ARMED CONFLICT WORSENS FAMINE IN SOMALIA

From Khairulanuar Yahaya

MOGADISHU, Sept 2 (Bernama) -- The famine in Somalia cannot be blamed on the
country’s long drought, said Sheikh Abdisalam Hussein Mala, a Somali lecturer at
Al-Madinah International University.

“The majority of the population are farmers who are well-prepared for
drought,” he said.

"They had an underground water system; they had been doing this for years.
If the condition of this country is good and there's no civil war, [the people]
would be able to maintain themselves even during the drought.

"But now, unfortunately, the people are being displaced by the civil war,”
said Sheikh Abdisalam.

Armed conflict has destroyed the irrigation system, he said. Without water,
“they could not do farming, and the drought adds to their hardship."

Civil war among Somalia’s 144 different clans started in 1991.


The United Somali Congress that year appointed Ali Mahdi Muhammad as the new
president, against the wish of the nation’s military leadership, headed by
General Muhammad Farah Aidid.

Somalia has been without a stable government ever since, and devastation has
been great.

Now, the Somali people are also facing the wrath of young citizens
controlling the left-wing radical group Al-Shabaab.

In Somalia, the Putera 1Malaysia Club humanitarian mission team of 55
members, including individuals from the media, have seen buildings destroyed by
mortars and cannons, and walls riddled with bullets.

Rural residents from the Lower Shabelle, Middle Shabelle, Oddur and Merca
have been forced to walk hundreds of kilometres to Mogadishu for relocation at
temporary settlements around the capital.


"My husband is here,” said Khadijah Yahaya, through an interpreter. “We fled
because of the famine. I had six children but three of them have died because of
lack of nutrition."

Their lives have not changed for the better at the temporary settlement, she
said, noting that food and medicine are both scarce at the camp as well.

Abdul Rassehd Muhammad, who landed at Martini Hospital in Mogadishu after
being shot in the foot, hopes for an end to the suffering caused by the armed
conflict.

"Talk together and try to make this end,” he pleaded. “Please have a good
national government."