Somalis left to a life in limbo as peace talks are put on hold

By Steve Bloomfield

At the height of its popularity, the Hotel Dal Hiis, in the Marere district of southern Somalia, teemed with British and Italian tourists spending their days lazing by the pool or going out on safari in search of lions.

It looks a little different now. Some 15 years have passed since the last tourist fled the civil war which exploded at the end of Mohammed Siad Barre’s regime. All that is left of Dal Hiis is a crumbling, concrete shell. The bones of a baboon lie at the bottom of the pool, slowly bleaching in the sun. Concrete sun loungers, once filled with cocktail-drinking tourists tanning by the pool, are covered in weeds and disappearing among wild grass.

Nor has any other part of this rural district near the border with Kenya fared much better. Once home to a sugar plantation which employed more than 20,000 people, the factory was closed following the 1991 coup. Its skeleton looms over the villages of Marere, Gududey and Hargeysa.

Somalia’s UN-backed government this week agreed to form a joint national army and police force with the Islamic Courts, who control much of the south. Peace talks between the sides are seen as the best hope of bringing stability and authority to a nation without either for nearly a generation. But as negotiations are put on hold for another fortnight, the humanitarian crisis engulfing Somalia’s population of 10 million continues.

Marere district has just one primary school, but few can afford to send their children there. Unemployment is high; flooding and a plague of tsetse flies have made agriculture and livestock production too unpredictable. Malnutrition rates are consistently above emergency rates and food aid is non-existent. Adult literacy is just 17 per cent, one in four children die before the age of five.

The only lifeline is a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which provides basic healthcare. MSF’s three doctors are the only ones in the whole of southern Somalia – a region of one million people.

“Life here is difficult because we don’t have a government,” said Isho Abuka, holding her three-year-old son, Arden. “There is only one school but it costs too much. We just try to find enough food. We can’t think of anything else.” But Mrs Abuka, her husband and their four children cannot find enough food. This year’s harvest has not been good. A severe drought has sent malnutrition rates soaring. She brought Arden to hospital two weeks ago after he got a fever and diarrhoea and began to rapidly lose weight. “I thought he was going to die,” she said. “But he is getting better now.” She left the other children in Jilib, a town 20km away, with their father. Last night she heard her four-year old son was also now ill.

Ahmed Isaac was nine when the government fell in 1991. “I remember people rushed into school saying the government was gone.” He has tried to escape Somalia for western Europe on several occasions, travelling south to Nairobi in Kenya and trying to find a people smuggler who will take him. “I always got caught. Now I can’t afford it.” Mr Isaac has a young son and a pregnant wife. “I wish to one day be a wealthy man and be able to support my family and relatives,” he said. “If we have a government maybe that can happen.”

No one in Marere is prepared to express a preference for either the weak, transitional government based in Baidoa or Mogadishu’s Islamic Courts. The district is ruled by neither and is not seen as important enough, strategically, to be fought over.

Abdi Hogh, the acting chairman of the elders in Marere district, said people simply wanted a government. “We have had a miserable life for the past 15 years. If there is no school, no hospital and no peace it is very difficult for people to survive.” But amid the suffering, a level of normality exists. Villagers sit in the shade, drinking tea or chewing khat, the mild narcotic favoured by many Somalis, watching the day go by.

Kiosks do a brisk business, selling tinned tuna and spaghetti, shampoo and sandals. More astonishingly, in a country without a central bank or a functioning ministry of finance for 15 years, customers are still able to pay for their products with the Somali shilling.

The threat of violence is never far away though. A heavily-armed militia has crossed the nearby river just 10km away and has put a roadblock in place, robbing passers-by of their mobile phones and money.

“If there is no government,” said Mr Hogh, “everybody who is strong will rob from those who are weak. They can do nothing – they have to accept it.”

Source: Belfast Telegraph, Sept 7,2006