___________________________________________________________________ S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E ____________________________________________________________________ No 38 November 27, 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. ____________________________________________________________________ In this issue: EYEWITNESS REPORT FROM INSIDE A U.N. COMPUND IN SOMALILAND SOMALI GUNMEN THREATEN, ROB AND ATTACK AID BODIES U.S. PROPOSES SENDING A DIVISION OF SOLDIERS TO SOMALIA CAUGHT IN "NOWHERE LAND", OGADEN SOMALIS PAY PRICE LANDMINES A THREAT TO SOMALIS HIT BY WAR, FAMINE SOPHIA LOREN CRADLES STARVING SOMALI BABIES SOMALIA - REACTION TO U.S. TROOPS OFFER MIXED EYEWITNESS REPORT FROM INSIDE A U.N. COMPUND IN SOMALILAND By Dorothy Morse Marinella Bruce says Somalian women have an organization called By Faith in God Alone. They work in Hargeysa, a city consisting of nothing but bombed-out rubble. "Yet there is life," exclaims Marinella. "Extraordinary efforts to survive! They sit in front of little boxes, from 6 am to 6 pm, selling whatever they can--lettuce,tomatoes, even natural herb makeup in yellow, green, brown, and orange. Even if they only sell 2 cookies, they will work all day to get a few shillings for their children." Marinella returned from a weeklong trip to Somalia just last week. "Many Somalian women were educated in Britain or America, but they say 'Now we are all one class--we have nothing.' Yet they are so powerful and so strong. The women's meetings are full of drama, life, hope! AND IT DOESN'T TAKE MUCH TO HELP THEM. For about $450, all I had with me, we hired a teacher for a school, got two women set up in business, got a water tank and a water system organized! I was overwhelmed by how much we CAN do." "The men and women stay apart now. The women say they used to fraternize, but many of the men have become savage, volatile. Many of them chew a leaf called chot--a narcotic. Yet there are some men of great courage and integrity. When Siad Barre was the Somalian dictator-- supported by the US--some Somalia professional men set up a wonderful health care system with aid from Germany. For this, Barre had them arrested in the middle of the night, tortured for months, and held in solitary confinement for years. People protested--even children in primary schools--and Barre killed these children. But the protests went on and eventually Barre was overthrown. But during the war he hired South African pilots to bomb Hargeysa, in his own country. That's why the city is is ruins--Barre bombed it. People fled over the hills to Ethiopia, and the fleeing children and women were strafed with bullets as they ran. But after Barre fled, the imprisoned men were freed, and they actually have come back and set up a reconstructionorga organization. They are wonderful men." Marinella is a board member of the Center for the Advancement of Somalian Women and Children in Washington DC, and is also associated with the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Women Changing the World. She vividly confirmed reports that the UN has failed in Somalia. "I stayed 2 nights in a UN compound. It was completely segregated from ordinary Somalian life. There were 3 wonderful meals a day, and Somalians waited on the UN personnel! I said to myself, "I've got to get out of here--I didn't come to Somalia for an eating experience. "Some of the UN individuals are good people, but the institution is a lumbering giant, basically useless. "When I told them about setting up the woman's water project, they were amazed and said, 'You've done more in a week than we have in months.' They are a charade. Everyone is a consultant, with a contract. And the less they do, the longer their contracts. I think this is the reason for trouble with UN planes at the airports. The Somalis resent the consultants in their big compounds and their chauffeur-driven cars. "The UN consultants say their function is to assess and write reports. Well, that would take about 2 minutes. Everything is blown to bits, the people are living in rubble, and they NEED EVERYTHING. "The newspapers in Kenya reported extensively on deaths in Somalian refugee camps on the border caused by UN agencies squabbling. The Kenya papers also reported on the big parties the UN throws in Nairobi when UN people arrive and depart. Save the Children UK came out and said in strong, angry language "the deaths of children can be laid at the feet of the UN." SOMALI GUNMEN THREATEN, ROB AND ATTACK AID BODIES Copyright 1992 The Washington Post By Aidan Hartley NAIROBI, Nov 26, Reuter - Two foreigners walking back from lunch in the so-called "aid enclave" of Mogadishu recently found themselves staring down the barrel of an AK-47. The young Somali gunman giggled at the fear in their eyes, put down the gun and waved them on. It was just a joke, Somali-style. A Somali gunman anxious for employment recently hijacked a senior U.N. military officer's car as he drove out of his office compound in the ruined capital Mogadishu. The gangster raced round the block, drove back into the U.N. office and returned the keys to surprised relief officials. "Now hire security," said the gunman. In