Somalia I Against My Brother

By Marguerite Michaels/Mogadishu

Anarchy has a thousand faces in Somalia. The men with the guns call it liberation, but it is freedom without responsibility, humanity, compassion, future or hope. Freedom to kill and the right to die. Freedom to liberate the weak from all they possess, wives from their husbands, children from their parents; freedom to liberate anyone from the burden of life in a power struggle that is destroying the last vestiges of society and human dignity.

Duale Noor Sabrie was sitting in his house in Mogadishu when the shell hit. Three of his brothers and his oldest son were killed. "The place was burning. My wife went in one direction; I went in another. It took us one month to find each other," he recalls. The family migrated by foot and boat to a refugee camp on the Kenyan coast. Sabrie had been a successful businessman with cars and servants and thousands of dollars of cash in the bank. Now, he says, "I am 56 years old. I cannot go home again or start over. Nothing will change in Somalia in my lifetime. But I am lucky. I am alive."

For those who remain in Mogadishu, living has become a slow death. Crowded into the few buildings still standing, women and children forage for food and water. A bag of looted U.S. flour is $30, a container of skim milk donated by the European Community is $20, and hardly anyone has money for either. The distended bellies and red-streaked hair of the children signal the malnutrition that is endemic.

The streets are controlled by pickup trucks carrying antiaircraft guns and young men -- some barely in their teens -- with Kalashnikov rifles. Their eyes are bright with the drug called kat, their fingers quick on the trigger. Makeshift hospitals dot the city; the existing ones were looted long ago. The wounded must bring their own beds, so most end up lying on the floor, a weeping relative holding aloft their intravenous solution -- when it is available. Somali doctors and foreign volunteers move so quickly from patient to patient that trails of blood pattern the floors.

The map of Somalia is a mosaic of clans and subclans. The men who captured Mogadishu in January 1991 and put President Mohammed Siad Barre to flight belong to the Hawiye clan. The northern quarter of the capital is held by the , Abagal subclan of interim President Ali Mahdi Mohammed. The Habar Gedir subclan of General Mohammed Farrah Aidid dominates the southern three-fourths. At the beginning of last year, hatred of Siad Barre united the groups, but that unity is long gone. Another clan has declared an independent Somaliland in the north; yet another controls the land south and west of Mogadishu. Meanwhile, Siad Barre waits with hundreds of well-armed fighters only 125 miles away from the capital.

Two weeks ago, a United Nations-led peace delegation brokered a cease-fire -- at least the third since September -- signed by both Ali Mahdi and Aidid. But the war is far from over. Somalians have a familiar proverb -- "I and Somalia against the world. I and my clan against Somalia. I and my family against the clan. I and my brother against the family. I against my brother" -- and they seem determined to fight their way to the very last line.