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Some of the World Food Program supplies went to the black market, some to feed livestock. One warehouse full of rations was looted in its entirety by a Somali government official. And across the city, feeding sites handed out far less food than records indicate they should have.

The British government estimates between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in Somalia’s famine, and the U.N. has requested $1.5 billion for Somalia this year, partly to prevent a return of famine.

The World Food Program provides much of Somalia’s food aid, and the U.N. says donations of food and cash saved half a million lives in the second half of last year. In the chaos of a civil war, with the aid effort’s own personnel at mortal risk merely for being associated with the West, orderly, corruption-free food distribution could never be guaranteed.

But AP’s three-month investigation into sites providing hot meals to families in government-controlled Mogadishu reveals various shortcomings, some of which WFP says it is already addressing by changing procedures.

A critical problem was keeping track of supplies: WFP knew how much food was being shipped to the capital, but not how much was being cooked or how many people were showing up to eat it.

Barey Muse, a mother of three, illustrated the frustrations. “My children are hungry but when I go here for food I must return empty-handed,” she said last month, holding two large bowls outside a feeding site called Hodan.

The WFP had to design a flexible program so that families could use the nearest hot-meal center as they moved between neighborhoods to avoid fighting. The price of flexibility was less control over theft, officials acknowledge.

The AP, along with a network of seven Somali observers who for their safety cannot identified, conducted more than 60 visits to 13 of the 21 sites where hot meals are prepared. From those visits, interviews with aid recipients and internal reports, it emerges that:

- Somali aid groups would cook and distribute at least 30 percent more food when expecting visits by journalists or WFP officials.

- Some food was trucked directly from an aid agency warehouse to the market to be sold for profit.

- WFP’s independent monitors repeatedly sounded the alarm, saying relatives of Somali aid workers would receive large handouts while others went without. One of their reports spoke of supplies being fed to livestock.

- A Somali government official stole 74 metric tons of food, according to an internal WFP report obtained by AP.

Stefano Porretti, head of WFP’s Somalia program, said feeding programs in Mogadishu were expanded rapidly in emergency conditions, and from October to January, WFP did not have independent monitoring was suspended.

“Changes to it (WFP procedures) are now being made,” he said.

He said AP’s research was done in that time frame, and that after AP’s findings were shown to WFP, the U.N. body’s new third-party monitor watched the sites closely for a week.

“The amount of food delivered is what is expected, and it is being cooked,” Porretti said. “There is no diversion at the sites.”

Somalia is perhaps the most dangerous country in the world for aid workers, who face kidnappings, suicide bombings and assassination. The hot meals program amounts to 8 percent of WFP operations in Somalia, and 17 of its staffers and partners, all Somalis, have been killed since 2008. Two were shot dead in December when they stumbled upon a “ghost camp” which was said to have been set up to fool aid agencies into delivering food there.

Islamist insurgents from the group al-Shabab still held part of Mogadishu last July, when the U.N. announced that parts of Somalia were suffering from famine. The hunger crisis was blamed on a combination of drought, warfare and a refusal by the insurgents to grant some aid groups access to areas it controls.

By September, the U.N. said more than 100 children were dying every day. WFP was already working to protect its aid from thieves, partly by delivering hot meals that were difficult to resell. But while WFP knew how much food was being given to the hot meals program, it did not track how many people were receiving it.

When foreigners visit a WFP hot-meals site, the pots are always full and the centers teem with people. Once the visitors leave, things change, as the experience at a feeding center called Hodan illustrates.

During an official visit, Sorrdo, the local aid group acting for WFP, made 20 large pots of porridge for lunch. But a Somali woman with whom the AP kept in touch said that on ordinary days only nine to 13 pot loads were made. WFP said the Hodan site was feeding 7,000 people a day. But when the AP made an unannounced visit last month, a flustered supervisor said only 3,000 were being fed.

Another Somali woman, Halimo Mukhtar, said she sometimes saw supervisors at Hodan selling cart loads of supplies to traders to feed to livestock.

“Why do they say they give us food every day?” asked the mother of six, whose youngest child was strapped to her back. She had received nothing, she said, and her children would be hungry that night unless she went begging.

“The food we share between six people is not even enough for two,” she said. “They sell our food to people to feed animals.”

Another site, Wadajir, sits less than 200 yards (meters) from the airport base where WFP’s international staff stay, and bustles with hundreds of people during official WFP visits. But when the AP visited the site run by Jumbo Peace and Development Organization last month, it was nearly deserted. Somali aid workers there appeared caught off guard. Two workers contradicted each other about how many people were being fed there, claimed a metal pot that could only hold about one bag of food held three bags, and that people usually came at 5 p.m. to be fed.

The site had closed at 1:30 p.m. on the previous day.

An AP translator overheard a worker named Sharif on a frantic phone call to his superior.

“Have they taken pictures?” the manager asked.

“No, no, we stopped them,” said the worker, glancing over nervously as a journalist snapped photos of the almost empty site.

Keep the journalists outside and stop them from taking photos, the manager yelled; he was coming right over.

At another site an observer who tried to take pictures for the AP was immediately ejected, and staff insisted he delete the images. At some sites, an observer reported, cooked food was sold to livestock traders, sometimes directly by staff, and other times by recipients.

Many of the AP witness observations are corroborated in reports by Pbi2, the company that previously carried out independent monitoring for WFP.

A July report obtained by the AP said that at several sites run by Saacid, a Somali aid agency, “you will see good-looking beneficiaries … who give the food to their animals and they are the ones who get served first and they are relatives of management.”

“They load donkey carts of cooked food each day because they receive extra ratios and even sometimes they come back several times while they know that others don’t get their ratio,” the report said.

Tony Burns, Saacid director of operations, said it was “impossible” for cart loads of food to be carried off, though he acknowledged a small amount may have been used as animal feed. He said that once food was given away no one could control what became of it and that the problem has “never risen to serious levels.”

Saacid is the biggest Somali aid agency in the capital. Until this month, it ran 16 out of 21 of WFP’s hot meal centers for families in partnership with the Danish Refugee Council. Saacid says it left the program because it was “inefficient.”

One Pbi2 report alleges that Saacid brought extra people from another center to bump up the numbers when a WFP delegation visited the Howl-Wadaag center in July. Burns denied such an event ever happened. In Bondere, also run by Saacid, some people got 10 times their ration and others got nothing, the report said. Burns said some favoritism takes place in the lines and the group cannot curb it.

Saacid says that due to complex clan politics, visitors cannot visit sites unannounced. The AP, each time it tried a surprise visit, was quickly told to leave, and staff declined to give any information.

Pbi2′s contract was not renewed in early October for reasons that neither it nor WFP would disclose. The company declined an interview.

Following an August AP report about aid theft, when a journalist photographed convoys of trucks unloading food aid at the market, WFP assigned two investigators to look at the issue of food diversion. They have not yet issued a report.

The Somali government fired and jailed two district commissioners, one of whom was accused of looting the 74 tons of food from the warehouse. Both were later pardoned and freed.

Some critics of the overall aid effort go so far as to claim that it does more harm than good, because the influx of food and the associated looting feed Somalia’s black-market war economy. The powerful in Somali society have little incentive to stop the suffering that brings in the aid – or to stop the violence that prevents it being monitored, said Linda Polman, author of “War Games,” one of a growing number of books critical of aid dispensation in combat zones.

“The solutions are not easy,” said Polman. “Aid organizations have a problem. It is difficult for them to be honest (about theft) because they will be punished. Donations will go down and donor governments will be angry. So it stays a well-kept secret,” she said. “To change this you would have to change the whole aid system.”

Poretti said that WFP did its best to keep donors updated about the risks of working in Somalia.

“Donor governments are updated regularly on the challenges we face working in complex and insecure places like Somalia,” he said “They are aware that WFP has to weigh these risks carefully against the danger that lives may be lost if we stop providing life-saving food assistance to vulnerable women and children in places like Mogadishu.”

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Abdi is a teacher in southern Somalia, a region that has been dominated by militia violence for years.

