Somalia’s famine-stricken refugees begin Ramadan fast

SOMALIA’S famine refugees, weakened by months of drought, yesterday began Islam’s punishing Ramadan fast amid the tents and shacks of the world’s largest refugee camp.

“Because of the famine, we’ve been going for days without any food anyway,” said Mohamed Dubow Saman, 25, comforting his daughter outside their shelter in Dadaab camp, just over Somalia’s border in neighbouring Kenya.

“That was a fast without reward. At least this fast is inspired by God.”

Sick people do not have to keep the fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. But most of the camp-dwellers appeared determined to keep to their traditions.

As the sun sank below the horizon late on Sunday, bathing Dadaab’s makeshift city in a deep orange hue, Saman scanned the sky for the first sight of the crescent moon, which would mark the start of the month-long fast. Like millions of believers across the world, Saman was prepared to go without food or water from dawn to dusk and wait until night to eat his meagre rations.

Ramadan comes at a tough time for the Horn of Africa’s Muslim population. In parts of the drought-prone region the rains have failed for four straight years, livestock farmers say.

The famine is spreading and may soon engulf as many as six more regions of the lawless nation of Somalia, the UN humanitarian aid chief said yesterday.

Some “12.4 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti are in dire need of help and the situation is getting worse,” UN emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos told reporters.

“Today we are warning that unless we see a massive increase in the response, the famine will spread to five or six more regions. Tens of thousands of Somalis have already died and hundreds of thousands face starvation with consequences for the entire region.”

Somali president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed has embarked on a tour of countries in the region, kicking off with Djibouti over the weekend, to stress the importance of delivering aid within the country first.

The African Union is also planning to hold a pledging conference for African heads of state and international partners on August 9.

Abdulrahman Malim Abdi mopped up the remains of a meal of wheat flour and water — scant sustenance for him and his 10 children. “This is how we enter Ramadan, it will be difficult.”