| Drought imperils Horn of Africa |
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Page 2 of 2 Even in the best of times in Somalia, when there's plenty of rain, warlords often wage battles. But in a time of drought, specialists warn that the stresses of survival will further unravel local power structures, creating new opportunities for havoc from freelance bandits, militias, and perhaps Islamic extremists aligned with Al Qaeda. "Somalia has been an extraordinarily difficult country for the last 15 years," Christian Balslev Olesen, UNICEF's Somalia representative, said in an interview in Nairobi. ''We've had flooding, drought, conflict, war, and general insecurity. But we haven't seen anything like this drought for the past 25 years. . . . The worst scenario is that we might be going into huge drought with some kind of high-scale conflict. And bringing food into a security situation like Somalia for 2 million people is going to be a nightmare." Last year, pirates hijacked two World Food Program ships carrying donated food. US Navy ships now patrol off the coast, but most shipping companies have refused to deliver to ports in Somalia. That means it takes up to a week longer for each shipment of food to come from the port in Mombasa, Kenya, and then be trucked to south and central Somalia. CARE, a US-based private agency, last week received a US shipment of lentils, sorghum, corn meal blend, and vegetable oil in the southern Somali port city of Merca, raising hope that the Somali routes can be used again. Still, the difficulties over the last months mean the World Food Program in south and central Somalia doesn't have enough food to go around. For the next two months, it will distribute just half of its normal food rations to families, and it won't reach vast numbers of people because they live far from distribution points. Fifteen miles north of Wajid, Habiba Hassan, 70, trudged out of a failed field of sorghum toward her village of Beniday, 6 miles away. With weathered and dusty fingers, she had tied ropes around the yellow-white stalks and then looped the rope over her forehead. The bundle rested on her curved back. "No one is going to survive out here -- unless they bring water," she said. ''I am 70 years old now, and the temperatures are getting hotter and hotter as the years pass by. We cut down trees so we can make some money from charcoal, but those areas where we cut are turning to desert." She said everyone in her village knew the reason for the drought. "It's global warming," she said, adding that villagers had learned much about the potential effects from climate change from radio programs aired on BBC's daily Somali service. ''In the past, this season was very hot during the day and cold at night. Now the temperature seems to be equal day and night. At night, we have to sleep outside, it's so hot." In nearby Goobato, a village with no cars, no motorcycles, no bicycles, no generators, no televisions, no mobile phones, and dozens of $5 radios, Nour, the village elder, said increased temperatures bake the soil. He said one good soaking rain three decades ago would result in a field of 10-foot-high sorghum, a grassy grain that is one of the foundations of their diet. Nour also said villagers share the blame: ''We cut trees just to survive, but we are part of the problem." At a recent emergency meeting, village leaders agreed to ask an aid agency to dig a borehole and pour concrete in the water pit so that the rain would not seep out. But both requests probably will not be fulfilled soon; a borehole can cost more than $100,000 and recent attempts to drill wells in the area here have failed because of high salinity content. Andrew Sisson, the Somalia mission director for USAID, said in an interview in Nairobi that American emergency help could substantially increase if the situation worsens. The European Union also is considering a boost in emergency aid, and Australia committed an additional $5 million last week in drought assistance for Somalia and Kenya. The US National Security Council in Washington has recently focused on the regionwide drought threat, Sisson said in an interview in Nairobi. ''They are concerned about a humanitarian impending disaster and also concerned about underlying conditions that continue to generate food insecurity quite often," he said. Nour knows that without rain soon, Goobato faces catastrophe. In the last few weeks, 140 of the village's 500 families have left, and many more are thinking about going soon. He has his own concerns. Two days before, two of his four children started vomiting violently. He rushed them to a nearby clinic. Five children and one pregnant woman have died here in recent weeks because of the drought, he said. "My children were in critical condition, but they are a little better now," he said. ''Still, I worry. We all worry." John Donnelly can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Published February 20, 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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