money from me, they hit me," she said, her 2-year-old son cradled in a ratty blanket tied around her neck. "They used the backs of their guns. They used sticks." She pulled back her pink shawl to show bruises on her arm.
On her first night in the camp named Mustahil, she stored the few items of clothing she'd brought in another family's hut. Then she and her children fell asleep on the sand under an acacia tree.
Mustahil is one of the newer camps outside Afgoye, but in just over three months some 6,000 people have gathered here. One of the elders, Kahiye Yusuf Ali, a lean man whose henna-stained beard glowed a deep orange, said they hadn't received any U.N. food rations yet.
"The children are growing skinnier," he said, pointing at a gaggle of boys, all elbows and knees.
A few hundred yards away, in the Jimcaale settlement, Muna's mother complained that the rations weren't enough for a family of nine.
She sighed. Blasted by rains, their hut was starting to wilt, and her husband was out in the midday heat looking for more wood. She ripped a strip from an empty sack of grain and tied some loose branches tighter. A few feet away, Muna hid her face behind a pale green shawl and kept watch over her young brothers.
"The fighting is different now," her mother said, talking as she worked. "Now it is everywhere. The shelling comes from all sides."
Here, she went on, they felt safe. Maybe in a few weeks they could return home. "If the Ethiopian troops leave Mogadishu, things will be fine," she said.
Muna, standing beside her, didn't utter a word.
A slide show on Somali refugees:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/216/gallery/22979.html
Somalia: What the News Failed to Report
Ramzy Baroud
www.americanchronicle.com, December 5, 2007
The people of Somalia are enduring yet another round of suffering as Ethiopian forces wreck havoc in the capital, Mogadishu. Apparently in response to an attack on one of its units, and the dragging of a soldier’s mutilated body through the city’s streets, an Ethiopian mortar reportedly exploded in Mogadishu’s Bakara market on November 9, killing eight civilians. A number of Somalis were also found dead the following day, some believed to have been rounded up by Ethiopian forces the night before.
Nearly 50 civilians have reportedly been killed and 100 wounded in the two-day fighting spree between fighters loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts and government forces and their Ethiopian allies. A report, issued by Human Rights Watch, chastised both Ethiopian troops and ‘insurgents’ for the bloodletting. Peter Takirambudde, the watchdog’s Africa director, was quoted as saying, "The international community should condemn these attacks and hold combatants accountable for violations of humanitarian law - including mutilating captured combatants and executing detainees."
Of course, one cannot realistically expect the international community to take on a constructive involvement in the conflict. Various members of this ‘community’ have already played a most destructive role in Somalia’s 16-year-old civil war, which fragmented a nation that had long struggled to achieve a sense of sovereignty and national cohesion.
To dismiss the war in Somalia as yet another protracted conflict between warlords and insurgents would indeed be unjust because the country’s history has consistently been marred by colonial greed and unwarranted foreign interventions. These gave rise to various proxy governments, militias and local middlemen, working in the interests of those obsessed with the geopolitical importance of the Horn of Africa.
Colonial powers came to appreciate the strategic location of Somalia after the Berlin Conference, which initiated the ‘Scramble for Africa’. The arrival of Britain, France and Italy into Somali lands began in the late 19th century and quickly the area disintegrated into British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. Both countries sought expand their control, enlisting locals to fight the very wars aimed at their own subjugation.
World War II brought immense devastation to the Somali people, who, out of desperation, coercion or promises of post-war independence, fought on behalf of the warring European powers. Somalia was mandated by the UN as an Italian protectorate in 1949 and achieved independence a decade later in 1960. However, the colonial powers never fully conceded their interests in the country and the Cold War actually invited new players to the scene, including the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba.
One residue of the colonial legacy involved the Ogaden province of Somalia, which the British empire had granted to the Ethiopian government. The region became the stage of two major wars between Ethiopia and Somalia between 1964 and 1977. Many Somalis still regard Ethiopia as an occupying power and view the policies of Addis Ababa as a continuation of the country’s history of foreign intervention.
The civil war of 1991, largely a result of foreign intervention, clan and tribal loyalties, and lack of internal cohesion, further disfigured Somalia. As stranded civilians became deprived of aid, Somalia was hit by a devastating famine that yielded a humanitarian disaster. The famine served as a pretext for foreign intervention, this time as part of international ‘humanitarian’ missions, starting in December 1992, which also included US troops. The endeavour came to a tragic end in October 1993, when more than 1,000 Somalis and 18 US troops were killed in Mogadishu. Following a hurried US withdrawal, the mainstream media rationalized that the West could not help those who refuse to help themselves; another disfiguration of the fact that the interest of the Somali people was hardly ever a concern for these colonial philanthropists. Since then, the importance of Somalia was relegated in international news media into just another mindless conflict, with no rational context and no end in sight. The truth, however, is that colonial interest in the Horn of Africa has never waned.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 provided an impetus for US involvement in the strategic region; only one month after the attacks, Paul Wolfowitz met with various power players in Ethiopia and Somalia, alleging that al-Qaeda terrorists might be using Ras Kamboni and other Somali territories as escape routes. A year later, the US established the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) to ‘monitor’ developments and to train local militaries in ‘counterterrorism’.
