Somalia’s Shabab occupy beloved “Mama Hawa” camp

[Somalina]

By Michelle Shephard

National Security Reporter

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

 

Somali fighters linked to Al Qaeda have occupied part of a camp and hospital run by Dr. Hawa Abdi, a fearless 65-year-old obstetrician, gynecologist and lawyer who is regarded as a hero among Somalis and affectionately known as “Mama Hawa.”

Along with her daughters Deqo and Amina Mohamed, Hawa has defied odds by offering a home and medical care for 90,000 displaced Somalis just 20 kilometres from Mogadishu, an area of unrelenting violence.

 

Hawa said an Islamic court run by Al Shabab, a group of radical Islamists, decreed Sunday night that part of her land no longer belonged to her, causing a mass exodus of doctors, patients and occupants to Mogadishu, which is under control of an African Union peacekeeping mission and Somali government forces.

 

The land that was reportedly awarded to a Shabab business associate by a court operating in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region housed camps for 400 internally displaced Somalis.

 

“This is so awful,” a distraught Hawa said in a telephone interview from Nairobi Monday.

 

“They don’t know Islamic laws or civil laws. They just have guns and they know how to kill.”

 

Hawa and her daughters recently left Somalia for Kenya following death threats – although facing danger for their work is nothing new.

 

In 2010, a force of 750 members belonging to the Hizbul Islam stormed the compound and held Hawa at gunpoint. The fighters told her she was unfit to run the facility since she was female and old. Hizbul Islam, led by Sheikh Dahir Awyes, would later join the Shabab for a brief period.

 

“I said to them, ‘What have you done for Somalia? Look what I have done,’” she said in an interview with the Star last summer in Montreal, recounting the ordeal.

 

Hawa wouldn’t budge and refused to leave her land, prompting an army of the women who lives she had saved, to surround the camp and order her release.

 

Amazingly, after 10 hours they did.

 

But the situation in Somalia has recently changed with Shabab officially merging with Al Qaeda this month and the remaining terrified residents are bracing for anticipated clashes as AU forces move into the area.

 

“It has never been this bad,” Hawa said Monday.

 

Hawa began her philanthropic vision in 1983 with one delivery room built on her ancestors’ land and a mission to treat women who were dying in childbirth. Today, the Dr. Hawa Abdi Foundation camp has hospitals, residences, two fresh water wells and an adjacent farm to help feed its occupants.

 

Hawa’s work has always been revered in Somalia but went largely unnoticed internationally until writer Eliza Griswold featured her in her book The Tenth Parallel.

 

In 2010, Hawa became one of Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year, featured alongside other humanitarians and celebrities like Cher and Fergie.

 

The magazine described her as “equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo.”

 

Source: Toronto Star

[Somalina]

http://www.jowhar.com/?p=666

[Sensei]

Quick rest stop on their way to extermination, they wont be there long knowing the ETs are lingering in Baidoa.

[Somalia]

So did the land actually belong to her, what does "ancestor" mean in this situation?

[Somalina]

Look it up.

[Somalia]

Yeah, please direct me to the "Somali Ancestry Database". :rolleyes:

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

"The magazine described her as “equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo.”

i wish there more people like dr. hawo and less shabaabs

[Mario B]

Somalia;796501 wrote:

Yeah, please direct me to the "Somali Ancestry Database". :rolleyes:

You're starting to sound like a [a word denoting male part] by the day!!

[faarah22]

he needs a hard ***** slap to set him straight me thinks.

[Somalina]

The Guardian

Thursday, March 15, 2012

 

 

 

Dr Hawa Abdi's camp, home for up to 90,000 displaced people, is threatened by al-Shabaab militants.

 

A delicate woman wearing a white scarf over her head, Dr Hawa Abdi speaks in halting English, occasionally leaning forward from an overstuffed armchair in a quiet apartment in Nairobi and tapping a brown notebook to make a point.

 

In 2010, Glamour magazine voted her one of their Women of the Year, describing her as "equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo".

 

For Abdi is one of Somalia's most famous figures – a 65-year-old gynaecologist known at home as Mama Hawa. In Somalia, she founded the Dr Hawa Abdi Foundation, which runs a camp and hospital that provides food, education and medical care to the landless. The camp, 12 miles from the capital, Mogadishu, in the Afgooye corridor, is home to up to 90,000 people on land that has been in Abdi's family for generations.

 

But militiamen recently confiscated part of the land surrounding the camp.

 

"Bit by bit, they are taking my land so I no longer have space to welcome the poor people," said Abdi.

 

This happened shortly after world leaders met in London to promise support for Somalia, and is a reminder of how difficult it is to work in areas controlled by the Islamist rebels of al-Shabaab. Abdi said an al-Shabaab court ruled at the end of last month that the confiscated land, which was home to 400 people, now belonged to one of the group's associates.

 

Since that ruling, many people have fled the camp, heading to Mogadishu. These are joining thousands fleeing an expected assault on al-Shabaab by African Union troops, who now control most of Mogadishu.

 

One of the stated aims of the African Union mission in Somalia (Amisom) is to clear the way for humanitarian organisations to reach people in the al-Shabaab-controlled south, still suffering the worst effects of last year's drought and famine, which killed tens of thousands.

 

The militant group, which despises foreign intervention, has expelled numerous international and local aid groups from the territory it controls. The United Nations refugee agency said on 17 February that more than 7,200 people had fled the Afgooye corridor in the previous two weeks. The 25-mile stretch of road is home to almost 410,000 displaced people.

 

Al-Shabaab has imposed a harsh form of sharia law in the southern part of Somalia. Punishments include beheadings, stonings and "cross-amputations" (cutting off a hand and the opposite leg). And although some analysts believe the movement is weakened as it faces a three-pronged assault from Kenyan, Ethiopian and African Union troops, Abdi says the situation is very bad.

 

"Now is the worst time; [al-Shabaab] don't want young boys to play football, they don't want them to see television, they don't want them to dress normally. They killed one because he was smoking in Afgooye," she says. "These people, we don't know what they want or where they come from."

 

The court ruling is just the latest attempt to squeeze Abdi off her land. Last October, militiamen arrived with workmen and cleared some of her land and adjoining territory to build storage units. Before that, in 2010, fighters from Hizb al-Islam attacked her camp and ordered her out.

 

She refused, telling them: "I'm a doctor. What have you done for society?" Eventually, under international and local pressure, the militants released her. Abdi left Somalia and handed over the administration of the camp to her youngest daughter, Amina.

 

The camp, which Abdi started as a clinic in 1983, has a 400-bed hospital, a school for around 700 children, wells and a farm. She has tried to provide food and water to the thousands living there, using her own money and funds from donors.

 

Abdi says Somalis have to solve their own problems, but that the international community must give financial support. Otherwise, any reconciliation is doomed to fail.

 

"I hope that in the next few months, I will be operating freely in my place and no one can take away my land," she said. "If al-Shabaab leave, as [is] the Somali habit we will go and sit under the trees, we will talk about the region, among the clans, and the problem will be solved. Only the Somalis can do it, but with economic support."

 

Abdi says she and her two daughters, Amina and Deqo Mohamed, both doctors, would like to return home. "At night I dream about going to where I played when I was still young."

[General Duke]

She should get the Nobel Peace Price so these clowns can get even more pissed off. I agree they won't be there for long.

[uchi]

Sick bast ards~ we need to isolate them.