'You can't eat peace'

'You can't eat peace'
Mogadishu, Somalia
22 January 2006 09:21

Tens of thousands of desperate Somalis have converged on Mogadishu over the past two months, abandoning their homes in the lawless nation's drought-stricken south and centre to beg for food in the capital as famine looms across East Africa.Since December, more than 76 000 hungry, thirsty and ailing peasants and pastoralists from at least five of the war-shattered country's worst-hit provinces have trekked to the mean streets of the bullet-scarred city in search of sustenance, according to aid workers who expect the numbers to rise."This is the beginning," Nicholas Haan, of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization's (FAO) food-security assessment unit, said on Friday in the capital of neighbouring Kenya. "More people will do the same trip in search of food and water."Sheikh Mohamud Omar, who arrived in Mogadishu from his village near Baidoa in south-western Bay province eight weeks ago, tells excruciating tales of deprivation in his home region."One meal a day was standard for the past six months, but even that meagre food is disappearing and people are heading towards maybe one meal every two or three days," he said."What we expect there soon is no meal at all and starvation," Omar said as he stood near a market stall, predicting that many -- mainly women, children and elderly -- would not survive the drought in Bay and neighbouring Bakol province without an immediate infusion of outside assistance.Extreme difficultiesWhile the FAO says up to 11-million people in four nations -- Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia -- are deemed at imminent risk of starvation, the nearly two million affected Somalis face perhaps the most extreme difficulties.With virtually no infrastructure for relief distribution, piracy cutting ocean-going food-aid supply lines, rampant instability from 15 years of anarchy and its worst harvest in more than a decade, Somalia has become the poster child for the Horn of Africa drought disaster, officials say."We are facing a humanitarian challenge of historic dimensions," the UN special envoy for Somalia, Francois Fall, said last week, warning of "extraordinary suffering and loss of life".The recent movements have raised fears that the chronic unrest that Somalia has suffered for more than a decade could get worse as livestock die in increasing numbers, crops fail and farmers and herders compete for rapidly diminishing food and water or leave for the city."The number of people migrating is increasing [and] may lead to violence," FAO nutritionist Noreen Prendeville told reporters in Nairobi.Yet impoverished and insecure Mogadishu, the epicentre of the anarchic violence that has engulfed Somalia for the past 15 years, is far from a welcoming destination for many of the new arrivals who brush shoulders with heavily armed militiamen clustered around markets and squares."I abandoned the horror of hunger, but finding shelter is difficult here," said Ahmed Abdulle Mumin, who fled Bakol with his wife and two children and whose family is now entirely dependent on hand-outs."There are too many of us to be helped," lamented Asha Adan, a mother of three who was begging nearby and grew annoyed with a reporter's interruptions. "We don't want to hear your questions; I need food, do you have any?"OverwhelmedIndeed, the huge influx of their hungry country cousins has taken many in Mogadishu aback, overwhelmed rudimentary social services offered by private aid groups and taxed Islamic traditions of hospitality and charity among residents who already had little to offer."The local agencies are powerless, they have no money," said Medina Elmi, the chairperson of Mogadishu's Save Somali Women and Children organisation, in comments echoed by others."Cash is short and even though the people coming to Mogadishu are hungry, there are many people here that are too," said local journalist Hassan Dusos."We can hardly support the huge number of beggars," said Ali Muhyadin Ahmed, a stall owner at Mogadishu's main Bakara market. "We are eating less just to keep our businesses running."But hunger keeps the Mogadishu migration moving, even from relatively calm areas of the country."What is making us flee is not violence," said Hasan Ibrahim, a 65-year-old retired soldier who is suffering from tuberculosis and came to Mogadishu from Bakol. "Where I was it was peaceful, but you can't eat peace." -- Sapa-AFP