Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/032392/0323004.000

Text File | 1992-10-20 | 4KB | 87 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 36

SOMALIA

I Against My Brother


Struggling for power, rival clans turn life in Mogadishu into a
slow death

    Anarchy has a thousand faces in Somalia. The men with the guns
call it liberation, but it is freedom without responsibility,
humanity, compassion, future or hope. Freedom to kill and the
right to die. Freedom to liberate the weak from all they
possess, wives from their husbands, children from their parents;
freedom to liberate anyone from the burden of life in a power
struggle that is destroying the last vestiges of society and
human dignity.

    Duale Noor Sabrie was sitting in his house in Mogadishu
when the shell hit. Three of his brothers and his oldest son
were killed. "The place was burning. My wife went in one
direction; I went in another. It took us one month to find each
other," he recalls. The family migrated by foot and boat to a
refugee camp on the Kenyan coast. Sabrie had been a successful
businessman with cars and servants and thousands of dollars of
cash in the bank. Now, he says, "I am 56 years old. I cannot go
home again or start over. Nothing will change in Somalia in my
lifetime. But I am lucky. I am alive."

    For those who remain in Mogadishu, living has become a
slow death. Crowded into the few buildings still standing,
women and children forage for food and water. A bag of looted
U.S. flour is $30, a container of skim milk donated by the
European Community is $20, and hardly anyone has money for
either. The distended bellies and red-streaked hair of the
children signal the malnutrition that is endemic.

    The streets are controlled by pickup trucks carrying
antiaircraft guns and young men -- some barely in their teens
-- with Kalashnikov rifles. Their eyes are bright with the drug
called kat, their fingers quick on the trigger. Makeshift
hospitals dot the city; the existing ones were looted long ago.
The wounded must bring their own beds, so most end up lying on
the floor, a weeping relative holding aloft their intravenous
solution -- when it is available. Somali doctors and foreign
volunteers move so quickly from patient to patient that trails
of blood pattern the floors.

    The map of Somalia is a mosaic of clans and subclans. The
men who captured Mogadishu in January 1991 and put President
Mohammed Siad Barre to flight belong to the Hawiye clan. The
northern quarter of the capital is held by the Abagal subclan
of interim President Ali Mahdi Mohammed. The Habar Gedir subclan
of General Mohammed Farrah Aidid dominates the southern
three-fourths. At the beginning of last year, hatred of Siad
Barre united the groups, but that unity is long gone. Another
clan has declared an independent Somaliland in the north; yet
another controls the land south and west of Mogadishu.
Meanwhile, Siad Barre waits with hundreds of well-armed fighters
only 125 miles away from the capital.

    Two weeks ago, a United Nations-led peace delegation
brokered a cease-fire -- at least the third since September --
signed by both Ali Mahdi and Aidid. But the war is far from
over. Somalians have a familiar proverb -- "I and Somalia
against the world. I and my clan against Somalia. I and my
family against the clan. I and my brother against the family.
I against my brother" -- and they seem determined to fight their
way to the very last line.

By Marguerite Michaels/Mogadishu.