___________________________________________________________________ S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E ____________________________________________________________________ No 19 September 18, 1992. ISSN 1103-1999 ____________________________________________________________________ Somalia News Update is published irregularly via electronic mail and fax. Questions can be directed to antbh@strix.udac.uu.se or to fax number +46-18-151160. All material is free to quote as long as the source is stated. ____________________________________________________________________ Thank you for all encouraging mail! I'm sorry that I'm unable to answer every letter personally. A fre- quent question is "can anyone join this list?". The answer is yes. All it takes is an e-mail address or a faxnumber. There are no news news on the US vessels yet so I take this opportunity to forward some backlog articles from USENET. From: hrcoord@igc.apc.org (Human Rights Coordinator) Date: 14 Sep 92 21:27:00 GMT Newsgroups: soc.rights.human Subject: Re: News stories on African Famine /* Written 9:28 am Sep 14, 1992 by jnr in cdp:hunger.general */ 09/14 Somalia's starving fight, gunmen kill for food By Jonathan Clayton BARDERE, Somalia, Sept 14, Reuter - Habiba waited patiently most of the morning to pass through the narrow entrance into the feeding centre. But when her turn came, the crowd behind her surged and she stumbled and fell. She was too weak to regain her footing and her withered three-year-old daughter Marion was knocked from her back. The two emaciated bodies disappeared under a sea of legs. Panic gripped people outside. Fearing they would lose their place in the queue, more forced their way through the narrow door. Many fell in a mound of writhing bodies. "On one side of the door is life, the other death," said an aid worker in this famine-hit town in southwest Somalia. Guards wielding sticks and the stems of stripped-down umbrellas beat back the jostling crowd and fastened the door shut again. Others frantically pulled bodies off the ground. At the bottom of the heap, mother and daughter were bloodied and bruised. The only members of their immediate family still alive, they had survived another day. Eyes glazed, Habiba recalled her husband Siad Osman died long ago -- in the early days of what is called the "world's worst humanitarian crisis." Their sons succumbed one by one on the long trek to Bardere. Food, or even the promise of it, sets the starving at each other's throats in Somalia. Gunmen kill to control it. Rumour that something to eat has arrived somewhere makes people trek for miles under a baking sun. Some make it, many do not. Bodies litter the roadside on the way from the dirt airstrip a few miles outside Bardere. Skeletal survivors lurk around the entrances to demolished buildings. Even if they reach feeding centres such as the one found by Habiba and her daughter on the banks of the muddy Juba river, only the lucky ones are admitted -- some are deemed too close to death to merit feeding. Donated food is starting to pour into Somalia but aid workers fear the scale of the tragedy could be even greater than their intial estimate that two million were at immediate risk of starving. As more and more parts of the country are opened up they fear a disaster of unparalelled proportions is laying in wait. "Those that cannot walk and the very, very weak are remaining in the villages. There the death rate is very, very high," said doctor Ayub Sheikh Yerow. In Baidoa, about 120 miles (200 km) northeast and at the centre of Somalia's famine agony, Irish nurse Annita Ennis agreed. "Things are still very bad, we need to get out to the villages," she told Reuters. Ayub, who works for the United Nations, opened the first feeding centre in Bardere a few months ago. He found a town destroyed by fighting between former rebels and the remnants of the army of former dictator Mohamed Said Barre. Siad Barre was forced out of the capital in January 1991. He took refuge in the southwest as his country disintegrated into tribal chaos. In April, he was driven into neighbouring Kenya by the forces of the country's most powerful warlord, "General" Mohamed Farah Aideed. Aid workers were staggered by what they found in Bardere. Ayub said: "65-70 per cent of the children are severely malnourished. That means they are less than 70 per cent of the weight they should be." He now runs four feeding centres in the town, each catering for some 3,000 people. The death toll has come down from more than 30 a day to between 10 and 12. From: hrcoord@igc.apc.org (Human Rights Coordinator) Date: 14 Sep 92 21:27:00 GMT Newsgroups: soc.rights.human Subject: Re: News stories on African Famine /* Written 9:28 am Sep 14, 1992 by jnr in cdp:hunger.general */ 09/14 Disease, banditry maim Somali fugitives in Kenya