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“Students here are not so much interested in learning because they can see a lot of people carrying guns,” said the 22-year-old English teacher. “Small guys like them are carrying guns, when they go from (school) to their houses … they pretend to be fighting using sticks like guns.

“That’s what they have in their hearts. Their intention: That they will fight when they grow older,” Abdi said.

UNICEF says an entire generation of children has grown up knowing only conflict and fighting in many parts of Somalia, and possibly thousands of children have been trained in combat.

Sikander Khan, the top official for the U.N. children’s agency in Somalia, says there is an increased need to invest more in Somalia’s youth and children to give long-term peace a chance to prevail.

“We need to make sure that this generation receives quality basic education, access to social services and protection from violence and abuse,” he said. “This will stop them being sucked into the continuing violence and they will then be able to make a positive and lasting contribution to the future of Somalia.”

Many children in Somalia have little or no education. Only about a third of children of primary-school age are enrolled in school, according to UNICEF.

Children in Somalia are frequently forced to join armed groups such as the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab. Schools have also come under attack.

“It is estimated that thousands of children have been trained in the use of arms and other skills related to combat. Reports from our partners indicate that in recent months there has been an increase in the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict by warring partners,” Khan said.

Mohamed Deq Nur, a 14-year-old student in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, said he remembers 2006 because he went a month without hearing a gunshot. That year a group called the Islamic Courts Union brought some semblance of order when they took control of Somalia and tried to enforce their strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Mohamed says he has seen dead bodies on the street – most recently, he said, when a man was shot because he refused to give a thief his watch. Mohamed said he doesn’t know how to use a gun but thinks it would be good to learn for self protection.

Last year, he said, he and many of his friends begged their parents to get them out of Mogadishu.

But he said he thinks things are now getting better. Regional troops are pushing al-Shabab on three sides, giving the government a chance to try to restore order.

“I don’t think Somalia had any future before, but this year is different,” he said. “Squatters are being evicted from school buildings which means there will be enough space for learning and there is already free education in some schools and the fighting stopped in Mogadishu.”

Somalia has been in conflict since the 1991, when long-term dictator Siad Barre was overthrown by warlords who then turned on each other. Al-Shabab has had a grip on much of south-central Somalia for the last several years, but now faces hostile militaries on three sides. Al-Shabab was pushed out of the capital last year.

Khan says the violence has deprived children of their childhood. Because of the conflict, many are also at risk of disease and malnutrition, among other safety risks, because of the lack of an effective central government.

Somalia had one of the worst child mortality rates in the world. One out of every six children die before their 5th birthday, he said.

For Abdi, the teacher, who attended high school in neighboring Kenya, 100 more students have enrolled in his school since al-Shabab insurgents were kicked out of town last year by Somali government forces.

The trend of increased enrollments seems to be the same throughout Somalia, increasing from some 285,000 in 2003-2004 to more than 760,000 in the 2011-2012 school year, according to Sikander.

In Dhobley, Somali government forces who are now backed by Kenyan troops have brought relative peace and stability to the town, Abdi said.

Before that, many residents had moved away because of al-Shabab’s brutal rule. He admits in the current situation, even he is looking for opportunities to leave.

“I cannot move because my family is here and I don’t know anywhere else to go,” he said.

the-battle-is-not-yours-Elev8]

AU soldiers used heavy weaponry, including anti-aircraft guns and tanks, to drive the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militia out of the village of Maslah during a battle that lasted several hours, they said.

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“The fighting has stopped now, but al-Shabab fighters were forced out of here,” resident Hussein Muhudin said by phone.

Somali troops are now searching homes in the area, he said.

Maslah was the last place insurgents could move freely within the capital. They used it to store weapons, train and carry out executions, and as a staging ground to carry out attacks on military bases in Mogadishu.

Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda said Mogadishu is now under full AU and Somali control. The AU force commander said that it would help civilians return home.

“This operation is necessary to consolidate the security of Mogadishu. It will make it possible for the civilians to return to their homes and resume their normal lives,” said Maj. Gen. Fred Mugisha. “I urge every peace loving Somali to give maximum cooperation towards this cause for peace.”

Al-Shabab claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on the attacking force.

“They launched a counterattack on our … forces but we inflicted heavy causalities on them,” the militia said in a short statement.

A small number of residents who remained in their homes during the fighting said they fled after fighting subsided.

“We are running away to Balad now, it’s a dangerous situation (here),” said resident Mahad Sheik. Balad is an agricultural town north of Mogadishu.

Mogadishu has long been a battleground during Somalia’s 21-year-old civil war. But al-Shabab withdrew from most of its bases in August and recent pushes by the AU and Somali troops have helped bring partial security to more of the city.

Insurgents in disguise can still move freely and assassinations, suicide attacks and bombings are still very frequent. But the insurgency no longer holds set positions and it cannot operate checkpoints.

Somalia has been without functioning government since 1991.

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50 Cent joins other celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, U2′s Bono and fellow rapper Jay-Z in making visits to impoverished areas of Africa, highlighting the problems there. He has pledged to use his energy drink, Street Kings, to help feed starving children in Africa. Due to the explicit lyrics of his music, the United Nations originally didn’t want to take his money.

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SEAL Team Six parachuted into Somalia under cover of darkness Wednesday and rescued an American woman and a Danish man from an outdoor camp where they were being held by Somali pirates, the official said.

The same team executed the mission last May in which al-Qaida leader bin Laden was killed.

The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the top secret operation.

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The aid group said Friday that the exact circumstances of the gunfire a day earlier is not immediately clear. However, a security guard, Ahmed Ali, said Thursday that a disgruntled former employee of Doctors Without Borders, a Somali dismissed the day before, had returned and opened fire.

The aid group identified the victims as Philippe Havet, 53, of Belgium, and Andrias Karel Keiluhu, 44, an Indonesian doctor best known as Kace.

In its statement, Doctors Without Borders said one victim died on the spot and the second at a hospital after surgery.

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The is one of several stories highlighted Wednesday in an annual New York fundraising event held by the aid group International Rescue Committee, which helped nurse Minhaj back to health.

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Famine has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Somali children this year, but the U.N. said despite restrictions by Islamist insurgents, heavy rains and fighting, aid agencies are expanding their reach. Food aid is now getting to 2.2 million of the 4 million Somalis who need it, the U.N. said.

“His mother never thought he would recover. Every member of his family is happy,” said Sirat Amin, a nurse-nutritionist with the International Rescue Committee who has been monitoring Minhaj’s progress. “He can sit without being supported, he can have (nutritional supplement) Plumpynut on his own. He’s crawling.”

In July, the month that the U.N. declared parts of Somalia famine zones, Minhaj was one of dozens of limp babies lying under mosquito net shrouds in the sweltering wards of the IRC hospital in Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp. Seven-month-old Minhaj weighed only 3.2 kilograms (7.05 pounds), less than some newborns.

Pictures of his gaunt cheeks and bulging eyes made him the face of the famine. But after weeks of intensive feeding with Plumpynut — a kind of sweetened peanut butter packed with nutrients — he is nearly 8 kilograms (17.64 pounds), almost normal for a boy his age.

Since the beginning of the year, hundreds of thousands of Somali families have poured over the border, fleeing war and hunger. Domes made from dirty tarpaulins and scraps of cloth mushroomed on the scrublands of northern Kenya and the U.N.’s famine announcement brought planeloads of television crews to capture images of their suffering.

Now the torrent of refugees fleeing into Kenya has slowed to a trickle and the camera crews have gone home. But that doesn’t mean the emergency is over.

Nearly 2 million Somalis still don’t have access to food aid. Rain has turned tracks through the bush to slush and there’s been fighting along the border after hundreds of Kenyan soldiers crossed into Somalia. Last month’s incursion followed a string of kidnappings on Kenyan soil by Somali gunmen.

Families wanting to flee may fear being caught up in the fighting or be stuck in the mud. Only the strongest are getting through. When they arrive, they are not only starving but sick and exhausted, Amin said. So although less are coming, when they arrive in the refugee camps in Kenya many are in a more severe state of starvation.

