THAT STRENGTH AND control that I so admired in this woman has been replaced by a sort of cornered wildness. “A killing at the compound! Who, for God’s sake? One of theirs? One of ours?” She jams the mobile radio back into the holder on her belt and steals a quick look at the airplane below.
I cannot imagine what is occurring in town, but from the look on Jeri’s face, I should be worried. I search for some answers; over to the city in the haze, down at the airfield—for what? An attack? Angry stone-throwing mobs? There is no sign of any activity. Maybe that in itself is an indication. On the grassy strip next to the tarmac, the boys sitting in the shade of the Technical continue to pluck and chew their miraa, and nearby, others lie curled up against the warehouse, no doubt dreaming of the houris who await them somewhere in the Great Beyond. On the airstrip, the large white cargo plane with the UN logo on its tail, an object that we equate with movement and power, gleams cold and lifeless. A few Somali gunmen, rifles strapped to their backs, squat in the shadow of its giant wings, looking up in fascination. Getting back on the plane is not a thought that I am consciously aware of. It is more of an instinct.
I follow this suddenly energetic woman down the wooden stairs two steps at a time, past two bony old workmen who are slapping cement into a shell crater in the wall. They are reluctant to move aside on the narrow stairway, and it is only when Jeri barks something sharp in Somali that the two men, hand trowels heavy with wet cement, let us pass. I wonder if they will toss the mud at us as soon as our backs are turned.
We join the UN security officer and Andrew outside the terminal building. “There has been a shooting in town—at the compound,” Jeri reports. “I don’t—” She stops in mid-sentence when the subclan leader berated earlier this morning approaches us. He is backed by four men who don’t look old enough to shave. With unaffected insouciance, they cradle their Kalashnikovs, fingers just off the triggers. There is a new arrogance in the colonel’s manner, an authority restored. The brief firefight near the Hercules is long forgotten. This is a Somali militia leader and we are interlopers, and for whatever reason we are here, we are here at his sufferance. I observe him intently, wondering if he knows about the incident in town.
“Why is that airplane still here?” he demands of anybody.
Jeri is the quickest, her voice now respectful. “It’s raining in Nairobi, Colonel.”
“Rain in Nairobi?” he repeats in disbelief. He looks us over with dark, suspicious eyes. “Yes, all right.” The Somali turns and walks away, apparently satisfied. A nice piece of diplomatic footwork.
Later in the day, the radio voice of Bravo Delta gives us the all clear: “We’ll meet with the sultan and try to figure this one out. Tell the Herc it can go back to Nairobi but to monitor the normal high-frequency channel in case we need him back here in a hurry.”
With a roar of its engines, the lumbering aircraft turns and taxis down the apron. It doesn’t pause at the runway; there’s no revving of engines, testing of flaps, a cautious look both ways. The pilot doesn’t appear to consider wind direction when taking off. As soon as he is on the runway he just gets the hell into the air without looking back. There is no doubt he’s glad to see the last of Kismayo on this day. Our lifeline becomes a disappearing mark against a nacreous sky.
Andrew and I squeeze into a UN vehicle between two young Somali militiamen in sunglasses whose AK-47s stick menacingly out the windows. Ian is sandwiched between driver and guard in the front seat. Two other gun-toting youngsters ride atop the roof. The Technical escorts us slowly down the pitted asphalt road to town, the long barrel of its gun sweeping from one side to the other. The blood on the old Land Rover’s dirty white tape has dried and turned into caked streaks of brown.
Our small convoy draws up at the closed barricade that I had seen from the tower, an impenetrable barrier of concertina wire and steel crossbars. The man behind the gun on the Technical shouts at the armed sentries below to let us pass. The keepers of the gate respond by quickly unslinging their automatics and leveling them at us. Soldiers on both sides begin screaming at one another. The sentries hastily backpedal, putting some distance between them and the vehicles, a move I recognize later as the first step in a possible shoot-out. They jerk their rifles skyward, motioning the driver of the Technical to reverse back to where he came from. One of the men on the mobile gun pulls back the cocking lever and lowers the muzzle toward the sentries.
