5

Broken by a Smile

By the time we visited the Somali capital in 1992, Mogadishu had long been the violent epicenter of an ongoing civil war involving more than a dozen different clans, all of them in a vicious struggle for survival. The two largest rebel factions were fighting it out in the streets of the capital for dominance and control of the city and, ultimately, the country.

The result of the conflict resulted in devastation of the country’s agricultural production and distribution channels; the destruction of Somalia’s already inadequate and primitive transportation system, communication and public utilities infrastructure; the end of any national, regional or local government rule or control; and a non-existent economy that lacked viable banks, businesses or industries, and no longer had a recognized and accepted national currency. It was a total societal collapse.

Virtually all Westerners and international groups, including agencies that had been working in the Horn of Africa for years, had pulled up stakes and left the country before the end of 1991.

Perhaps as many as a million displaced people joined a human flood of refugees pouring over the borders of their homeland into Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and across the gulf to Yemen. (Only the most fortunate refugees found the means to escape to Western Europe and North America.) With them came horror stories of suffering beyond belief.

After my return to Nairobi from that first trip to Somaliland, Ruth and I tried to find a way into other parts of Somalia to assess needs. We used the same basic strategy that we had used to learn about Hargeisa: we wandered around downtown Nairobi, looking for people we could identify as having a Somali heritage. Then we would follow them into coffee shops or to markets where we would strike up conversations and try to begin establishing relationships.

Over time we heard their stories, tried to encourage and help them, and eventually began also to share our desire to provide assistance to their people still suffering in Somalia. Some of these new refugee friends trusted us enough to pass on the names and stories of clan relatives they wanted us to help when we got into their homeland.

A few Somalis even referred us to western relief agency workers and a handful of western believers who had been forced out of Somalia. These believers were now working among the large Somali immigrant community resettling in Nairobi or with the hundreds of thousands of Somalis now inhabiting refugee camps scattered along the Kenya-Somali border and in the desert region of southern Ethiopia.

Our most reliable sources of information warned us that the focus of violence currently centered around Mogadishu. They said that it wouldn’t be safe for us to visit the area until the civil war ended, or at least until the fighting moved elsewhere. The prospect of that happening anytime soon, without the intervention of outside forces, seemed unlikely.

Unfortunately, the suffering in Somalia had received little attention from the international community. Finally, the Secretary-General of the United Nations began calling for a cease-fire among the warring clans. The possibility of United Nations involvement offered the potential for better conditions and the promise of needed resources.

When the United Nations announced that it had brokered a temporary cease-fire, Ruth and I saw a window of opportunity to get into the country and assess the needs in Mogadishu. Some western workers who had fled the country indicated that their organizations wanted to reestablish a presence in country, but they believed that it was still too dangerous to return.

At that time, no one knew how many citizens of Mogadishu had been killed or had fled during the years of conflict. In addition, because of devastating drought, the city had been flooded with refugees from other areas. As in Hargeisa, the people in the capital had nothing and needed everything. Yet conditions seemed even more desperate in this area.

Despite the agreed-upon “cease-fire,” combatants continued to battle for territory in the city. Most nights and days were punctuated by the sound of gunfire—much of it distant and easily ignored, but some of it extremely close.

One day, I asked a gunman why he was fighting. He squinted at me through cigarette smoke and said, “It’s Thursday. We take Friday off to go to the mosque and pray. This is Thursday. We fight on Thursday.”

Within a day or two of my arrival in Mogadishu, several Somalis whose names I had been given (and warned not to go looking for too openly) actually showed up at the gate of the United Nations compound where I was staying. They asked for me by name. I never found out how they knew I was there, but I had lived in Africa long enough to chalk it up to the amazing power of the Holy Spirit and the effectiveness of the oral grapevine.

