Somalia facing humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands flee capital

By Salad Duhul and Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Associated Press Writers

Published: 24 April 2007

There are no more hospital beds available in this bloodstained capital, and barely enough bandages to patch up the wounded. Even the bottles of medicine are running dry.

But still the patients keep pouring in - and they are the lucky ones, having survived another day of gunfire and mortar shells as Islamic insurgents battle troops allied to Somalia's fragile government.

"Even the shades of the trees are occupied at this point," Dahir Dhere, director of Medina Hospital, the largest health facility in Mogadishu, said yesterday. "We are overwhelmed."

Battles rocked Mogadishu for the sixth straight day Monday as Somalia heads toward one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history, with civilians getting slaughtered in the crossfire. A local human rights group put the death toll at 1,000 over just four days earlier this month, and more than 250 have been killed in the past six days.

More than 320,000 of Mogadishu's 2 million residents have fled since heavy fighting started in February.

Ahmed Mohamed, 32, was not one of them. A mortar shell hit him over the weekend, crushing his right leg.

"The doctors told me I would die unless they cut off my leg," Mohamed said, tears streaming down his face in the city's Keysaney Hospital, which was packed beyond capacity with nearly 200 people. "So I have to let them do it."

Somalia Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said Monday his interim government was winning the battle against the insurgents, but called for greater support from the international community.

"If we do not get international support the war may spread throughout the region and Africa," Gedi said. "These terrorists want to destabilize the whole region."

The government and its Ethiopian backers have been facing mounting pressure from the US, European Union and United Nations over the mounting civilian death toll and appear determined to bring order to the city before a planned national reconciliation conference in June.

But the fighting has decimated Mogadishu, already one of the most violent and gun-infested cities in the world. At least 18 civilians were killed Monday, said Sudan Ali Ahmed, the chairman of the Elman Human Rights Organization group. A 6-month-old baby was among those wounded, said a witness, Khadija Farah.

Somalia has been mired in chaos since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned against each other. The western city of Baidoa, where the Somali Parliament is based, was dubbed "City of Death" in the 1990s during a searing drought and famine there. Mogadishu, once a stunning seaside capital, is now a looted shantytown teeming with guns, with no functioning government or institutions.

A national government was established in 2004, but has failed to assert any real control.

Last month, troops from neighboring Ethiopia used tanks and attack helicopters to crush a growing insurgency linked to the Council of Islamic Courts. The movement had controlled Mogadishu and much of the country's south for only six months in 2006, but those were the most peaceful months since 1991.

The group was driven from power in December by Somali and Ethiopian soldiers, accompanied by US special forces, who have accused the group of having ties to al-Qaida. The militants reject any secular government, and have sworn to fight until Somalia becomes an Islamic emirate.

Meanwhile, the capital and its surrounding towns have become scenes of ghastly despair. Women and children flee on foot with little more than their clothes and some cooking pots, then sleep by the side of the road. In Afgoye, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the capital, fights were breaking out over a spot of shade beneath a tree.

"Everyone wants to sit in the small area under the tree," said Asha Hassan Mohamed, a mother of seven who reached Afgoye last week but returned to Mogadishu because she couldn't find any food.

"It's so crowded because there is no shelter."

The United Nations said the fighting had sparked the worst humanitarian crisis in the war-ravaged country's recent history, with many of the city's residents trapped because roads out of Mogadishu were blocked.

Catherine Weibel, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, said many of those who haven't fled the capital are simply too vulnerable to do so.

"All the people who are sick, in wheelchairs, disabled," she said, "they cannot leave."

Ethiopian helicopter gunships fire on Somali market

Helicopters fire on Somali market

Ethiopian helicopter gunships have fired at a market near an insurgent stronghold in the Somali capital.

The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says hundreds of insurgents armed with rocket launchers and machine guns are battling Ethiopian troops.

Ethiopian tanks are also deployed. Crowds dragged several dead bodies in uniform through the streets.

The security crackdown in the south of the city is being billed as a three-day operation to restore order.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia says two-thirds of its troops have withdrawn from Somalia.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told parliament the rest of his troops, which are deployed in support of the interim government, would leave in consultation with the African Union.

Ethiopian troops helped install the government last December but have been gradually handing over responsibilities to the AU force that was deployed to Mogadishu this month to try and bring stability to the city.

Some 1,700 Ugandan troops are in Mogadishu as the advance party of a planned 8,000 strong AU force.