The ward where Amin works has been expanded by two tents, but even so, 78 children are sharing 56 beds. That’s about twice as many as when Minhaj was admitted. Some children are in even worse condition than he was.

Many of the new arrivals come in with diarrhea, cases of cholera, or secondary infections. Amin and other aid agencies say that deaths from illness are likely to rocket as weakened immune systems contend with the cold rains and diseases spread by puddles of dirty water.

The U.N. Children’s Fund said around 168,0000 acutely malnourished children under the age of 5 could die within weeks. They are concerned about infectious diseases like measles, cholera and malaria, particularly in the dirty and overcrowded camps in the capital of Mogadishu.

“The famine is not over … Children are dying on a daily basis,” said Hannan Sulieman, UNICEF’s deputy representative for the Somalia mission. “Malnutrition has been way above emergency levels for over 10 years.”

She said that her organization was planning to maintain current levels of aid until August or September next year, when Somalia would have had a long and a short rain harvest.

The famine is the worst emergency to hit Somalia for a generation. The U.N. has appealed for $1 billion and has got $779 million so far.

But aid still doesn’t reach many of the starving. Islamist militias battling the weak U.N.-backed government have forbidden many aid agencies to operate in their territory, exacerbating the effects of a severe drought.

So even after their parents have struggled through the mud, have made it past the militias and have staggered into the hospital, it is still too late for many, said Amin.

“I’m coping with it but sometimes it’s heartbreaking. People are suffering. Sometimes they die in front of you,” he said. “Sometimes you want to help but the numbers are just so high. There are just so many.”

But seeing children like Minhaj recover gives him the strength to go on.

Fighter jets and helicopters have been flying overhead since Kenyan forces moved en masse into Somalia on Sunday. The invasion came one day after Kenyan defense officials said the country has the right to defend itself against al-Shabab militants after a string of kidnappings inside Kenya. Four Europeans have been abducted and one killed.

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Witnesses in the Somali town of Dhobley on Monday said an estimated 40 Kenyan military vehicles entered the town on Sunday. Ali Abdullahi, a resident in Dhobley, said the army vehicles were towing what he described as “big guns.”

No large-scale fighting has yet broken out, the residents said.

Late Sunday evening, a military helicopter crashed and caught fire inside Kenya from an apparent mechanical malfunction, a diplomat and a resident said. No civilian casualties were reported but the status of the pilots on board was not immediately known.

Kenya’s government spokesman, Alfred Mutua, said Kenyan troops “are pursuing al-Shabab across the border.” He did not give any other details.

In response, al-Shabab, Somalia’s most dangerous militant group, tried to raise the alarm in areas it controls. Residents in the town of Qoqani who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals said militants were going into homes and forcibly recruiting new fighters.

“Are you ready to live under Christians?” one al-Shabab official shouted on a militant radio station. “Get out of your homes and defend your dignity and religion. Today is the day to defend against the enemy.”

A Somali government spokesman, Abdirahman Omar Osman, said his government welcomes logistical support from “our Kenyan brothers,” but said Somalia did not need Kenyan troops.

“Our forces are ready to combat al-Shabab and they are doing so effectively. They are ready at the borders, so sending troops is not needed,” Osman said.

The helicopter crashed in Liboi, a town about 10 miles (20 kilometers) from the Kenya-Somalia border. The Liboi resident asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. The diplomat’s employer does not allow him to be identified.

Mutua and Kenya’s military spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kenyan troops have frequently crossed the border into Somalia, but Sunday’s push appears to be a bigger and more concerted effort. Minister of Internal Security George Saitoti told a news conference on Saturday that Kenyan forces would pursue al-Shabab into Somalia.

“For the first time our country is threatened with the most serious level of terrorism,” he said.

The public declaration to attack al-Shabab came two days after armed militants kidnapped two Spanish aid workers with the group Doctors Without Borders from the Dadaab refugee camp, a sprawling expanse of temporary homes where almost 500,000 Somalis live. The population of Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, has swelled by tens of thousands in recent months because of Somalia’s famine.

On Oct. 1, Somali gunmen took a wheelchair-bound Frenchwoman from her home near the resort town of Lamu. Somalis also abducted a British woman from a Kenyan coastal resort in September. Her husband was killed in the attack.

Kenya’s push north into Somalia will open another front that Somali militants must contend with. African Union forces from Uganda and Burundi have expanded their control of Mogadishu in recent months and have almost completely forced al-Shabab out of the capital.

The rapper, who left Somalia as a child more than two decades ago to settle in Canada, made a brief visit to Mogadishu on Sunday. He was mobbed by famine refugees who tried to shake his hand or hug him as he toured Mogadishu’s Banadir Hospital and met with malnourished children.

“I came to Somalia to see the situation here and give any donation I have to the people and anything else available,” he said, speaking in Somali. “I will do all I can to help my people in Somalia.”

He did not perform his hit song “Wavin’ Flag,” which tells of the difficulties he faced growing up in the lawless, impoverished Horn of Africa nation. A version of that song was used for a Coca-Cola Co. campaign when South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup.

The United Nations says more than 3.2 million Somalis need food aid. The U.S. says 29,000 Somali children under age 5 have died.

The U.N. says tens of thousands of people already have died in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti and has warned that the famine hasn’t peaked. More than 12 million people in the region need food aid, according to the U.N. Somalia has been hit hardest because of a confluence of conflict and climate change.

Decades of violence in Somalia has left population vulnerable to the vagaries of weather changes. Islamist insurgents are also attempting to overthrow Somalia’s weak U.N.-backed government. The most dangerous among the groups is the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militant group, which has barred aid agencies from operating in the territories it controls in southern Somalia.

The southern parts of Somalia, which are mainly under the control of al-Shabab extremists, have been worst affected because of the group’s refusal to allow in key humanitarian groups including the World Food Program, the world’s major aid provider.

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Witnesses accused government soldiers of starting the chaos by trying to steal some of the 290 tons of dry rations as the aid workers tried to hand them out in the biggest camp in Mogadishu for famine refugees. Then refugees joined in the scramble, prompting some soldiers to open fire, the witnesses said.

“It was carnage. They ruthlessly shot everyone,” said Abdi Awale Nor, who has been living at the camp. “Even dead bodies were left on the ground and other wounded bled to death.”

David Orr, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said the food distribution started smoothly at around 6 a.m. but degenerated a couple hours later.

“We got reports of trouble, looting. The trucks were overwhelmed by a mob of people. There were reports of some shots fired,” said Orr, who said he could not confirm any death tolls. He said he didn’t know specifically what type of food was being handed out by the WFP, a U.N. agency.

Another refugee, Muse Sheik Ali, said soldiers first tried to steal some of the food aid, and that other refugees began to take the food.

“Then soldiers opened fire at them, and seven people, including elderly people, were killed on the spot. Then soldiers took the food and people fled from the camp,” he said.

Thousands of Somali’s have flooded into Mogadishu from the drought-stricken south, walking much or all the way and seeing weakened loved ones perish from starvation or complications from malnutrition. The drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 in the last 90 days in southern Somalia alone, according to U.S. estimates.

Somalia Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali visited the camp after the violence and said he was “deeply sorry.” Ali said an investigation would be opened and promised harsh punishment for anyone found guilty.

The already mostly lawless capital has been made even more chaotic with the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing drought in the south, the famine’s epicenter. International groups face huge challenges in distributing food inside Somalia. The worst-hit part of the country is a no-go area for most aid groups because it is controlled by al-Qaida-linked insurgents, who deny there is a famine and who have allowed only the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter.

More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of immediate food aid. The U.N. says 640,000 children are acutely malnourished in Somalia, where the U.N. has declared five famine zones, including the refugee camps of Mogadishu.

Witnesses said two World Food Program trucks were delivering aid when the chaos broke out. WFP often tries to do what it calls “wet feedings,” in Somalia – giving out already made food like porridge – to limit the chances that it will be looted. But in this case it was dry rations, Orr said.

Somali soldiers control just part of the capital and are poorly trained.

