On the Eve of Liberation, Baidoa Watches More Die

On what may be the eve of their liberation from hunger, thousands of emaciated Somali men, women and children sat listlessly amid the bombed-out ruins of this city Monday, waiting under a cloudless sky for food rations and watching their own death toll mount.

F-14 Tomcat fighters roared high overhead every few hours, and Baidoa residents eagerly followed the jets’ vapor trails, praying it was a sign that the U.S. military intervention to halt the looting and end their suffering was imminent.

“The Marines need to come quickly,” said Dr. Abdulkadir Hussein, who was treating 75 gunshot victims at the 100-bed Baidoa Hospital--behind a sign warning that “Weapons Inside the Hospital are Forbidden.”

“All of us are just waiting for the troops to come, so the bandits will go away,” he added.

This city of 60,000, in the center of Somalia’s famine zone, has been trapped in a frenzy of shooting and looting in the three weeks since the United States first offered to send 28,000 troops to Somalia. Their U.N.-approved mission: to restore order and escort food from the ports to the hinterlands and the country’s 2 million people facing starvation 200 miles away.

The violence here, caused by an 11th-hour offensive by armed gangs to pillage the city before U.S. troops arrive, has turned the debilitating yearlong famine into a ferocious nightmare. About 100 people starved Monday, up from a daily toll of 70 only a few weeks before. Since July, 200,000 people have died here. In nearby towns, the daily toll now approaches 200.

A steady stream of Somalis emerged from the bush here Monday and crowded into feeding centers run by an array of international relief groups. Wearing single sheets of dirty gray cloth, they were held in lines by stoic young men swinging sticks. The healthier children sat on flat rocks in the sun. Others slept quietly beneath blankets.

For the weakest, the five-times-a-day rations may be too late. Soon, relief workers say, the sickliest will be added to the grim statistics of Somalia’s famine.

All across Baidoa, the scenes on a still, hot day were both depressing and frightening.

At an Islamic orphanage, as children played with prayer boards in the courtyard, Mohamed Abdi, 13, sat silently in the dirt, naked except for a small blanket around his waist. The skin on his back was stretched tightly over his protruding ribs. “His parents died of hunger,” said Abdulahi Amin, 32, an orphanage worker. “And we’ve received 25 more just like him this week.”

In downtown Baidoa, a young boy trudged across a bridge in sandals and a red T-shirt that read, “I am the boss.” Pickup trucks bearing relief agency flags--and with armed guards in the back--bounced along the rutted streets Monday.

And those were the good guys. The troublemakers usually come out after dark.

Relief agencies are being attacked regularly, and they have evacuated most--and in some cases all--of their foreign staff. A local orphanage housing 2,000 children, many of whom are malnourished, has been without doctors or medicine for a week because the agency that provides medical care has cleared out.

“These Marines are brave, great Americans,” said Mohamed Iman Aden, who heads the orphanage. “At this stage, for them to be delayed is not right.”

In recent days, trucks with food have been robbed at gunpoint. And aid agency compounds have been heavily fortified with sandbags and armed, rooftop guards to fend off night marauders. “I think the looters figure they’d better get as much as they can from the relief agencies before the Marines come,” said Lockton Morrissey, 34, who heads the CARE mission here. “So, they are acting as if every night will be their last night to rob us.”

Several CARE employees have been attacked in recent days, a food convoy from the Baidoa airport was hijacked, and a gang robbed the agency’s treasury of $20,000 worth of Somali shillings. Six of the agency’s nine foreign staffers have been evacuated to Mogadishu and Nairobi, where they are postponing their return until after the Marines arrive.

The road from Mogadishu, dotted with armed roadblocks and thieves, has been impassable for relief convoys for months. So organizations have been forced to use expensive airlifts to bring in donated food from Nairobi. Some flights have been canceled because of security risks. But six U.S. Air Force cargo planes brought in more food Monday.

But until they can get the road open, aid officials say they won’t be able to bring in the food and supplies necessary to end the famine and return refugees to their farms. Many aid officials here, losing patience with the continuing threats to relief efforts, are angered by delays in the U.S. military move into Baidoa. They say they understand that the military needs time to stage a major occupation of this city.

But they clearly are worried. “I’ll tell you one thing: They are slow,” said Robert Mullock, an American who works at an orphanage here. “They should have been here five days ago.”

Maryan Haji Hassan, a Somali who runs a feeding kitchen for Irish Concern, added, “Every day they don’t come it just gets worse.”

Most officials, however, figure the bands of looters will vanish into the countryside, as they did last week in Mogadishu, when the U.S. forces arrive.

“Somalians are sick of this looting. Most never want to see another gun in town,” said John Marks, who heads the United Nations’ Baidoa office.

Droughts are common in this region, but famines are not. For centuries, farmers here have routinely stored part of their harvest underground. But earlier this year, troops loyal to ousted President Mohamed Siad Barre went on a rural rampage, stealing or destroying farmers’ stockpiled food and killing cattle. Those attacks, along with the drought, left millions of Somalis without food or shelter.

Now there is no end in sight to the famine. The rains that usually fall in Baidoa in September and October failed again this year; the bulk of the crops never emerged from the parched, sandy soil.

As a result, people here will have to wait at least until the next harvest, in June or July, before they can again produce their own food.

And a full-scale relief effort, unhindered by looting, is their only hope.

Amid the suffering that gripped Baidoa on Monday, 1-day-old Ali Aden Abdi provided a rare feeling of optimism. The boy slept next to his mother and three sisters in a small, crowded room at the feeding center that Hassan runs.

Hassan pulled back a blanket to examine the child.

“I think,” she said, “he will live.”

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