The Road to Hell (20 page)

Did they know they were being used? I asked. A young man named Ahmed Sheikh Osman spoke up. “I was told that as a refugee I would have the opportunity for further study. It was a program through UNHCR. I filled out the documents. But then I realized there wasn't any chance of that. It was the children of government officials who were getting those
scholarships; they were claiming to be refugees. How could these foreigners possibly know the difference?”

An older man, Mohamed Mohamoud Aden, joined in. “We are putting the blame in UNHCR. They didn't care who used the food and the money for the refugee children. Food was diverted and so were the funds the government was getting for the refugees. Refugee children were supposed to study but couldn't. So we wanted to go back, back to the Ogaden. We had our documents ready for repatriation [in 1988], but the civil war came. The rations grew less and less. When the fighting started, they left us holding our forms for repatriation. We hear UNHCR is supposed to help people. They just abandoned us. Now they don't think about the people they left behind in Jalalaqsi.”

Two men left the room and returned with six blue plastic ration cards on a dirty string: a big hole punched in the middle of the cards for the refugees who chose to stay in Somalia; three little holes in the middle for those who wanted to be repatriated. They regarded those three little holes as a promise, Mohamed explained, and they are still holding on to those cards in the hope that something will come of it. But those cards are from 1988, another era. They are from another humanitarian crisis ministered to by a different group of NGOs spending different funds from long-expired government contracts. Those cards mean nothing, but they are all the refugees have to hold onto now.

Ahmed Sheikh Osman said, “I would have gone back to the Ogaden in 1986 if I had been given the chance. As a student willing to pursue studies, I sent a letter to UNHCR. What happened to the letter for scholarship? They never replied. That's when I wanted to go back.”

As we were talking, the children once again gathered around and started shouting. Some of them came into the room and ignored the demands of the adults to leave.

“When a child has been a refugee, he loses his manners,” one of the men offered. “He has no loyalty to his parents. We were seated under a tree; why did we have to leave? Before, children would never come to where the elders are. We are living so close together here. If you send them somewhere, they object. They refuse.” He shook his head and then looked up at me as if to apologize.

A
bdi Ahmed Yusuf is a small, wiry man of fifty-nine with a tight gray beard, pasted unevenly across his face. He was a herder in 1974 when the first famine hit the Ogaden. His cattle died and he went to refugee camps established in the Ogaden by the government of Ethiopia. I met with him
later that afternoon in another part of Mogadishu. He and his family had found a structure that looked as if it had once been a garage. It had three walls and a corrugated iron roof that kept the sun away. Every day he went around the hellish streets of Mogadishu and somehow returned with scraps of food for his children.

We sat on a pile of rubble beside his shelter. “Once I had a good life,” he told me. “I had seven children and a wife, fifty cattle and forty goats. I was eating
ghee
and meat and drinking milk. I didn't need to ask for permission to sleep anywhere. I was not asked Where are you going? The children went to Koran schools. There was peace in the bush, and Somalis never wanted to kill one another. Water was easy.”

Then came a drought in 1974.

“My animals started dying. I didn't sleep for many nights. Hyenas would eat them. I had to run around trying to put more energy into the goats so they could escape. Sometimes I would take just their skins and sell them. I would bring a few animals into the
boma
[compound]. I saw my wife holding both hands to her face; the woman was demanding some things I could not afford. We began to ask Allah for rain.

“I would take the prayer boards with the Koran written on them and put them over my head and pray for rain. We called that the ‘cow death' year. Twenty families lost all their cows and goats. When there were only seven cows left, it was time to move to town. I put the
hori
[shelter] onto a donkey. I put children who were well onto the donkey. I had one camel for transporting water in the
haman
[intricately woven water-carrying containers]. We started trekking. I was very strong and I could carry some of the children on my back. It was the worst time in my life. On the way to the town we saw people dying. People shit their rectums out and died on the path.