Our boys, rifles in hand, spill out of the car, jump off the roof to join the dispute. First they remove their sunglasses, then they cock the guns. I wonder about the sunglasses; is it the eye contact? The loaded and cocked guns point at one another, and the angry jabber continues. Inside, wet heat runs down our faces into our shirts. In this tropic swelter, we wait while the armed Somalis bicker in a language of strange, sharp guttural sounds. The argument is something abstract. It appears they are ready to shoot one another.
Without turning his head or moving his lips, Ian says in a low voice, “No sudden movements. Just stay here like you are.” Then he adds quietly, “The blighters probably want some money to let us pass.”
“And?” I croak. “We give them money?”
“No. These are all General Morgan’s men. Different subclan but still his men. We pay him for the security. Not every bloody roadblock in town. It appears, gents, we are at daggers drawn.”
Our guards return from the barrier. One of the boys, grinning victoriously, crowds back into position next to me, winks, gives me a thumbs-up. I hear the two lads clamber back up onto the roof. The sentries angrily drag the coiled razor wire off the road, kick aside the tank traps, and hurl Somali abuse and clenched fists as we motor past. Our driver attempts to whistle some tune. Not far down the road, a metal sign, as bullet-riddled as any on the Pennsylvania Turnpike during hunting season, remains defiantly cheerful. Its message in Arabic, Italian, and English is barely legible: Welcome to Kismayo.
The road to the city passes communities of wattle shacks and vacant boma, round corrals made of thorny branches. A lone camel rubs its withers against a baobab and gazes at us with sleepy half-lidded eyes as we drive past.
“During the UNOSOM days, there were five hundred blue helmets along this road to protect the food convoys,” Ian says. “Now we have some boys with guns.”
“What about the riverboat—think I’ll have any problems getting it to the port?”
He shrugs.
The UN compound appears impenetrable. I am not sure what I expected—not necessarily a city office building, but certainly not a desert fortress. High bilious-colored cement walls defaced with graffiti in Arabic and nibbled by bullets rise out of the dust like sheer cliffs. Six yards tall, the thick walls are topped with sandbags and concertina wire. It reminds me of a state prison.
The only vehicle entrance into the compound is through a large blue solid-steel door; an attached cement guardhouse with a smaller door and narrow observation slots anchors the big gate. Unicef guards—locally hired Somalis distinguished by their loose-fitting baby blue uniforms that in a normal world would be mistaken for children’s pajamas—admit walk-ins through this small portal.
A mob of Somalis mill in front of the entrance and turn to face us as we approach. It’s hard to know what is or is not normal in this place, but it doesn’t take an old hand to feel the tension, to realize that the crowd is on the brink of challenge. It is apparent by the atmosphere, sullen and malefic, that despite our good intentions we are regarded no better than foreign intruders.
Our escorting militiamen sweep their guns over the crowd to clear a path. The big gate swings open slowly, just wide enough to let us through, then slams shut. Only the UN vehicle has been permitted inside. The Technical and our roof guards remain on the other side.
“One day they protect you, the next day they want to shoot you,” Ian mutters.
Within the walls: a two-story office building of yellow cement, several outbuildings, and a dusty parking area. On the roof of the main building, a blue-uniformed Unicef guard leans lazily against a battlement of stacked bags of sand, monitoring activities below. There is an empty slot for the barrel of a machine gun, but the only weapons allowed are those carried by the Unicef blue pajamas. A UN flag hangs impotently in the still air from atop a tall mast next to the makeshift pillbox.
If there were tensions outside, you would not know it in here. A few day laborers sit in the shade of a scraggly gum tree in the center of the parking area, chewing miraa. Under a thatch-roofed shelter nearby, two men on prayer rugs bow to the east, heads down, bums up. Perhaps it is the sight of prayer that offers this place a sense of peace. I wonder, however, when, how, and what event caused the main building to be so splattered by bullets.
Upstairs, Brian Devenport, the UN Development Program project officer known by his radio phonetics as Bravo Delta, sits alone in the middle of a threadbare couch in the lounge area, staring off into the distance. In his early forties, he is unshaven and his graying hair needs a trim. He wears a faded green T-shirt, jeans, and old running shoes. A fishing captain from Perth with years of administrative experience for the United Nations, he is in charge of all UN operations in Kismayo. In uniform and scrubbed up, I imagine he would cut quite a figure.