Somalia this means renting a "technical," a four-wheel drive vehicle full of militiamen, for some $300 a day. Such incidents in the past few weeks have become progressively more serious and the threats more menacing as militias and their warlord leaders become ever more greedy for money from foreign relief agencies. "There is no business like the aid business," joked a Mogadishu businessman to a journalist on a recent visit. He was referring to the international aid effort that has brought money flooding into the ruined city since harrowing images of starvation shocked the world into action last summer. At least one million people are at risk in a famine which still kills hundreds each day. "Large sums of cash are extorted from donor agencies and organisations to allow them to operate," said U.N. Secretary- General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in a letter to Security Council President Andre Erdos on Wednesday. "The cycle of extortion and blackmail...must be broken and security conditions established that will permit the distribution of relief supplies," he said. Boutros-Ghali's patience appeared to have snapped after a week in which a U.N. grain ship trying to enter Mogadishu port was hit by a shell, U.N. officials were robbed at gunpoint at an airport in the main southern town of Kismayu, and a Pakistani soldier was shot and badly wounded in an ambush in the capital. The international aid agency CARE pays militias at Mogadishu port $11,500 every four days and also has to give them 60 tonnes of each shipload of food in return for "protection" from attack. "If we didn't have all these guns for security hundreds of thousands more Somalis would have died," said International Red Cross delegate Max Hadorn, adding his agency had to tolerate the protection racket so that at least some food got through. The story is the same in most other Somali towns: gunmen loot about three quarters of food aid before it gets to those who need it and yet demand larger fees for supposedly guarding relief operations, relief workers say. The United Nations has indicated it will step up its military presence and take on ruthless warlords unless they stop disrupting relief work. U.N. sources said Boutros-Ghali was drafting a detailed plan of action for the Security Council after examining several options, including the use of force. U.S. PROPOSES SENDING A DIVISION OF SOLDIERS TO SOMALIA Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. By BARRY SCHWEID WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States is offering to commit up to 30,000 troops to a multinational U.N. force assigned to protect food and other relief supplies from feuding warlords in Somalia, administration officials say. Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger made the offer Wednesday to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in response to his plea for more help in a so-far unsuccessful U.N. relief mission in the war- and hunger-striken African nation, the officials said. So far, the United Nations Security Council has authorized a safeguarding force of up to 3,500 troops in Somalia, though only 500 are currently there. Earlier Wednesday, the United States tentatively agreed to provide transportation for the other 3,000 -- none of them Americans. "But there was broad agreement" within the Security Council "that things aren't working out" under the current plan, said one of the administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. That led Eagleburger to offer fuller U.S. participation in a striking buildup of the relief guardian force, the sources said. The White House today released a statement from Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, saying the United States is "gravely concerned about the people of Somalia, and our ability to provide food and medicine under the dangerous conditions that exist in that country. "We are consulting with the United Nations about the best way to guarantee relief supplies from around the world. We want to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches these starving people as soon as possible." Boutros-Ghali did not decide immediately whether to take Eagleburger up on the offer, which was conditioned on other nations also providing more troops as part of the operation, one official said. "It was a tentative discussion," the official said. CNN, which first reported the U.S. offer, said Eagleburger discussed the proposed deployment with President Bush before Bush left Washington on Wednesday for Kennebunkport, Maine. White House spokesman Sean Walsh late Wednesday said there was no formal meeting Wednesday of the National Security Council, but Bush held his usual morning meeting with his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft. One U.S. official told The Associated Press that the troops would "not be shy about using their weapons," to ensure delivery of the relief supplies. The United Nations estimates that 250,000 Somalians may die by the end of the year because of food shortages and the inability of other countries to bring in aid. The East African nation has been plunged into anarchy, with rival clans fighting for power, since the ouster