UN, AU, US, UK, EU, IGAD: Responsible for Somalia’s Dire Humanitarian Situation

By imposing their unacceptable and unrepresentative puppet Sheikh Sharif on the Somalis, by provoking the heroic Somali resistance against the barbaric AMISOM soldiers, and by forcing the impotent clown Sheikh Sharif to defend his absolutely illegal position, the global community bears full responsibility for Genocide against the Somali Nation.

The international community, by waging a direct war against the existence of the Somali Nation, demonstrates the striking absence of Law, Justice and Morality in the sphere of international politics.

This undeniable reality will trigger thunderous reactions of unprecedented dimensions because in and by itself, it justifies every reaction – involving all possible existing means – from the part of any individual. While I will expand on the consequences of the criminal act currently perpetrated in Eastern Africa by the UN, AU, EU, US, UK and the Neo-Nazi bogus-institution IGAD in further editorials, in this article I republish several recent IRIN reports that bear witness to the prevailing dire humanitarian situation in Central and Southern Somalia.

This is a shame for the entire Mankind; it will irrevocably have the same dire consequences for the prevailing iniquitous, inhuman and absolutely evil world order.

Somalia: Fears of More Clashes as War-wounded Overwhelm Hospitals
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84597

Nairobi, 28 May 2009 (IRIN) - Scores of civilians are fleeing their homes in the Madina district of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, amid fears of clashes between armed forces massing in the area, witnesses told IRIN on 27 May.

"Many families, including those who fled other parts of the city to seek safety here, have already left and many more are leaving," Faduma Mohamed, a resident, said.

Forces loyal to the interim government are massing in Madina, southwest of the city, in anticipation of a showdown with insurgents, allegedly supported by foreign forces.

Madina and the areas around it have so far escaped the fighting and many families from north and south Mogadishu had sought refuge there.

"Both sides have been bringing in forces," Mohamed said. "There is too much movement of troops and the atmosphere is one of war. We don't know when it will begin but we know it is coming."

Mohamed said in her area only three families - including her own - were left. "My children are becoming very anxious but I cannot afford to leave."

A local journalist told IRIN that people had been leaving the area for the past three days.

"Unfortunately it looks likely that Madina will suffer the same fate as other parts of the city. There will no longer be a safe neighbourhood in Mogadishu," he said.

An estimated 62,000 people have fled their homes since the latest fighting flared on 7 May, according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

Hospitals over-stretched

Hospitals in the capital are overwhelmed by the number of injured seeking treatment since fighting intensified, medical sources told IRIN.

"We are over-stretched in terms of space and staff," Dahir Mohamed, deputy director of Madina hospital - the largest in the city - told IRIN on 27 May.

He said the numbers of people seeking treatment was growing daily and all the wards were full. "We have set up sheds outside for the extra load."

Mohamed said entire families were now staying in hospitals. "We have a mother and father who were injured and the children are here as well because there is no one to look after them. We cannot tell them to leave. They have nowhere to go."

Many families were also seeking shelter in the hospitals. "They feel safer here. They are afraid to go out there," he added.

Ali Bile, the head of Keysaney hospital, said it was caring for twice its capacity. He warned that if the fighting continued, it would be forced to set up tents. "We will have to cope somehow. We cannot turn them away."

Both said the hospitals had sufficient drugs to deal with the influx, thanks to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"At the moment we have enough drugs. ICRC has been providing us with all the drugs we need," said Bile.

"But manpower and space are increasingly becoming a major problem," added Mohamed.

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Somalia: Coping with Humanitarian Tragedy in Mogadishu
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84718

Mogadishu, 5 June 2009 (IRIN) - A woman sits holding a baby in a queue at a medical clinic in Mogadishu, the violence-hit capital of Somalia, where fighting between government troops and insurgents has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

"His leg is paralysed; maybe because we don't have anything to eat," the young mother says.

More than 100 people are waiting in the burning sun. Some will be here for hours, but there is no alternative. The few hospitals in the city are overcrowded, and the remaining civilians have to go to great lengths to find help.

The clinic is run by AMISOM, the African Union peace-keeping force in Somalia.

"At least we can do something," says Joseph Asea, head of the AMISOM health clinic in Mogadishu. "We have 30 patients now, but when fighting is bad there can easily be 70."

An ambulance arrives. A boy with an improvised bandage around his elbow is carried in. The nurse takes it off to reveal a fresh gunshot wound. She treats it with disinfectant.

He is lucky to be alive; over the past few weeks, hundreds of people have died in the fighting.

The people in the clinic are relatively safe and treatment is still available. "So far, we are able to supply the people with treatment and medicines," Asea said.

Access issues

According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, at least 96,000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu since the start of the latest fighting on 8 May.

