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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Tue Dec 28 2010 - 23:38:34 EST
http://en.m4.cn/archives/2360.html
Stark reality in a Somali community
Post Categories: Africa
By By Hu Yinan (China Daily) | 17:57 BeiJing Time,Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Feisal Farah Mohamed's dream is to obtain a university degree in medicine,
have five or six children and move to China or Australia.
The idea of immigrating to the United States has never crossed the
19-year-old Somali's mind since, as he puts it, the popular Western
portrayals of his people - most notably the 2001 Hollywood movie Black Hawk
Down - are a world apart from his own.
However, living in Mandera, a town with few opportunities where violence
lurks, Feisal is somberly aware his dreams may never materialize.
Decades have passed since Feisal's grandfather, like many others, crossed
the border from Somalia to settle down in Kenya, although a Somali identity
still resonates with hundreds of thousands of people in conservative
communities throughout the African country's vast, dry and impoverished
North Eastern Province.
Here, roads, jobs and safe drinking water practically do not exist.
The situation is severest in Mandera, just a mile south of the Somali
border, where tensions have escalated in recent weeks. The United Nations
has classified the town as a "phase-three security zone", one where no UN
movement is permitted without armed escort.
Since 2008, the town government has imposed a daily curfew, from 9 pm until
5 am, as a result of ongoing clan clashes.
"During times of conflicts like these, sometimes we get 10 missing people
reports a day. Some of them never show up again," said Isacko Jirma, Mandera
coordinator for the Red Cross Society of Kenya.
A guard who identified himself only as Hussein at the office of the UN's
High Commission for Refugees and World Food Program said the fact he is a
Somali working for the UN makes him a target for bandits and fighters with
Al-Shabaab, the radical Al-Qaida-linked Islamist group that has gained
control over most parts of Somalia.
Spontaneous violence is a daily occurrence in Mandera, where virtually
everyone is Somali.
At 1:32 pm on Nov 10, moments after a brief talk with China Daily, one of
Hussein's colleagues radioed to report that unknown individuals had fired
seven shots nearby. "I don't know what the intention was," said the voice
over the walkie-talkie.
According to the US-based Foreign Policy magazine's last three annual
indexes, Somalia has not had a functioning central government since civil
war broke out in 1991. Even with the help of African Union peacekeepers, the
Western-backed Somali government has struggled to control the few blocks of
the capital, Mogadishu, that it actually rules.
In Somalia, Sharif Mohamed, 25, a corporate inspector who frequently travels
to Mogadishu, said it is not at all surprising to find ordinary Somalis who
distrust the government and, in turn, lean toward the other side.
"If you want to build the country, you have to build the people (and their
trust)," he said, stressing that Somali officials are clearly "not doing
their job".
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