“They fired on us as if we were their enemy,” said famine refugee Abidyo Geddi. “When people started to take the food then the gunfire started and everyone was being shot. We cannot stay here much longer. We don’t get much food and the rare food they bring causes death and torture.”

Private militias – most of them politically connected – are competing to guard or steal food. At least four competing militias have the run of government-controlled areas of Mogadishu.

The gunmen roar around in pickup trucks and wage battle over the wages they hope to be paid to either guard the aid or for the cash it will bring when it is stolen and sold. The insecurity amid famine echoes the situation in 1992 that prompted deployment of a U.S.-led multinational force to safeguard the delivery of food to Somalia’s starving.

That international intervention collapsed in 1993 after two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and 18 servicemen were killed in the crashes and subsequent rescue attempt in the streets of Mogadishu.

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The United Nations has said previously that tens of thousands of people have died in the drought, the worst in Somalia in 60 years. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, a statistic that suggests the death toll of small children will rise.

Nancy Lindborg, an official with the U.S. government aid arm, told a congressional committee in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. estimates that more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia. That number is based on nutrition and mortality surveys verified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.N. on Wednesday declared three new regions in Somalia famine zones, bringing the total number to five. Out of a population of roughly 7.5 million, the U.N. says 3.2 million Somalis are in need of immediate lifesaving assistance.

Getting aid to Somalia has been made more difficult because al-Qaida-linked militants control much of the country’s most desperate areas. Al-Shabab has denied that a famine is taking place, and won’t give access to the World Food Program, the world’s biggest provider of food aid.

Tens of thousands of refugees have fled south-central Somalia in hopes of finding food at camps in Ethiopia, Kenya and in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated to fight the hunger crisis, but the U.N. says it needs hundreds of millions more.

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At least six people died and 39 people were wounded, including 19 AU peacekeepers.

A medical official at Mogadishu airport said the AU peacekeepers were to be evacuated to Nairobi, the capital city of neighboring Kenya, to be treated of injuries they sustained in the fighting. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the press.

The al-Shabab militants already have killed men who tried to escape the famine with their families, saying it is better to starve than accept help from the West. The World Food Program says it cannot reach 2.2 million people in need of aid in the militant-controlled areas in southern Somalia because of insecurity.

Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the AU peacekeeping force in Somalia, said that AU forces had conducted a “short tactical offensive operation” Thursday in Mogadishu.

“This action will further increase security … and ensure that aid agencies can continue to operate to get vital supplies to internally displaced,” Ankunda said in a statement.

“We are concerned about the extremists’ reckless attacks given the humanitarian activities being carried out presently,” he said.

Ankunda said al-Shabab’s decision last week to rescind permission allowing aid groups to operate in the areas the militants control already has denied hundreds of thousands of Somalis access to food aid.

He said the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, will keep humanitarian organizations informed of their future operations to limit the impact on the relief efforts.

“AMISOM fully understands the need to restrain military operations while the aid agencies mount their humanitarian campaign. However, we are here to maintain stability in Mogadishu, and if we perceive a threat from the extremist insurgents, then it is our duty to protect and defend the most vulnerable from this threat,” he said.

The devastating famine in the Horn of Africa threatens al-Shabab’s hold on areas under its control, with the militants fearing that the disaster will drive away the people they tax and conscript into military service.

In the past, the militants have blocked aid workers from helping those in need in Somalia, fearing that foreign assistance would undermine their control.

A World Food Program plane with 10 tons of peanut-butter paste landed Wednesday in Mogadishu, the first of several planned airlifts in coming weeks.

That will help, but Lt. Col. Kuamurari Katwekyeire, the civil-military coordination chief for AMISOM, said the U.N. and other aid groups need to do more.

In a statement Thursday, the WFP said that it has a funding shortfall of $252 million for the famine relief efforts in the Horn of Africa. The agency said it was encouraged by the response of some donor countries that have pledged $250 million to help.

The drought has created a triangle of hunger where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet. The U.N. believes tens of thousands already have died in Somalia in areas held by al-Qaida-linked Islamist rebels.

WFP estimates more than 11.3 million people need aid across drought-hit regions in East Africa. The majority of those affected live in pastoral communities whose herds have been wiped out because of a lack of water.

But the famine has particularly ravaged Somalia because many aid groups were banned from militant-controlled areas in the south two years ago.

Somalia has been mired in conflict since 1991 when long time dictator Siad Barre was overthrown by warlords who then turned on each other. Islamist militants led by al-Shabab are attempting to overthrow the weak U.N.-backed government that is being propped up by about 9,000 AU peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi.

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Exhausted, rail-thin women are stumbling into refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia with dead babies and bleeding feet, having left weaker family members behind along the way.

“Somalia is facing its worst food security crisis in the last 20 years,” said Mark Bowden, the U.N.’s top official in charge of humanitarian aid in Somalia. “This desperate situation requires urgent action to save lives … it’s likely that conditions will deteriorate further in six months.”

The crisis is the worst since 1991-92, when hundreds of thousands of Somalis starved to death, Bowden said. That famine prompted intervention by an international peacekeeping force, but it eventually pulled out after two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down in 1993.

Since then, Western nations have mainly sought to contain the threat of terrorism from Somalia — an anarchic nation where the weak government battles Islamic militants on land and pirates hijack ships for millions of dollars at sea.

Oxfam said $1 billion is needed for famine relief. On Wednesday, the U.S. announced an additional $28 million in emergency funding on top of the $431 million in assistance already given this year.

Most importantly, those new U.S. funds won’t be placed under restrictions implemented in 2009 that are designed to keep food and money from being stolen by Islamic militants.

Aid groups have called for the restrictions to be lifted entirely and say the rules have severely limited their operations. U.S. humanitarian contributions in Somalia fell from $237 million in 2008 to $29 million last year.

“We’ve seen a very large shortfall over the past few years given the political restrictions attached to humanitarian funding,” said Tanja Schumer of the Somalia NGO Consortium, which represents 78 aid agencies working on Somalia. “To get American money we have to vouch for all our contractors and all our local partners and that is tricky.”

Somalia is the most dangerous country in the world to work in, according to the U.N.’s World Food Program, which has lost 14 relief workers in the past few years. Kidnappings, killings and attacks on aid convoys occur frequently. Two years ago WFP pulled out of Islamist-controlled southern Somalia after the rebels demanded cash payments and other concessions.

U.S. military operations against terrorism suspects also have disrupted humanitarian operations, said Bowden. Insurgents vowed to target foreign aid workers after a U.S. missile strike killed the head of the Islamist al-Shabab militia and 24 other people in 2008. Aden Hashi Ayro was reputedly al-Qaida’s commander in Somalia and linked to a string of attacks on foreign aid workers and journalists.

But WFP head Josette Sheeran said the agency is willing to return to southern Somalia if the insurgents guarantee safe passage and free access to aid. Two regions of Somalia — Bakool and Lower Shabelle — are suffering from famine and eight more are at risk.

“We are absolutely fully committed to going where the hungry are,” she said.

The Horn of Africa is suffering a devastating drought compounded by war, neglect, poor land policies and spiraling prices. Some areas in the region have not had such a low rainfall in 60 years, aid group Oxfam said. Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti have all been badly affected, and Eritrea is also believed to be suffering, although its repressive government does not release figures.

Yet only Somalia is technically suffering from famine, defined as when two adults or four children per 10,000 people die of hunger each day and a third of children are acutely malnourished.

In some areas of Somalia, six people are dying a day and more than half of children are acutely malnourished, Bowden said. Prices of staple foods have increased 270 percent over the last year, compounding the misery.

Somalia’s civil war is partly to blame, said Joakim Gundel, who heads Katuni Consult, a Nairobi-based company often asked to evaluate international aid efforts in Somalia.

He said aid groups found fundraising easier if they blamed natural disaster rather admitting the emergency was partly caused by a complex, 20-year civil war worsened by international apathy and incompetence.

“There is no clear cut answer,” he said. “People are suffering and there is a need to respond. But drought is not the only cause. Conflict is a key reason and it is not being addressed properly.”