Bravo Delta says he will meet with the sultan in a few minutes and we are welcome to sit in. “Might give you blokes an idea of what Kismayo is about.” There is not a lot of enthusiasm in his smile. “I’ve got one of your boats in the lot if you want to check it out. They tell me you’ve got some sea time.”
“Worked merchant ships, towboats, fishing in Alaska, yachtie.” I try to be dismissive. I’m a little embarrassed.
“Fishing? Commercial fishing? We’ll have to compare notes. And you’ve got a yacht as well. That’s my dream. One day I’m going to buy a boat—to sail around the world,” he says wistfully, and then with sudden brusqueness, “You can help run the port while you’re here until you start your deliveries. Oh, sign up for a radio—you’ll be Juliet Bravo.”
The boat that arrived the day before rests on cement blocks in the dust next to the makeshift mosque. I assume that there are others worried about the Somali reaction to this flashy obscenity, for it has been well covered by a heavy gray tarpaulin. Or maybe someone was just protecting the shiny blue toy from bird shit.
When I join the meeting upstairs with the sultan, Brian and Ian are sitting together on the couch, wearing expressions of truant schoolboys caught smoking behind the barn. They are not big men; Brian is stocky, more rumpled, blondish, and Ian, the ex-military man, is of average height and thin and neatly kept. Neither of them looks like they’d take any crap, yet they look less significant next to the powerful-looking balding Somali with a small gray mustache in the lounge chair across from them.
I had imagined that sultans wore turbans, white robes, and gold daggers. Not this one. This grand poobah is dressed in a blue-and-white-checkered wraparound sarong. His bare hairy chest appears the size of a forty-gallon drum and his gut about the size of a sack of maize meal. He wears matching blue plastic sandals and brown socks. His limpid eyes avoid any direct contact and he speaks softly but with authority:
“We know how important it is for the United Nations to be here,” he says slowly through a translator. His oleaginous tone is soothing. “You have helped our people and this is well known. You will be our friends always. The work you do to help Somalia will never be forgotten. You will always be welcome here as our friends.”
Brian and Ian look up, try to smile in appreciation. I notice Brian seems to purse his lips frequently. Is it a tic?
“You are here to feed our women and children,” the sultan continues. “You are here to feed them—not to kill them.”
I am not sure I heard correctly. His statement has no meaning. I look to Brian and Ian; they nod as if being scolded.
“United Nations shoots our people without provocation! Your security men—they kill our women and children.”
The UN does not kill women and children and I expect some protest, some denial, but they remain silent, waiting for the sultan to continue.
“The UN, Unicef, WFP, they are all very important to us, but this situation is not acceptable.” The sultan’s tone is low and deceptive. He furrows his round face in concentration as he chooses the exact words. He does not need to raise his voice. “My friends, I know you would not order your guards to kill our people. Yet they have done so. You are here to help us, not to kill us. I know that. But now my people do not know that.
“I know you are here to help and that is good. But I cannot accept such killings. My people cannot accept the murder of our citizens, of our women and children. Your guards—Unicef guards—shot our people, who came only in peace. This is not acceptable.”
I find myself holding my breath.
Ian rubs his mustache with his forefinger, his voice low with sadness and contrition.
“Please tell the sultan that we will investigate the shooting thoroughly,” he says to the translator. “It is too early to know exactly what happened, but we very much regret the violence at the gate.”
“I am happy you will investigate,” the sultan says in a tone of mild reproach. Something is out of sync here; I would expect the sultan to be furious, but he doesn’t sound very upset.
“Please tell the sultan that during our investigation we will hold those men responsible.”
“Yes, that is good.” He pats his heavy lips with a white lace cloth. “My dear friends, I am worried. My people are not happy. They are very angry. And this is a worry.” He raises his heavy brown eyes, offers an insincere smile. “I am confident you will find a solution and that we will work peacefully together. I say this again to you. You must not shoot our women and children. My people must know that this will not happen again.”
