Women Fasting in Somalia

"Landep News"

Somalia Famine

Tens of thousands of Somalis amassed in the capital of the country, Mogadishu, came under intense rain and had to suffer penetrating cold as torrential rains fell overnight on the makeshift structures on Sunday, thus compounding to the already existing problems of the people in this part of the world.

Though the lack of rain is what brought these people in the capital city in the first place, and the fact that it rains is very good news, given that it offers hope that the drought may end, right now it adds to the misery of the famine-stricken Somalis in the capital.

Even though the United Nations World Food Programme has already begun to send food to Somalia, the amounts are insufficient to solve the problem, as more than 3 million Somalis have been affected to different extents by this famine.

People complain that they left behind everything they had and lost their crops and their livestock, and that once in the capital they have received insufficient help.

UN World Food Programme decided to airlift some 3,000 tons of food and bring them to Mogadishu, in order to avoid the delays the shipment by sea would have meant and to avoid skirmishes with the Islamist Al-Shabaab, who promised to attack the convoys with food coming from the United Nations.

Soon after the convoys arrived, the al-Shabaab were chased out of the city by the governmental forces and by the African Union soldiers, who instituted a safety zone so that the Islamists may not stage any attack on the convoy, or on the people who desperately need food in the capital. Other loads with food were directed toward Kenya and Ethiopia, where hundred of thousands fled in search for something to eat.

There are some 2.2 million people in Somalia living under the rule of Al-Shabaab, and those are out of WFP’s range and cannot be helped in any way.

Furthermore, African Union intelligence reported on Saturday that the al-Qaeda-related organization is attempting to win back the territory it lost to governmental forces last week.

Women Fasting in Somalia

African Union says that the organization was supplied by sea by its friends in Yemen with ammunition they are likely to use during the Muslim month of Ramadan.

The African Union reminded that over 100,000 internally displaced people were living in Mogadishu right now, and that the al-Shabaab must be kept out of the region.

The Islamic world begins on Monday the holy month of Ramadan, a month of reflection and fasting. According to Muslim tradition, the fasting lasts until sundown, when the Muslims have extravagant dinners to break the fasting.

The people of Somalia are thought to be exempted from these nighttime celebrations, since they have been going hungry for months in a drought that installed after three years of lack of rain.

The people living in these camps are not going to be able to prepare a ritual night meal to regain their strengths. Some of the refugees declare that they have already been fasting for months unintentionally, but without breaking the fast at sundown.

During the benediction of the pilgrims in the Castle Gondolfo, south of Rome, the pope Benedict XVI urged the Christian believers not to forget the people who suffer of famine in the Horn of Africa.

The famine provoked by adverse natural causes was amplified, the pope thinks, by the war in the region and by the lack of institutions.

Approximately 12 million people had to suffer because of the drought in the Horn of Africa, in states like Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, and the relief effort is believed to take some $2.4 billion out of which $1 billion has already been received.

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