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Doctors say the 25-year-old’s brother and sister were killed in front of him, and that he was abducted and tortured by gunmen. Soon after, Qasim began wandering the streets naked, lashing out at passers-by.

In this Horn of Africa nation that has been mired in anarchy and war for two decades, nearly all families have been touched by tragedy. The World Health Organization estimates that one in three Somalis have suffered from some kind of mental illness, a rate that is among the highest in the world.

Gunfire crackles every few seconds in Mogadishu at night, and mortars scream out of the sky.

“We believe every bullet or mortar will cause more people to become mentally ill,” said Dr. Abdirahman Ali Awale, a Somali psychiatrist.

Somalia’s civil war also has simultaneously destroyed health care infrastructure to treat the traumatized. A World Health Organization report found that the country has only three psychiatrists and no psychologists working at its five main mental health facilities.

As a result, some Somalis have been chained up in mental wards for as long as eight years, according to the WHO. At one mental health facility, almost 50 percent of patients were chained. At other clinics, doctors recite the Quran to patients, hoping it will improve their condition.

This year, WHO began giving medicine and other supplies to the Habeb mental hospital, the only facility that treats patients without detaining them.

“Our treatment is chain-free. We never restrain them,” said Dr. Abdirahman Habeb. He says the facility has treated more than 9,000 psychiatric patients using a combination of medicine and counseling. Still, the majority of mentally ill people in Somalia face much grimmer prospects.

The Somali government, which is consumed by political infighting and battling an al-Qaida-linked insurgency, is unable to even assert control over all of Mogadishu much less help its traumatized population. It relies on 9,000 African Union peacekeepers to retain control of half the country’s capital.

Dr. Rizwan Hamayun, who helped write a WHO study earlier this year examining mental health in Somalia, said the chaos has resulted in a loss of jobs, family, homes and property which in turns can contribute to mental illness. His latest new patient was a shepherd who attempted suicide after losing all his animals not to war but to a natural calamity – an ongoing drought.

While poverty and fear are the main triggers for mental illness, some also have been intimidated by continuous threats made by insurgents over mobile phones. Insurgents call and threaten people they suspect of collaborating with the government. As punishment for alleged crimes, insurgents saw off captives’ hands and feet in public squares and stone people to death.

The insurgents accused Ibrahim Nuraddin of selling phone credit, bread, and other small items to Somali soldiers. The elderly former shopkeeper had a mental breakdown after receiving frequent death threats, relative Ibrahim Farabadn said.

Nuraddin had already spent one year imprisoned in his family’s house or tied to a tree. Finally, relatives sought treatment after hearing that a Mogadishu clinic was taking patients. Three hefty men dragged Nuraddin into the clinic but he struggled to escape. They quickly chained him up.

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Meanwhile, the remains of the four were taken aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, as were 15 suspected pirates now facing charges in the deaths.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that the killings were “deplorable” and that they underscored the need for international cooperation on fighting the scourge of piracy in waters off the Horn of Africa.

It was the first time U.S. citizens have been killed in a wave of pirate attacks that have plagued the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean in recent years.

Clinton expressed her sympathies for the families of the victims killed aboard the pirated yacht Quest – Jean and Scott Adam, of Marina del Rey near Los Angeles, and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, of Seattle, Washington.

The Adamses lived aboard the Quest and had been sailing around the world since December 2004 distributing Bibles. The yacht was hijacked Friday several hundred miles south of Oman.

President Barack Obama was awakened to news of the deaths at 4:42 a.m. Washington time Tuesday. He had authorized the military on Saturday to use force in case of an imminent threat to the hostages, said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Marine Gen. James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement from Tampa, Fla.: “We express our deepest condolences for the innocent lives callously lost aboard the Quest.”

Clinton urged international partners to provide material, financial and logistical support to an African peacekeeping mission in Somalia, the country the pirates use as the launching point of their attacks. Reports indicated that the pirates had launched from the coastal town of Harardhere, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

U.S. naval forces were trailing the Americans’ captured yacht with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and four warships and negotiations were under way when pirates fired toward the ship with a rocket-propelled grenade, the military said. Then gunfire was heard aboard the yacht; and when special operations forces arrived on the vessel they found the Americans had been shot, the Central Command statement said.

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Islamist leader Sheik Hasan Dahir Aweys, left, shakes hand with the spokesman of the Al-Qaida inspired Al-Shabab group Sheik Ali Mohamoud Rage. (AP Photo Farah Abdi Warsameh)

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalis say Islamist insurgents have banned unrelated men and women from shaking hands, speaking or walking together.

Residents of the southern Somali town of Jowhar said Saturday that the al-Shabab insurgents threatened to whip, imprison or execute anyone found breaking the recent edicts.

Resident Hussein Ali says he will no longer greet women he knows for fear of punishment.

Student Hamdi Osman says gunmen are searching buses for improperly dressed women or women traveling alone. She says she was once beaten for wearing Somali traditional dress instead of the long, shapeless black robes favored by the fighters.

The insurgents have already banned women from working in public, leaving many families completely destitute.

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KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — An al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group suspected in twin bombings in Uganda’s capital that killed 64 people watching the World Cup final endorsed the attacks on Monday but stopped short of claiming responsibility, as Uganda’s president vowed to hunt down those responsible.

The blasts came two days after a commander with the Somali group, al-Shabab, called for militants to attack sites in Uganda and Burundi, two nations that contribute troops to the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

The attacks also raise concerns about the capabilities of al-Shabab, which the U.S. State Department has declared a terrorist organization. If confirmed that the group carried out the attacks, it would be the first time al-Shabab has struck outside Somalia.

In Mogadishu, Somalia, Sheik Yusuf Sheik Issa, an al-Shabab commander, told The Associated Press early Monday that he was happy with the attacks in Uganda but refused to confirm or deny that al-Shabab was responsible.

“Uganda is one of our enemies. Whatever makes them cry, makes us happy. May Allah’s anger be upon those who are against us,” Sheik said.

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Kampala’s police chief, Kale Kaihura, said he believed al-Shabab could be responsible.

A California-based aid group, meanwhile, said one of its American workers was among the dead. Police said Ethiopian, Indian and Congolese nationals were also among those killed and wounded, police said.

Ugandan government spokesman Fred Opolot said Monday there were indications that two suicide bombers took part in the late Sunday attacks, which left nearly 60 others wounded.

Blood and pieces of flesh littered the floor among overturned chairs at the scenes of the blasts, which went off as people watched the game between Spain and the Netherlands. The attack on the rugby club, where crowds sat outside watching a large-screen TV, left 49 dead, police said. Fifteen others were killed in the restaurant explosion.

“We were enjoying ourselves when a very noisy blast took place,” said Andrew Oketa, one of the hospitalized survivors. “I fell down and became unconscious. When I regained, I realized that I was in a hospital bed with a deep wound on my head.”

Several Americans from a Pennsylvania church group were wounded in the restaurant attack including Kris Sledge, 18, of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. He said from a hospital bed afterward that he was “just glad to be alive.”

Florence Naiga, 32, a mother of three children, said her husband had gone to watch the World Cup final at the rugby club.

“He did not come back. I learnt about the bomb blasts in the morning. When I went to police they told me he was among the dead,” she said.

Invisible Children, a San Diego, California-based aid group that helps child soldiers, identified the dead American as one of its workers, Nate Henn, who was killed on the rugby field. Henn, 25, was a native of Wilmington, Delaware.

“From traveling the United States without pay advocating for the freedom of abducted child soldiers in Joseph Kony’s war, to raising thousands of dollars to put war-affected Ugandan students in school, Nate lived a life that demanded explanation. He sacrificed his comfort to live in the humble service of God and of a better world, and his is a life to be emulated,” the group said in a statement on its website.

Kony heads the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has waged one of Africa’s longest and most brutal rebellions, in northern Uganda.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni toured the blast sites Monday and said that the terrorists behind the bombings should fight soldiers, not “people who are just enjoying themselves.”

