SOMALIA: Refugee camps are facing a new influx of Somalis fleeing bloodshed, writes Rob Crilly in Dadaab, northern Kenya
Kenya's northern desert is a bleak, inhospitable place. Acacia trees and bandits are the only life forms that prosper here.
But for 15 years, thousands of Somali refugees have made their home in Dadaab's three sprawling humanitarian camps as famine, floods and years of clan fighting took a bloody toll on their country.
Now a fresh exodus is under way. More than 100 people are arriving every day on foot, donkey or in the cattle trucks that double as buses.
They have come to escape fresh bloodshed and the threat of civil war. The Somali government has been in a state of near collapse ever since Islamic militias seized control of the capital in June.
Aid agencies say 20,000 refugees have arrived since the start of the year.
They expect at least another 30,000, raising the risk of a major humanitarian emergency.
Many of the new arrivals come from Mogadishu or other areas now under the control of the Islamic courts.
"There is not much here, but I came because we heard that the refugee camps were peaceful," says Noorto Ibrahim Hassan (30), speaking in the harsh Somali language.
She arrived last Friday. Her new home is little more than a dome of bent sticks covered in plastic sheets. Her family survived the anarchy of Mogadishu for 15 years after the collapse of the country's last functioning government.
They tried to avoid roadblocks manned by rival militias and stayed at home after dark.
Then fresh fighting erupted earlier this year between the Islamic courts, who are accused of harbouring al-Qaeda terrorists, and an alliance of warlords, backed by the US.
Two of her cousins were killed by mortar rounds in June.
"I felt we just had to leave to escape the bullets and the war and coming here was the only way to look after my family," she says.
She left her husband in Mogadishu and walked with her three young daughters for 20 miles before finding a ride on a truck heading south to the Kenyan border.
Humanitarian agencies say the arrivals are dominated by women and children running from violence.
Thousands of boys and young men have also found their way to Dadaab, trying to escape being forced to fight in a looming civil war.
Mohammed Qazilbash, senior programme manager for Care, the aid agency which manages much of the camp, said: "The families that we see arriving are often in quite dire circumstances in terms of both a health and nutritional point of view, as well as from a trauma perspective."
He is dealing with a worst-case scenario of 100,000 new arrivals this year in a camp already home to 136,000 refugees.
No one is sure how long the boreholes will continue to provide enough water and whether there will be tensions between the arrivals and long-term residents, creating a "crisis waiting to explode", according to Mr Qazilbash. The three sub-camps that make up Dadaab were founded in 1991. The collapse of Siad Barre's brutal government and the country's descent into civil war sent the first refugees fleeing into Kenya.
Famine, floods and years of violence have kept them here.
Today the camps have an air of permanence. While many people live in shelters made of little more than sticks, enterprising Somalis have set up internet cafes, makeshift hotels and even a cinema.
Nemia Temporal, of the UNHCR, the United Nation's refugee agency, says the camp should only ever have been temporary.
"When we make a humanitarian intervention we always think of it as an interim measure. But the situation in Somalia never really stabilised and we are really struggling to repair and maintain our facilities after 15 years," she says in her Dadaab office.
"On top of the existing problems, we are now trying to deal with this extra influx." The refugees leave behind a country on the brink of war.
The government, which has seen its influence diminish day by day as the Islamists advance across the country, is barely functioning while prime minister Ali Mohamed Gedi attempts to build a new cabinet.
Stalled peace talks scheduled for Khartoum this week have been abandoned once again.
An already volatile situation has been inflamed by the presence of Ethiopian troops on Somali soil where they have been deployed to defend the fragile government.
This week the courts have consolidated their power based in Mogadishu, announcing plans to deploy uniformed security men to police the streets.
Their militias have also spread north, taking control of port towns along the coast and inching closer to semi-autonomous region of Puntland, which has vowed to defend itself against the Islamists.
The courts have imposed strict sharia law in areas under control, closing cinemas that show western films and sentencing rapists to death by stoning.
Marijuana users have been given 40 lashes.
Yesterday, senior African military commanders met in Kenya to consider sending a peacekeeping force to Somalia, but observers believe it remains a distant prospect.
With the future of their country hanging in the balance, few refugees have any thought of returning. "I will be here for as long as the refugee camps are here," says Hassan quietly as she sits on a reed mat.
No one believes the refugees will be returning any time soon.