Aaron and Anne-Sophie

Today marks yet another Yemeni national holiday, Evacuation day, or the day when the last British soldier left Aden in 1967 (also the year when Israel began to occupy the West Bank and Gaza). So we have a day off. We’ve gotten pretty settled here in Yemen after 2 and half months, which basically means there are a lot less surprises. We’re used to the blackouts during class, all the covered woman, etc., and just the different rhythm of life here. At the same time we still have a lot to learn about life here and we’ll keep writing about it. However the activist side of me has pushed me to explore some other issues that we weren’t expecting to encounter here in Yemen.

For the last 20 days Somali refugees have been camped outside the UNHCR (UN High Commission on Refugees) building here in Sanaa about 2 blocks away from our English institute, demanding improvement in their rights and status as refugees. There have been recent reports about it in the Yemen Oberserver (a middle of the road Yemeni paper in English, while the Yemen Times paper in English is generally more critical of the government here), and we read it was nearby, so I wanted to check it out. My affinity with refugees was forged by work in Palestine, so I felt I needed to go. Some opinion articles were warning that Somali refugees, although hard working and peaceful refugees in Yemen, would be prime targets for recruiting as future Islamic terrorists, because of their poverty and desperation. Either way I didn’t know much about Somalia, except for the graphically violent movie “Blackhawk Down,” based on a true story of Somali warlords trying to stop US soldiers from securing aid to parts of the country. Such a story sort of spits in the eye of my belief that giving aid as opposed to giving weapons to or bombing a country is a better way to do democratize and pacify a country, because what people would refuse such a gesture, while it seems almost certain that people in a country would resist you if you bomb it and occupy it. At the same time it’s hard to say that any aid given by the US and other powerful countries aren’t with strings attached and other intentions. Anyway, Somalia’s noteriety as a country that has been hostile to international aid agencies (like kidnapping aid workers) and the press has lead to very limited news and information coming from the country to the rest of the world as well as little local news getting to the Somalis themselves. International organizations have either left or appointed local folk to represent them. A country plagued by on and off civil wars since 1971, Somalia has been essentially government less over the past decade. Recent talks in Kenya have put an interim president and parliament in place there in 2004, so hopefully things will improve there. Yet the past decade in Somalia has been a period of lawlessness run by feuding warlords, where the gun and extreme market economy rules. It has caused many Somalis to flee to neighboring countries such as Kenya and Yemen. In order to get to Yemen, Somalis risk their lives traversing the Gulf Aden in pirate invested waters, and many of them don’t even make it over here. On the Yemen side there doesn’t seem to be much restrictions in their coming here, but the problem is bubbling like the sulta stew we eat for lunch here. They come here with almost nothing and many have very little education. Those with qualifications are often bypassed by Yemenis for jobs in an already very job scarce environment. I understand that it’s already difficult enough for the Yemeni government to find jobs and better living for their own people. So it’s a tough issue.

Asking Yemenis about Somalis and how we can distinguish them between other African looking folk, they simply say that they are the very tall and skinny ones. Many Yemenis and other Arabs obviously have some African decent in them, especially the ones from the coast that have a lot contact with Africa. They are of all classes. Many African looking Yemenis however are descended (and I’m not sure if this correct, but this is how I understood it from Maher) from slaves here, and a lot of them take (or are forced to take) the janitorial cleaning jobs. You often see them wearing orange outfits cleaning up the heavily polluted streets and the Sisyphus like task of sweeping the dust on the street, because it’s constantly dusty here. There are rich Arab Muslim Africans from Sudan and other places. Finally there are both immigrants and refugees coming from countries like Somalia and Ethiopia. Most Somalis here are Muslims. Most speak Arabic, but their native Somali language is Cushitic. Given the role of blacks here and Muslims around the world, many Somalis also complain that their lack of status in the eyes of the UN is due to their being Muslim and/or being black. In general they not only want to renew their refugee status with UNHCR (which the UNHCR says they’ll be doing soon), they want more rights in the countries their living in, or a new homeland or host country where they can have those rights.

When I went there 2 days ago I wasn’t sure what to expect. However I quickly stood out from the lines of Somalis camping all along the sidewalks, and was greeted immediately. They then referred me to a man who could speak English well to talk to me, so I sat with them on the street as he told me their situation and why they’re doing this. He immediately wanted to know if I was press. I told him no, but that I had done some activsit work before and had some experience in advocacy work. He was pleased to hear that . . . any extra attention they could get for their cause was welcome, especially since they’ve basically felt ingnored the past 20 days and for the many years Somalis have suffered in Somalia and as refugees in other countries. I promised to do some more research on the matter, to continue to keep in contact with them to learn more, and to do what I can in whatever little sphere of influence I had as an American citizen. Happy for the attention, everyone got out of their little makeshift tents and asked me to take photos of them (see photos in the Sanaa album).

I returned again with Anne-Sophie today, and we had heard that there had been a couple of small clashes with Yemeni police and that they were restricing people/press from talking with the Somali protestors. Although Yemen is in better shape democratically than many other countries in the region, because it has 2 or 3 major parties representing the government, there’s still a lot of corruption and intimidation of voices of critical of the government. Recently a newspaper writer critical of the government was beaten up and stabbed by a jambiya. Western allies like Egypt who claim to be democracies were just as bad in recent elections with intimidation at the polls. Countries in this region have too long a history of monarchial and theocratic rule, or foreign occupation and foreign rule through pupper leaders/dicatators, so it’s really hard to make transitions to a real democracy (I’ll get into this more later as I promised when I’ll talk about Middle Eastern history). The current president in Yemen has almost been in power for 30 years, and less than a third of that has been as democratically elected president. Anyway, I was hoping to get some stories and more details about Somalia, but as soon as we got there and started talking the police came and we had to pretend like we were just walking through. They stopped to talk to us three times, and we just told them we lived nearby and were on our way to the restaurant. We and the Somalis had to deny that we knew each other. This is a rather typical situation in the West Bank, but it was strange to experience that here . . . we’re not sure why the Yemeni government is so uptight about being knowing more about Somalis or helping them out, since a lot of the protest seems to be focused on UN. We’ll hopefully learn more soon, but are now restricted in our communications with these Somali protestors. However I’m less intimidated by qat chewing Yemeni police than Israeli soldiers, so I’m not worried. We have the right to walk and talk with anyone we want in public spaces without any press pass or anything like that. So we’ll see. (click here to contact the UNHCR to tell them your concerns for the Somali refugees)