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“We shall go for them wherever they are coming from,” Museveni said. “We will look for them and get them as we always do.”

Ugandan army spokesman Felix Kulayigye said it was too early to speculate about any military response to the attacks.

Somalia’s president condemned the blasts and described the attack as “barbaric.”

Al-Shabab, which wants to overthrow Somalia’s weak, U.N.-backed government, is known to have links with al-Qaida. Al-Shabab also counts militant veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan conflicts among its ranks.

Al-Shabab’s fighters, including two recruited from the Somali communities in the United States, have carried out multiple suicide bombings in Somalia.

Uganda’s government spokesman said the first blast occurred at the Ethiopian Village restaurant at 10:55 p.m. Two more blasts happened at the rugby field 20 minutes later, he said.

Ethiopia, which fought two wars with Somalia, is a longtime enemy of al-Shabab and other Somali militants who accuse their neighbor of meddling in Somali affairs. Ethiopia had troops in Somalia between December 2006 to January 2009 to back Somalia’s fragile government against the Islamic insurgency. Ethiopia later withdrew its troops under an intricate peace deal mediated by the United Nations.

In addition to Uganda’s troops in Mogadishu, Uganda also hosts Somali soldiers trained in U.S. and European-backed programs.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the U.S. was prepared to provide any necessary assistance to the Ugandan government.

President Barack Obama was “deeply saddened by the loss of life resulting from these deplorable and cowardly attacks,” Vietor said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined Obama in offering condolences and added, “The United States stands with Uganda. We have a long-standing, close friendship with the people and government of Uganda and will work with them to bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice.”

Officials said the Sunday attacks will not affect the African Union summit being held in Uganda from July 19-27. Many African leaders are expected to attend.

“The summit will go on. The AU and African countries have the resolve to fight terrorism with the international community,” said Ramtane Lamamra, the AU’s peace and security commissioner.

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]]> http://newsone.com/589455/somali-militants-praise-attacks-that-killed-64/feed/ 8 Somali Militants Praise Attacks That Killed 64 (thumbnail) ionenewsone Uganda Explosions http://newsone.com/570345/rare-haven-of-stability-in-somalia-seeks-independence/ http://newsone.com/570345/rare-haven-of-stability-in-somalia-seeks-independence/#comments Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:30:00 +0000 NewsOne Staff http://newsone.com/?p=570345 ]]>

From the NY Times:

BURAO, Somalia — The rallies usually start early in the morning, before the sunshine hurts.

By 8 a.m. on a recent day, thousands of people were packed into Burao’s sandy town square, with little boys climbing high into the trees to get a peek at the politicians.

“We’re going to end corruption!” one of the politicians boomed, holding several microphones at once. “We’re going to bring dignity back to the people!”

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The boys cheered wildly. Wispy militiamen punched bony fists in the air. The politicians’ messages were hardly original. But in this corner of Africa, a free and open political rally — led, no less, by opposition leaders who could actually win — is an anomaly apparently worthy of celebration.

The crowd that day helped tell a strange truth: that one of the most democratic countries in the Horn of Africa is not really a country at all. It is Somaliland, the northwestern corner of Somalia, which, since the disintegration of the Somali state in 1991, has been on a quixotic mission for recognition as its own separate nation.

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From HuffPost.com:

Gunmen believed to be from a radical Islamic group in northeast Mogadishu, Somalia, shot two people dead during an impromptu raid on a house where people were watching a World Cup match Saturday night, Reuters reports.

A witness told reporters that masked militants “stormed into the house” and open fired at the World Cup viewers, killing two instantly. The militants rounded up about 10 other fans, but left the bodies in the home, the witness said.

The incident came on the heels of a national ban on viewing “un-Islamic” World Cup games made by the local militia group al Shabaab, which controls much of south and central Somalia by force. By al Shabaab’s logic, the championship interferes with the group’s plan to overthrow the government, because Somali citizens are too preoccupied with the games to fight on their behalf.

Other militant groups have also professed their disapproval of the World Cup.

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From Press TV:

The United States is involved in preparatory military operations in Somali for a ‘major’ offensive against Somali fighters, report says.

US is providing military assistance to Somali government in order to retake capital Mogadishu from Somali fighters, a recent report in The New York Times indicates.

The American military is conducting nighttime surveillance in the Al-Shabab-controlled areas of the capital and training Somali intelligence officers and forces in addition to providing logistical supports for the government, the report adds.

All the preliminary efforts, including reconnaissance and logistic operations, are meant to help launch a major assault on what US government dubs the ‘al-Qaeda’ branch in Somalia within ‘a few’ weeks.

Text continues after gallery …

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“It’s the Americans … helping us,” the US newspaper quoted Somali military chief General Mohamed Gelle Kahiye as saying.

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From The Huffington Post

On Sunday, Islamic militants stoned a man to death for adultery in front of hundreds of local residents in Somalia. The man, named Mohamed Abukar Ibrahim, 48, was killed by members of the rebel group Hizbul Islam in Afgoye, 20 miles from the capital Mogadishu, according to the AFP. A second man, Ahmed Mohamoud Awale, 61, who was accused of murder, was shot to death. Hundreds of villagers were forced to watch the stoning by the militants, multiple reports said.

The girl with whom Ibrahim was accused of having an affair received 100 lashes; she escaped being put to death because she was not married at the time of the alleged sexual relations.

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Bullet-Scarred Young Boy Becomes Lost Face Of Somalia’s War

REPORT: Inside Mogadishu, The City The World Forgot

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NAIROBI, Kenya — The bullet hit mother and son as they walked through Somalia’s capital. She felt a sharp pain in her palm. Then she saw her 8-year-old: The bullet tore through his cheekbones, nose and mouth. Blood gushed down to his waist.

Two months later, Ahmed Mohamed Mohamoud’s nose is a small hole. His mouth is always open because he has no upper lip and his right eye is gone. He can barely speak.

His is a lost face of Somalia’s war.

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Like so many other victims of a savage war, Ahmed was caught in the crossfire between Islamist insurgents and government forces, struck as he walked home from a Mogadishu market with his mother, who says a barrage of bullets poured out from the presidential palace.

Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, there are few images of the bloodshed in Somalia, where thousands of children have been casualties without the world knowing. Most foreign journalists stay away because of the danger.

On Sept. 24, an Associated Press photographer was present after Ahmed was shot and took pictures of the boy, bleeding profusely as he was carried from the scene by two bystanders. During the weeks that followed, AP journalists kept tabs on Ahmed and his mother, who are still struggling with his grievous wounds.

“My heart bleeds whenever I recall his former face, whenever I compare the two faces,” said Safi Mohamed Shidane as she inspected her son’s scars at a hospital in neighboring Kenya, where Ahmed was flown for treatment after a Minnesota-based Somali immigrant group intervened.

“God will judge those who did this to my son,” she said.

The lack of basic medical care, much less specialized doctors, has worsened the plight of children wounded in Somalia, a country mired in chaos since the last central government was ousted in 1991 and warlords turned their guns on each other.

“Ahmed’s situation represents the crisis faced by many, many children in Somalia,” said Katherine Grant, a child protection specialist with UNICEF who has visited the boy in the hospital outside Nairobi. Her agency will soon release a report accusing all parties in Somalia’s conflict of recruiting child soldiers.

There are no reliable casualty figures for children in Somalia, according to Grant and Susannah Friedman, emergencies director for Somalia for Save the Children U.K.

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“It is one of the most dangerous situations we’ve seen for children,” said Friedman, whose agency has aid workers in southern and central Somalia, but has pulled out of Mogadishu.

Yet even in violence-plagued Somalia, where the U.N. says one child in 10 dies before his or her first birthday and only 30 percent of the population has access to clean drinking water, Ahmed’s suffering tugged at heartstrings.

Doctors at Mogadishu’s Medina Hospital did all they could: They inserted a tracheotomy tube for Ahmed to breath and a feeding tube for nourishment. Doctors stitched together the horrific wounds to his face and wrapped it in thick layers of gauze.