I passed along greetings from their colleagues and I then explained how other agencies had engaged me to investigate the most serious human needs in the city. My new Somali friends proved to be an invaluable fount of knowledge and guidance in the days that followed. They not only confirmed the reports that I had heard about the enormity of the crisis facing their country—ninety percent unemployment, eighty-five percent starvation or severe malnutrition rate, more than three hundred thousand citizens starved to death over the preceding six months, as many as three thousand starvation deaths a day—they also gave me a personal tour of the city.

My Somali contacts gave me the full tour. They showed me what had once been the wealthiest neighborhoods with their security-gated and walled compounds. They also showed me the pathetic patchwork camps (the word “slums” might not suggest their measure of impermanence) where the influx of rural refugees had taken up residence. In those places, refugees huddled under makeshift traditional rounded homes of tattered cloth, in huts constructed of cardboard boxes, or anywhere else that provided the smallest semblance of privacy or shelter from the tropical sun. As in Hargeisa, I saw a lot of old places where normal, everyday things—like schools and hospitals and stores—had once been. What life remained in Mogadishu was so far from “normal” that it bordered on “insane.” And the signs of that insanity were visible everywhere.

Emaciated mothers scratched at the dry earth with nothing but bony fingers and broken sticks. I couldn’t imagine what they were doing—until I realized that they were gouging out of that hard, unforgiving ground, graves deep enough to gently lay a child’s dead body and cover it with rocks.

A constantly shifting battle line (the “Green Line”) split the city into territories occupied by the followers of the country’s two most powerful warlords, the bitterest of rivals now, despite their shared genealogy as fellow members of the same clan.

Mogadishu at that time reminded me of an Old Testament world that did not know Jesus and had never been exposed to the Son of Man or His message. Baal, Goliath, and Nebuchadnezzar would have been right at home in this world. Jesus must have had this kind of world in mind when he warned his Pharisee critics in the twelfth chapter of Matthew that “every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.”

Later in the same conversation, Jesus used another analogy that sounded like a prophecy about Somalia: “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation” (Matt. 12:43–45).

To me, that seemed to describe the condition of Mogadishu perfectly.

I encountered one of the most lasting images of depravity when my Somali guides took me to see the compound that the current leaders had seized (after reportedly slaughtering the entire family that had previously lived there) to serve as military headquarters and personal residence. Inside heavily armed gates, the war lord and his minions generated their own electricity, watched satellite television, and ate like kings.

Just outside was a mob of several hundred desperate children, bellies bloated by malnutrition, gathered around the walls of the compound. The children were anxiously awaiting what was a frequent, though not daily, occurrence. When the carcass of whatever animal had been slaughtered for the leaders’ supper was heaved over the wall, the starving children descended like locusts, tearing and ripping off chunks of bloody animal hide to chew on and find the little nutritional value that it provided them.

The conditions were horrifying. I was forced to reconsider both my definition of “evil” and my understanding of the fallen nature of humanity itself.

I cried out to heaven: “God, where are you? Do you know what is happening in this place?”

What kind of God would allow this to happen?

Safely back in Nairobi, I described to Ruth what I had seen. I also reported my findings to the other agencies and contacted my own supporters to let them know what I had seen. I wrote e-mails and letters, gave interviews, and published articles advocating an immediate response to the growing crisis in Somalia. Suffering people were dying by the thousands every day. Somebody needed to do something about the insanity now!

No one disagreed. But until there were better, safer means of access to the country, everyone I talked to concluded that there was little they could do. They were happy, however, to have me return to Somalia as often as I could to do whatever I could do. And I did that, hoping to identify good opportunities once safer conditions came.

One of my next trips took me to the interior city of Afgoie, thirty kilometers west of the coastal capital. That third visit confirmed what I had already suspected: the entire country was in desperate shape and in need of life support. And there was one unforgettable experience that drove that conclusion home.

