By MARC LACEY BAIDOA, Somalia , April 29 — It can be hard to shed a nickname after it has caught on, especially one as potent as “city of death.”
That is the title this place earned in 1992 when a famine struck Somalia and the suffering was centered in Baidoa, a bush settlement in what had been the country’s breadbasket. But Baidoa is eager to redefine itself after years of war and drought. There is also something in the air here that has not been around for ages — a glimmer of hope. There was little of that 14 years ago, when Baidoa’s streets were lined with the skeletal bodies of the dead and the only orphanage was losing 10 to 15 children a day to hunger. The first President Bush, who at the end of his term initiated an ill-fated attempt to bring aid to this war-torn region, visited Baidoa in January 1993. He saw refugees sleeping on patches of cardboard along roadsides. At Baidoa’s orphanage, he visited ailing children. “I don’t think there will be any leaving of the Somali people to suffer the fate they had been suffering,” Mr. Bush said.
Things did not turn out that way, as the American peacekeeping mission soon collapsed. Nine months into the Clinton administration, the United States’ involvement in Somalia ended after an American Black Hawk helicopter went down in Mogadishu, the capital, and a deadly battle ensued between the American soldiers and a local warlord, Gen. Mohammed Farrah Aidid. The gunmen continued a long history of terror in this city, which had witnessed Somalia’s slow descent into chaos. It had been overrun four times by General Aidid’s fighters or government troops during the civil war that led to President Mohammed Siad Barre’s ouster in 1991. Virtually all of Baidoa’s larger buildings have been destroyed in the fighting, and the people have become used to what would be considered anarchy anywhere else. Baidoa’s dismal past hung heavy in the air on Saturday, as scores of Somali leaders gathered in a food warehouse converted into the country’s Parliament building. There was speech after speech about everyone’s desire to end the suffering. “We appeal to Somalis wherever they are to stop fighting,” said the Parliament speaker, Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden. Somalia’s transitional government, carefully balanced by clan, came into being in 2004 after marathon peace talks in Kenya. It had a rocky start, with the first session of Parliament, held in a Nairobi hotel, descending into a melee. In fact, because the fighting by militias continues, finding a foothold in Somalia has been difficult. Mogadishu is considered far too unsafe for the new government, so President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi opted instead for the town of Jowhar, 60 miles to the north. But Mr. Aden objected, paralyzing the effort. Baidoa, about 140 miles to the northwest of Mogadishu, is the compromise. It will be the capital until Mogadishu’s warfare can be quelled. Mr. Gedi predicts that will take months, but years appears more likely, as Islamic militants battle with warlords who have formed what they call an antiterrorism coalition. There have been 13 failed attempts at creating a government since 1991. Mario Raffaelli, Italy’s special envoy to Somalia and a veteran of the peace efforts, contends that the talks that led to this government were more inclusive than in the past. Another reason for the hopeful atmosphere in Baidoa is that the only way to go, it seems, is up. The first step at governance was to repair and paint the tin-roofed silo and stock it with desks and chairs. “This is the only big building that is still standing,” said Abdallah Dero Isaac, the minister of constitutional affairs. “The rest are destroyed.” Standing at attention along one wall of the Parliament were smartly dressed police officers, men and women, who had recently graduated from a United Nations -sponsored police academy. The problem: the officers lack guns to take on the outlaws. Fortunately, the militias that ruled Baidoa until recently have been relocated to camps outside of town, where they have received food and retraining. But creating an oasis of calm remains a huge challenge. “We want Baidoa to be an example for the rest of Somalia,” said Mohamed Ibrahim Habsade, who is a member of Parliament as well as the warlord who controls Baidoa. Mr. Habsade was helping to kick off reconciliation meetings among the country’s traditional elders, who have played an important role historically in Somalia’s clan-based culture, but have been pushed aside by warlords who rule by the gun. “The warlords are the problem creators,” said Malak Muktar Malak Hassan, chief of the traditional chiefs in Baidoa, who puts his age at 104. He is optimistic, but only if the power shifts to the vast majority of Somalis seeking peace. “They are living on war,” he said of the warlords, many of whom have top roles in the government. “If there is no war, they can’t live. Traditionally, the elders ran the country.” Nobody does now. Somalia is divided up by men with guns. But the people of Baidoa clearly want to break with the past. “We want this to be over,” said Ibrahim Mohamed Omar, 26, who has grown up as his city has fallen down. He and others want Baidoa to replace its awful nickname with something forward-looking. Something like: Baidoa, the interim capital. | |||||
Source: The New York Times , May 1, 2006