“We thank the sultan for meeting with us, for helping us,” Brian says. “Please extend our sympathies to the families of those shot. We hope that the sultan can help us find a solution. As the sultan says, it is very important for us to continue our work here, and we hope that he will give us the same cooperation he has in the past.”
The meeting adjourns and my mind reels. Unicef guards shot into the crowd? Women and children?
“Yeah, the wankers shot into the demonstrators and hit a woman and a schoolkid. They were throwing rocks, sticks, mud, anything they could get their hands on, and the guards fired back. The woman was pregnant and the schoolboy—he was about ten or eleven. Shit!” Brian slams his fist onto the table. It now is apparent how much control he had managed during the meeting. After a moment, he looks up. Calmer: “I guess you’ve come at the wrong time, eh? Let’s just hope the sultan can keep the lid on.”
Andrew, Ian, and I are driven to our quarters on the other side of town, each of us with his own thoughts. The armed guards next to us sit quietly, leaning on their guns. What are they thinking? Are they angry? Do they care? I cannot seem to focus. Killing at the airport. Killing at the gate. Sultans, warlords, desert fortress, Arabs with rifles. This is all fantasy—it must be, for real life is not like this.
Our compound is up the paved road that leads to Mogadishu in the north. There appear to be very few operating cars in this town of sixty thousand people, and the streets are available for women in colorful veiled chadors, children, chickens. Stooped old men shamble beside their wooden donkey carts, pulled by plodding beasts with great sullen heads and long flicking ears. We veer around a cart on truck tires pulled by a young barefoot boy with cracked heels and splayed feet. Unattended goats and dirty white cows with camel-like humps wander without evident direction down the road. They cannot be hurried or directed, and we slow down or stop and wait. The long, gently sloping road evokes a basic need: How desperate I am for a run—haven’t jogged in weeks. It looks like an interesting run; maybe I’ll try it in the early-morning hours before the heat. Although, on second thought, it might not be such a good idea.
From the street our quarters appear similar to the Unicef compound: high walls, sandbag battlements, big blue steel door with peepholes. But inside, the similarity ends. While a tension hung over the Unicef fortress in town as if it were always under siege, and a dusty air as if it were always temporary, our base within the walls looks and feels positively Elysian. Well-kept graveled walkways, lined with planted basil, oregano, chili pepper, and poinsettia plants, connect the three buildings of the compound; flowering bougainvillea, frangipani, and mango trees in the yard give the impression this could be an inexpensive but well-kept little tropical hotel. It’s evident that somebody puts effort into this place.
During Operation Restore Hope it had been the headquarters of the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency. Because of its location this far out on the main road toward Mogadishu, it is apparently seldom a target and few locals bother with it. All demonstrations and manifestations of anger are held traditionally at the Unicef compound, not only because it’s more convenient but because it is Unicef that has the high-profile job of determining who gets the food.
The three of us gather under the thatch-roofed open-air dining area; serve us a piña colada with a little paper umbrella, add a soft melody from some steel drums, and we could be in some cozy Caribbean hideaway. Tropical birds sing sharply in the late-afternoon sun. Gunfire echoes on the outside. Ian pours the tea.
Two of our blue-clad guards did fire into the crowd, the security man says finally. “The idiots shot first.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “Tribal feud, perhaps; we’ll never know. The pregnant woman died on the spot,” he says, heaping sugar into his cup. “The schoolboy is at the Médecins sans Frontières hospital in town. He’ll probably die by dawn.”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Let me get this right—our guards fired their guns into a crowd of people who were demonstrating for food? And they killed a pregnant woman and wounded a schoolboy?”
Ian nods.
“Unicef was created to protect children, not to . . . This is insane. In the States, Ian, Unicef sells Christmas cards, collects money during Halloween, makes Easter appeals for children—how is it possible that the agency known to the world and to God for its good works is responsible for killing a pregnant woman and a child?”
“No one was firing at us?” Andrew asks. “We weren’t returning fire?” His good-looking boyish face reveals his disbelief.
“No and no.”
“Women and children—the two objects in the Western world that are held most sacred,” I say quietly.
