Mogadishu residents back to living in constant danger

Maryan Aliyow Isse had hoped the security situation in Mogadishu would stabilize after the Ethiopian-backed transitional government took control of the Somali capital in December. She was wrong. "We are in constant danger," said Maryan, who lives with her four children among 945 displaced families in a compound that used to be the Taleh government school in the southern Hodan district. "Mortars explode near the camp every night." Other Mogadishu residents said worsening violence had already forced many families to leave the city. "Many families have left," Muhammed Rage said. "It is not an exodus yet but you can see families moving, particularly from the south of the city." Many of those leaving were heading south to the nearby towns of Afgoi and Merka, and others as far north as Beletweyne, he added. According to the United Nations, an estimated 1,000 people left Mogadishu in January due to fear of conflict and instability. The recent attacks, Mogadishu-based aid workers said, have targeted both military and government installations, as well as internally displaced people. On Feb. 2, a mortar attack hit Taleh, killing four people and wounding dozens of others. Three days later, another hit Liban camp in southern Mogadishu. Abdirahman Fatih, a displaced person in the camp, said eight people, most of them women and children, were killed. "The mortars were fired by unidentified people," Maryan said. "I worry about the safety of my children." Mogadishu, residents said, had become more insecure since the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) left the city, having been routed by Ethiopian and Somali government troops. The Transitional Federal Government, formed in Kenya in 2004, had never managed to take full control of the country, instead remaining holed up in the southern towns of Jowhar and Baidoa. Deafening sounds of artillery fire and bullets boom throughout the city on most nights, as insurgents opposed to the transitional government target sites associated with it, using rockets, mortars and various other weapons. According to Mogadishu residents, the UIC, which administered the capital and a swathe of the south for nearly seven months, restored much-needed peace, stability and order–even if many Somalis found it harder to make money after the UIC banned a narcotic, Khat, which is widely consumed in Somalia. "Women are now taken away and raped by armed gangs at night when they go out because toilets are very scarce here so we use the open at nights," Murayo Mohamoud Hassan, a 36-year-old mother of four, said. The troops deployed in the city, she claimed, shoot at displaced people's camps whenever they suspect that gunmen may have sneaked in. "We do not know where to flee to," she said. "We are victimized by both the Ethiopians and unknown armed men firing rockets at Ethiopians. Echoing that view, Fadumo Hassan, a mother of one living in Coca-Cola camp, said the UIC had encouraged Somalis to help each other. "When Islamists were here even Somalis in the diaspora helped us, sending money. But now everything is stuck," she said. Rage said the displaced had been most affected by the current insecurity. "They don't have a support base here so they cannot expect much help from the local population," he said. Local leaders said the difficulties endured by the displaced had hardened opinion against the country's leaders and their Ethiopian backers. "Since the Ethiopians entered Mogadishu, we are under curfew," Abdi Hassan, leader of the Shabeele compound near Bandir hospital, said. "Yet we are very vulnerable to mortars and rockets that unknown men fire at the Ethiopian bases near us." Frustration with the worsening security situation has started to boil over. On Feb. 9, two demonstrations took place after prayers. The first was at an intersection in the northern suburb of the capital. Here, for the first time, 10 masked men claimed responsibility for rocket attacks against Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu. "We are the 'Somali People's Resistance Movement,'" a man who called himself Abdirazak told hundreds of protesters. "We are warning other African countries trying to send troops to Somalia to back off or here will be their graveyard," he shouted. In the frenzy, Kenyan, Ethiopian, Ugandan and US flags were set ablaze by the demonstrators. Abdirizak claimed attacks against foreign troops would continue until they all left the country.