Somali exiles long to live in peace

By Karen Allen
BBC News, Kenya

Dadaab is a city of rags. Thin branches fashioned into tent frames draped with colourful pieces of cloth, are all that shelter the people here from sand and sun in this settlement in northern Kenya, 60 km from the Somali border.

I'm not willing to go back to Somalia until Somalia becomes peaceful and a democracy Maryan

Dadaab is home to 130,000 refugees, most of them Somalis.

Some have been here since the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, but the majority are more recent arrivals.

Since January this year, with the first signs that a major power shift was about to happen in Somalia, 18,000 refugees have scrambled across the border.

Many have fled the horrors of Mogadishu where fighting between the Islamic courts' militia and an alliance of warlords left hundreds dead and thousands of civilians injured.

Maryan, 18, and her sister Denyi, 10, fled their home in Mogadishu after gunmen forced their way in and shot their mother, father and two sisters at close range.

"As we were in the house, fighting started - people killing other people - so we ran here," Maryan says in her fluent English.

"We had no food and water, so a lady who we met travelling along the way gave us food and water."

It took them four weeks to reach Dadaab - on foot.

Candlelit lessons

The girls' parents were not "big people", but academics who had taught their daughters English by candlelight every night.

Her father believed in giving his daughters a good education, even if Mogadishu didn't have schools to send them to.

So, it is an arresting experience to find in a flimsy tent, a young woman who has witnessed great horrors, able to articulate her feelings so clearly - and in a foreign language.

Food at Dadaab is becoming scarce

Like so many of her new neighbours, Maryan yearns for a life of peace and has little desire to return to home.

"I'm not willing to go back to Somalia until Somalia becomes peaceful and a democracy," she insists.

"I would like both sides - the government and the Islamic courts - to go to Sudan and talk and sort out their problems and to build a nation"

Division

Somalia's fate hangs in the balance. The Union of Islamic Courts has, through its militia groups, taken control of huge swathes of the country, while the western-backed transitional government is fractured and weak.

The Arab League succeeded in getting both sides together briefly in Khartoum back in May, but subsequent meetings have been stalled over the issue of security.

For the people of Dadaab the outlook is bleak. Just across the border Ethiopian troops are on Somali soil - inflaming what is already a volatile situation.

Although Ethiopia has denied having troops in Somalia, and its rival Eritrea has denied arming the Islamic courts, everyone here knows there is a risk this could spiral into a major regional crisis.

Somalia is my homeland and I want my country to get peace Hussein

So the agencies that run this camp are expecting fresh arrivals.

Fatuma Mohamed from the World Food Programme explains refugees are arriving at a rate of between 2,000 and 3,000 each month.

"We expect the numbers of new refugees to reach 30,000 by the end of the year," she says.

Mystique

Under Kenyan law the refugees can't work, or even try to farm the arid land around them, so they rely on food handouts.

There are enough rations to last until around this time next year. Aid workers wonder what happens after that.

But for those who have spent much of their childhood living in a refugee camp, their homeland offers mystique and promise.

Hussein, 19, has been in Dadaab since he was seven years old. He hopes one day to return to Somali and have a stake in his country's future.

He disapproves of the tens of thousands who harbour hopes of getting asylum in Europe and the US.

"I'm not interested in that - Somalia is my homeland and I want my country to get peace," he says as he stands in the queue for food.

"It has been said before he who leaves his country is a slave for another. I want to go back to my country."

With little prospect that these people will return home soon, Dadaab has become a Somali community.

It has its fair share of wise old women, amateur politicians, jokers and wheeler dealers.

It is also a place with many children, many of them born here, and some who have seen their parents die either here or in Somalia.

It leaves one wondering whether this city of rags will still be home in 10 years' time.