Most are in informal camps outside the city, with hardly any access to humanitarian aid.

"The situation is deteriorating and the daily rate of displacement is increasing," said Roberta Russo, spokeswoman for UNHCR Somalia.

She said the rate of new arrivals this week from Somalia to Kenya "went from an average of 100 a day to 150-200 a day".

Russo said access was still one of the major problems faced by humanitarian agencies trying to bring relief to the displaced.

This week UNHCR had to stop distributing aid to the outskirts of Mogadishu because of the fighting and consequent insecurity on the roads.

Food and security

AMISOM patrols some of the roads to monitor security. AMISOM troops also protect the port of Mogadishu where the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is dispatching much-needed food aid.

At the main berth, the cargo of MV Jaipur is being offloaded. It was hijacked by Somali pirates, but is now on duty again. From here, the food aid will be distributed across the country. Some three million people in Somalia depend on food aid.

"Without the protection of AMISOM we couldn't do this work," says Abdi Yusuf, a government police officer in the port.

The AMISOM peacekeepers also protect President Sheik Sharif Ahmed at Villa Somalia in Mogadishu, a multi-storey building in the heart of town.

"I feel very safe here," the president said, but he called for more international help for his country. "We have an influx of foreign fighters who support the insurgents. If they manage to take over, it's easy to imagine what can happen next. So we are urging the international community to do more."

A first step could be boosting AMISOM numbers. From the initially pledged 8,000 soldiers, only 3,400 were deployed by African Union countries.

"So far we could not deliver the services to the people that we want to," said Maj Ba-Hoku Barigye, AMISOM spokesman. "Happily we understand that Ghana, Zambia and Malawi are close to contributing to the force."

The UN Security Council’s unanimous decision to extend the mandate of AMISOM by another eight months could provide some breathing space.

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Somalia: Plea to Help IDPs Near Kenyan Border
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84751

Nairobi, 8 June 2009 (IRIN) - Officials in Somalia's border town of Eil Waq, Gedo region, have appealed for urgent help for thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who need food, water and shelter.

At least 15,000 Somalis, some of whom fled violence in the capital, Mogadishu, and others who are drought-displaced, are facing disease and uncertainty in Eil Waq, near the Kenyan border, locals told IRIN on 8 June.

"We don’t have exact figures but our estimate is that some 2,500 families [15,000 people] have arrived in Eil Waq," Hussein Hassan Katilow, the district commissioner, said.

He said the IDPs were being hosted by families in the small town of about 24,000 people, or had set up makeshift shelters in and around the area.

Since fighting intensified between government forces and insurgents in early May, almost 100,000 Somalis have been forced to flee their homes to join hundreds of thousands already displaced.

According to the UN, some three million Somalis need assistance.

Katilow said the IDP influx had escalated in the past two weeks.

"Both the nomads [drought-displaced] and those coming from Mogadishu are still coming to the town; we are getting people every day," he said.

Katilow said Eil Waq was overwhelmed by the influx and needed help. He said if the influx continued, the displaced would equal or outnumber the residents.

"I am hosting four other families," he said. "We have appealed in past and we are again appealing for help for both the locals and the displaced," he said. "There is not a single 24-hour period when we don't get people coming."

Mahad Mohamed, a local journalist, told IRIN many IDPs, especially from Mogadishu, had been planning to cross into Kenya but were denied entry, even though Kenyan officials deny the border is closed, he said.

"In the past two weeks, would-be refugees have been turned back by Kenyan authorities," Mohamed said. "I have witnessed a number of people who were denied entry."

He said the IDPs had fled a recent upsurge of violence in Mogadishu while others were pastoralists who lost their livestock to the drought and were seeking help in the town.

Mohamed said the displaced often arrived hungry, exhausted and traumatised by the long journey to the border town.

"They are having difficulty even with the weather," he said. "They are mostly women and children and come with nothing to feed or shelter themselves."

A civil society official, who requested anonymity, said continued insecurity in parts of southern Somalia had limited the ability of aid agencies to help the needy.

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Somalia: "People May Be Dying in Their Homes and We Don't Know About It"
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84770

Nairobi, 9 June 2009 (IRIN) - Fighting in parts of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, has trapped many residents and made them inaccessible to the help they need to survive, civil society sources said on 9 June.

"There are people who have been stuck in their homes for the last three weeks; they are terrified, hungry and have no access to any help," Asha Sha'ur, a civil society activist, told IRIN.

She added: "Those who are left in the city have little choice except to wait and hope that the violence around them does not get closer. Some of the trapped residents cannot afford to flee while others are too afraid to leave Mogadishu."

