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| Last Updated: Jun 14, 2010 - 8:03:37 PM |
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Somalia: Warlords Next Door?
26 May 26, 2008 - 10:36:02 PM
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Dispatches reveals how key politicians at the heart of the vicious
fighting in Somalia - described as the world's worst humanitarian
crisis - enjoy incredibly close links to Britain. They have British or
EU passports, their families live here and they commute between Somalia
and homes in English cities. British taxpayers are financing them in
the name of democracy - yet in Somalia they are linked to allegations
of mass murder, torture, extortion and corruption.
Reporter
Aidan Hartley sets off on the trail of four senior figures in Somalia's
Western-backed government - an investigation which takes him from
Leicester and Birmingham to Mogadishu - a city so dangerous that he and
director Jim Foster are the only Western journalists on the ground.
The
leaders of the current government, installed 17 months ago when
Ethiopian forces seized Mogadishu from Islamic militants, were expected
to restore peace after years of civil war, but also to destroy Al Qaeda
and its allies in the Horn of Africa. The investigation begins in
Britain. Among the British-Somali community, Hartley finds anger and
frustration that taxpayers are sponsoring politicians who they claim
are ruling by the gun and profit from conflict. In Leicester, one
British-Somali tells Hartley he was recently told to pay ransoms for
the release of several relatives languishing in a dungeon controlled by
a senior official in the Somali government who has a house in the same
Leicester neighbourhood.
To find out more, Hartley and Foster
travel to Mogadishu where they find a city descending into chaos and
extreme violence. Vicious fighting between insurgents and the
government forces has killed more than 7,000 civilians and produced the
largest exodus from a capital city since Pol Pot's Cambodia. The
immediate horrors of the fighting are captured on film when a roadside
bomb hits a vehicle escorting the Dispatches team while they're driving
in convoy with armed security guards, used to fend off kidnappers and
bandits. Three people are killed and three others wounded. Attacks like
this are a daily occurrence, together with indiscriminate artillery
shelling, assassinations and street skirmishes.
Hartley
investigates allegations that the government's National Security Agency
(NSA), the counterpart to MI6 and the CIA in counter-terrorism
operations, is operating with extreme methods. He hears first-hand
claims of false imprisonment, torture and extortion from prisoners who
are only freed when ransoms are paid.
Dispatches heads to the
outskirts of Mogadishu where hundreds of thousands of terrified
civilians from the city have fled to live in squalid camps. They live
in huts of plastic and sticks among the sand dunes. They all rely on
humanitarian aid from Britain and other donor countries, but they're
already starving and falling sick.Hartley investigates why aid workers
rarely set foot in Mogadishu and why the desperate victims of war are
not receiving the food and medical aid they so badly need. And finally,
the investigation examines claims of indiscriminate bombardment of
civilian districts where insurgents are thought to live.
Back in
the UK Hartley interviews Minister for Africa Lord Mark Malloch-Brown
about British support for this Somali government that is presiding over
the worst phase of conflict in 17 years of vicious civil war in Somalia.
Source: Chanel4
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