written by Mike Pflanz
Monday November 28, 2011
Somalia's al-Qaeda-linked Islamists on Monday banned 16 Western aid agencies from central Somalia, claiming they were "fostering secularism" and were "amplifying the refugee crisis".
Armed and masked men forced their way into the organisations' offices in the towns of Baidoa and Wajid and began removing computer equipment, files and supplies, witnesses reported.
Most United Nations organisations working in Somalia were on a list published by al-Shabaab's 'Office for Supervising the Affairs of Foreign Agencies'.
"Our office in Baidoa was taken over at 730am and all of our staff were ordered to go home," said Iman Morooka, spokesman for Unicef's mission to Somalia.
"They are all safe. It is not clear to us yet why this has happened, and why now, and we are working to understand all the details."
It was unclear for how long the ban would last, but aid workers fear that help to hundreds of thousands of Somalis, many suffering the effects of famine, would be at risk.
"You can't tell if this is one commander acting unilaterally, or a proper edict sent down from al-Shabaab's bosses," said one senior aid worker in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital where many organisations working on Somalia are based.
"But the fact is right now, everything's stopped. We're looking at what we can do in the next few days, then we'll assess longer-term strategies. It could be a real mess."
Aid agencies were "working with international bodies to foster secularism, immorality and the degrading values of democracy in an Islamic country", according to the al-Shabaab statement.
They were "financing, aiding and abetting subversive groups seeking to destroy the basic tenets of Islamic penal system" and "undermining the livelihoods and cultural values of the population", it continued.
It even claimed that the agencies – all Western – were making Somalia's refugee situation worse by "failing to implement durable solutions".
Al-Shabaab has been blamed for deepening the effects of four failed rainy seasons for the millions of Somalis who live in its territory, through taxes, forced recruitment and refusing foreign aid deliveries.
The banned agencies included Unicef, the World Health Organisation, the UN refugee agency UNHCR, Norwegian Church Aid, the Danish Refugee Council Concern and others from Sweden, Italy, Germany and France.
More than 250,000 people in Somalia are still at risk of imminent starvation, the UN said late last week.
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