January 14, 2006	Saturday	Zilhaj 13, 1426

WAJID (Somalia): When Habiba Hassan’s food ran out, she fed her four children on boiled bones and aran, a bitter leaf that grows in Somalia. She blamed her husband for the family’s plight, and not just because he abandoned her.

Hassan said her husband was with a militia group manning a roadblock near the Wajid refugee camp where she lives in a small shack made from plastic bags, dirty rags and pieces of cardboard box since fleeing fighting in southern Baidoa.

“He is with the militia who are holding the (World Food Programme) food aid that was coming our way,” she said last month. “He does not care about us.”

The 14-truck aid convoy was the first in years to risk the land route from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to Wajid, a town in barren and dangerous south-central Somalia.

The United Nations’ food agency was forced back onto Somalia’s potholed and perilous roads after pirates hijacked two of its ships last year, complicating efforts to get food aid to people hit by years of conflict and a severe drought.

Somalia slipped into chaos in 1991 when militias ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. An interim government was formed at peace talks in 2004, but has proved fractious and fragile, unable to rein in powerful warlords and their militias.

Hundreds of roadblocks, where gunmen extort money from passing drivers, are dotted across the capital Mogadishu and along roads and dirt tracks throughout the country, providing a major source of income for the warlords.

Militia members, armed with guns and sometimes with double-edged knives, erect wooden barriers to stop trucks and buses. If the cargo is valuable, they may steal it.

They use the money they extort to buy khat, a stimulant commonly chewed by Somalis. Once high, they become reckless. Gun battles often break out and people are regularly killed.

The presence of these ad hoc barricades has angered many Somalis, like those waiting for the food aid in Wajid.

“These militia are merciless. Why should they hold food brought to their own people?” asked Ali Marid, who heads the camp where Hassan lives with 730 Somali families.

“Ten people have already died of hunger this month.”

Political wrangling is still undermining peace efforts, despite the return home last year of the fledgling government led by President Abdullahi Yusuf.

But there are some signs of tentative progress. In early January, two factions in the government agreed to convene parliament in Somalia within 30 days — offering hope that efforts to rebuild the country might be revived.

A severe drought has deepened the misery of people in a country that barely functions. The United Nations said last month that one million people were in dire need of food aid.

WFP says the roadblocks coupled with piracy at sea are making distribution extremely difficult.

“Surely what do we do when such people are refusing the food passage?” said Zlatan Milisic, WFP country director in Somalia.—Reuters