“That’s what happened. But then, this is Somalia.”
Even with all the talk, it doesn’t sink in. How could it? It is just too damn preposterous. I should be shocked. Yes, certainly, I am shocked. But am I really?
“What’s next, Ian?” Andrew asks.
“We keep our heads down. May have to stay in our compounds for a day or two until this gets sorted—and the families get paid.”
“Paid? For the killing?”
“Blood money. The families will demand retribution and they’ll get rich. Thank God it wasn’t a camel. Then we would have serious problems. A woman and a child are not so important to these people, at least not in death. They are dealing with Westerners, so they are playing their hand. But camels are far more valuable. They always have been.”
“What is the price of a life? A pregnant woman worth more than the schoolkid?”
“Other way around. The schoolboy was male; he’ll fetch more. Probably the price of a few dozen camels.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” Andrew asks. I think we are both guessing that if this happened in Los Angeles, Detroit, or even Nairobi, the cities would burn down.
“As long as the sultan and General Morgan keep things under control, we’ll be okay.” Ian pauses, stares into his cup. “But it could blow. I’ve been warning Nairobi that something like this could happen. We’ve got to put together an evacuation plan.”
In the empty dormitory-style sleeping room, I rig the mosquito net above my bunk. My mind is cluttered with facts, faces, vitiated by events unrelated to any nightmare I could have conjured. I try to catch up. I’ve been in Somalia for less than five hours, haven’t even unpacked my bags.
I find I am curiously exhilarated. My nerves taut, my senses alive, my stomach in a knot—not from stress but excitement. I think I am enjoying this. Not far from the surface is a nagging frustration expected of a former reporter. Being on the scene when it happens. This is a story, an event that should be covered: UN guards kill a pregnant woman and schoolchild. I doubt that news of the shootings has made it to the outside or that anyone beyond Somalia will ever hear of the shootings. It is breaking news, but there are no journalists here. Certainly I cannot report the event, not only because I am so isolated, but my consultant contract with the UN is pretty clear on the matter: I cannot disclose anything that occurs out here while “in the course of performing (my) obligations.” And really, what does it matter? I recall a CNN promo in which one of their cameramen says: “If there is no picture, there is no story.” Something like the sound of a tree falling in the woods. It makes no sound. No woman, no child shot. There is no story.
Such frivolous thoughts seem to be a way to skirt the real issue. Sitting on the bed under a creaky fan that does little to dry the sweat, I try to come to terms, or at least to make myself feel the anguish of these events. A woman, a child. But how am I supposed to react? I let it go; I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it happen. I find release in my abstention; I am trying to demand too much from a tarnished soul.
The daily staff briefing with the four other internationals is scheduled at 1800 hours at Unicef. Our vehicle bounces down the street toward the compound, blue UN flags fluttering from the fender poles and assault rifles poking out the windows both front and back.
It is dusk and the lighting is not good. As we approach the Unicef base, a mournful keening, a sort of shimmering sound, rises out of the dust ahead.
Turning the corner on the road leading to the compound entrance, we stop with a screech at a barrier of boulders the size of basketballs loosely stacked as a wall. Our cheerful young driver, named Harun, tries to drive around the blockade. Ian and Andrew both yell out, “Stop! Stop!”
Half a dozen impassive youths standing shoulder-to-shoulder behind the stone wall point their assault rifles at us. Our guards jump out and begin arguing with the militiamen.
In front of the entrance to the compound, a thousand veiled women, an undulating mass of colored and black robes, sway as one like sea swells from an approaching distant storm. The woeful ululating of the cowled women, a haunting mournful cry, rolls through the air.
Our guards return to the car, subdued.
“Sasa, sasa!” they order the driver. “Go back!”
Harun backs out cautiously and the youths on the road lower their guns. The frightful wailing recedes.
Back at our own compound, over the handheld radio Bravo Delta tells us that his people are now surrounded on all sides by militia forces armed with recoilless rifles, RPG-7 grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, mortars, and, he reports, “more fucking firepower than I’ve seen since Mogadishu.” The agreement reached earlier with the sultan isn’t working.