of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Bare early last year. On Tuesday, spokesmen for relief organizations said the situation in Somalia had deteriorated in the last two months despite the international relief program. John Hammock, executive vice president of Oxfam America said "millions of people are at risk of starvation. Thousand of people are dying daily." The port of Mogadishu has been closed since Nov. 7, and gunmen from one of Somalia's rival clans shelled a U.N. ship carrying wheat as it tried to enter on Tuesday. Tons of foods are stacked up at the port because of the strife. One of the administration officials agreed that "The concern is that we face a horrendous disaster," without a stronger show of force. CAUGHT IN "NOWHERE LAND", OGADEN SOMALIS PAY PRICE Copyright 1992 The Washington Post By Jonathan Clayton GODE, Ethiopia, Nov 25, Reuter - Flies are everywhere. They cover the faces of dying children, swarm over the feeble bodies of emaciated livestock and buzz around the entrances to flimsy stick and cloth huts that serve as home. This is the Ogaden desert, one of the most inhospitable and barren places on earth. The sun rises early in this land which juts diamond-like from Ethiopia into the bleeding heart of Somalia. Well before noon, its pitiless heat serves notice of another day of struggle against the elements. Caught between Somalia's tragedy and Ethiopia's neglect, the people of the Ogaden have suffered quietly for months. For many, the burden now appears unbearable. "There is a mentality in the camps this year of 'We have come to Gode to die'. People have nowhere else to go," said Paul Antigoni of the Irish charity Concern which runs a feeding centre in this regional capital. Gode, like other towns of the Ogaden, has seen its population double over the last two years. People, their lives wrecked by drought and civil war in nearby Somalia, drifted to the urban centres in search of food. Stretching out to the horizon, the flimsy twig huts of some 30,000 refugees and local homeless shimmer in the haze. The racking coughs of sick children pierce the still air. Skeletal figures, now a common sight all over the Horn of Africa, move ghost- like around the camps. These people are Somali-speaking nomadic Ogadenis, until recently dependent on livestock and trade with Somalia. When Somalia fell into bloody chaos after the January 1991 downfall of Mohamed Siad Barre, the Ogadenis -- already hit by years of drought -- lost their economic livelihood. Others who had taken refuge across the border during the 1977-78 Ogaden war between Ethiopia and Somalia and then stayed on in refugee camps fled back to relative safety. To these hardy nomadic people, the border is meaningless. They have meandered backwards and forwards for centuries, searching for grazing and waterholes for their animals. But to the government in Addis Ababa and to the United Nations that has mounted a huge relief effort to deal with the Somali famine, the border is a real frontier. This means that although the people are suffering largely from the same crisis as next door, their relief effort is administered from the Ethiopian capital -- much further away than base camps in Kenya for the operation in Somalia. Aid workers accuse the government-run Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) of reacting far too late to the tragedy and then responding inadequately. Last August, mortality rates reached 12 a day for every 10,000 people while average malnutrition rates were over 60 per cent, high by any standards. An estimated 350,000 people are believed to be in need of assistance, but no emergency appeal was made. At first food stored in local warehouses was not distributed by RRC officials, aid workers say. Then, when finally it was, there were sometimes gaps of as long as 40 days between distributions. "They were a forgotten people in a forgotten land. When I first came here, there were 17 people a day dying in the camps. I was shocked. The children were half-dead, half-living," said U.N. field worker Salim Akhtar. Unlike neighbouring Somalia, the area is virtually free of the insecurity that has plagued relief operations in that country. "A group of elders in the border town of Mustahil recently told me perhaps if they had a little bit more insecurity they would receive the type of rations they get on the other side," said one senior U.N. official. In the Ogaden, food distributions have largely consisted of wheat, whereas in Somalia the starving have also received oil and rice and other goods. Traders have made an easy killing bringing aid over the border and selling it in Ogaden markets as more and more food has arrived in Somalia. "The closer one gets to Somalia the cheaper food becomes," said Ben Parker of the U.N. Emergency Prevention and Preparedness Group. The difference in the size and quality of food handouts has created a new phenomenon, "aid commuters" -- groups of people who drift around refugee camps on the Kenyan, Somali and Ethiopian borders in search of the best deal. "Clearly, it would make more sense to have a cross-border approach for what is essentially the same problem. But that's very political," said one aid