SECTION: WORLD POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS; INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 43

HEADLINE:  The nomads made to wander too far
 

BODY:
   The conflict in the Horn of Africa is still alive, and it is hurting a lot of people from the Ogaden territory over which Somalia
and Ethiopia fought each other last year. Over the past two months, the flow of refugees across the Somali border from
south-eastern Ethiopia has risen dramatically.At the end of October Somali refugee camps housed some 85,000 people; now
the figure is over 100,000. If those who have crossed over with their livestock to follow their nomadic way of life on the Somali
side are included, the number of people displaced by the war could be as high as 500,000.

Since the fighting between Ethiopia and Somalia officially ended last spring when the regular Somali troops were withdrawn
from the Ogaden, not a single refugee has gone home. In the northern area of the disputed territory, the Western Somali
Liberation Front (WSLF) recently convinced a handful of foreign journalists that it was still in control everywhere except in the
towns.

Farther south, the picture is very different. Below the Shebelle and the Juba rivers, where the population lives a more settled
and semi-agricultural life, Ethiopian troops are showing their muscle.  They are entrenched along the two arms of the Juba and in the border area. The refugees arriving in the camps around the Somali town of Luug, 40 miles from the border, say that harsh reprisals are being taken against the people living beyond the Ethiopian lines.

The stories told by the latest refugees, who since the beginning of December have been arriving on some days in their hundreds, are depressingly similar. The Ethiopian soldiers arrive, burn the village, slaughter the camels and steal the rest of the livestock.  The men of the village stay to fight; the women, children and some of the elderly flee into the bush. Often the refugees do not see their menfolk again. In some cases the flight over the border has taken two months or more, for to avoid attack it has been necessary to make detours of hundreds of miles. A number of the children have died of hunger on the way; others have been killed foraging for food or when they have stopped at a waterhole. Those who have got through owe their survival to the nomadic groups they encountered, and to WSLF guerrillas operating as guides and protectors.

The brutal Ethiopian campaign against the Ogaden people is intended both as punishment of those who threw in their lots with
the WSLF last year, and as intimidation of potential recruits to new guerrilla forces. These tactics have proved counterproductive. Most Ogadenis regard the Ethiopian forces as an army of occupation. All male refugees above the age of
14 arriving in the camps are immediately recruited into the WSLF for military training.

Providing for the refugees has cost Somalia $10m so far. There has been some international help: the UN High Commission for
Refugees has given $3m; the World Food Programme and the UN Children's Fund are providing food and medical equipment.

Luug, the administrative headquarters for an area with a normal population of 25,000, now harbours 39,000 refugees. With
one 25-bed hospital and a single doctor, it is barely able to cope. Over half the refugees are children, many suffering from
severe malnutrition. The camps are orderly and well laid out, but the public health problems give cause for anxiety; nomads are
unused to living in large population concentrations. Without their livestock, which constitute their larder and their wealth, they
are destitute.

With no immediate prospect of getting the refugees to return home, the Somali government is now considering proposals for
settling some of them in permanent farming co-operatives on the banks of  the Juba River. In the meantime, much more emergency relief is needed.
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