No-go zone

In a dawn operation, at least six people died in the fighting which broke a ceasefire declared a week ago and was brokered by elders form the Hawiye clan - the biggest in Mogadishu - but Ethiopia denied reaching any deal.

Ethiopian tanks, troops and helicopters are trying to take control of five key junctions.

This is the worst fighting Mogadishu has seen since the Islamists were ousted Zenaib Abubakar Mogadishu resident

The militia responded with heavy artillery fire.

The southern part of Mogadishu, where the fighting is going on, has become a no-go zone.

Dozens of injured civilians are stranded, as heavy fighting has grounded public transport and other business activity in the Somali capital.

"This is the worst fighting Mogadishu has seen since the Islamists were ousted. Explosions can be heard all over the city and many people are just holed up in their homes," resident Zenaib Abubakar told the BBC Somali Service.

Ms Abubakar said heavy shelling is taking place near the main stadium, where Ethiopian and government troops are battling with insurgents who are putting up heavy resistance.

"It's difficult to tell how many people have been injured or killed because fighting is taking place in several parts of the capital and communication today is not very good," said another resident, Ahmed Noor.

The interim government has blamed the escalating violence in the capital on remnants of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

Somalia enjoyed a six months lull in the insecurity that had dogged the country in the past 16 years, when the UIC took power last year.

But insecurity has returned to the city.

The UN estimates that 40,000 people have fled Mogadishu since February.

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Town & Country

Israel As a Strategic Liability

1945-1956

By Harry F. Clark

March 2007

Abstract

The present catastrophic partnership of the United States and Israel in the Middle East is the opposite of conditions that existed during Israel’s founding, sixty years ago. The US foreign policy establishment opposed sponsorship of a Jewish state during the military and diplomatic struggle over Palestine after World War II. The State Department expected the US to inherit a position of leadership in the region, based on decades of good will, antipathy toward the British and French empires and qualified sympathy for the nationalism of their subaltern peoples. The region was valued for its oil reserves and communications links, including the Suez Canal, and was to be secured behind the "northern tier" of Greece, Turkey and Iran, where the Cold War began in 1945-6.

Zionism was opposed because it antagonized the Arabs, and US support for a Jewish state after the war was due to the nascent Israel lobby, which overwhelmed the government’s diplomatic and military expertise. This complemented the Zionist struggle against British rule in Palestine, which ended in the conquest of most of Palestine and exile of 750,000 Arab Palestinians, and introduced a force more inimical to Arab interests than British imperialism. Once Israel was established, US diplomats and strategists accepted it and acknowledged its military prowess, but kept it at a distance, limiting arms sales and excluding it from military alliances. The US feared political instability and radicalism from the desperate plight of the Palestinian refugees, the precarious Arab-Israeli armistice, and the rising force of Arab nationalism.

PDF

Situation of Palestinian Refugees: "Worse than ever"

Report, Electronic Intifada, 21 March 2007

Karen AbuZayd (Emmanuel Dunseath/IRIN)

DUBAI, 21 March 2007 (IRIN) - The decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies at the heart of 21st century world affairs, with numerous nations, international organisations and NGOs involved on both sides.

The United Nations has long played a role in the conflict, on both political and humanitarian levels. Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established for the specific purpose of providing assistance to the Palestinian refugees the war created.

Today, UNRWA is the main provider of basic services - education, health, relief and social services - to more than 4.3 million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, predominantly in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

In the absence of a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, the UN General Assembly has repeatedly renewed UNRWA's mandate, most recently extending it until 30 June 2008.

Karen Koning AbuZayd, a US national, was appointed Commissioner General of UNRWA on 28 June 2005, having been deputy commissioner since 2000 and having previously worked 19 years for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).


Q: Do you see the recent kidnap attempt and shooting at John Ging, director of UNRWA’s field office in Gaza, as a turning point in the way the agency will conduct its operations in the occupied Palestinian territories?

A: No, I hope not because our services are very much needed in the oPt and we do want to carry on with our work. We do have to evaluate how much we do with our international staff, how we can continue. We’re in discussion with the [oPt] government, which is helping us quite a lot, and so we have to see how that plays out and what they do about it.

Do remember that we have in Gaza alone about 9,000 local staff, Palestine refugees themselves, who will of course keep our basic services going – health, education and social services. But to do extra things, to have the international staff there, we have to be sure that we’re going to be safe and secure.