The dead woman’s subclan is demanding the UN hand over the guards responsible for the shooting. The elders say they want to deal with these killers according to Somali tradition, which I suppose is beheading. The subclan of the shooters is demanding it hold their own boys overnight to protect them from the woman’s clan. In the meantime, the militia leaders are wondering why the UN guards have not yet been formally arrested. The two sides are about to shoot it out, and Unicef is being blamed for all of it.
Ian admits this is about as serious as it has ever been. “If the boy dies tonight, then I hate to consider the consequences.”
Within the relative safety of our quarters, I am chilled by the lament of a thousand women, a thousand mothers, their taunt of everlasting torment upon those of us who have committed such evil. This wail of accusation is damning within and upon my soul because I know that we are the accused. Their trolling chant drives out all other thoughts. I have a perverse, near-desperate need to hear more.
We are cut off from our headquarters and our colleagues; four of them are there and we three are elsewhere. They are being held prisoner, their compound under siege. We are unable to help. If any nation’s citizens—Israelis, for example—were in a similar situation, separated from their colleagues, imprisoned at gunpoint, they probably would be rescued immediately.
They must be scared shitless. Is this not serious enough to get the hell out before someone gets hurt? I catch myself in mid-thought, for already I am dismissing the dead Somali woman and dying child. “Someone” means one of us, not one of them.
“You’ve been asked to report on the security situation, and now is your chance,” Ian says, pulling a satellite phone out of his briefcase. “Perhaps you will have better luck.”
During this flood emergency, the Nairobi WFP/Somalia security office is to be manned, according to Wolff, twenty-four hours a day. But no one answers my call. Finally, during a third attempt, I raise a sleepy askari at the office gate. In a mixture of Swahili and broken English, he says he is merely the guard and to call back in the morning.
Ian disappears into his quarters for a bottle of whiskey. Andrew and I rummage around the kitchen area and find some dirty glasses. It is dark now, and the one dangling lightbulb in the outside dining area attracts the flying critters of the tropics. A large bat swoops just above our heads.
Ian returns with a bottle of Glenfiddich and pours each of us a hefty shot. “Well,” he toasts, “If we ‘can fill the unforgiving minute’ . . .”
“. . . ‘with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,’” I add a little uncertainly. “Kipling.” I feel foolish. I don’t know if Ian’s statement is a traditional British toast or his comment on the times. Or if I am sounding like a smart-ass.
“That says it all,” Andrew adds, lifting his glass.
Ian tips his glass in my direction, smiles broadly—it is the first time I have seen him smile. “Well done! And for a bloody Yank.” A quick burst of gunfire outside the compound concludes the toast.
“Where do these people get so many guns, so many bullets?” I ask, breaking the silence. “Everybody seems to own an AK-47.”
“Nearly everyone does. The guns come from Yemen and Pakistan, originally from China and Russia, paid for by foreign aid from the Libyans. Ethiopia sells guns to one faction, Eritrea to another—you would never guess there’s been an arms embargo on Somalia since ’92. The militiamen for the most part are given their guns by the clan leaders. It is up to the shooter to buy his own bullets, and they are expensive. Each bullet costs about twelve cents U.S., a lot of money down the barrel for these people if the gun is on automatic. Sort of a way to keep control of the boys: We give you the guns but you pay for the killing. The shooting won’t stop until they run out of bullets—which won’t be anytime soon. By the way, if the big gun goes off next door, we’ve got trouble.”
“Shooting at us?” Andrew asks.
“No, no. General Morgan’s headquarters are across the way, and he’s got some artillery. It may mean a new clan war—the Marehan trying to take back Kismayo.”
“Apologize for my ignorance, Ian, but what is this thing with the clans? I’ve heard talk of subclans, even sub-subclans.”
“There are basically five or six families in Somalia, each with its own turf. When the government collapsed, the country was left in the hands of the clans, and most of them fought for the ports, airports, main roads—wherever money could be made. They run import and export activities in narcotics, charcoal, and guns. Many of the clans print their own money.”
“The militia are the clan soldiers?”