official. The local people are suspicious of the government in Addis Ababa, dominated by former rebels from the northern province of Tigray who overthrew dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in May 1991. Recently hundreds of people demonstrated after the Ministry of Agriculture said 161 vacant local positions could not be filled by people with Somali school certificates. A measles vaccination campaign was also halted before its completion after the Ministry of Health said the disease had not reached epidemic proportions. "Every government has neglected the Ogaden, this one is no different," said a U.N. official. LANDMINES A THREAT TO SOMALIS HIT BY WAR, FAMINE By Jonathan Clayton NAIROBI, Nov 24, Reuter - Their lives wrecked by civil war, vicious clan bloodletting, and a looming famine, the women and children of northern Somalia must also contend with a deadly, hidden enemy -- hundreds of thousands of landmines. Each day they kill and maim Somali civilians, mainly children under the age of 16 and women, according to a report released on Tuesday by the U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). "In northern Somalia, camel and goat herders are afraid to return to their grazing lands. City dwellers fear returning to their homes. The fields explode, the houses are booby-trapped. There are landmines everywhere," said Chris Giannou, a Canadian surgeon and member of the PHR team that drew up the report. The 52-page report, "Hidden Enemies -- Landmines in Northern Somalia," details the extensive mining of the area by the army of fallen dictator Mohamed Siad Barre during a 1988-1991 civil war against secessionist northern rebels. The mines, laid throughout the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, are mainly anti-personnel devices which tend to kill only when an individual takes the full force of the explosion. More likely, legs, ankles, feet are blown off. The report said up to 1,000 landmine amputees had scant hope for adequate care or rehabilitation because "emergency, surgical and hospital services are grossly inadequate." "There are few crutches, virtually no articifial limbs or physical therapy available," the report said. It added that one of the cruelest tactics of Siad Barre's forces was the deliberate mining of civilian homes. The report, resulting from a two-week study conducted last February and March, added that thousands of people were thought to have died of injuries sustained in remote areas. "In a pastoral society where muscle power means survival, the loss of a limb can be particularly cruel. Among nomads, amputees become a special burden to their families," it added. Data collected from hospitals in the main northern cities of Hargeisa, Barbera and Borama showed that 74.6 per cent of mine victims treated between February 1991 and February 1992 were children between five and 15. PHR said the mines were also preventing the repatriation of thousands of Somalis who fled into neighbouring Ethiopia during the height of the fighting between government forces and the Somali National Movement. The mining has devastated what little economy there was in the impoverished corner of the Horn of Africa, bordering Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Red Sea. After Siad Barre was overthrown by another rebel group in January 1991 and the country descended into an orgy of clan feuding, the Somali National Movement declared independence for the area once known as British Somaliland. The report said that even agricultural and grazing areas -- populated mostly by nomads -- west of Burao had been mined along with water sources, and both main and secondary roads. PHR called on U.S. President-elect Bill Clinton and the international community to answer "the desperate need for demining and rehabilitation in northern Somalia." SOPHIA LOREN CRADLES STARVING SOMALI BABIES By Aidan Hartley BULLA HOWA, Somalia, Nov 23, Reuter - Film idol Sophia Loren held skeletal babies in her arms when she visited famine-hit Somalia as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. on Monday. "It's a tragedy on a biblical scale," said Loren, who went to the Somali town of Bulla Howa, close to the Kenyan border, with officials of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and some 40 jouranlists. But Loren, 58, said she saw "signs of joy" among the hundreds of refugees who had left squalid camps in Kenya to return to villages they fled months ago. Mortality has plummeted in the Kenyan camps, which hold 422,000 refugees. Relief agencies are giving out food and seeds to encourage Somalis to go home. "Two weeks ago this boy couldn't walk," a Belgian Medecins sans Frontieres worker told Loren, pointing out a stick-thin child at a feeding centre in the Kenyan town of Mandera. To shouts of approval from a battery of paparazzi, Italy's notorious celebrity photographers, Loren then spoon fed infants. On Sunday Loren visited Baidoa, the southwestern Somali town where dozens of people are still dying of famine months after the world launched a massive relief effort. "The impact of children like skeletons, of disease, were so brutal. As soon as I closed my eyes last night these images came back and I had a terrible night," Loren told Reuters. U.N. official Panos Moumtzis said the world body hoped to raise at least $300,000 in donations from the four-day publicity trip, which cost a tenth of that. SOMALIA - REACTION TO U.S. TROOPS OFFER MIXED Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. By THOMAS WAGNER Associated Press Writer MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- An aid agency predicted disaster Thursday if the United States sends a large military force to this starving nation, but other relief specialists welcomed Washington's offer. Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger told U.N. chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Wednesday the United States was willing to send up to 30,000 soldiers to Somalia as part of a U.N. peacekeeping force. If the offer is accepted, it would mark largest deployment of U.S. troops in a U.N. operation since the Korean War. Only small groups of American soldiers have been involved in U.N. operations since then. Boutros-Ghali will present a plan to the U.N. Security Council next week to expand the scope of U.N. operations in Somalia, a senior U.N. official in New York said Thursday, on condition he not be named. The official refused to say if the Secretary-General would recommend the council accept the U.S. offer. The United Nations in August authorized deployment of a 3,500- member force to Somalia to guard humanitarian efforts, but only 500 have arrived because of objections from two feuding warlords there. More U.N. peacekeepers could be sent without the warlords' authorization if the Security Council broadens their mission. A relief official here was enthusiastic about the prospect of having thousands of American troops guarding food convoys, which have been repeatedly attacked by bandits, and ensuring food is not stolen at Mogadishu's port or elsewhere. "Obviously, if you put 30,000 troops in Somalia it's going to have a positive effect on moving food out of Mogadishu port," said Rick Grant of CARE. The agency has been designated by the United Nations to move food from the port to starving Somalis in the capital and drought-ravaged countryside. But another relief agency sharply criticized the U.S. troop proposal. "Imposing troops on Somalia as suggested by the United States would be a disaster for the whole relief operation," the British- based Save The Children said in a statement issued in London. "If troops arrive without the consent and understanding of the Somali population, it could turn the population against all outside intervention, including humanitarian relief," said the agency, which runs feeding centers and clinics for mothers and children here. The United Nations estimates 300,000 people have died from war and famine and 2 million more risk starvation. In Washington, the White House said Thursday the United States is "gravely concerned about the people of Somalia." "We want to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches these starving people as soon as possible," said a statement from President Bush's spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater. But Mark Bowden, Save The Children's Africa director, said sending troops as suggested by Eagleburger was a bad idea. "Any idea that 30,000 troops imposed like an invasion force could somehow sort the situation out should be condemned as inappropriate and unacceptable," Bowden said in a statement from London. "It would put in jeopardy the whole relief operation, as well as the personal safety of our staff," he said. Some relief workers said the move could prompt Somalia's rogue gunmen to turn on foreigners, while others said they would welcome the protection of American soldiers. Stephen Tomlin, of the Los-Angeles based International Medical Corp, said he hoped U.S. troops would be more effective than the 500- member U.N. force that has already arrived. "The 500 U.N. troops already here aren't fully deployed and haven't shown any usefulness at all," Tomlin complained. The force has been hampered by restrictions placed on them by the warlords, and their base has even been fired on by a warlord's forces. For their safety, relief workers would have to be withdrawn before any massive deployment of U.N. troops, said Mary Considine of the Irish agency Concern. Paul Mitchell, spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program, said he approved of any measure that would provide greater security, but would not specifically endorse the troop offer. "It's not our role to say what's needed," he said. "But what is critical is security -- protection for convoys, protection for boats and protection for planes." The lack of security has crippled aid efforts. Bandits, some loyal to the warlords and others operating on their own, regularly loot relief donations meant for the dying and sell them on the black market. Some aid workers say at least half the food sent to the country has been stolen. The capital's port has been closed more than a week by the feuding warlords, and a food-laden ship attempting to dock Tuesday was hit by a missile. ____________________________________________________________________ Posted by Bernhard Helander in Uppsala, Sweden.