The US contingent was hardly neutral in the ongoing conflict. Reportedly, US troops were involved in aiding Ethiopian forces that entered Somalia in December 2006, citing efforts to track down al-Qaeda suspects. The Ethiopian occupation was justified as a response to a call by Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), whose legitimacy is questioned. TGF, seen largely as a pro-Ethiopian entity, had been rapidly losing its control over parts of Somalia to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which came to prominence in January 2006, taking over the capital and eventually bringing long-sought stability to much of the country. Their attempts engage the US and other Western powers in dialogue failed, however, as a US-backed Ethiopia moved into Somalia in December 2006. On January 7, 2007, the US directly entered the conflict, launching airstrikes using AC-130 gunship. Civilian causalities were reported, but the US refused to accept responsibility for them.
The last intervention devastated the country’s chances of unity. It now stands divided between the transitional government, Ethiopia (both backed by the UN, the US and the African Union) and the Islamic courts (allegedly backed by Eritrea and some Arab Gulf governments). Recently, the UN ruled out any chances for an international peacekeeping force, and the few African countries who promised troops are yet to deliver (with the exception of Uganda).
This situation leaves Somalia once more under the mercy of foreign powers and self-serving internal forces, foreshadowing yet more bloodshed. Our informed support is essential now because the Somali people have suffered enough. Their plight is urgent and it deserves a much deeper understanding, alongside immediate attention.
Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=44854
YouTube - Somalia's refugees crisis - 07 Dec 07. The refugee crisis in Somalia is growing as thousands flee Mogadishu to escape fierce battles raging through the capital.It's a situation the UN describes ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUlMPHeYr
As Somali Crisis Swells, Experts See a Void in Aid
A Somali woman was carried in a wheelbarrow as she fled fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia, a few weeks ago. United Nations officials said Somalia is on the brink of famine.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, November 20, 2007
AFGOOYE, Somalia, Nov. 19 — The worst humanitarian crisis in Africa may not be unfolding in Darfur, but here, along a 20-mile strip of busted-up asphalt, several top United Nations officials said.
A year ago, the road between the market town of Afgooye and the capital of Mogadishu was just another typical Somali byway, lined with overgrown cactuses and the occasional bullet-riddled building. Now it is a corridor teeming with misery, with 200,000 recently displaced people crammed into swelling camps that are rapidly running out of food.
Natheefa Ali, who trudged up this road a week ago to escape the bloodbath that Mogadishu has turned into, said Monday that her 10-month-old baby was so malnourished she could not swallow.
“Look,” Ms. Natheefa said, pointing to her daughter’s splotchy legs, “her skin is falling off, too.”
Top United Nations officials who specialize in Somalia said the country had higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed and fewer aid workers than Darfur, which is often publicized as the world’s most pressing humanitarian crisis and has taken clear priority in terms of getting peacekeepers and aid money.
The relentless urban combat in Mogadishu, between an unpopular transitional government — installed partially with American help — and a determined Islamist insurgency, has driven waves of desperate people up the Afgooye road, where more than 70 camps of twigs and plastic have popped up seemingly overnight.
The people here are hungry, exposed, sick and dying. And the few aid organizations willing to brave a lawless, notoriously dangerous environment cannot keep up with their needs, like providing milk to the thousands of babies with fading heartbeats and bulging eyes. “Many of these kids are going to die,” said Eric Laroche, the head of United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia. “We don’t have the capacity to reach them.”
He added: “If this were happening in Darfur, there would be a big fuss. But Somalia has been a forgotten emergency for years.”
The officials working on Somalia are trying to draw more attention to the country’s plight, which they feel has fallen into Darfur’s shadow. They have recently organized several trips, including one on Monday, for journalists to see for themselves.
“The situation in Somalia is the worst on the continent,” said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the top United Nations official for Somalia.
That situation has included floods, droughts, locusts, suicide bombers, roadside bombs and near-daily assassinations.
United Nations officials said the recent round of plagues, natural and man-made, coupled with the residual chaos that has consumed Somalia for more than a decade, have put the country on the brink of famine. In the worst-hit areas, like Afgooye, recent surveys indicate the malnutrition rate is 19 percent, compared with about 13 percent in Darfur; 15 percent is considered the emergency threshold.
The officials, in making the comparison, were not trying to diminish the problems in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died from violence and disease since 2003. But they said they were concerned that the crisis here was increasingly urgent.
Unlike Darfur, where the suffering is being eased by a billion-dollar aid operation and more than 10,000 aid workers, Somalia is still considered mostly a no-go zone. Just last week, a Somali aid worker and a guard were shot to death at an aid distribution center in Afgooye. United Nations officials estimate that total emergency aid is under $200 million, partly because it is so difficult just getting food into the country.