But medical supplies — and expertise — are scarce in Somalia. When heavy fighting hits the seaside capital, tents go up at Medina to accommodate all the casualties. Inside, bloody footprints track down long corridors echoing with screams.

Appeals went out for help for Ahmed, including on Somali Web sites.

In late October, a Somali immigrant aid group, Healing the Children of Minnesota, had the boy flown to Kenya, where there are specialists and more advanced equipment. The Nigerian physician treating him there, Dr. Igohwo Etu, said the boy will need surgeries costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to reconstruct his face.

The Rochester, Minn.-based aid group is now trying to arrange treatment for Ahmed overseas and has contacted hospitals in the U.S., Britain, Italy and Mexico, its associate director, Abia Ali, said Monday.

The group, which is funded mainly by contributions from Somali immigrants, has helped 56 Somali war victims, mostly children, obtain medical care, according to its executive director, Abdi Gaal. These included two children treated at the Mayo Clinic and one at Fairview University in Minneapolis, Ali said.

Despite his uncertain future, Ahmed is a cheerful little boy who likes to play with a toy helicopter and spends time reading the Quran while lying in his hospital bed, his left eye twinkling as he scans the pages.

At the urging of his mother, he uttered a few words during a recent AP interview: “hooyo” — or “mother” in Somali — and his name.

But at other times the boy’s spirits sink.

His mother consoled him and wiped away tears that streamed from the swollen spot where his right eye once was, even as another tear dropped from his good eye and rolled into the opening where his lips and nose once were.

“With the help of God, you will recover and go back to your school,” his mother murmured, stroking her son.

Doctors had planned to remove Ahmed’s feeding tube Monday, but delayed the procedure until Nov. 30. Shidane says she was told that American or Canadian doctors might operate on Ahmed after the new year, but isn’t sure about future plans for her son.

Tens of thousands of Somalis have fled the fighting in Mogadishu, where gun battles occur daily and the Islamist insurgents hold public amputations and executions within shooting distance of the headquarters of the embattled government.

“Right now it’s very hard to be optimistic that the situation will improve, let alone that the violence will end,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “In Mogadishu the situation is one of a bloody military stalemate. Neither side can gain the upper hand and the civilians are caught in between them.”

From FastCompany.com:

Apps, apps everywhere, but just how big is Apple’s app economy anyhow? Chances are, it’s bigger than you think. According to mobile ad startup AdMob, $200 million in apps are downloaded each month, making the App Store worth about $2.4 billion per year. To place that in context, that’s slightly less than the nominal gross domestic product of Somolia, and quite a bit more than the GDP of Central African Republic.

By comparison, Android is raking in about $5 million per month for a grand total of $60 million annually. One reason for the disparity between Apple’s app proliferation and Android’s lagging numbers stems from the fact that the iPhone represents 60% of U.S. smartphone usage.

But all the “iPhone v. Android” brouhaha has overshadowed one of the main catalysts behind the App Store’s success: the iPod Touch. Android and iPhone users download an average of 10 new apps per month, whereas iPod touch owners average 18 downloads. IPod Touch owners also download twice as many free apps as Android and iPhone users, and research has shown that users of free “lite” versions of apps are more likely to pay up for the complete versions.

To read more, click here.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Somali pirates holding a hijacked ship off the coast of Somalia fired at a U.S. Navy helicopter as it made a surveillance flight over the vessel, the first such attack by pirates on an American military aircraft, the Navy said Thursday.

The helicopter, which is based on the USS Chancellorsville, was not hit and there were no injuries, the Navy said.

The copter was flying on Wednesday over a Taiwanese-flagged fishing vessel, the Win Far, which pirates seized along with its 30-member crew in April and were holding south of the Somali port town of Hobyo.

The helicopter was about 3,000 yards away from the ship when the pirates opened fire with “a large caliber weapon,” the Navy said in a statement. The helicopter did not return fire, it said.

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Since seizing the Win Far in the Gulf of Aden, the pirates have used the vessel as a base for attacking other commercial ships, including the U.S.-flagged Maersk Alabama. Four pirates seized the Maersk Alabama in April, taking its captain Richard Phillips hostage. He was held for five days in a sweltering lifeboat off the coast until U.S. Navy snipers shot three of his captors dead.

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a Bahrain-based spokesman for the Navy’s 5th Fleet told the Associated Press that Wednesday’s shooting marks the first time pirates shot at U.S. Navy helicopters conducting daily surveillance flights over areas where pirates anchor hijacked vessels and await ransom.

Christensen said four other merchant ships and 105 crewmembers are currently being held by pirates near the Win Far. They are anchored along Somalia’s coast, between port towns of Hobyo and Eyl, Christensen said in a phone interview on Thursday.

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Piracy has increased in the Gulf of Aden — a crucial shipping route in and out of the Suez Canal — and elsewhere off the coast of Somalia, fueling a more than doubling of pirate attacks in the first half of 2009, according to an international maritime watchdog.

Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, and the country’s interim government is embroiled in a struggle with Islamist extremists with suspected al-Qaida links.

MINNEAPOLIS – One young man attended secret meetings in Minneapolis. Another got a phone call, urging him to leave Minnesota and go to Somalia to fight. Terrorist training videos featuring English speakers pepper YouTube, calling others to the cause.

Details are emerging about how terrorists in Somalia have lured young American men — including as many as 20 from Minnesota — back to their homeland to join their jihad. At least three have died, including one who authorities believe is the first American suicide bomber. Three others have pleaded guilty in the U.S. to terror-related charges.

Court proceedings and interviews with community members, attorneys and terror experts indicate the Somali-based terror group, al-Shabab, uses widespread recruitment tactics including a vast Web-based network.

“Al-Shabab 10 years ago would be a two-bit, paramilitary group that no one would’ve cared about … sitting in a basement somewhere stockpiling rocket-propelled grenades and bullets for AK-47s,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist at Georgetown University. “Now, we see them reaching into the United States.”

‘Most explicit’ propaganda
Like many terror groups, al-Shabab uses Internet videos to draw disenfranchised young men into its fold. Many feature typical militant scenes: men with covered faces firing automatic weapons, marching or practicing martial arts. Some show close-up footage of dead bodies and religious documents.

But al-Shabab’s propaganda sets it apart.

“I would say they were among the most explicit, the most violent, and the most enthusiastic videos of any jihadi organization out there,” said Evan Kohlmann, a terror consultant.

The group, which the U.S. government says has ties to al-Qaida, also uniquely targets Americans and English speakers, Kohlmann said.

Some videos show English-speaking suicide bombers reciting last wills. Others showcase a man with shoulder-length brown hair who calls himself Abu Mansour the American commanding fighters and glorifying jihadists killed in Somalia.

Al-Shabab’s online propaganda proliferated in recent years after messages from Osama bin Laden appeared on jihadist forums encouraging followers to go to Somalia. The country of 7 million has not had a functioning government since 1991.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Washington was concerned al-Shabab uses foreign fighters and there was no doubt the group wants to take control of Somalia and “launch attacks against countries far and near.”

Cultural awareness
Experts say Western recruits’ passports and cultural awareness make them valuable.

“You can’t take someone from the slums of Mogadishu and take them on some suicide mission to Rome, Paris, New York,” Hoffman said. American deaths also bring more attention to al-Shabab’s cause, he said.

In Minneapolis, home to the largest population of Somali immigrants in the U.S., a federal investigation into the missing men is illuminating the recruiting.

Salah Osman Ahmed, 26, of New Brighton, told a judge last month that he attended “secret meetings” in Minneapolis starting in October 2007. There, he said, a group of “guys” talked about returning to Somalia to fight Ethiopians. At the time, the Ethiopian army, which many Somalis viewed as abusive, occupied parts of Somalia.

When Ahmed got to Somalia, his attorney said, he realized what al-Shabab really was.

Hoffman said the underground meetings fit a pattern.

“The conspiratorial air is part of this group bonding,” Hoffman said. “That kind of atmosphere makes these young men think that what they are doing is all the more important.”

Hoffman also said terror groups use a network of friends, many of whom act like persuasive salesmen, to help recruit.