I had heard about a hospital that the Russians had built in Afgoie decades before. Obviously, the civil war had gotten there before me. Part of the roof was gone and some of the outer walls had been damaged during the fighting. Inside I found one middle-aged Somali doctor who told me in excellent English that she had received her medical training in Russia and had worked in Afgoie for years. She told me that she was trying to keep dozens of young patients alive—including many seriously wounded and burned children injured during the most recent fighting in the area. She was doing this in the shell of a hospital without electricity, running water, or any other professionally-trained staff.

I spent the first part of my visit at the hospital serving as her “medical assistant.” This meant that I physically restrained her patients while the doctor set broken bones and sewed up wounds without any anesthetic. As she worked, I told her that I had come wanting to assess the hospital’s needs and discuss how relief agencies might be able to help.

“Come with me,” she said, “and I’ll show you our facilities.”

The half dozen “hospital beds” in the first room we entered consisted of nothing more than metal frames and springs. The appearance of one of the patients in that room horrified me. A tiny, starving child sat motionless, like an emaciated statue, atop a piece of cloth that covered a small section of the metal bedsprings. The child stared straight ahead, showing no recognition that we had entered the room. When I commented that the child looked too small and too weak even to be sitting up on her own, the doctor shocked me by saying, “This little girl is three years old; she weighs nine kilos.” (Less than 20 pounds.)

My love for children trumped my horror and, without a conscious decision, I crossed the room while the doctor recited some of the things that her hospital needed. As I approached the little girl, she remained motionless, staring straight ahead, still with no evident response to my presence. It was as if raising her eyes would take more strength than she could muster. Still listening to the doctor, I reached out and absent mindedly brushed the back of my index finger up and down the child’s cheek.

I recoiled in surprise the next second as a sudden, almost beatific, smile lit up that tiny face. The incongruity of this child’s reaction, at that moment, in that place, so startled me that I cried silently toward heaven, “Where in the world did that smile come from?” Then I whirled around to look back toward the doctor who smiled sadly and simply shook her head. She thought that I was moved by the inhumane conditions of her hospital.

But I had been broken by a smile.

As we left the room to continue my tour, I promised the doctor that I would try to bring supplies on my next visit to Somalia. How could I not respond to such need?

Retracing our steps later that day, I stopped in the hallway and glanced into the first room that we had visited. When I noticed that the little girl was no longer there, I asked where she had gone. The doctor consulted a volunteer for an explanation, and then quietly, regretfully reported the response to me: “Unfortunately, that little girl died.”

I was glad that I hadn’t been there to see her tiny body carried out. I much preferred to remember her smile.

I would tell the story of that little girl many times in the weeks to come. The response was often the same. Organizations were convinced of the need, but they insisted on improved security before committing to work in Somalia. The refusal of faith-based organizations to get involved was especially frustrating to me. I had discovered that secular humanitarian groups, like the one I was attached to, were continuing to work both with Somali refugees and within Somalia itself. Even western construction companies and contractors were on site. After all, there was money to be made. But where was the faith community?

How is it, I wondered, that so many people are willing to die for financial or humanitarian reasons while many Christian groups insist on waiting until it is safe to obey Jesus’ command to “Go” into all the world?

It soon became obvious that any faith-based agencies in Somalia would be a target and that any Somalis working for them would risk the wrath of radical elements of Islam. Knowing that, Ruth and I established our own international NGO as a way to gain entry and establish relief, health, and development projects inside Somalia. Our goal was to provide the best of care to a war-ravaged people and, in doing so, to give a “cup of cold water” in Jesus’ name.

Many within the faith community applauded our hearts but questioned our wisdom. “It’s too dangerous!” we were told by people who loved us. When we pointed out that Jesus commanded His followers to go into “all the world”—not only into all “the safe places in the world,” they reluctantly agreed to let us explore the possibility. Sometimes we were warned, “If you get somebody killed doing this, their blood is going to be on your hands!”

Even so, many like-minded people flocked to our fledgling relief organization in obedience to take that cup of cold water wherever it might be needed. We were given seed money to equip and staff mobile health clinics and to distribute food and relief supplies.

