A12 From Page One somalia from A1


Siad Barre’s government plunged Somalia into an endless civilwar. Today, al-Shabab, a militia


linked to al-Qaeda, controls large chunksof theMuslimcountryand seeks to overthrow the fragile U.S.-backed government. The mi- litia’s Taliban-like decrees and re- cruitment of children provide more reasons for Somalis to flee. They travelnorth,oftentoplac-


es they have only imagined, arriv- ing hungry and desperate. They join the hundreds of thousands who have fled since 1991, leaving behind a city that once had 2.5million people. Many remain too poor to flee.


The ones with some means head for camps in Somali towns like Galkayo, Bossaso and Hargeisa, searching for peace and support. The ones with a few dollarsmore head for foreign lands—Djibouti, Yemen, Saudi Arabia—searching for a newlife. Those who succeed enter a


worldwhere they canbedeported at any moment, where they are increasingly viewed as a security threat. Those who fail, and most do, are trapped in a humanitarian limbo, resigned to hardship, de- pendency and a broken life. Or they die. “They travel from one hell to


another hell,” said Ahmed Abdul- lahi,aU.N. refugeeprotectionoffi- cer in Galkayo, 470 miles north- west of Mogadishu and often the first stop on the journey toward Djibouti and Yemen. These are the stories ofwomen


who have taken this road, from the places they end up.


Galkayo Sixmiles north ofGalkayo, in a


place calledHalabokhad,473fam- ilies are stuck in a makeshift set- tlement. The landscape is hot, dusty, bleak as their lives. They live in round, cramped


tents made from clothing and straw. They become isolated, un- able to afford transportation to town. Local officials are in charge of


the settlement, which is support- ed by the United Nations. But there is only one borehole for water. Food and medical care are also scarce. Bone-thin children have yellowish skin, a sign ofmal- nutrition in a country where one ofeverysevenchildrendiesbefore age 5. Women deliver babies in- side their tents, sometimes with- out help. This is where Amina Aden ar-


rived three months ago with her exhausted children and nothing else. Her neighborhood was en- gulfed by war. Her husband was killed in crossfire a day before they fledtheirhome carrying only what they could. A fewmiles out- side Mogadishu, masked men stopped their minibus filled with refugees. The youngest women were ordered out. Aden heard them scream while they were gang-raped. The men returned, and Aden


braced herself.Her eight children surroundedher, crying, tuggingat her clothes. The men looked at them, thengrabbedanotherwom- an. “My children savedme,”Aden, 35, recalledwith a feeble smile. After the rapes, the men deliv-


ered one final blow: They robbed all the passengers of theirmeager possessions. “They even took our sandals,”Aden said. Her children, ages 3 to 15, do


not attend school. For breakfast, they drink tea. For lunch, they eat a bland porridge. There is never any dinner. “I cannotevenbuymilkpowder


for my baby,” said her neighbor, KaltoomAbdiAli,37.She, too, fled Mogadishu with her seven chil- dren after mortar shells crashed intoherhouse twomonths ago. In the mayhem, she was separated fromher husband. “I don’t know where he is,” Ali


said. Her 14-year-oldand16-year-old


sonswork 14hours a day,washing cars, cleaninghousesor collecting garbage for local residents. On most days, they earn $1. “I want my children to have an education, but if we leave here, life could be worse,” Ali said. “No one cares about us.” For themost part, help is limit-


ed. After two decades of conflict, famine and drought, the United Nations has had difficulty raising funds to assist Somalis, U.N. refu- gee officials say. There’s donor fa- tigue and, in a post-9/11 world, nations are preoccupied with ter- rorism, security and other global crises. The United States, Soma- lia’s main donor, has provided more than $185million to Soma- lia’s government and an African Union peacekeeping force, but withheld humanitarian funding this year, fearing that al-Shabab was siphoning off foreign aid. More than 2 million Somalis


have sought haven in U.N.-sup- ported refugee camps in neigh- boring countries and in settle- ments in nearly every region of Somalia. The conflict has signifi-


Fatima Ali Omar plans to leave Bossaso for Yemen—where she heard they “treat refugees well”—as soon as her child turns 1. She hopes to be smuggled into Saudi Arabia to find work: “Nothing matters as long as I find a good life at the end of the journey.”


EZ SU


KLMNO


SUNDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2010 For Somali refugees, escape brings its own risks


Hargeisa This is the capital of the Other


Somalia, a place barely touched by war, where gunfire is seldom heard. Known as Somaliland, this regionbrokeawayfromSomaliain 1991 andtodayhas its ownelected, functioning government. The streets arebustling;newconstruc- tionrises fromnearly every corner. Fatima Ahmed Noor fled here


from Mogadishu after al-Shabab tried to recruit two of her nine children, after the war drove her husband insane and he separated fromthe family. She has found anything but


peace. The clans that rule Somal- iland look at her with suspicion and disdain because she is from southern Somalia, where al-Sha- bab rules. Somaliland considers itself anindependent country; the world does not recognize it as such. Authorities treat Somalis like Noor as foreigners. She and her children live in a refugee set- tlement and have little access to health care, education or jobs. “They say, ‘When we get recog-


nition,wewill also recognize you. You are displaced from another country, so you have to be treated as a foreigner,’ ”Noor said. “Every- one from Mogadishu is in the same condition.” She and her children earn $3 a


day washing clothes, if they are fortunate. As she spoke to this reporter, a


community leader came over and glared atNoor. “Iwant to listen to what you are saying,” she said harshly. She is among those who hurlverbal insultsatNoorandher children. What makes Noor equal to the


other women in the settlement is this: “Rape is very common here,” Noor said. “There is no discrimi- nation.”


