Somalis slowly return to ruined homes in capital (AP)

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Abdinur Isse stepped gingerly over the bat droppings, pushed aside the thorn bushes and walked into his roofless, burned-out home.

"We are starting from zero," the 51-year-old Isse said, staring at the smashed concrete, cinder blocks, corrugated iron and other rubble in the long-abandoned dwelling where his family once lived.

"This used to be my room. Now only bats live here," he said.

He's one of thousands of Somalis flooding into Mogadishu after Islamist rebels pulled out of the capital last month.

About 6,200 people arrived in Mogadishu in August, the U.N. refugee agency said, reversing a five-year-trend of families fleeing the fighting.

Some of those are families from the famine-stricken interior of the country, drawn to the international aid available in the capital.

But many are former residents, cautiously returning to see what they can rebuild from the ruins of their lives now that fighting in Mogadishu has mostly died down.

Two decades of war have gutted most of the city, including Isse's once-beautiful villa. Walls etched with starburst holes from exploding grenades are crumbling on streets overgrown with thorn bushes.

"My home used to be beautiful," Isse said sadly. "Now, it's a desert."

For months, Isse's Bondere neighborhood was bisected by a front line between the Islamic insurgents of the al-Shabab militia and troops from the African Union supporting the weak, U.N.-backed government. The al-Qaida linked rebels forbade anyone to cut the bushes, which offered perfect cover for launching hit and run attacks.

The ground is scarred with hastily dug trenches and tunnels to allow fighters to move unseen.

Now residents are washing off old bloodstains, sweeping out debris and rediscovering dust-covered toys.

Among those returning is Abdirahman Barre, whose two-room home made from corrugated iron sheets was demolished by a mortar. He is camping out next to the twisted wreckage in a dome of cloth scraps stretched over twigs.

"I have no money to rebuild it. We ask people to help us to rebuild our homes," he said as he greeted other returning neighbors, their donkey carts piled high with belongings.

Many have not been home for years, living in makeshift shelters by the side of the road in Afgoye or Elasha, two massive settlements for the displaced on the outskirts of Mogadishu. Around 409,000 people live in Afgoye alone.

"There's no water, electricity, or markets here. It gets extremely dark at night and people's movement stop," Barre said.

The U.N. and other international agencies have had a plan in place for more than two years to help Somalis returning to Mogadishu, but only if there are sufficient numbers. The plan calls for giving out building materials, iron sheeting and other aid if more than 200,000 people come back.

So far, the numbers are too low to implement the plan, the U.N. said, so Somalis are having to make do for themselves. Some get piecemeal help by camping among the families fleeing the drought, war and famine, said Andy Needham, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency.

"I want the district to return to normalcy again, and it truly will be if everyone works on his home," said Mohamed Shido, 39, who returned to his abandoned neighborhood of Sinay to help clean up. A neighbor said they need help to fill in potholes and clear large debris from the streets.

"It needs a lot of rebuilding and work that cannot be completed by residents alone," said Sabriye Muhummed, a retired former civil aviation officer. "You see everyone makes only his home, so who will construct and clear the streets, police stations and all other difficult tasks? Only a government's resources can fill the gaps."

A Somali government official did not return messages seeking comment on rebuilding plans. On Tuesday, the government signed a promise to improve governance and services in return for international funding. But for the past few years, very little has been done, even though the government received tens of millions of dollars in donations.

Even if they must clean up for themselves for now, residents say, they want soldiers to guard abandoned police posts to protect them from marauders by night and militants by day.

The Islamists withdrew from their bases in Mogadishu last month, with many leaving in convoys of vehicles. The retreat followed months of fighting in which the better-armed African Union forces steadily pushed them back from most of the city.

Some of the al-Shabab insurgents, however, just hid their weapons and melted back into the city. They have carried out a gruesome campaign of beheadings in recent weeks against civilians. The reason for the killings is unclear.

"Al-Shabab does not deserve to be in control of our village. We expect the government to live up to our expectations and provide security to prevent al-Shabab's return," said Fadumo Addow, a mother of two who returned to the capital's Wardhigley district this week.

A small snake crawled away as Addow lifted a rusted cooking pot. Cockroaches scuttled when she sat on a bed covered in cobwebs.

But she was not deterred — not by these unexpected guests in her home, not by the threat of future attacks, and not by the lack of help.

"My return to my village is a dream a long time coming," she said. "It finally came true today."

___

Associated Press writer Katharine Houreld in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Witnesses: 6 Somalis killed at food distribution (AP)

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Six Somalis were shot dead by a soldier as families scrambled for food aid in the Somali capital on Thursday, witnesses said.

Families had stood in line for hours before finally rushing guards and carrying off food aid, said witness Sharif Haji Hassan. He said the guards tried to beat them back with rifle butts but then opened fire. Some shot into the air but one soldier fired into the crowd, he said.

"Then some soldiers used butts to beat people and others were opening fire at refugees and in the air. I saw five dead bodies," he said. "There was a food distribution and some refugees run off with packages and small sacks of food. There was too much blood on the sand, like a slaughterhouse," he said.