One of the first requirements was to recruit a Somali staff—local individuals of good reputation and solid references, some of whom had worked with western agencies in the past. A couple of our first workers happened to be Somali believers; the vast majority were Muslims. At that time, there were just a few more than one hundred known believers in this country of seven million people. For Somalis, being known as a follower of Jesus opened the door to intense persecution, and often death.

We quickly realized that any Somali working with us would be suspect. According to a Somali worldview, any western organization working in Somalia was assumed to be “a Christian organization”—and any employee was suspected of being a Christian. Regardless of their religious beliefs, however, I needed a top-notch Somali staff with experience and contacts.

Following the advice of international and Somali sources, we hired staff members from each of Somalia’s five or six major clans. That guaranteed that, wherever we happened to be in Somalia, we would have local contacts who could provide advice, cultural knowledge, and street smarts as we worked out details and made decisions.

While we were known as a professional relief organization, we obviously wanted to be a godly witness by operating with the highest possible moral and ethical standards.

For example, when we searched for rental property, we wanted to make certain that we were dealing with a property’s rightful owner. I remember looking at one property where my Somali staff whispered a warning as soon as we walked in: “You don’t want this house, Dr. Nik. This is definitely a looted compound. But don’t say anything because these are really bad people. Just be nice, walk around the property, and pretend to be interested. If we leave too soon we may make them angry.” Open houses being shown by hosts wielding automatic weapons adds a new dimension to real estate transactions.

We faced similar ethical questions about ownership in securing vehicles. With rampant armed hijackings, and no official system for registering or licensing cars, there was no reliable way to track a title history. It seemed that the old saying “possession is nine-tenths of the law” was the standard for ownership.

Despite the challenges that we faced in trying to launch a Christ-like and ethical business venture in Mogadishu, our fledgling organization was soon operational. Early on, we flew in several nurses with enough basic medical supplies to establish mobile clinics that provided the first health care that some villages had seen in years. Confronted by the staggering needs of the nation and sadly limited by our own meager resources, we needed more help. We also knew that there were hundreds of thousands of starving or malnourished people who could not afford to wait for the relief aid that the United Nations was promising. Given the need, we did everything that we could do, as quickly as we could.

Not long after negotiating the original ceasefire, the United Nations voted to send in a few dozen international peacekeepers to monitor the situation in Somalia. But there were never enough of them to adequately patrol even the green line in Mogadishu, let alone provide any protection or enforcement anywhere else in the country.

We were more hopeful a few weeks later when member nations of the United Nations voted to increase their commitment to Somalia. First, the United Nations announced a massive airlift of food, medical, and other relief supplies into the country. That was followed by the authorization of an international security force of several hundred military troops to accompany the supplies and provide protection for United Nations civilian personnel and any relief organizations that would partner with them to carry out the international relief mission in country.

By the time the United Nations’ major relief effort began in August of 1992, we had been in Somalia for months, networking with a dozen or more different organizations, and establishing relief and development projects of our own. Since we had established headquarters in Mogadishu and a few other places, and since our own programs were operational, United Nations’ administrators recognized us as a partnering organization.

To that point, we had been working with tens of thousands of dollars in relief supplies. Suddenly, we were asked to help deliver millions of dollars’ worth of international aid to the Somali people.

The rival clans agreed to grant the United Nations secure access to the Mogadishu airport and to Indian Ocean port facilities. But it became clear quickly that the agreement was a farce. Almost immediately, the relief supplies were stolen—and most of it never helped the people it was intended to help. In fact, over eighty percent of the relief goods were being stolen.

I wondered how people could be so callous. When I expressed my frustration, one of my national staff recited a Somali saying that he had heard all of his life. Sadly, it explained a lot:

I and Somalia against the world; I and my clan against Somalia; I and my family against my clan; I and my brother against my family; and I against my brother.

Those were appalling words to live by, but a telling glimpse into the heart behind the face of evil—and perhaps a hint into the worldview that might actually explain the insanity.