Myndighederne i hård kamp for at sikre nødhjælpen og truer med militærdomstole.
NAIROBI, 17 November 2011 (IRIN): The frequent looting of relief aid at distribution centres in Mogadishu by local or state security agents seriously undermines efforts to help hundreds of thousands of people.
Many of them have fled areas of Somalia in a state of famine, according to officials and aid workers.
“Looting (plyndring) of aid is a major problem, especially as it affects the most vulnerable families in Mogadishu, who rely on humanitarian support to survive,” said Marcel Stoessel, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Mogadishu.
“We have been working with the authorities in Mogadishu to improve the overall security situation in the capital. This is the best way to facilitate the safe delivery of humanitarian assistance to the most vulnerable,” Stoessel said. “Obviously, we still need to do more.”
Stoessel did not discuss who was behind the looting but the government has acknowledged the involvement of its own agents.
Earlier this month, Transitional Federal Government (TFG) President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed warned that “soldiers and armed militia” would be dealt with severely if found to be responsible for looting food aid.
Security agents deployed in Mogadishu include TFG soldiers, poorly paid police and militias under the authority of the city’s district commissioners. After the August withdrawal from Mogadishu of the Al-Shabab insurgency, such militia groups have grown in importance.
“Extreme measures”
TFG spokesman Abdirahman Omar Yarisow told IRIN the government was serious about tackling the disruption of food aid.
“We have taken extreme measures, such as taking to military court those who try to divert the food aid to loot it. For example, recently the military court sentenced two district commissioners to 10 and 15 years’ imprisonment [respectively],” he said.
He acknowledged that people had been killed and injured when security forces opened fire during food distributions. “This is not acceptable and there are investigations currently under way and those who are responsible will face severe punishment.”
In one such incident in early August, 10 people were reportedly killed when TFG troops opened fire during a scramble for food aid in the capital.
Looting “is becoming a daily occurrence and it is mainly done by people wearing government security force uniforms”, said Mohamed Ilmi, a human rights activist in Mogadishu.
In one of the latest incidents [14 November] in the Tribunka camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs), Ilmi said, government forces who were supposed to protect aid distribution fired into the crowd, forcing them to run for cover, “they then took the food; fortunately there was only one injury”.
Ilmi said on many occasions IDPs had been killed, “as happened in Badbaado camp a few days ago, where at least five were killed”.
Halima (not her real name), an IDP, had just received her food rations on 14 November, along with hundreds of other families, when armed men started firing into the crowd, scattering the displaced.
“We had just got our food and it was still on the ground when they opened fire. We ran for our lives. Then they calmly took our food and put it on trucks that just showed up.”
She said the incident was not the first time they had been robbed of their food. “It happens but we cannot do anything. We cannot even complain or we will suffer even more.”
“Big business”
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