Whenever Mohamud Ali Abdi’s captors went out, they tied one of his toes to the trigger of an AK-47 assault rifle pointed at his stomach. On their return, they would make more phone calls to his relatives demanding $7 000 in ransom.
This went on for 80 days until the merchant’s relatives abducted three of the kidnappers’ own clansmen and threatened to kill one a day until Abdi was freed. They let him go.
Abdi is just one of hundreds of people who have been grabbed off the streets of Somalia’s capital over the past eight years, since clan warfare ebbed and left thousands of young gunmen with no money and nothing to do in this Horn of Africa nation.
”This phenomenon of abductions started to appear some eight years ago, immediately after the serious clan warfare stopped,” said sociologist Abdulkadir Yahyeh Sheikh Ali of the Centre for Research and Dialogue.
”It is then when we first saw dangerous gangs from different clans sitting together and chewing khat (a semi-narcotic leaf). I knew immediately what would follow – organised and sophisticated crimes.”
The most highly publicised victims have been foreign aid workers, but the great majority are Somalis, many of them merchants of Arab origin from outside the traditional clan system. Because of the kidnapping danger, aid groups rarely station foreigners in Mogadishu.
After gunmen grabbed Mohamed Ali Abokar, a Somali economist working for the UN Development Program, on April 28, the United Nations suspended its aid programs in Somalia’s capital, including a polio immunisation campaign. The United Nations said Abokar, the 15th UN employee kidnapped since 1995, was released unconditionally on Saturday.
Terms of the release of foreigners or Somalis working for international organisations are never made public; money or something else of value generally changes hands to obtain the release of private Somalis.
When clan-based political faction leaders united to oust longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991, Somalia was swept by clan warfare that brought periodic famines and prevented relief food from reaching those in need. A US-led operation to secure the way for the emergency aid and an ensuing UN peacekeeping force failed in attempts to restore order and pulled out in March 1995.
Hajji Abdulkarim Farah, a trader who started out in business when Somalia was still an Italian colony, insists kidnapping is not a Somali tradition.
”Abduction is like the slave trade: you capture someone at gunpoint, then try to sell him to his relatives,” he said.
He considers it worse than murder. ”Because when you know your person is alive, but you can’t set him free, this kills the dignity of the person and his people.”
Yahyeh traces the kidnapping racket to the forceful conscription of youths for military service during the Siad Barre regime. Frantic relatives would track down the young men at military camps where officers would demand money for their release, he said.
Researchers like Yahyeh believe kidnapping will continue as long as Mogadishu remains unstable and the authority of the one-and-a-half-year-old transitional government of President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan remains weak.
Kidnapping is rare elsewhere in Somalia. Members of the ”unarmed communities” – usually coastal merchants of Arab origin who have no clans to fall back on – generally have no alternative but to pay for the release of their relatives.
The families of other victims often resort to the ”eye-for-an-eye” approach that won Abdi’s release. Frustrated by the failure of intermediaries to win the release of Abokar, his clansmen from the Rahanwein community seized five
trucks belonging to the Habr Gedir clansmen of the kidnappers. The trucks are worth much more than the $10 000 initially demanded for his release.
But kidnappers are trying to stay one step ahead of their victims by operating in multi-clan gangs to make it impossible for relatives to figure out against whom to retaliate.
In a place without police or an effective judicial system, kidnapping is also used to collect debts.
”If there is no police, no other sort of authority, and the person does not want to give you back your money, then you’re forced to kidnap him or his wife or his child,” said Diriyet Ahmed Ilka Asseh, a gunman, although he denied he ever kidnapped anyone. – Sapa-AP