“Not always. Militia are often independent of the clan elders, especially here in the south. They are the unknown—unpredictable and powerful, too powerful, with the ability to disrupt. The clan elders can lay down an edict, but it is the irregular forces, the militia, who rule, who because of their guns have veto power over legitimate clan activities. Those guys are the wild-hairs, the troublemakers led by small-time gang leaders. I suppose it is something like Mafia families, families within families.”
“That shooter at the airport. What was his story?”
“Don’t think we will ever know. Strung out on qat. Or angry over some family feud. Or angry with us.”
Andrew mentions that we weren’t given any indication back in Nairobi there was clan trouble in Kismayo.
“Don’t they know there are problems out here?” I ask. “I mean, isn’t there any communication between here and there?”
“Yes, on both counts. There are comms between here and Nairobi, and they know. We have contact with them by long-distance radio and by the phone,” he says, nodding toward the aluminum attaché case. “They know there are problems in the field.”
“I don’t think the WFP knows.”
“Well, Kismayo is a Unicef operation. But I would be quite surprised if the WFP doesn’t know what is going on out here. They get the daily and weekly reports from the field.”
“It rather feels that once here, we are forgotten,” Andrew says. “Almost abandoned.”
“I was told that Kismayo was safe,” I say.
“Right.”
“What an unholy mess—you know, I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to do here. I’ve got some boats, but I am told there is no river.”
“That’s right, not here there’s not.”
“I’m told to report on the security situation, but no one answers the phone.” I am not a scotch drinker, but this is going down remarkably easy.
Andrew was in Mogadishu briefly when the UN peacekeepers pulled out in 1995. He has seen some war. “I didn’t expect this. I’m a bit nervous.”
“Understandable. It’s smart to be. You never know whose name is on the bullet.”
Andrew and I catch each other’s eye. I wonder if I look as anxious as he.
“Last week,” Ian says, “the militia tried to shoot down one of the relief flights. My own UN rig was fired upon en route to the airport the day before last.” Here is a person who has been ambushed and presumably nearly killed. This news now brings it home.
We sit quietly, waving off the mosquitoes and ducking the large black june bugs that bounce off the overhead light and tumble into our laps.
“What’s considered a serious enough incident to pull the plug?” Andrew asks.
“Well, it hasn’t happened yet. It will take a lot more than this before Unicef and WFP consider pulling out.”
“How much more?”
Ian responds with a lost gesture, adds nothing.
“Why?”
“Politics. If Unicef and WFP weren’t here, where would they be? They need these ‘emergencies’ to keep the system working, to keep the bureaucracy going. I seriously doubt your people in Washington or even ours in London know what really is behind all these emergency humanitarian relief efforts. Certainly not this one.
“We never were invited into Somalia for this crisis. Few people know that. We never were asked to come to help these people. Of course, it must be said that this country has no government to ask us to help, but had there been, I’m not sure we would be any more welcome than we are today. Few anywhere particularly care what happens here—how many mouths are fed, refugees sheltered, lives saved; not in London, New York, Rome, or Geneva. Certainly there is no local interest.”
I find this cynical remark a little extreme and call him on it.
Ian raises his voice: “You don’t think the local elders, the warlords, even the sultan really give a shit about helping the flood victims? They couldn’t care less—it is not their people. They permit us to save lives because we pay them to let us do so.” Ian tops up his glass and, not wanting to appear that it is getting personal, fills ours. “The ultimate protection racket.”
We listen to the night, the crickets, the frogs, the gunfire. I am taken aback by Ian’s bitter honesty; this is a UN official—he should be toeing the company line. I wonder if he has got a proper perspective on our mission.
“We are needed and we help, there’s no question,” he continues, a little affected by the whiskey, “but when you begin your deliveries on the Jubba—if you ever get there—you probably will see very little famine, disease, or death. These people are in trouble, but is there an emergency? Famine in the Sudan—that is an emergency, but here in Somalia? There have been floods in Somalia for centuries. Look at the maps. For the Jubba Valley there are two sets, one for the dry season and one for the rainy season. During years of serious floods, there was never outside help. It is our Western arrogance that presupposes we must step in and save lives, whether or not we’ve been asked. And we present to the concerned world this farrago of half-truths, and the money is raised—not without difficulty, but it is raised.”