Another witness said one of the injured later bled to death. Abdi Mire Nur said the old woman was being taken to hospital when she died.

Waberi district commissioner Ahmed Meyre Makaran said he could only confirm one death and three injuries.

"The incident happened at a food aid distributions center after one of the soldiers guarding the food accidentally fired bullets at refugees," he said. "We are apologetic about what happened there."

There have been several deadly shootings in the Somali capital as starving families fight over food aid. Six areas in southern Somalia are suffering from famine. The effects of a devastating drought have been exacerbated by Somalia's 20-year-old civil war.

View the original article here

Somalis dying in world's worst famine in 20 years (AP)

NAIROBI, Kenya – Tens of thousands of Somalis are feared dead in the world's worst famine in a generation, the U.N. said Wednesday, and the U.S. said it will allow emergency funds to be spent in areas controlled by al-Qaida-linked militants as long as the fighters do not interfere with aid distributions.

Exhausted, rail-thin women are stumbling into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia with dead babies and bleeding feet, having left weaker family members behind along the way.

"Somalia is facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years," said Mark Bowden, the U.N.'s top official in charge of humanitarian aid in Somalia. "This desperate situation requires urgent action to save lives ... it's likely that conditions will deteriorate further in six months."

The crisis is the worst since 1991-92, when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death, Bowden said. That famine prompted intervention by an international peacekeeping force, but it eventually pulled out after two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in 1993.

Since then, Western nations have mainly sought to contain the threat of terrorism from Somalia — an anarchic nation where the weak government battles Islamic militants on land and pirates hijack ships for millions of dollars at sea.

Oxfam said $1 billion is needed for famine relief. On Wednesday, the U.S. announced an additional $28 million in emergency funding on top of the $431 million in assistance already given this year.

Most importantly, as long as the Islamists don't interfere with aid distributions, those new U.S. funds aren't restricted under rules implemented in 2009 that are designed to keep food and money from being stolen by the insurgency.

"If (the insurgents) are willing to allow access we are willing to stand fully with the humanitarian actors," said Dr. Raj Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Aid groups have repeatedly called for the restrictions to be lifted and say the rules severely limited their operations in the past two years. U.S. humanitarian contributions in Somalia fell from $237 million in 2008 to $29 million last year.

"We've seen a very large shortfall over the past few years given the political restrictions attached to humanitarian funding," said Tanja Schumer of the Somalia NGO Consortium, which represents 78 aid agencies working on Somalia. "To get American money we have to vouch for all our contractors and all our local partners and that is tricky."

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, blamed al-Shabab for exacerbating the crisis.

"The reason the aid hasn't gone in sufficient quantities into south and central Somalia is because al-Shabab has prevented those capable of delivering large quantities of aid from having access — and when they have had access they've taxed them, harassed them, killed them, kidnapped them," Rice told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Somalia is the most dangerous country in the world to work in, according to the U.N.'s World Food Program, which has lost 14 relief workers in the past few years. Kidnappings, killings and attacks on aid convoys occur frequently. Two years ago WFP pulled out of Islamist-controlled southern Somalia after the rebels demanded cash payments and other concessions.

U.S. military operations against terrorism suspects also have disrupted humanitarian operations, said Bowden. Insurgents vowed to target foreign aid workers after a U.S. missile strike killed the head of the Islamist al-Shabab militia and 24 other people in 2008. Aden Hashi Ayro was reputedly al-Qaida's commander in Somalia and linked to a string of attacks on foreign aid workers and journalists.

But WFP head Josette Sheeran said the agency is willing to return to southern Somalia if the insurgents guarantee safe passage and free access to aid. Two regions of Somalia — Bakool and Lower Shabelle — are suffering from famine and eight more are at risk.

"We are absolutely fully committed to going where the hungry are," she said.

The Horn of Africa is suffering a devastating drought compounded by war, neglect, poor land policies and spiraling prices. Some areas in the region have not had such a low rainfall in 60 years, aid group Oxfam said. Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti have all been badly affected, and Eritrea is also believed to be suffering, although its repressive government does not release figures.

Yet only parts of Somalia are technically suffering from famine, defined as when two adults or four children per 10,000 people die of hunger each day and a third of children are acutely malnourished.

In some areas of Somalia, six people are dying a day and more than half of children are acutely malnourished, Bowden said. Prices of staple foods have increased 270 percent over the last year, compounding the misery.

Somalia's civil war is partly to blame, said Joakim Gundel, who heads Katuni Consult, a Nairobi-based company often asked to evaluate international aid efforts in Somalia.

He said aid groups found fundraising easier if they blamed natural disaster rather admitting the emergency was partly caused by a complex, 20-year civil war worsened by international apathy and incompetence.

"There is no clear cut answer," he said. "People are suffering and there is a need to respond. But drought is not the only cause. Conflict is a key reason and it is not being addressed properly."

___

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

View the original article here