By Manoah Esipisu MANDERA, Kenya, Sept 14, Reuter - Hundreds of Somali refugees who fled famine and war at home are dying slow, painful deaths from disease in Kenya, a senior U.N. official said on Monday. The refugees are also prey to marauding bandits who kill them for their few possessions and also attack camps dotted along the frontier, officials say. "Medical supplies are scarce and there is a shortage of clean water which these thousands of displaced people need," said Phillipe Chicheau, representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Mandera, a town where the frontiers of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya meet. "Up to 400 Somali refugees are dying every week," Chicheau told reporters. "Some 40 Ethiopian fugitives die each week." Kenya blames escalating crime in northern villages and in urban centres on hundreds of guns filtering in with the flood of Somali refugees. British Development Minister Baroness Lynda Chalker was moved almost to tears when she visited several dusty, overcrowded, makeshift camps in Mandera and the nearby town of Wajir, where some 380,000 Somali and 50,000 Ethiopian fugitives live. "What has happened out here is tragic," Chalker said. About two weeks ago, former Belgian prime minister Wilfried Martens said after a visit to Mandera: "There is absolute misery and human suffering of a scale not describable." The refugees live in makeshift tents made from sticks, branches, leaves, sisal fibre and polythene paper provided by the UNHCR. Most have no matresses, no beds, no blankets, no bed covers -- often they sleep on the soft but cold sand. Whatever clothes they brought into Kenya are in tatters. Most of the children walk naked, or with just a wrapper round their loins. Many children just stare -- with hardly any expression of pain -- yet they have deep and fresh gun wounds which worsen by the minute due to medical neglect. Many are sure to die. Aid workers say many of the refugees enter Kenya weak and dehydrated after travelling hundreds of kilometres (miles) in the desert with neither water nor food. When they cross the border they find Kenyans emerging from two years of severe drought, emaciated and needing emergency food aid as well. Somali refugees began flooding Kenya shortly after clan leaders General Mohammed Farah Aideed and self-declared president Ali Mahdi Mohammed turned on each other after helping to oust dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in January 1991. The United States, Germany, Canada, France and Belgium have joined U.N. and other international relief agencies in rushing humanitarian aid to the famished and war-scarred country, and to northern Kenya, before it is too late. Kenya, which produces food sufficient for its needs, this year made its first ever appeal for food aid, saying that Somali refugees had put a severe strain on the country's resources. .TOPIC News stories on African Famine 09/14 Somalia: Guns And `Rambos' Are the Rule By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service MOGADISHU, Somalia - One of the most dangerous corners in one of the world's most dangerous capitals is the gun bazaar at the central marketplace. It stands as a stark reminder of how difficult the task will be to establish order in a country gone gun-crazy. The bazaar is actually just two tables in an unimposing corner stall, tucked away at the end of a dusty alleyway on the divided city's south side. It is a kind of convenience store for heavy firepower, offering weapons from handguns and grenades to assault rifles and grenade launchers. Somali men, young and old, come here to have guns repaired, replaced or reloaded. In a city awash with guns, firearms, it seems, come cheaper than food and fuel. The U.S.-made M-16 assault rifle sells for about $75. Much preferred by the young militiamen who swagger through the town is the Russian-made AK-47, which sells for about $100. It is perhaps a telling sign of the chaos in Somalia that the price of ammunition recently has risen to 5,000 Somali shillings - just under $1 - for a single bullet. Foreigners typically are greeted at the gun bazaar with a chorus of unmistakable and menacing "clicking" sounds made by clips being fastened, rounds being loaded and safety catches being released. Adan Gedi Adan, a Somali translator, tells a foreign journalist to relax, that loading a round and clicking off the safety catch is the way Somali men greet each other as friends. Since Somalia slid into anarchy, the translator said, the most popular videotape at street stalls is "Rambo." "They love Rambo," said Adan, who six times has seen the movie that depicts the violent, superhuman exploits of a fictional U.S. ex-commando. "And, in the morning, they will try to practice what Rambo was doing." The job of imposing some kind of order on a country full