In Somalia clashes between Islamist-led insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government forces are constant—and underreported. They started in December 2006 when the Union of Islamic Courts (in power in south and central Somalia for just six months) was ousted by the current Transitional Federal Government, with support from the Ethiopian military, and with more than a tacit blessing from the United States.
The U.N. Security Council recently extended the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia and requested the secretary-general “to continue to develop the existing contingency planning for the possible deployment of a United Nations Peacekeeping Operation.” Very tentative language, but the current peacekeeping effort is tentative, too. Last February the United Nations authorized the deployment of an 8,000-strong AU force to Somalia. Six months later only 1,800 peacekeeping troops from Uganda are on the ground. But is there a peace for them to keep? A National Reconciliation Conference, the 13th such effort in a decade, ended Aug. 30 after a month and a half of deliberations in Mogadishu, with no peace and no reconciliation in sight.
On the contrary, mayhem is growing and the Iraq-style violence is resulting in an Iraq-style internal displacement; the United Nations puts the number of displaced people at 400,000 (from a total population of 7 million). This is almost as high a proportion as in Iraq, where 2 million are internally displaced and the population is 27 million. Because Somalis have nowhere to flee—Ethiopia, the intervening side, is not an option; Kenya closed its border and the flight across the Red Sea to Yemen is perilous—it is easier to ignore this quagmire internationally, since it has not produced refugees abroad.
One of the favored destinations for the fleeing inhabitants of the Somali capital of Mogadishu is Galkayo, a town I visited recently for an assessment of humanitarian (water and sanitation) needs. It is 300 miles northeast of Mogadishu, and it sits exactly on the border of two clans traditionally at odds: the town’s southern half is Hawirye and the northern half is Darod.
No barbed wire, wall or river separates the two sides. Strangely, it is a range of displaced persons’ settlements that constitutes the buffer zone, because as outsiders—mostly ex-Mogadishu residents—its occupants are pushed toward the outer limit of each part of Galkayo. There are now 42,000 internally displaced persons in the Galkayo region, and July saw more than 1,000 new arrivals.
In the southern part of the town, the camp of Bulo Jawanley is not a typical row of tents but a series of miniscule nests that the newcomers make for themselves in every empty space they can find. The day I visited, five more busloads of people arrived from Mogadishu. Fitting the new arrivals into the already overcrowded space seemed like trying to squeeze extra bees onto a honeycomb.
What I witnessed in Galkayo is happening all across the country. The U.N. refugee agency expects half a million Somalis to be displaced by the end of 2008. Dealing with such a large displaced population is beyond the capabilities of a weak transitional government, especially since Somalia has not functioned as a state for 16 years.
From a humanitarian point of view the Somali tragedy may have even more dramatic consequences than the Iraqi tragedy, for two reasons. First, owing to the geopolitical situation of Somalia, its people have nowhere to flee and the country is like a pressure cooker. The second reason is that Somalia does not have even the basic infrastructure to fall back on, unlike what Iraq had before the U.S. intervention. This is why the international community must step in.
But who can do it?
The current situation is, according to Human Rights Watch, “a human rights and humanitarian crisis on a scale not seen since the early 1990s.” The quagmire in Somalia is neither easy nor new, but this should not stop the politicians trying to find a solution. Everything and anything must be done, lest another few years in Mogadishu look like the past few years in Baghdad.