What is your general assessment of the humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza? Is it worse than ever before?

It is worse than ever. Our emergency appeal this year for 2007 is US $246 million – that’s just the UNRWA part of the CAP. This is higher than it was at any time during the intifada [Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation], which means that the needs are much greater [now] than they were during the intifada. And that’s mainly because of the boycott of the Palestinian Authority over the past year.

So we’re hoping now, with the National Unity Government having come into being [sworn in on 17 March], that there will be a change on the part of the international community – at least some of it – to lighten this boycott and to begin to deal with this government, and to give people their salaries back. Because there are all those people who have been working for nothing for a year. So we’re hoping there’ll be a change.

But the EU and US said they do not accept the new Palestinian unity government as it is. It doesn’t seem as if there will be any change with that respect.

What we have understood is that they are prepared to deal with some members of the government. They’re not boycotting the whole government and so maybe some things can be worked out. And I know that the EU is trying very hard to bring in more money, as they did last year, more money than in the past.

But of course that’s not the same as getting the economy actually working again, opening up the border points, getting things working – the economy as well as the humanitarian situation.

What are some of the logistical difficulties UNRWA faces in providing humanitarian relief in the occupied Palestinian territories with regard to border crossings and checkpoints? Can you elaborate?

Yes, well this is quite severe, particularly in Gaza where the whole of the Gaza Strip is closed off and we’re dependent on one commercial crossing [Karni Crossing], which is open sometimes and open for some hours sometimes.

The Rafah Crossing for people, of course, is very rarely opened and the crossing for other people – businessmen and internationals - through Erez is difficult.

On the West Bank side, as you may have heard many times, there are at least 530 checkpoints, roadblocks, the wall [Israeli separation barrier] continues to expand, the settlements continue to grow and it’s extremely difficult to go even from one village to another in the West Bank.

So we operate under great handicap which makes us very much less efficient and costs us a lot more money than we’d like to spend on these things.

What would you say is the most critical humanitarian need of the Palestinians in the occupied territories?

I would say being able to get the economy back on track, being able to let people work and get their salaries and being able to move goods so the businesses can start again.

Right now, the World Food Programme and ourselves feed the refugees and non-refugees, many humanitarian organisations brought in more money last year to give relief assistance but the people are very keen to work and to take of themselves and that’s what we’d like to see.

Is UNRWA getting the funds it needs to achieve its objectives?

No, we get the money – our donors are very generous, very good at giving us the money for the basic services – education and relief for the most vulnerable. But UNRWA’s been around for 58 years now and a lot of the refugees have been around for the same amount of time with their same houses or same schools.

We have a serious problem with the decline in our standards of our schools, our health clinics. Our schools are double-shifted, our doctors see 100 patients a day so we really need to have money to build up the infrastructure and we need more money every year because there are more refugees every year.

Is the mass exodus of Iraqis to neighbouring countries, particularly Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, having an impact on the Palestinian refugees already in those countries and their access to your services?

No, not really. They are the ones who have access to our services and also of the host governments. The Syrians and the Jordanians are extremely generous to the refugees. Many of them are citizens and are treated as citizens.

In Lebanon, we have a new approach by the government to let us improve the conditions in the camps and let refugees work in more occupations. So I would say that they’re not particularly affected except by the rising prices in the countries where these Iraqi refugees are going to where things are getting more difficult all round.

What is the perception of the United Nations in the occupied Palestinian territories, with regard to the perhaps blurred line between the UN’s political and humanitarian arms?

I think that UNRWA has always been very special among the Palestinians and known as being part of them because we have all over the region 27,000 staff who are Palestine refugees. Of course, because they know that we are there to help them and so on, we are appreciated by the community and that certainly helps the UN generally.

Even throughout this intifada there have been so many UN agencies that have come in that people understand very well the difference between the humanitarian and the political and they will blame the nations that make the political decisions but they don’t so much blame the UN. I would say that we are more appreciated in the oPt than in many other parts of the world, in fact.

What is your vision of how the decades-old Palestine refugee dilemma can be resolved?

This is a political issue. It’s not a humanitarian issue. The refugees are one of the final status issues – as we call them – that will be solved when there is a peace process that finishes and creates a Palestinian state.

At that time, UNRWA is keen to implement whatever the political actors decide. We will be there to work on whatever choices the individual refugees make. It’s very much a principle of refugee business that the individual refugee must make the choice about his future and we would want that to happen before we acted.

This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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