No Place to Hide

Refugees fleeing the carnage of Mogadishu find new dangers in Somalia's supposedly safer north.

BY BOBBY PIERCE | OCTOBER 28, 2009

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

Displaced hope: Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees have fled the fighting in Mogadishu since civil war broke out in 1991. Many of these refugees embark on a perilous journey that leads to an even more ominous reality in the refugee camps of Puntland and Somaliland. These semi-autonomous regions in the country’s north have seen relatively little fighting, compared to the south, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are safer.  Above, Somali boys hang out on a hill overlooking a refugee camp for the thousands of internally displaced people.

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images

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Bobby Pierce is an editorial researcher at Foreign Policy.

MAIGARI

3:40 AM ET

October 30, 2009

SOMALI REFUGEES

It is distresssing to see women and children suffering the cost of war taht is not of their making. Most of the suffering is traceable to the cold war era and unabashed US support ofr dictators who share USs' world view.
The Union of Islamic Courts have suceeded in uniting most of thew countrty before the US forced them out! The consequence is that now Somlia is a failed state with all the aattendant human misery.
We can only hope that the Obama administration will step back and reconsider the "blind " anti Islamic phobia now rampant everywhere. First by allowing the people of each country to freely elect thier leaders not by imposition. Secondly, the actions of over zealous few must not be used as an excuse to impose embargos on a people.
In amny instances, it is the seeming outside support that causes splinters and ultimately give room for the overzealous to use the mantra of ethnic/relogious fervour to staert an insurrection. The experts qiuckliy cash in and blame Radical Islam for the woes!