Complex EmergencyA thriving al-Shabab has left the refugees of their terrorist actions with little-to-no options to find sanctuary because their options do not have guarantees; Their options for dealing with a crisis or situation where they are in imminent danger are limited because they have extremely low chances of survival in their choosing, which is why these refugees' choices turn out badly for them. Aid for these trapped and endangered people has been blocked by al-Shabab, which is leaving the Somali people defenseless, and adding another layer to this emergency.
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Explanation
Somalian refugees who are put in emergency situations have three options: stay, flight or fight. However, the challenges that come with these options remain, before and after refuge. When arriving at a camp, these refugees looking for sanctuary find themselves in a new situation where they are overcrowded, underfed, and still in danger despite the fact that they fled to avoid it.
The Options and The Resulting Challenges
Option # 1: Stay
These refugees have the option to stay where they are despite the fact that most of them are in immense danger because of it. The main reason for choosing to stay is that many refugees have no guarantee of safe arrival to a refugee camp, no guarantee of better life conditions in the refugee camp as many are severely lacking in resources, and they have no guarantees that they will be in any less danger than their current situation. Some communities are bombed daily, but even the people here prefer this to making the journey to Kenya, which shows just how bad and inhumane things are in Somalia right now. (Rawlence, 16)
Option # 2: Flight
If these refugees were to attempt the journey to Kenya, they would need to get past checkpoints set up by al-Shabab and the corrupt police system, and if they were wanted by al-Shabab they would have very little chance of getting past this first step. Refugees have hidden on tops of trucks, and clung to the undercarriage of cars to escape the oppression of al-Shabab. If it wasn’t already hard enough to escape from an essentially lawless land, it’s even harder to escape to another land with a corrupt police system. In Kenya, their police system is not much more developed than Somalia’s. To get to Kenya, refugees must have a substantial bribe to cross the border, which is illegal as it denies refugees their right to sanctuary. Even if after going through all this, many refugees do not have money left for transportation to camps such as Dadaab and must survive a long and perilous walk. Knowing of all this, this is why many Somalis opt to stay where they are. Some will also try to reach Mogadishu, which is a safer place relative to the rest of Somalia, and the government has more of a presence there. The main obstacle for refugees trying to go here is that there are more checkpoints, less transportation, and Kenya is usually a lot closer. (Rawlence, 16)
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Guled
Guled is the son of the now deceased and overthrown dictator of Somalia, Siad Barre. Glued was abandoned by his parents and chose to stay in his home in between al-Shabab territory and Mogadishu. Guled once said, "I don't have dreams," simply because as a kid growing up in an environment where al-Shabab demonstrated their power by beheading his neighbors, all he was concerned about was his life, and soccer, his favorite sport. He was relatively safe in Somalia, but then Ethiopian forces allied with the US and UN and turned his neighborhood into a war zone. He would hide outside his neighborhood with his sister in the surrounding forest of thorn bushes and outlast the whistling missiles and the silent mortars. After this, his sister's and his house was destroyed and they were forced to remain in the thorn bushes, until one day al-Shabab picked him as one of their new recruits. He was forced to fight and beat women on al-Shabab's behalf, until when he got a holiday he escaped by taking a bus to Kenya. However, he needed to pay the driver and then a truck driver who allowed him past the corrupt Kenyan police system where he hid on top of a truck and safely landed in Dadaab where he then recounted his story years later. (Rawlence, 16) |
Option # 3: Fight
The third option many Somalis consider is joining al-Shabab to get on the other side of the violence. Because many Somalis have faced extreme violence and experienced being abandoned by the powerless Somali government, some of al-Shabab’s ideas actually appeal to them, which is why they join. They also join because if they don’t they will be killed by al-Shabab, and they would rather live than die. See Guled's story on how al-Shabab recruits these people and how it is against some of their wills. (Rawlence, 16)
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Challenges After Refuge
Refugees who choose to flee to Kenya or Mogadishu face many challenges in refugee camps where aid workers and organizations are left to deal with them because of government corruption in Kenya and Somalia. The main refugee sanctuary in Kenya is Dadaab, which is made up of three camps, Ifo, Dagahaley, and Hagadera. Dadaab was originally built in 1991 in response to the civil war, however, it was only built for 90,000 refugees; today it hosts 500,000, making it the largest refugee camp in the world. Clearly, these camps are overcrowded and undersupplied, which has made conditions for refugees far less than humane.
Refugee Camp Conditions
Just to give an idea of how this overpopulation of Dadaab impacts the spread of disease, 9 outbreaks occurred in Dadaab in 2010 alone. People are starving, without shelter, space, and are without clean materials. There are so many people in Dadaab that this city-like place that an unofficial overflow camp for refugees has been created called Eastleigh, just outside of Dadaab. In the video to the left, Hawa, a strong young displaced woman describes her hardships living in Somalia, as well as how hard it is to raise kids in Dadaab refugee camp, where she lives. (MSF YouTube, 10)
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The Ever-Pervasive al-Shabab
This massive flow of refugees has emboldened al-Shabab as they have been sneaking into Kenya using the refugees as cover and setting off bombs and terrorizing the people of Kenya. In response to this, Kenya is withdrawing their support, which creates future problems for these refugees as they will have nowhere to go once the camps shut down. (Aronson, 11)
Evictions of IDPs in Mogadishu
As for the refugees inside of Mogadishu, they are not much better off. Many have had their homes and previous lives destroyed by al-Shabab and the famine, leaving them to make shelters on their own in displaced persons camps in the outskirts of Mogadishu. Al-Shabab has taken this as an area of interest because many government officials come and go here, Mogadishu being the nation’s capital. This has trapped many defenseless refugees inside the capital. This seemed like more of a potential threat rather than an immediate crisis until the Somali government started to evict IDPs from their shelters. Because the Somali government is not helping these refugees, the rest of the world is left to solve their problems, and are shorthanded in doing so because they have their own problems on top of this. (Human Rights Watch, 15)
These pictures give a satellite image of the IDP camp that the Somali government evicted thousands of people from in a period of two months with no notice. This destroyed literally thousands of homes, and pushed most of these refugees into al-Shabab's territory where they will most likely be killed. One women gives her account of how the evictions took place, as shown below. (Human Rights Watch, 15)
"There were three gunmen. One shook my hut and I tried to stop him because my baby was inside. He slapped me, but I cried and shouted, 'My daughter is inside! My daughter is inside!' He finally stopped shaking the house and told me to take my daughter. As soon as I got her, he uprooted the sticks holding up our shelter, it collapsed, and he moved on to destroy the one next to mine." (Human Rights Watch, 15)