SOMALIA: Drought Victims Drink Urine!
Mohamed Elmi, Oxfam regional programme manager was quoted as saying:
The situation is as bad as I can remember. Some people are dying and children are drinking their own urine because there is simply no water for them to drink. (…)Many families are surviving on just a 20-litre jerry can of water for three days. (…) This is equivalent to 830 ml, or three glasses, of water per person per day for drinking, cooking and washing. (…)The situation will get worse unless swift action is taken. (…) People cannot survive on just three glasses of water a day when the temperature is hitting 40 degrees. (…) Without water, children will die and the livestock on which pastoralists depend will end up as rotting corpses around dry wells.
This horrifying and tragic story should not surprise anyone! Experts both inside and out the country have been issuing dire warnings for months. Unfortunately, the international community and specially the media seem to be paying a lip service to this emerging catastrophe in front of our eyes! However, the blame should squarely be on the shoulders of the destructive Mogadishu warlords and Sharif Xasan Aadan; Speaker of the transitional Somali federal parliament. The fact is, if Sharif Xasan did not destroy the planned installation of the Somali Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, the political and the security situation in the country would have been different. Indeed, the UN would not be begging for access to the Somali victims of this devastating drought.
In short, the fracture of the Somali peace accord due to Sharif Xasan’s reckless political maneuvers caused the destabilization of the TFG and inflicted serious political and security problems for the Somali Nation. This in turn caused a major delay for the TFG to function properly. The destructive Mogadishu warlords on their part refused the TFG to settle down and operate from the Somali capital as it should, thus weakening further the TFG’s ability to function properly.  As I wrote earlier, the tribal warlords killed thousands of innocent Somalis and now they intend to kill hundred of thousands if not millions through starvation by the looting the food supplies for the hungry Somalis. This must not be tolerated. The myopic Somali tribalists must recognize that the tribal warlords that they are supporting politically and economically are indeed destroying their communities though starvation!Â