From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Oct 13 2008 - 12:17:15 EDT
In Somalia, a 'forgotten crisis'
October 13, 2008
By Jeffrey Gettleman
AFGOOYE, Somalia (IHT) -- There is a
sense of overwhelming hopelessness just stepping into one of the
feeding centers around here and seeing dozens of women sitting with
listless babies in their laps, snapping their fingers, trying to get a
flicker of life out of their dying children.
Little eyes close. Wizened one-year-olds struggle to breathe. From the doorway, you can see the future of Somalia fading away.
While the audacity of a band of Somali pirates who recently
hijacked a ship full of arms has grabbed the world's attention, it is
the slow-burn suffering of millions of Somalis that seems to go almost
unnoticed.
The suffering is not new. Or especially surprising. This
country on the edge of Africa has been slowly, but inexorably, sliding
toward an abyss for the past year and a half, or some would argue, for
the past 17 years.
United Nations officials have called Somalia ""the forgotten crisis.""
The causes are displacement, unemployment, drought, inflation,
a squeeze on global food prices and a war that will not end. Fighting
between Somalia's weak transitional government and a determined
Islamist insurgency has been heating up in the past few weeks, driving
thousands from their homes and cutting people off from food. The
hospital wards here are one indicator of the conflict's intensity.
""In the past two months,"" said Dr. Mohammed Hussein, ""our patients have doubled.""
In August, they had 200 women lined up every day with emaciated babies. Today, it is 400.
More than three million people, about half of Somalia's
population, now need emergency rations to survive. Nobody seems to like
it. Many say they feel humiliated.
""That's all we talk about -- when will the next handout
come,"" said Zenab Ali Osman, a grandmother raising her daughter's
children.
Before fighting drove her from Mogadishu, the capital, to
Afgooye's endless refugee camps of gumdrop-shaped huts made from
plastic bags and in some cases soiled T-shirts, Osman used to wash
clothes. In a good day, she would make the equivalent of 80 cents.
That is what the civil war has done to the economy, leaving so
many people to survive off pennies. But out on the high seas, it is a
different story. Pirates thriving off this same lawlessness are making
millions of dollars by hijacking ships in Somalia's unpatrolled waters
and demanding hefty ransoms to free them. On Sept. 25, a band of
pirates seized a Ukrainian freighter full of tanks and other weapons
bound for Kenya.
The pirates are asking for $20 million, an unfathomable amount
here. Negotiations are still going on, and the likely price will
probably be closer to $5 million.
On Friday, Sugule Ali, a spokesman for the pirate group,
threatened to blow up the ship in three days if no ransom was paid, The
Associated Press reported from Nairobi. He said the pirates met Friday
and decided they would blow up the ship, along with themselves and the
crew, if they did not get the ransom.
No one wants to pay the pirates, but giving in may be the safest way out.
""I pray to God they are caught,"" said Dhuho Abdi Omar, a
mother who was waiting at a feeding center in Afgooye with her
two-year-old girl, who had not eaten for two weeks. ""These pirates are
blocking our food.""
Not everyone agreed. Many young men in the camps seemed to lionize the gunmen of the seas.
""They're tough guys,"" said Mohammed Warsame, 22. ""And they're protecting our coast.""
The pirates have said as much, insisting that they hijack ships in response to illegal fishing and dumping.
""They're our marines,"" said Jaemali Argaga, a militia leader.
Somalia has not had any marines, or national army or navy to
speak of, since the central government imploded in 1991. Clan-based
warlords carved the country into fiefdoms, preying upon the population.
People eventually got fed up and, in the summer of 2006, a grassroots
Islamist movement drove away the warlords.
But Ethiopia and the United States accused the Islamists of
sheltering terrorists and in the winter of 2006, Ethiopian and American
forces ousted the Islamists. The result today is vicious fighting
between the weak government forces and Ethiopian soldiers on one side
and Islamist guerrilla fighters, backed up by businessmen and war
profiteers, on the other. Civilians are often caught in between.
Thousands have been killed in the past year and a half.
Many aid workers have fled. The United Nations World Food
Program is one of the last organizations with a large staff inside
Somalia. Denise Brown, the deputy country director, said the
environment is increasingly hostile. And desperate.
A mob of hungry people besieged a convoy of 35 UN-chartered
food trucks moving through Mogadishu two weeks ago. The people stripped
the trucks clean, looting more than 2 million pounds, or 450,000
kilograms, of food.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=179885
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