War refugees seek help after watching tsunami aid efforts

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - On a dusty old radio, Ali Abdallah Mohamed Osman followed the news after giant waves lashed the Somali coastline, sweeping away homes and livelihoods.

Within days, truckloads of aid began rolling in to the northeastern fishing village of Hafun, the Somali town hit hardest by the same tsunami that ripped through Southeast Asia. But Osman, who has lived in an improvised refugee camp in Mogadishu since fighting chased him from his home 13 years ago, saw none of that aid.

"Everyone is always talking about Hafun. But what about everyone else?" asked the worry-worn father of seven, who has lost five other children to war, hunger and disease. "We need help, too."

The Dec. 26 tsunami, which humanitarian workers say killed more than 100 people and affected up to 30,000 others here, was the latest in a long list of calamities to befall this semi-desert land, with its clan-based fiefdoms and dueling warlords.

Drought, cyclones, bloodshed and war have killed hundreds of thousands over the past 14 years, sending the survivors fleeing time and again.

In Mogadishu alone, some 250,000 displaced people fill every corner of bullet-pocked government buildings, abandoned schools and factories and the broken shells of homes piled with rubble.

With no government or aid agencies to help them, most can turn to only their equally impoverished fellow clan members.

Somalia has had no central government since clan-based faction leaders united to overthrow dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The factions then turned on one another in a bloody and ruinous campaign for hegemony.

Their heavily armed militiamen have chased foreign aid workers from Mogadishu and large parts of the rest of the country. Most U.N. agencies and other humanitarian groups, whose members have been kidnapped and killed, now run their Somalia operations from neighboring Kenya.

A Somali government-in-exile also is in Kenya, where officials considering a return said yesterday they would need $77.3 million to relocate, rebuild district and regional administrations and launch efforts to reconcile the country.

When fighting engulfed Osman’s central Somalia village in 1992, he walked six days with his family to reach Mogadishu. Two children died along the way. The day they finally reached the former capital, a daughter was hit by a stray bullet and was partially paralyzed.

The family found a degree of security in the ruins of an old Coca-Cola factory, where hundreds of families have patched together dome-shaped huts out of sticks and cardboard.

"Some aid agencies used to come here and bring us rice, maize and sometimes dates," Osman told a reporter. "But you are the first foreigner I have seen in at least two years."