Insecurity in refugee camps worsening

While it could sound as if running away from war to seek refuge in a secure country when Emmanuel Nyabera, the spokesman for the Kenyan office of the UNHCR said last week that since the war broke out between the Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the Union of the Islamic Courts (UIC) early this year, 100 Somalis have been arriving daily in Dadaab refugee camp, northeastern Kenya, is not the case.

With the number of refugees swelling daily, with last week alone about 1,800 people arriving in the camp, generally in good health, many are visibly exhausted from the long journey, Dadaab has been known historically as one of the insecure refugee camps in Kenya.

Yet since January, although about 18,000 Somali refugees have arrived in Dadaab, where three refugee camps already hosted some 134,000 people, mainly from Somalia, the fact that many of them have lost relatives in the fighting and walked or came by truck from Mogadishu is even more traumatising than insecurity itself.

Although fighting between the two groups erupted in February and only subsided in early June when the Islamic group routed the warlords, again the fact that Somalia has been without a functioning government since the overthrow in 1991 of the administration led by Muhammad Siyad Barre, the war seems to have no end, the Somali refugees will not only live in despair, but also in a more depressed state. 

More stressing is the arrivals of women and children, some of whom have lost their dear husbands during the war.

Since the camp was created in 1991 when Barre was ousted, until 1993, approximately 300,000 Somalis have fled across the 800-mile Kenyan-Somali border.

Although many were victims of violence, including rape, as they fled to Kenya to escape these dangers, it is very unfortunate that they are faced with similar abuse upon arrival.

According to Human Rights Watch report, in 1993 the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) documented close to 300 rape cases. Of these cases, almost one hundred had occurred in Somalia, while the remainder took place in the Kenyan refugee camps.

Between January and August 1994 alone, forty-five more cases of rape in the camps were reported. While these figures are profoundly disturbing, they represent only the cases actually reported to UNHCR, which believes the actual incidence of rape in that period could be as much as ten times higher. 

This does not include an overwhelming number of cases where Somali refugee women and girls were violently attacked by unknown armed bandits at night or when they went to the outskirts of the refugee camp to herd goats or collect firewood. 

The war itself seem to have no end, now that President Abdullahi Yusuf has disagreed with his own cabinet ministers, to the extent that he was forced to dissolve the entire cabinet last week following the resignation of 40 full and junior ministers who said they resigned because the prime minister refused to heed their call to resign after a majority of Members of Parliament voted against him. 

And an already volatile situation, which has been inflamed by the presence of Ethiopian troops on Somalia soil where they have been deployed to defend the fragile government, is even making matters worse.

While the Ethiopian troops know that any aggression against the Islamists might unite Somalia’s warring clans against a common enemy, most Somalis have a deep distrust for neighbouring Ethiopia, which they see as an expansionist nation that still occupies a part of its territory.

More worrying still is the fact that the UIC has not only taken control of Haradhere, some 500 km northeast of Mogadishu, which had become a safe haven for pirates, but also they cannot participate in peace talks scheduled for August 31 in Sudan if Ethiopian troops are still supporting the government. 

The two sides announced their participation after meeting a Kenyan delegation to the country, led by Assistant Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula, on Monday, if the government does not convince the militias that the Ethiopian troops are removed from Somalia.

While the roots of the crisis are profoundly parochial and have more to do with practical power, prestige and clan issues than ideology, the interest of US in Somalia is also a threat to peace talks.

And since civil conflicts often give rise to economic activities whose purpose is to finance arms purchases and pay the salaries of combatants, US has to take interest, not only in Somalia, but also other warring countries. The recent U.S. decision to send thousands of extra troops to Baghdad can justify the allegation. 

Although U.S. officials have long feared that Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1991, is a desirable place for al-Qaeda members to hide and plan attacks, this is not the reason for their interest in Somalia war. 

This explains why U.S. officials have refused repeated requests to provide details about the nature and extent of their support for the coalition of warlords, which calls itself the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism in what some Somalis say is a marketing ploy to get U.S. support. 

Which is why when President Bush met with Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in March at a joint press conference and stated that Israel is a close friend and ally of the United States, and in the event of any attack on Israel, the United States will come to Israel’s aid, the issue is not a friendship as such but an interest.

Source: Kenya Times, Aug 19, 2006