N.O.R.F Posted October 31, 2006 Somalia: Free market wasteland by Rex Weyler After the December Tsunami had swept 3000 kilometers across the Indian Ocean, Somali fisherman Hassan Abdi discovered a large metal container in the surf north of Mogadishu. The dirt-poor people of Somalia recycle any material resource, thus Abdi and his friends hauled the three-meter container into town to cut up as scrap metal. Warned not to tamper with it, the fishermen left it outside a former government building in Mogadishu. Meanwhile, villagers along the fifteen-hundred-mile Somalia east coast discovered similar metal containers, some 2 meters in diameter and up to 4 meters long, and began salvaging them for metal. On May 10, villagers near Barawe, north of Mogadishu, opened a container with axes until the spewing contents blinded three people and poisoned several bystanders, men, women, and children. Police, traditional leaders, and a local aid agency, Daryeel Bulsho Guud (DBG), launched warnings over the radio and in print media. Journalist Mihiyadin Ali Jumale filed reports relayed to German journalist Marc Engelhardt. I learned about these events from two members of the German relief organization Diakonie Emergency Aid, and have since interviewed journalists and aid workers from Somalia. Displaced, nomadic Somalians live beyond the reach of media. In spite of the public warnings, on May 19, fishermen in Kismayo beach, 500 kilometers South of Mogadishu, attempted to open a container with axes. The container exploded, killed four people , and severely burned the skin of eight others. Toxin containers have now washed up at fifteen known sites. In addition to the deaths and burns, exposed Somalian villagers have suffered respiratory infections, mouth ulcers, abdominal hemorrhages, and skin lesions. “Somalia is a UN no-go zone,” explained Roswitha Brender from Diakonie. “For security reasons, UN operations are very limited there. We’ve been working in Somalia, but the local organization DBG, needs assistance, as we are not toxin experts.” In April, Diakonie approached UNEP Nairobi, the United Nations Environmental Monitoring Centre, which referred them to UNEP in Geneva. The German aid organization urged the UN to send a team to Somalia, including monitoring scientists, doctors, and information staff to warn the public. On June 9, UNEP met, assessed the toxin catastrophe in Somalia, but declined to send a team or investigate the source of the containers. “The UN Institutions, and the Somali Representatives are not showing any interest in learning where the toxic waste comes from,” said aid worker Jürgen Prieske from Germany. “To the contrary, they’ve said that this question ‘should not be raised’ for the time being.” Hannelore Hensle, who has worked with Diakonie in Africa and around the world for 35 years, asked Greenpeace to step in and help, but the environmental group has not yet committed to the project. Somalia is not an attractive or safe place to go unless one is doing cash business. The country is factionalized among warlords and provisional governments. Journalist Marc Engelhardt describes Somalia as “pure market-economy, without regulation. Goods are imported and exported. Telephone networks and power lines are established, as long as it promises profits. In this system, environmental concerns don’t feature at all.” Multinational resource corporations covet Somalia’s uranium, iron ore, copper, natural gas, and possible oil reserves. It appears now, that these global corporations and/or nations dump toxic and radioactive waste in Somalia’s waters, likely with pay-offs to local officials and warlords to keep quiet. The UN estimates that dumping waste off the coast of Somalia can be achieved for 1/100th of the cost in Europe or North America. As a UN no-go zone, the country provides the perpetrators with protection from scrutiny. However, the tsunami has exposed this destructive shadow of free-market globalization. This land of poverty, oppression, sweltering heat, droughts, dust storms, famine, deforestation, monsoon floods, soil erosion, and desertification, now suffers industrialism’s most deadly waste and the world’s indifference. Rex Weyler: www.rexweyler.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ms DD Posted October 31, 2006 How depressing. It makes me wonder the state the country will be in by the time we all return. That is if we ever do. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
N.O.R.F Posted October 31, 2006 Somali UN/Humanitarian/Dev types should make a trip to Mugdisho and co-ordinate a clean-up (financed by the UN). Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ElPunto Posted October 31, 2006 ^I think you guys need to take it easy - industrial accidents, things blowing up, ppl dying from chemical waste happens everywhere, even in the developed countries As to the UN etc - please - after decades in the country they have acheived little. Somalis coming back from short sojourns abroad have been able to do much, much more for the country. "This land of poverty, oppression, sweltering heat, droughts, dust storms, famine, deforestation, monsoon floods, soil erosion, and desertification, now suffers industrialism’s most deadly waste and the world’s indifference." What melodramatic, self-serving bull-shit Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