One man who filled that role in Minneapolis, by one account, was Zakaria Maruf.

Stephen Smith, an attorney who represents several young Somalis questioned by authorities, said his clients describe Maruf as someone with a bravado that appealed to younger men he met on the basketball court or at mosques.

Smith said one of his 18-year-old clients got a phone call from Maruf, in Somalia, asking him to join the fight. Maruf and the teenager also exchanged e-mails and had a brief conversation in a chat room, Smith said.

Smith said the teen didn’t go but felt uncomfortable turning down someone he looked up to.

Maruf’s whereabouts aren’t known. Some family members say they believe he was killed in Somalia last month, but federal officials could not confirm that.

Facebook link?
Many young Somalis in Minneapolis say friends who left have stayed in touch through Facebook or phone calls. In those conversations, friends said, the men talked about life in Somalia being harder than expected, and of missing American food and Starbucks.

The Facebook accounts are private. While the FBI said it can’t comment on specific communications, spokesman E.K. Wilson said the agency continues to investigate “who or what motivated” the young men to go to Somalia.

In Minnesota, imams are trying to counter al-Shabab’s message by speaking out against violence and radicalism, reminding the faithful that Islam is peaceful.

Farhan Hurre, the executive director of Minneapolis’ Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, which has rejected suspicions it played a part in recruiting, said mosque leaders also are advising parents to keep their eyes open.

“If you have computers, if you have Internet, you have to know the sites that your boys are visiting and what they are listening to,” Hurre said.

Burhan Hassan was an infant when he left his homeland of Somalia. He grew up American, a bright student with dreams of becoming a doctor or lawyer. But now his family is trying to find out why the 17-year-old was killed under mysterious circumstances in Somalia.

Hassan was one of about a dozen young Somali men who have gone missing from the Minneapolis area over the last couple years — recruited, their families say, by radical elements in Somalia. Relatives said they learned Friday that he had been killed and buried in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, but they had few details.

His death follows a suicide bombing carried out in that warring Horn of Africa country last October by another young Somali man fromMinneapolis.

“We believe he was killed because he would have been a key person in the investigation into the recruitment (of young Somali men) here in Minneapolis,” said Hassan’s uncle, Abdirizak Bihi. Bihi said his nephew was found shot in the head in an open area of the city.

Hassan‘s mother declined to comment Monday. But Bihi, her brother, said she’s “devastated, the whole family’s devastated.”

“We had a young kid, we put all the efforts in our life to bring him here,” Bihi told The Associated Press.

FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson said he could not confirm whether Hassan had been killed. A State Department spokeswoman, Joanne Moore, had no firm information either.

The FBI has acknowledged an ongoing investigation into the disappearances, but won’t elaborate. Several local Somalis say they’ve been questioned by the FBI, Customs officials, or subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury over the last several months.

Hassan — who was raised by a single mother after his father died in an accident — was 8 months old when his family arrived at a refugee camp in Kenya. With two older brothers and a sister, he was not yet 4 when they came to the United States in 1996.

Hassan was a student at Roosevelt High School and was taking college courses such as calculus and advanced chemistry through the University of Minnesota, with dreams of attending Harvard University to study medicine or law.

“He never knew anything about Somalia. He grew up here. He was an American kid,” Bihi said. He said his nephew did not even speak the Somali language.

But last November, Hassan disappeared at the age of 17. His mother reported him missing to police. Relatives said they feared he was recruited by al-Shabab, an extremist Islamist group considered by the U.S. State Department to be a terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida. Al-Shabab denies the links.

Last October, a Minneapolis man, Shirwa Ahmed, carried out a suicide bombing as part of a series of coordinated attacks that targeted a U.N. compound, the Ethiopian consulate and the presidential palace in Hargeisa, capital of the Somaliland region. FBI Director Robert Mueller said in February that the bomber had probably been “radicalized” in the Twin Cities.

Bihi, Hassan’s uncle, has said that Hassan called home from time to time but the calls were short and cryptic. When family members asked Hassan what he was doing, the teen quickly ended the phone conversation.

Bihi said the teenager, who was in poor physical shape, had been sick — possibly with malaria — and that his family had been working to try to bring Hassan to the U.S. Embassy in Kenya. Bihi said the family suspected that Hassan was killed by members of al-Shabab.

Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, said there is a concern Hassan was killed because of plans to return to the U.S., and he noted others are still unaccounted for.

“Someone ought to be held accountable for this,” Jamal said.

Like some of the other missing young people, Hassan had also attended the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in Minneapolis. Hassan had gone to the mosque for more than 10 years and was involved in a youth group there, another uncle told a U.S. Senate committee in March.

Officials of the mosque — the largest in Minnesota — have repeatedly denied accusations by families of some of the missing men that the mosque played a role in their decision to leave. The center’s director, Omar Hurre, repeated on Monday that such allegations are “baseless.”

Hassan‘s relatives have said his disappearance came as a shock when the family discovered him missing Nov. 4, 2008.

In testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, another uncle, Osman Ahmed, said they first became suspicious when they got a message from Roosevelt High School saying Hassan had missed all his classes that day. He said the youth’s mother checked his room and found that his luggage, clothes and passport were missing.

Ahmed testified that all of the missing Somali-American youths he knew of who disappeared were not troubled kids or involved with gangs. On the contrary, he said, they embodied the hopes of their community.

“They were the doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists and leaders of the future of our strong and prosperous nation,” he said.

From TheGuardian:

Mogadishu’s best barometer of ­violence is the little blackboard on which Dr Taher Mahmoud daily records the number of patients in his hospital. For the last 20 years the tall surgeon with huge hands has been operating on the victims of the city’s civil war.

“It’s good times now,” he told me when we met a few weeks ago. “We are only getting four to six gunshot casualties a day. That’s very good.” He pointed at the blackboard covered with his neat white handwriting: it recorded that 86 patients were undergoing treatment. “During the Ethiopian war [2007-08] we had 300 in this hospital.”

Click here for more.

From PressHerald.com:

Five men have filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against PharMerica, one of the nation’s largest pharmacy services corporations.

Four of the plaintiffs are originally from Somalia, and the other is from Ethiopia. According to the suit filed Wednesday at U.S. District Court, the men were hired in early 2007 as pharmacy technicians at PharMerica’s facility in Portland.

The men claim that over the next six months, they suffered persistent harassment and discrimination by white co-workers and supervisors, creating a segregated workplace where their rights were routinely ignored.

After reporting their concerns about the alleged hostile environment, the men claim to have been subjected to retaliation by PharMerica managers. The plaintiffs say that on July 30, 2007, they were all fired.

Click here for the full report.

For those not familiar with K’Naan, he is a rapper from Somalia based in Canada. Here is a piece he wrote for the Huffington Post on Pirates in Somalia.

Why We Don’t Condemn Our Pirates
by K’naan

Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery?

Well, in Somalia, the answer is: it’s complicated.

The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast with such
lop-sided journalism, that it’s lucky they’re not on a ship themselves. It’s true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective.

But according to so many Somalis, the disruption of Europe’s darling of a trade route, is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don’t believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.

Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And although its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, sprung from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.

After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of twenty-some-odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi, and General Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels, were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It’s as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe.

A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It’s because of this disagreement that we’ve seen one of the most decomposing wars in Somalia’s history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead.

But war is expensive and militias need food for their families, and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting. Therefore, a good clan -based Warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid’s men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and re-selling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely: the Indian Ocean.

Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard.

Read the Whole Story

Watch K’Naan Talk to Davey D. About Pirates

Part 2

A Mogadishu airport staff member says mortar shells were fired toward the airport as a plane carrying a U.S. congressman took off safely from the Somali capital.

An airport staff member reached by telephone at the control tower says the plane carrying New Jersey Democrat Donald Payne took off safely Monday. He says none of the six mortar shells fired landed in the airport. The airport staffer refused to give his full name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Payne met with Somalia’s president and prime minister during his one-day visit to Mogadishu on Monday. They discussed piracy, security and cooperation between Somalia and the United States. Payne is chairman of the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Africa.