U.N. Steps Up Evacuation Plans as Somalis Loot Headquarters

Somalis looted the abandoned U.N. headquarters in Mogadishu, and giant clouds of locusts swarmed in the northwest of the country, as U.N. civilian workers stepped up their evacuation plans Friday.

U.N. spokesman George Bennett said local Somali leaders had reported seeing three locust swarms, each 1.8 miles long, rolling across the bush. Locusts can consume every bit of vegetation in their path.

In Mogadishu, women and children joined crowds stripping down the 160-acre complex that was the nerve center of U.N. operations for the last two years. It was finally deserted by peacekeepers Wednesday and promptly ransacked.

“It’s the busiest street in Mogadishu,” one witness said as people tottered out of the compound carrying toilets, basins, doors and windows.

The wholesale destruction of the complex, on which the United Nations spent $160 million--a drop in the ocean for a mission that cost $1.5 billion a year--has disgusted the United Nations and prompted it to move its evacuation plans forward.

Bennett said the remaining civilian staff, originally scheduled to depart at the end of the month, will now be flown out by Feb. 15.

The United Nations’ mandate in Somalia expires on March 31, and all of its personnel, civilian and military, are scheduled to be out of Somalia by that date.

Special U.N. envoy James Victor Gbeho said Thursday that the move was prompted by rival clan fighting over a building vacated by the U.N. Development Program and the systematic looting of the U.N. headquarters compound.

“It is clear that pledges by Somali leaders to keep these areas free of fighting and looting have not been honored,” Gbeho said.