Cast adrift: The world turns its back on Somalia / A humanitarian disaster unfolds: One year after the Congolese elections, civilians flee renewed fighting in the east
Two items from the new "Economist" print edition:
"Cast adrift: The world turns its back on Somalia"...
THE escalating violence in Mogadishu, Somalia's ruined capital, continues unabated. The fighting there in the last week has been awful. Over 80 people have been killed, some of them children. The bodies of Ethiopian soldiers killed in gun-battles with Islamist fighters were dragged through the streets by angry mobs, beaten, and spat on. Those grisly scenes were reminiscent of the treatment of American soldiers killed in Mogadishu in 1993.
A report this week by the EU claims that as many as 5,000 people have been wounded in the fighting in Mogadishu this year; 800,000 civilians are now displaced across the country. And the two sides are squaring up for more blood-letting. The leader of the ousted Islamists, Hassan Dahir Aweys, has called for a general uprising against Ethiopian and Somali-government forces. Somalia's president, Abdullahi Yusuf, an old adversary of Mr Aweys, responded by demanding that civilians drive militants out of their own neighbourhoods, or face the consequences.
Worse, perhaps, is a sense that Somalia is now being deserted by foreign countries. The harvest in central Somalia seems to have failed; some think [that] it the worst in 13 years. Over 1 [million] Somalis are now thought to be dependent on humanitarian assistance, but only a fraction of the needy are being reached. Despite international promises to tackle piracy off the coast, it remains at record levels, making it harder to ship in food aid. A famine is likely.
This week also saw the admission by the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, that there was no chance of a UN peacekeeping mission in Somalia. That was a big blow to those hoping to get the country back on its feet. The best [that] Somalia can hope for, Mr Ban says, is a “coalition of the willing”. At the moment, there are just the unwilling.
Ethiopia leads the heavy fighting against the Islamists on behalf of the sometimes ghostly Somali government. But it wants to get its troops out as soon as possible. Uganda is the only country to send in peacekeepers. It has 1,600 troops in Mogadishu under Africa Union (AU) command, but they are holed up at the airport. There is little chance now of the other AU troops promised by Burundi, Nigeria, and others turning up. It looks as if Somalia is being cast adrift.
AMONG the crowd of displaced civilians clamouring for food stood a young boy. He had fled his village and was left with little but a filthy T-shirt that read: “I'm voting for Kabila, the peacemaker”.
A year ago, [DR] Congo did indeed hold elections that many had feared would never take place. They were won by the incumbent president, Joseph Kabila, largely thanks to support in the east, which he promised to pacify. But for the people of North Kivu, an eastern province at the heart of a decade of war, the aftermath of the voting has brought anything but peace. Some 500,000 civilians have fled their homes, out of a total population of about 4 [million], [in order] to escape the growing fighting between the army, rebels, and militias. In the past two months alone, more than 160,000 people have been displaced.
Making comparisons between humanitarian crises may not always be fair or useful. But those dealing with the emergency in Kivu are starting to do so. “The situation at the moment in North Kivu is worse than Darfur,” says Sylvie van den Wildenberg of the UN mission in the province. Many more people have fled their homes this year than in Darfur. Refugee camps are starting to pop up just outside the provincial capital, Goma.
Congo's last war, which officially ran from 1998 to 2003 but is still simmering in North Kivu, was the world's deadliest since 1945: some 4 [million] people died. Most were silent deaths from hunger or disease, rather than bullets, blades, or bombs. The current crisis in North Kivu is now adding daily to the death toll. Aware that they and their homes are targets for all sides, civilians flee at the first sign of fighting, many blending into the bush. Many villages are empty, while those sheltering the displaced are starved of bare necessities by roadblocks and attacked by gunmen.
Some make it to camps. But there is no guarantee of safety. Cholera and malaria continue to kill, mostly the children. And sometimes, as on November 13th near Mugunga camp, just 15 kilometres (9 miles) west of Goma, fighting erupts; this time 30,000 people had to flee again. “We are seeing this repeated displacement of civilians, which is exacerbating the problem. People who have already fled are having to flee again,” says Jane Coyne, head of Médecins Sans Frontières in North Kivu.
The conflict has taken on another dimension of brutality too. Women have been raped on an unprecedented scale, in the thousands. According to experts, rape is being used as a weapon of war. Such are the scale and violence of the attacks in eastern Congo, claims Yakin Erturk, the UN's special rapporteur on violence against women, that they constitute a war crime. Rape is being carried out by all sides and, worryingly, by civilians too.
Pity the UN
Stuck in the middle is the world's largest UN peacekeeping mission. Its soldiers are meant to protect civilians and support the army. But neither party is satisfied. On November 5th, 27 Indian peacekeepers were injured when attacked by a mob of hungry civilians who claimed not to have received any food aid. Other peacekeepers were stoned by government troops, angry that the UN had prevented them from trying to achieve a total military defeat of the rebels.
Much of the latest violence is attributed to Laurent Nkunda, a dissident Tutsi general who now leads a rebellion. But, to complicate matters, American diplomats trying to resolve the crisis have persuaded the Congolese army that Rwandan Hutu rebels, who operate from North Kivu, must be dealt with as well as Mr Nkunda. These rebels were at the heart of Congo's decade of violence and were twice cited by Rwanda as a reason to invade Congo.
Rwanda is backing Congo. But it says [that] it wants the government and the UN to come up with plans to defeat the Hutu rebels by the end of the month. With another military front opening up, the humanitarian crisis is sure to continue.
Comments