Along theDjibouti border Six days ago, Deka Mohamed


Idouwas in a differentworld. She had a house, a family. She had somehowsurvived 20 years of civ- ilwar in the capital. Then, in a blur, her life fell


apart. A clash between al-Shabab and the government forces erupt- ed in her neighborhood. In the chaos, shewas separatedfromher husband and three of their chil- dren. With their two other kids, she fledMogadishu. Along theway, shewas robbed.


PHOTOS BY SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN/THE WASHINGTON POST AishaMohammed Abdi, who fled to Djibouti two decades ago, walks six miles daily to fetch wood that she can sell or use to heat her tent.


cantly blocked the ability of U.N. and humanitarian agencies to de- liver aid to south and central So- malia, which are under al-Sha- bab’s control. Here, and in other settlements


around Galkayo, women fear the night. Two weeks ago, three masked


gunmen entered Asha Muse’s tent. In front of her four children, theybeatherandherniece,Muna. Thementore thewomen’s clothes off andtook turns raping themfor two hours. One attacker stabbed Muna in the thighwith a knife. Another turned toAli’s son. “If you make a sound, we will kill you,” Muse recalled him say-


ing. Before they left, the men stole


$85 and some clothes. “Everybody rapes women. The


soldiers, the militias, everybody,” said Hawa Aden Mohammed, an activist who runs a women’s shel- ter in Galkayo where victims of rape and other gender-based vio- lence seek shelter. Muse and her niece did not


inform the police or aid workers. Muse has stopped collecting gar- bage, fearing her attackers will spother.Herneighbors,whohelp- lessly listened to their screams, look at her sympathetically. “We can’t go back to Mogadi- shu.We can’t afford to leave here.


We knowwewill get raped again,” said Muse, her tears filling her eyes. “But there’s nothing we can do.”


Bossaso Theyarriveinthiscoastal town,


filled with pirates and smugglers, with dreams of sailing to Yemen. A few months ago, as the war


edged closer to his house, Ali Os- man Ado took his pregnant wife and five children out of Mogadi- shu. A trader, he had saved enough money to move them to Bossaso — $135 from Mogadishu — and to pay smugglers to take himto Yemen, then SaudiArabia. “He toldme when I get there, I


will find a better life. I will come for you and the children,” recalled Hassina Abubaker, 30, two months pregnant at the time. He didn’t know that Yemeni


authorities, fearing that al-Sha- babmilitants could infiltrate and join al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch, were cracking down on Somali refugees, his wife said. He didn’t know that Saudi Arabia had sent more than 9,000 Somalis back to


Mogadishu. He didn’t know the smugglerswould be ruthless. Three days after he left, his


friends called her fromYemen. “The ship was overcrowded.


The crew started to throw people off the boat to make it more sta- ble,” said Abubaker, staring list- lessly at the dirt floor of her tent. “My husbandwas one of them.” Over the past three years, 1,066


migrants died or wentmissing — theywereinboats that capsizedor they were killed by smugglers, according toU.N. officials. In another tent, Fatima Ali


Omar held her baby. When he turns 1, she plans to go to Yemen because she heard they “treat ref- ugeeswell.” Eventually, shewants to be smuggled into Saudi Arabia towork as amaid. She knows that womenhavebeenrapedalong the way. She knows that many are forced into prostitution. She knows that if she complains, she will be deported. “Nothing matters as long as I


find a good life at the end of the journey,”Omar said. “Iwill forget I was raped.”


She had to borrow$60, the cost of coming from Galkayo to this for- lorn border. Two months preg- nant, in a rattletrapminibus on a bumpy road, she constantly wor- ried that shewould lose her baby. Now, on the edge of a foreign


land, she worried as much about what she left behind as what lay ahead. Idou looked down the road, at


the Djiboutian border police, at the U.N. refugee workers prepar- ingtoregisterher,at thewhitegate thatwould open a newlife for her family. Soon, they will be trans- portedtoAliAddeh,adesert camp across the border inDjibouti. “How will they treat us there?”


Idou asked.


Ali Addeh camp,Djibouti A bazooka shell struck Aisha


Mohammed Abdi’s house inMog- adishu, killing her uncle. She fled the capital with her husband and five children. Two died of hunger along the way. Days later, they arrived inDjibouti. “I dreamed of a better life,” she


recalled. Thatwas 20 years ago. She still lives inthis camp,hun-


dreds ofmiles fromthe capital, on a barren, oatmeal-colored land- scape ringed by tan mountains. The Somalis call it “Tora Bora” because the region resembles Af- ghanistan. This is where Djibou- ti’s government, worried that newcomers would take jobs away from its citizens, sends Somali andEthiopian refugees. TheU.N. rations ofwheat flour,


oil, lentils and sugar are not enough to feed Abdi’s family. There is also a shortage of water. Every day, Abdiwalks sixmiles to fetch wood. She sells most of it; the rest is for cooking and heating their tent.There is no electricity. Rapists are here, too. Two po-


licemen guard the camp of 14,000 refugees. Darkness is the rapists’ accomplice. “Women can’t identify their


abusers,” saidAyanMohammed, a Djiboutian social worker. “Every- one is afraid.” Abdi once dreamed of being


resettled to another country. No longer.Only64Somalis left for the United States and other Western countries this year, less than half of 1percent of the Somali refugees living inDjibouti. She once dreamed of returning


home.No longer. “It is worse in Mogadishu now


thanwhen I left,” she said. Today, she no longer dreams. “I have been a refugee for 20


years,” said Abdi. “Whether I stay longer here or leave for another place, onlyGod knows. But I have lost all hope.” raghavans@washpost.com


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