of gun-toting Rambos will fall first to a U.N. contingent of 500 Pakistani soldiers, whose mission it will be to secure the Mogadishu port, the international airport and the warehouses where relief supplies for the famine-wracked country are stored. An advance team of 60 Pakistanis is due to arrive here Monday aboard a U.S. transport plane. The group's commander, Brig. Gen. Imtiaz Shaheen, is under no illusions about the difficulty of the mission. "This place is bad news," he told reporters here last week. Shaheen said his troops will be carrying only "small arms," for self-defense and to secure strategic areas. "You don't bring antitank weapons," he said, alluding to the U.N. peace-keeping role. "You don't bring cannons and you don't bring heavy offensive weapons." Shaheen said the most important piece of information for the arriving troops will be a detailed explanation of the nature of Somalia's gun-crazy society, so soldiers realize that not everyone here who carries a gun is an enemy. Shaheen, in an interview, said he expects incidents to occur, citing as an example the shooting two weeks ago of two U.N. observers by someone who opened fire on their vehicle as they approached a crude roadblock. "We have to be aware that those things can happen," he said. "That doesn't mean you get . . . (angry) and run away." The general said he is counting somewhat on the ability of the clan leaders to exercise control over the young gunmen roaming the streets. "I sincerely hope they will be able to enforce some kind of control," he said. Many relief workers here, however, say that the clan warlords' ability to control gun-wielding marauders is exaggerated. They pointed to the looting incident at the capital's port last month in which three commandeered tanks were used to support the looters. Because of that episode - which occurred despite assurances by clan leaders that the port was secure - the International Committee of the Red Cross has suspended new food shipments to the port. "Our ship is waiting outside," said Dominik Stillhart of the Red Cross. He said the ship was laden with 6,500 tons of relief goods, but would remain 15 miles offshore until the port could be made secure. Many believe that the international community must take the initiative in trying to reestablish order in Somalia by first seeing that the population is disarmed. Some have suggested trading food for firearms or paying Somalis to turn in their weapons. Rakiya Omaar, the Somali executive director of Africa Watch, a human rights group, said the only hope is for the United Nations to disarm the population by force. "Somebody just has to take those guns away," she said from London. "Force is the only thing these young kids understand." From: hrcoord@igc.apc.org (Human Rights Coordinator) Date: 14 Sep 92 21:27:00 GMT Newsgroups: soc.rights.human Subject: Re: News stories on African Famine /* Written 9:28 am Sep 14, 1992 by jnr in cdp:hunger.general */ 09/14 U.N. troops in Somalia have to confront gangsters By Aidan Hartley MOGADISHU, Sept 14, Reuter - United Nations troops flying in to Somalia to guard relief operations face a showdown with clan gangs that have grown rich from 20 months of fighting and famine. "There are those who took the best houses, the guns, the best women -- and they will fight if they think the U.N. troops will bring an end to that," said one Somali relief worker. Battle-wrecked Mogadishu has been carved up by rival families of the Hawiye clan into gangland zones that make them big profits. The first 40 Pakistani soldiers out of a force of 500 arrived on Monday to take control of key facilities such as the airport, protect relief convoys and personnel -- and put an end to the gangsters' rackets. Most relief agencies see deployment of troops as the only way to ensure food and medical care reaches Somalia's hungry, who number up to two million. Foreigners arriving at the international airport have to pay Hawadle clan militias landing fees in dollars -- $2,000 for a plane and $100 per passenger. Another clan, the Suleiman, loiter in the Indian Ocean port trying to steal bags of relief food being unloaded from ships. A bloody feud between Mogadishu warlords Ali Mahdi Mohamed and Mohamed Faragh Aideed reduced much of the city to rubble and killed or wounded 30,000 people. A "green line" no-man's land now splits the city between Ali Mahdi's Abgal clan-dominated district in the north and Aideed's Habre Gedir in the south. Unruly clan forces are made up of youths, most of them country boys who grew up herding camels in the bush but now patrol the streets heavily armed and high on the leaf drug qat. Ironically, the youths are employed by the U.N. and other relief agencies to guard relief supplies from looters in return for cash payments and food. Their bosses are no longer the traditional elders