|
|
Somalia: Capital City Shell Shocked and Deserted by Population
 |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu)
ANALYSIS
28 January 2008
Posted to the web 28 January 2008
Mohamed Amiin
Once a beautiful and big sea-side city, Mogadishu, Somalia's capital city is now going through its worst nightmarish and the most affected victims of this misery are the inhabitants, particularly the innocent civilians who were primarily taking the brunt of most horrible events since 1991 when law and order collapsed in the city soon after the topple of Somalia's late strongman Mohamed Siad Bare.
Mogadishu, a prized place to whoever has grown up in it just like me, went through all sorts of violence such as shelling, mortar bombing, air strikes, which completely destroyed its beauty but at this time as you are reading this article, worse than all those, is happening to Somalia's biggest city, mass desertion by its residents after the city has formally become battleground for unscrupulous and brutal sides who mercilessly want to execute their political ambitions through all forms of violence; assassinations, street and gun battles, shelling and many more vicious forms and that is leading the city to be almost empty and ghost.
Since in the Christmas of 2006, when Ethiopians forces backing the transitional federal government overran the city, more than three-fifth of the populations fled from the city after deadly showdowns between Ethiopian forces and Somali insurgents, mostly Islamists turned the city into a death-trap where thousands of people of most innocent civilians got killed.
In times of calmness, the residents of Mogadishu even after the collapse of the central government have been estimated to be nearly two millions and most populated areas in the city were clearly in and around the city's open-air market of Bakaraha where various business activities from trading in bread to guns was good enough to do but now let alone other parts of the city, the Bakara market is almost getting deserted because of a persistent back and forth attacks by insurgents and Ethiopians.
Civilians fleeing from the city face significant hardship in the new areas they fled to. Afgoye, an agricultural and trading town which lies thirty kilo meters south of Mogadishu is overcrowded by the people fled Mogadishu and there is harsh humanitarian crisis and so is the main road that stretches between Mogadishu and Afgoye town.
Thousands of families are sheltering in whatever can be made of as a house, even under trees.
Worse than the plight on the faces of these civilians are the horrible stories they tell when you ask what forced them out of their houses. The common stories you hear from them are, family members, neighbours, or friends killed in their houses while sleeping by artillery or mortar shell or people who got wounded in the middle of night and bled to death without medical help as hospitals couldn't be reached because of the danger existing in the city.
Somalia's capital city is really suffering and its residents are deserting it in desperate as it is turning into uninhabited and the only help it can be consoled with, is such stories written by the beleaguered Somali journalists who them selves are anguishing because of the ongoing violence in their homeland and great gratitude to few of our international colleagues who sometimes risk themselves to visit and write facts of the stories that are really happening on the ground.
|
Contributed by Shabelle Senior correspondent Mohamed Amiin.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 Shabelle Media Network. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