In recent weeks, Mogadishu has been a battleground for troops loyal to the weak government of the western-backed President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and a variety of armed opposition groups, chief among them al-Shabab, which now controls much of the south and centre of the country, where it has imposed sharia law. The fighting has displaced almost 120,000 people since 7 May.

Sha'ur said they had received reports of desperate people stuck in their homes for days "with no access to any assistance, whether it is food, water or medical help; people may be dying in their homes and we don’t know about it".

Civil society groups were trying to visit some of the areas on 9 June "to ascertain the condition of the people and see where we can help", Sha'ur said.

In past conflicts, people fled to other areas of the city that were safe, "but now there are increasingly no safe places left to seek refuge", she said. "The trapped residents need most urgent help."

Muhammad Nur Ga'al, deputy head of the coalition known as Civil Society in Action, said the humanitarian situation for both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and those still in the city was becoming more and more precarious.

"War, hunger, disease and rains have combined to create the worst humanitarian disaster this country has seen," Ga'al said.

He said the little help that was getting through was not enough to meet the massive needs of the people.

He said insecurity was the biggest obstacle in reaching the needy, but that agencies should be more creative in how they accessed the population.

"They have to come up with new ways of reaching those who need them," Ga'al said, adding that one option would be to involve the Somali business community and local agencies, although the business community was already providing some help to the affected populations.

Ga'al called on the international community to scale up humanitarian assistance "in any way they can".

He added: "If the situation does not improve we will be faced with a humanitarian catastrophe comparable to that of 1992."

Rights concerns

Meanwhile, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) have expressed concern over the effect the escalating violence in Mogadishu is having on civilians and the human rights violations being committed.

"Yet again, parties to the conflict in Mogadishu fight with no regard for the safety of civilians, in clear violation of international humanitarian and human rights principles," Guillermo Bettocchi, the UNHCR Representative for Somalia, said in a joint statement on 9 June.

He called on the international community to intervene and end "this self-perpetuating culture of impunity, including by establishing a credible and independent process to investigate and eventually prosecute those responsible for the apparent war crimes and crimes against humanity that Somali civilians have and continue to be exposed to".

The agencies said many of those killed or injured were women and children.

"Parties to the conflict must realize that the main victims are their own children, who are being killed, maimed or displaced by the fighting, some even recruited to take part in the fighting," Hannan Sulieman, acting UNICEF Representative to Somalia, said.

According to UNHCR, an estimated 117,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in Mogadishu since early May.

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Somalia: No One Left to Tell The Story
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84783

Nairobi, 10 June 2009 (IRIN) - At least five Somali journalists have been killed and dozens more have left the capital, Mogadishu, this year, after receiving death threats - creating the spectre that some, if not all, independent media may close down due to lack of staff. There are 11 independent radio stations and two TV stations in the city.

"We are in a very difficult and dangerous situation. We are being forced to choose between reporting on what is happening and our lives," Hamdi Kadiye, an executive member of the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUJOS), told IRIN.

The killing on 7 June of the Radio Shabelle director Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe has added to pressure on journalists in the capital.

"All we do is cover the story. We don’t side with any group, but the fighting groups want to silence us to make sure no one hears or sees the suffering they are causing," she added.

She said many journalists had left because "they no longer felt they could carry out their duties".

She admitted that Somalia's story may be lost in the process, but said: "You cannot ask someone to continue when you know their life is in serious danger."

Since late 2006, when Ethiopian troops backing the Transitional Federal Government ousted the Union of Islamic Courts, dozens of Somali journalists have been killed, five of them this year alone, or forced into exile due to the ongoing fighting in the capital.

Ali Sheikh Yassin, deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Human Rights Organisation (EHRO), told IRIN that journalists were in even "more danger now than at any time in the past".

He said harassment and intimidation of journalists had increased this year. "We get reports of journalists getting anonymous calls and SMSs [text messages] threatening them."

If this trend of journalists being killed or forced to flee continued, many independent media would be shut down, he added.

"Unfortunately, many of the radio stations and even the TV stations will close for lack of staff. There is a real danger that the independent media will be no more," said Yassin.

That would be a catastrophe for the Somali people and particularly for the people of Mogadishu, he said, adding that the fighting groups could achieve their aim. "They are keen to keep the world from knowing the crimes being committed and the humanitarian disaster their actions and activities are creating."

A civil society activist, who requested anonymity, told IRIN that both sides in the conflict were worried and afraid that the media reports would be used against them "if they are made to appear in court to answer to their actions".

He added: "Thousands have been killed or maimed. Hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes. Someone has to eventually take responsibility for that."

If journalists left and the independent media ceased to exist, there would be no one to tell the story of those suffering in the camps, in their homes and in hospitals, he said. "They are not only killing and starving the people, now they will make sure no one knows about it."

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