who ruled Somalia's two dozen mainly nomadic and Islamic clans and brokered peace in feuds over water holes and pasture. Power passed into the hands of a new generation of warlords -- former hoteliers, army officers and diplomats -- after rebels ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre from Mogadishu in January last year. All government institutions collapsed and the arid state descended into anarchy. The warlords have little authority over the clans but five fiefdoms have emerged through a series of alliances. Siad Barre took refuge in southwest Somalia until he finally fled into exile last April, but his own Marehan clan is still fighting Hawiye forces under Aideed along the Kenyan border. The Hawiye are also feuding sporadically with Marehan and Mejerteyn forces in the northeastern region around Galcaio. Aideed reluctantly accepted the deployment of 500 troops but is bitterly opposed to the extra 3,000 approved by the Security Council to fan out from the capital to areas of conflict. Ali Mahdi, on the other hand, wants 10,000 U.N. troops in the country -- he thinks their presence will bolster his bitterly disputed claim to the presidency. The U.N. says the role of the troops will only be to guard relief operations. But many analysts see intervention by foreign troops as a first possible step towards prodding the clans into peace talks and creating a new national government. From: hrcoord@igc.apc.org (Human Rights Coordinator) Date: 14 Sep 92 21:27:00 GMT Newsgroups: soc.rights.human Subject: Re: News stories on African Famine /* Written 9:28 am Sep 14, 1992 by jnr in cdp:hunger.general */ 09/14 Countdown to arrival of U.N. troops in Somalia MOGADISHU, Sept 14, Reuter - Chronology of events leading to the arrival of United Nations troops in Somalia on Monday. July 1, 1960 - Independence unites Somali territories ruled by Britain and Italy since the late 19th century. Oct 29, 1969 - Army seizes power in a bloodless coup. Major-General Mohammed Siad Barre takes control. April, 1981 - Rebel Somali National Movement (SNM) set up by Issak northern clan begins nine-year guerrilla campaign. Thousands die as Siad Barre's rule becomes more brutal. By end of decade Ogaden and Hawiye clans are also in rebellion. Siad Barre is dubbed "Mayor of Mogadishu" because he controls so little of the state. 1991: Jan 27 - Rebels invade Mogadishu and drive out Siad Barre after fighting which kills many. Orgy of ethnic score-settling and looting follows. Jan 29 - United Somali Congress (USC), led by Hawiye clan, names Ali Mahdi Mohammed interim president in move bitterly opposed by rival USC chief Mohammed Farah Aideed Rival. Clan fighting erupts in all parts of country. May 15 - Clan factions start peace conference in Djibouti brokered by Organisation of African Unity. Six groups announce a truce. Northern SNM secedes and founds Somaliland. July 21 - Second round of Djibouti talks announces new truce and interim government but several factions reject Ali Mahdi as president again. Siad Barre fails in bloody offensive to recapture Mogadishu. Sept 8 - Fighting between Ali Mahdi and Aideed clans ends after three days in peace brokered by elders. Oct 4 - New Ali Mahdi government announced with more than 80 ministers. Swiftly rejected by Aideed and other clans. Nov 18 - Feuding erupts for third time between Ali Mahdi and Aideed factions. Up to 30,000 killed or wounded in Mogadishu street fighting in the following four months. 1992: Jan 20 - New Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali promises to end U.N.'s heavily-criticised delay and launches massive humanitarian effort for Somalia. Feb 12 - Warlords agree to attend U.N.-brokered peace talks in New York as fighting rages after Security Council slaps arms embargo on Somalia. March 3 - Aideed and Ali Mahdi sign ceasefire but fail to agree on how to monitor it. Banditry still rampant. U.N. sets up first permanent office after 14 months' absence. Agencies warn that famine is seriously advanced for 1.5 million people. July 5 - First unarmed U.N. military observers under Pakistani Brigadier-General Imtiaz Shaheen arrive to monitor truce in Mogadishu but weeks pass before they are deployed. Aug 6 - U.N. mission tours Somalia, the fifth since the government collapsed in January 1991, to assess needs as relief agencies voice outrage that famine is killing thousands. U.N. takes up its recommendations to deploy up to 3,500 troops to guard relief aid in Mogadishu, north and south of country. Aug 12 - Aideed agrees to deployment of 500 armed Pakistani troops to protect relief operations. Huge U.S., French, German and Belgian airlifts of food mounted. Politicians from United States and European Community visit to see suffering in feeding centres and refugee camps. Sept 14 - First 40 U.N. troops arrive in Mogadishu from Pakistan.