From correspondents in Dadaab
Saturday, August 05, 2006
DESPAIR is written on the faces of the Somalis peering out from their flimsy cardboard and cloth-roofed huts in this UN refugee camp in northeast Kenya, where thousands have fled from chronic instability at home.
Despite a let-up in violence in the lawless Horn of Africa nation since Islamist militia seized Mogadishu from US-backed warlords in June, officials predict a huge influx into Dadaab in the coming months amid continuing uncertainty.Already home to nearly 130,000 mainly Somali refugees, propelled here by the endemic chaos that has engulfed their country since 1991, battles since the beginning of the year have already swollen the camp’s population by another 18,000.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) expects arrivals to continue at a rate of between 2000 and 4000 a month until the end of the year, reaching a total for 2006 of 30,000 new residents.
While relieved to have escaped the deadly gunbattles, newcomers are joining thousands who have been here for more than a decade, enduring the new life fraught with uncertainty, dependence and misery.
Although many rule out the idea of returning home, conditions in Dadaab, an vast dustbowl of makeshift houses and thorn shrubs about 470 kilometres (290 miles) northeast of Nairobi, are nearly as poor as those they left behind.
“My main aim was to run away from the fighting and I hope to get the same humanitarian aid as those who have been here before,” said Amina Mohamed Musa, 36, a mother of five, who lost two children in the latest bout of fighting.
But the expectations of the former Mogadishu resident who arrived here three months ago with a group of 130 other Somalis after a 20-day trek have quickly faded.
“I am desperate because we have problems accessing water, food and medicine,” she said.
All residents of Dadaab depend on relief food, which they say is never sufficient and under Kenyan law are not allowed to seek employment or leave the camp, deepening their dependence and exacerbating their economic misery.
At current rates, the WFP projects expects its food supply for Dadaab will be gone by January if more funds are not made available.
“These are civilians fleeing war,” says Dahir Mohamed Ali, head of the Hagadera section of Dadaab, one of three camp subdivisions. “They have little hope for peace back home and their hope to be repatriated is very minimal.”
“If peace returns, I am willing to go back home,” says 44-year-old Amina Adan Waso, who has lived here for 14 years. “But from what we hear in the news, there is no hope of going back.”
For the past 16 years, since the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre, Somalia has been a cauldron of anarchy, lacking any central authority and controlled for the most part by unruly warlords and armed gangs.
The rise of a hardline Islamic movement has restored a semblance of order to Mogadishu and other areas it controls in southern Somalia but many here are wary of the strict brand of Sharia law it enforces.
The return of relative peace to Mogadishu under the Islamists, who deny charges of harbouring terrorists, has not impressed former residents of the capital now in Dadaab who fear a new surge in violence between Muslim militia and the country’s fractured transitional government.
“There is no hope even with the Islamic courts,” said Ahmed Said, a 46-year-old from Mogadishu who arrived here in April. “They are the ones who are behind the fighting and are part of the problem.”
A standoff between the government, which has been wracked with infighting and unable to meet the Islamist challenge to its limited authority, has led to the deployment of Ethaiopian troops to protect it and Muslim calls for a holy war.
A second round of peace talks expected to open in Sudan this week was scuttled as the Islamists insisted on the withdrawal of the Ethopian troops, whose presence in Somalia the government and Addis Ababa have flatly denied.
“My future is desperate,” Said said as he sat on a plastic jerrican in front of a ramshackle hut. “It is a desperate situation. That place has no hope and fighting will continue.”
Source: Adelaidenow, Aug 5, 2006