Pirates lurking off the coast of Somalia have attacked more than 20 ships this year, including two carrying United Nations food. The militias that rule the streets — typically teenage gunmen in wraparound sunglasses and flip-flops — have jacked up roadblock taxes to $400 per truck. The transitional government last month jailed a senior official of the United Nations food program in Somalia, accusing him of helping terrorists, though he was eventually released.
United Nations officials now concede that the country was in better shape during the brief reign of Somalia’s Islamist movement last year. “It was more peaceful, and much easier for us to work,” Mr. Laroche said. “The Islamists didn’t cause us any problems.”
Mr. Ould-Abdallah called those six months, which were essentially the only epoch of peace most Somalis have tasted for years, Somalia’s “golden era.”
Somalia’s ills have always come in waves, starting in 1991 when clan-based militias overthrew the central government and the country plunged into anarchy. That fighting, like the fighting today, disrupted markets, kept out aid shipments and led to rapid inflation of food prices. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people starved.
The United States tried to come to the rescue in 1992, sending thousands of soldiers to Somalia to assist with humanitarian operations.
But American troops abruptly pulled out after Somali militiamen shot down two Black Hawk helicopters in Mogadishu in October 1993.
After that, the United States — and much of the rest of the world — basically turned its back on Somalia. But in the summer of 2006, the world started paying attention again after a grass-roots Islamist movement emerged from the clan chaos and seized control of much of the country.
The United States and Ethiopia, Somalia’s neighbor and rival, quickly labeled the Islamists a threat and accused them of harboring terrorists from Al Qaeda.
Inside Somalia, the Islamists were very popular, at least initially. But then they overplayed their hand and declared a holy war against Ethiopia in December 2006, which provoked a crushing Ethiopian response. American military commanders funneled key satellite imagery to Ethiopian troops as they rolled across the Somali border; American planes bombed fleeing Islamists. One American official said the operation was considered an antiterrorism success.
The transitional government arrived in Mogadishu at the end of December. It has struggled ever since against an insurgency that is a mix of Islamist fighters, rival clans and profiteers who have made a fortune as a result of the anarchy, whether by importing expired baby formula or renting out former government land.
“Those criminals are our biggest problem,” said Abdi Awaleh Jama, an ambassador at large for the transitional government.
The African Union promised to send 8,000 peacekeepers to help. But because of the focus on building a 26,000-strong force for Darfur, only 1,600 Ugandans have arrived. Clearly, some of Somalia’s problems are not the government’s fault. Neither is the drought-flood-drought cycle that has left an impenetrable crust of rock-hard silt over Somalia’s fields, causing the worst cereal harvest in 13 years.
But most Western diplomats agree that unless the transitional government reaches out to Islamist elements and becomes more inclusive, it will fail — like the 13 transitional governments that came before it.
“This government doesn’t control one inch of territory from the Kenyan border up to Mogadishu,” said a Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol.
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the warlord turned transitional president, recently forced out the prime minister and is looking to replace him with a leader who can bridge clan divides.
“This is basically the last chance,” the Western diplomat said.
But the people in Afgooye’s squatter camps do not have a lot of faith. “We want the Islamists back,” said Mohammed Ahmed, a shriveled 80-year-old retired taxi driver.
Mr. Mohammed said he was not especially religious. “But,” he said, “at least we had food.”
http://www.addisvoice.com/article/somrefu.htm
Zenawi's invasion worsens humanitarian crisis in Somalia
November 20, 2007: The U.N. refugee agency estimates the number of displaced people in the war-torn eastern African nation of Somalia "has risen sharply to a staggering 1 million."
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said on Tuesday that about 60 percent or 600,000 people are thought to have fled from the capital of Mogadishu since February, with nearly 200,000 displaced in the past two weeks -- a flight from warfare that has left "entire neighborhoods in the volatile capital empty."
Previous fighting displaced about 400,000 others. The population of Somalia is more than 8.8 million, according to the latest World Almanac.
Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia in December 2006 to drive the Islamic Courts Union out of Mogadishu and restore the U.N.-backed transitional government after a decade and a half of near-anarchy.
After the invasion, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi promised his troops would remain in Somalia only a few weeks, and dismissed fears that his army would become bogged down in a guerrilla war.
The Islamists responded by launching an insurgency against Somali government and Ethiopian troops, who have made only "limited progress" against them, according to a U.N. report.
The United States accused the ICU of harboring suspected al Qaeda figures, including three men wanted in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and raised no objections to the invasion.
Washington has long been concerned that Somalia could turn into a safe haven for terrorists, but ICU leaders denied harboring al Qaeda suspects.
Indonesia's representative to the United Nations Marty M. Natalegawa told reporters on Monday that U.N. Security Council members "expressed strong concern about the deteriorating political, security and humanitarian situation in Somalia." Indonesia holds the rotating council presidency.
The council members stressed "the need to continue to actively develop contingency plans for the possible deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force as part of enhanced U.N. integrated strategy in Somalia," Natalegawa said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cautioned last week in a report on Somalia that the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping operation and even a technical assessment mission is unrealistic because of the volatile security situation.
News source: CNN