“We settled in a camp near Korahey, a baked, dry place with no trees. The Ethiopian government took us there and established shelters. We were given food by the Ethiopians. The government encouraged us to learn agriculture. We were brought to a project and taught to farm. The government would take the produce and bring us money. We didn't mind because we were hungry. We started growing fat again. We got blisters on our hands until we got used to the hoes.”

Then, in 1977, Somalia invaded the Ogaden.

“We were having a good life until the bullets started coming,” Abdi said. “First the Ethiopian troops were there. Then the Somali army came with tanks. I captured three Ethiopian soldiers who were not armed and
brought them to the Somali commander. I told him that they should not be killed. The Somali commander was a good man, brave and understanding. But we were sad at the loss of so many Ethiopians.”

While we were talking, a friend of Abdi's wandered over and sat with us. His name was Aden Farah Mohamed. He was in his late fifties, and had a long beard dyed red with henna. Together they looked like two respected elders of the Ogaadeen clan, and under different circumstances they might be enjoying the fruits of their years, relaxing with other elders and presiding over the affairs of the clan. Instead, they were scavengers in the urban wasteland. He listened as Abdi told me how some of the Ogaadeen had fought alongside the advancing Somali troops. Then he added, “Many of us helped the Ethiopians. Many of the Ethiopians had to come to the Somalis for water. They wanted to flee back to Addis Ababa with their families. We helped them because they were our friends.

“Then the Somali troops came to us with trucks and sent us to Beledweyne. We were told, ‘you will get medical care, food, and water.' Some of us were taken to Jalalaqsi, down the road from Beledweyne. Others were put into camps near Beledweyne. People were given knives and pots and kettles. The food was very little but we were told that we would get farming land.”

I stopped him. “Do you mean that you were sent back to Somalia before the Ethiopian counteroffensive drove the Somali army from the Ogaden?”

“Yes,” they told me. The Ogaadeen had been sent back across the border into Somalia even as the Somali soldiers were advancing.

I had been under the impression that the first wave of Somali refugees had crossed into Somalia fleeing the Cuban-Ethiopian counteroffensive. The truth was that the Somali government intended to settle at least some Ogaadeen in Somalia from the beginning. It was ironic. Somai culture is deeply rooted in nomadic culture. Nomadic lore is venerated by people generations removed from that existence. And most Somalis say that the Ogaadeen are the keepers of the true culture.

Abdi told me how from Beledweyne they were asked to move to camps in Jalalaqsi. At first they refused, but the government took him and some of the elders to the campsite there and showed them around for four days. “We saw the river and the farming area and everything. It was good. Then they said, ‘Sign here and say it's good and you can live there.'”

Aden ended up in Qorioley. “I had no choice. I wanted a place to live in peace and we were just taken there,” he said. “I opposed the Somali government encouraging the people to come this way. ‘We promise you we are
taking you to a land where there is a big river and good pasture. Food. Shelter. Medical help.' I said No! But we were taken there in government vehicles.”

Abdi picked up their story in Jalalaqsi. “First the Somali government was bringing the ration, and then CARE came with cards and started giving rations.

“We were made crazy with food. I became rich from food. I was able to marry another woman, a second wife who I call CARE wife, and then I married another woman, a young one who has many children who are starving now.”

“How did you get rich on the refugee food?” I asked.

“We were getting too much food so we would take the food and sell it to buy soap and cloth and kerosene. Several refugees opened shops in Jalalaqsi town and started selling the food. It was cheap, so the people were buying it. And it was cheaper than in Mogadishu, so merchants from the city came to buy the food.

“I was an elder on the committee in the refugee camp. Because we were respected, we were given a bonus in food from the camp commanders. So I could sell that food and with the money I would buy the rations from others in the camps. I opened a big shop in Jalalaqsi. Wife number one and daughter took care of the business. I was buying food from the refugees at a good price and selling it in Jalalaqsi town and returning with food, fuel, and watches that I would sell back to the refugees. Soon I was bringing food to Mogadishu directly and making a lot of money. Then I married CARE wife. I was happy.