“What about us here in the field? Does anybody know we are out here?”
“In Nairobi, of course. You say there are some Swedes going to the river? Then someone in Stockholm knows and keeps track of them. They are on contract sent by their government. But those of us who are permanent are sent where we are told. We are doing our jobs and we accept that. And it is our risk. But our security—and I am a security man—is not of paramount consideration.”
“We almost sound expendable.”
“You might say that.”
“I was joking. No one is expendable.”
“Well, we are. To a point.”
“Why weren’t we told? Those Swedes—they think this is going to be worse than Bosnia.”
“Possible.”
“But that was a war.”
“This is different. This is not a war, this is just a big secret. In Bosnia, you had peacekeepers, authorized by the so-called international community—the eyes of the effing world. Here—there is no one here but us. It was up to you to know what you were getting into. They won’t tell you. How would they get people to do the job?” He takes a deep swallow of his scotch.
“This is classified as a Phase Four operation,” he says, “indispensable personnel only. But here in Kismayo, it is Phase Five, and I have been trying to shut us down. I fax, I message, I call the Unicef director personally, urging him to close the shop. But he won’t do it, no matter what happens. He has got to hold on to that bloody little empire.” Ian fiddles with his blond mustache, short nervous scratches—while I wonder how in the hell they could send us out here when they knew that the security officer at the time was recommending pulling out.
Ian disappears for a few minutes, returns with some papers.
“WFP didn’t know about the security situation? This is the UN Country Team report filed last week:
SECURITY UPDATE
KISMAYO: The security situation in Kismayo and its surroundings remained quiet but tense. On 13 November, at least one person was killed when two militia groups fought near that town’s airport following an internal dispute. The situation was later resolved by the elders amicably. On 15 November, a lone gunman fired several shots at the Unicef compound in Kismayo during the loading of eight trucks with relief supplies meant for the flood victims in the valley, north of Kismayo town. The guards of the compound returned fire and disarmed the gunman. The motive of the attack was not clear.”
He reads us a memo he wrote to the head office nine days earlier. In it, he recommends abandoning the operation and evacuating the staff from Kismayo.
“Even if we did pull the plug, right now I’m not sure we could get out alive. The local militia, the sultan, the warlords—General Morgan and the others—they’re all getting fat off the UN. It is the only business in town. If it is any comfort, that is why they don’t want anything serious to happen to us. That’s not to say it won’t just explode and one of us get killed by accident—or intent; it has happened before. But you can take some comfort that the local authorities, such as they are, don’t want anything to happen to us, because they know that would be the end of their gravy train. Trying to get out is as suicidal as staying.
“And now”—he stares into his glass, rubs away a mosquito boring through his sleeve—“we are bloody well in it. No, mates, we are simply jobs for the boys. Jobs for their boys, jobs for our boys. Everyone who doesn’t return in a body bag is a winner. Evacuation.” He raises his drink and, with a smile that appears lost and spiritless, salutes us.
A strange inhuman moan drifts in from beyond the compound walls, a sad, deep-throated cry from somewhere in the distance. The thrilling sound is joined by howls of desperation, a wail that intensifies, stops conversation, and sends a chill.
“Hyenas,” Andrew says. “Haven’t heard them for years, but that’s what they are. They’re close.”
“Driven here by the flooding,” Ian says. “The water comes closer every day. First time I’ve heard them this close. Might give the Somalis something else to shoot at.”
“I thought hyenas were supposed to laugh.”
Ian snorts. “Not tonight, not in this place.”
Ian speaks more to himself than to us. “I have never told anyone to kill someone before. I did today. God.” He stands, a little unsteadily. “Good night, gentlemen.”
Andrew and I walk outside toward the room we share. I look up at the stars that sparkle in the blue-black African night. It is a low, all-enveloping consuming darkness; white pricks of diamond light, impersonal and cold, confer a clear, inviolate truth. Andrew, a city boy, raises his eyes to the night. Far away, gunfire rattles. The hyenas howl.
“You don’t see a sky like this in Nairobi. It’s beautiful.”