Needy can only wait as help struggles to get to them

SOMALIA: The logistics of getting food to the hungry is made more difficult by local militia, writes Edmund Sanders in Wajid…

SOMALIA: The logistics of getting food to the hungry is made more difficult by local militia, writes Edmund Sanders in Wajid, Somalia

When food stocks ran out at this desolate Somalian refugee camp two weeks ago, families resorted to boiling tree leaves in water, yielding an edible green porridge of dubious nutritional value.

Drought has withered this season's harvest of maize and sorghum. Most of the cattle and goats are dead.

A convoy of 14 humanitarian trucks loaded with 500 tonnes of maize, beans and oil began heading for the camp late last month, but it had become snared at a militia checkpoint 56km (35 miles) away, an achingly short distance from the hundreds of hungry refugees.

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Completing the final leg of the trip should have been simple, particularly given the urgent need, but nothing is simple in Somalia these days.

The emergency shipment was the latest casualty of Somalia's clan-based fiefdoms and rival warlords who have parcelled out this African nation since the government collapsed in 1991.

"We are eating trees, our children are sick," said Ali Marid Mohammed (55), a clan chief in the refugee camp. "Now these militias are even preventing the people who are trying to help us. When will this end?"

Almost as anxious to see the aid delivered was Zlatan Milisic, the new country director for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Somalia. Last week he led a small delegation of aid workers and reporters to the Wajid camp to draw attention to the drought and highlight his programme's efforts.

However instead of overseeing the distribution of food to grateful refugees, Milisic got caught up in trying to free the convoy and what started as a press junket turned into an illustration of the challenges still facing this stateless society.

"It's more complicated to move around here because every subclan has its own army," Milisic said, "but it's not enough for us to say, 'The climate is not conducive, we can't do it.' We have to find a way. This is our duty."

Aid groups lately are reporting setbacks in Somalia, where a fledgling federal government is so divided that rival factions of it operate from different cities.

In September, rising tensions and weapons stockpiling in the long-peaceful town of Jawhar, north of the capital, Mogadishu, led UN workers to temporarily flee the city. A month later, a UN security worker in the southern port city of Kismaayo was shot dead. Two WFP-chartered ships filled with food aid for Somalia have been hijacked and held for ransom in the last five months.

"Our supply line to Somalia was cut completely," Milisic said. "No shipping company would work with us any more."

At the same time, the WFP is alarmed by the lack of rain in parts of southern Somalia, tripling its projections for emergency food aid and warning that up to 1.3 million Somalis may need assis- tance over the next six months.

With sea routes off limits, the WFP organised its first truck convoy in four years to carry food more than 1,200km (750 miles) from its warehouse in Mombasa, Kenya, to Somalia. Besides adding to the cost and slowing delivery time, the trip presented a host of logistical challenges.

Because of the risk of attack by bandits in Somalia, the Kenyan transport company hired by the WFP would haul the cargo only to the border, where food sacks and oil tins had to be transferred to Somalian trucks with Somalian drivers.

Once in Somali, the real difficulties began. The convoy had to navigate more than two dozen checkpoints set up by various subclans and warlords en route to Wajid, 322km (200 miles) northwest of Mogadishu.

"No truck can pass without paying," said Mohammed Sharif, a WFP logistics officer, "but nobody's in charge, so you have to negotiate with each and every one of them."

Checkpoint tariffs range from $20 to $130 a truck, but a long convoy like the WFP's makes an enticing target for local militias, who raise most of their funds by extorting money from drivers.

By Thursday, the convoy had been on the road more than a week when it was stopped in Yurkut, a southern village. As usual, the deadlock was over money.

The transport contractor argued for a lower price because the goods were humanitarian, not commercial. A militia leader held out for more. Each was determined to wait the other out.

Back at the refugee camp, families also waited. Most are former farmers and cattle herders who fled violence in the south in the 1990s and returned in the last six months, hoping to start over.

Habiba Adan (60) said her family's ration from the October 26th delivery ran out two weeks ago. "Every day of delay has a huge impact on us," she said.

To earn money for food, the family collected firewood to sell. Others went begging in Wajid, but because of the drought, many residents there aren't much better off.

At the WFP compound in Wajid, Milisic received updates on his convoy, but for nearly two days there was little change.

The standoff was particularly frustrating because a decade ago, the agency helped pay to build the road linking Wajid and Yurkut. "We built the road and now they're not letting us use it," said El Rashid Hussin Hammad, WFP programme co-ordinator for Somalia.

Milisic eventually appealed to a respected local leader who belongs to the same clan as the militia holding the convoy. The checkpoint was outside his area of authority, but he set off for it anyway. After several more hours of negotiations, a price was set and the convoy resumed.

But optimism was tempered by news that at least three more checkpoints stood between the convoy and the refugees.

By late Saturday afternoon, Milisic had run out of time. Uncertain when the convoy would arrive, he boarded a UN aircraft for his Nairobi office without seeing the food distribution. Two hours after his aircraft took off, the convoy arrived.