“One day I woke up and said my prayers. I was sitting on my mat when I saw a group of people coming carrying the Koran. They came into my compound.

“‘Salaam Alechem.'

“‘Alechem Salaam,' I said. We shook hands. I knew the first man. He spread mats. We were talking about the Koran and life. I told CARE wife to prepare tea, and quickly. She was eighteen years old and a beauty.

“‘What can I do for you?' I asked the men.

“‘We are here to propose that you marry the daughter of this sheikh.'

“This was the biggest honor. I had earned this. A man would not have offered his daughter if I was a bad man.

“I said, ‘Thank you. I want to be engaged now,' so it took place there and then. A goat was brought and slaughtered and we had a feast of rice and goat meat. I gave the elders a gift of an
imamad
, a cloth turban. And then I paid the bride price of 2 million shillings.”

I was astonished. That was a lot of money in 1986. But Abdi was proud. “She was the daughter of a sheikh,” he told me again. “And that is nothing compared to the camels and guns and horses that would be expected of me when I was a nomad. I would have given 100 camels.

“I had three wives and life was blessed. Later the NGOs came and advised people to farm, but there was no reason to. When the NGOs would tell us this or that, we would try to make them believe we were serious. When they would leave, we would just laugh at them.

“Anyone who was seen doing that work was seen as someone who is poor, someone with no camels and no goats. A man of that sort cannot marry a girl whose father has camels. A man of that sort cannot marry the daughter of a sheikh.

“We became richer than the Hawiye people who lived in the area, and they used to approach us for food help.

“At first we had good relations with the people. We were sharing and helping each other and doing business. Then the Siyaad Barre disaster fell on us. Around 1985, he started saying, ‘These people are Hawiye and these people are Ogaadeen.' We started getting the first ideas of what Siyaad Barre was up to.

“First there were the rumors,” he said, tugging on his ear. We'd start to hear that this person was from this clan and this person is that clan. There were people in the camps who were watching and listening. We were afraid.”

Abdi paused for a moment. We could hear the sounds of children crying in the distance. He looked around at the broken buildings. “Every problem that takes place in this world comes from top officials from the big city,” he said softly. “Our problems started when Siyaad started handling his own people with his right hand and the others with his left hand.”

Siyaad Barre had succeeded in turning the Hawiye and Ogaadeen clans against each other. Young Ogaadeen, convinced that the Hawiye, Isaaq, and other clans were their enemies, began joining the armed forces in record numbers.

“Do you think Siyaad Barre was using the refugees to protect his clan against the Hawiye?” I asked Abdi.

“First we were ignorant about it. Later we discovered that it was the intent of the Siyaad Barre regime to use refugees for his selfish ends.” He paused. “I never thought a foreigner would ask that question. … We discovered that when the war started. Had I discovered it earlier, I would have done something.”

“What?”

“I would have been the first to leave.”

“And you didn't know.”

He looked at me sternly. “You are a foreigner. You are writing many pages, but I trust you. You will go abroad and you may go and publish anything. What you are writing may harm me. If I know now that you are going to harm me, I would not talk to you.

“If I had known earlier, 2,000 lives would not have been lost in the Shebelle River. Women and children were put in the river to flow with the current.

“I myself was rescued by a Habar Gidir [Hawiye] man. I buried my brother and my daughter with my own hands, in Jalalaqsi, 1990. This is the foundation Afweyne [Siyaad] laid. Now I have the whole picture.

“There were people in the camps who said they were ‘politicians.' They would lecture us: ‘This is your government; the leader, Siyaad, is your relative. Without him you wouldn't have gotten all these opportunities. He has brought CARE with the food. We expect you to follow the way of the government.' Then they would leave and give the elders more money and tell them to talk to the younger ones. We were afraid.”

I had known some of this from Abdullahi Jama and learned more when I was working with Faduma in the refugee camps, but overall, they seemed to have kept it all hidden very well. “Were you told how to deal with the foreigners?” I asked Abdi.