Eking out a living in Mogadishu

For Zehera Ali, the rain of bullets that showered Mogadishu when the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) seized control of the city in June was just another episode of life in the war-ravaged city. One of 165 Zanzibari refugees living in the Somali capital, Zehera fled the tiny island in 2001 when riots engulfed it after disputed elections. "Armed men broke into our house and raped me and my sister. That is when I decided to flee," the 23-year-old divorcee told IRIN from the rundown former government building that functions as a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) where she lives. With almost 250,000 IDPs and refugees, the humanitarian conditions in Mogadishu have been exacerbated by gun battles between the UIC - which now controls the seaside capital - and the defeated warlords. Fighting between the two groups erupted in February and only subsided in early June. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), more than 2,500 people were wounded in Mogadishu over this period, underlining how ferocious the fighting has been in the past six months. "The [humanitarian] situation in the capital is really bad," Pascal Hundt, head of the ICRC Somalia delegation, said recently. "Nothing is functioning. The water system is not functioning, so there is definitely a need for an increased effort to stand by the Somali population." Tough life Like Zehera, most of the refugees beg for food. They have no jobs and are often threatened by 'landlords' with eviction from the rundown government building where they have been staying for the past five years. "We have to pay the man two million Somali shillings [about US $140] by the 5th day of the month or vacate the building by the 22nd," their leader Ghulam Abdulrahman told IRIN. "Yet we are poor and have no jobs." Zehera and six other Zanzibari women have children. They have lived among their fellow refugees in the IDP camp since arriving in Mogadishu by road from Dadaab in northeastern Kenya. But the children rarely receive treatment when they fall sick because their husbands cannot afford taking them to private hospitals. However, having lived for a few years in Mogadishu after being lured away from the turbulent politics of the spice islands by friends, the Zanzibaris have developed good relations with the local people, Rashid Ahmed, who is married to a Somali woman, said. While their home is a country that has been without a central government since Mohammad Siyad Barre was ousted by clan warlords in 1991, and is supposed to be run by a two-year old transitional government that has so far failed to gain total control, the Zanzibaris still prefer living in Mogadishu - especially after the UIC takeover. The UIC, which took control of Mogadishu after defeating an alliance of secular armed factions that controlled the city for more than a decade, has restored relative calm to the city, they say. For Zehera and other displaced people in the city, the determination to eke out a living in this city is best illustrated by graffiti on one of the walls at the bullet-scarred buildings, which reads: "Every man [has] a right to decide his destiny." gh/mw/eo