The worst drought in the Horn of Africa in 60 years is forcing Somalis south, writes JODY CLARKEin Dadaab
HIS THREE daughters squatted dutifully at his knees, Mursal Adin (32) draws in the sand as he speaks, making a slow stroke in the cool morning soil for each number that reels off his head.
Five for the number of days that it took him to get here from Somalia. Two for the mornings he’s queued to get registered with the UNHCR. And then one for his tobacco farm, all 20 acres of it that he left behind, barren and abandoned, but plundered long before by the Islamist group al-Shabab.
“They came in 2009 and said you can keep a third of what you make, the rest you give to us,” he says. “If the drought persists I could have survived on the little I saved, but they’ve ruined us, spending money on guns and themselves.”
The worst drought to hit the horn of Africa in 60 years is forcing Somalis south in search of food. So too is the protracted conflict in Somalia, which has been without a functioning government since 1991.
As 1,300 people arrive every day into Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest at 350,000 and rising, people tell of the indiscriminate taxes forced upon them by Al-Shabab, of savings taken and livestock seized.
“When we’ve had droughts before, we could depend on aid agencies to help us,” says Nasir Ibrahim (40), a father of five queuing at a food depot.
“But Al-Shabab have banned them. That’s why we came here.” He has 1,000 Kenyan shillings (just under €8) left, after losing 5,000 KSH (€39) to bandits, who stalk the roads that lead from Somalia into northeastern Kenya. He has no shoes either, stolen after he rode a car to the border. “They know we’re coming, looking for food.”
Still, they are the lucky ones, inside a depot where they will be collected and driven to a registration centre for refugees. Along with 50 or so others, they queued early and will soon receive a permanent ration card from the UNHCR, entitling them to a weekly supply of food.
The rest look mournfully inside, a wide-eyed group of 200 people, fingers wrapped eagerly around fences topped with barbed wire.
An aid official screams into a megaphone, telling them to come back tomorrow. “Only the people inside the gate are getting on the bus.”
An old man tries to dart through a yawning between the gate and fence but is chased away by a security guard. It’s the perfect dystopia. Get in, you eat, stay outside, you wait – for weeks in some cases. The whim of the bureaucrat stands between you and a regular meal.
At the food depot next door, priority for feeding, say aid officials, has been given to those with families. Access to it, though, where new arrivals are processed and given an initial ration of 3.2kg of maize before they are allowed to apply for their permanent card, can also be bought, it is alleged.
“Why are you letting in people with no children?” screams a UN staff member, berating two members of the agency contracted to control access to the depot. “Families only.”
Bashir Ahmned (40) was first in the queue outside the gate at 6am.
Crouched at the front in a pair of cheap plastic sandals, he’s been waiting for three days to get rations for his daughter Halima and son Abdi. “Those who paid are inside. Those who didn’t don’t get in.”
By 11am, the food depot run by Care International still has not begun distributing food. By 4pm they stop, leaving hundreds outside to wonder when they’ll eat.
“What is the UN trying to do with us?” screams one woman.
“The UNHCR is doing its best,” says one aid official, “but the registration process can take weeks for some people.”
Meanwhile malnutrition rates are rising, especially amongst children.
“The situation was so overwhelming that we had to open a second [paediatric] ward,” says Christopher Karissa, a clinical official with Médecins Sans Frontières, which runs the main hospital in Dagahaley, one of the three camps that make up Dadaab.
The situation has begun to stabilise, he says, but cases are still arriving every day.
One nutritional study carried out by MSF found that children were more malnourished after two months spent in the camp than when they first arrived.
On one bed, Hawa Abdi cradles her one-year old-daughter Naley, weak and vomiting after a six-day trek to the now sprawling camps in Dadaab. A light sweatshirt falls loosely over her bare shoulders, barely concealing her thin frame.
“This is the worst drought we’ve ever seen,” says Abdi. “Before we would walk to where there had been rain and work on another person’s farm, but there are no crops anywhere. I had 19 acres of maize and sorghum but it’s gone. All gone.”
Those who owned livestock tell a similar story. Entire herds wiped out, nothing left to replenish stocks.
“It’s a punishment from God,” says Abdi Adin (43), holding on to the hand of his three-year-old son outside the food depot.
“The bullets are still flying in Somalia. Everywhere there are gunshots. God has punished the Somali people.”