In the news on Friday, May 22:
“Martin Bell, former BBC war correspondent and current UNICEF UK Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies, recently concluded a three-day trip to the north-east zone of Somali to report on the situation of children and women affected by conflict, drought, displacement and other hardships – and to shed light on UNICEF’s efforts to provide them with crucial services.
In Bossaso, one of the country’s busiest ports, Mr. Bell visited settlements for displaced people and saw firsthand the dire conditions in which they live. Displaced populations form a group of chronically vulnerable people here, lacking even the most basic social services and livelihood opportunities.
Bossaso hosts 27 camps where 40,000 people have sought refuge from other parts of the country. Over 1 million people in Somalia are internally displaced, mainly due to the conflict and insecurities in the central and southern regions..”
More at Relief Web.
Doctors Without Borders/Medicins Sans Frontieres reports that more than 270,000 have fled to Northern Kenya, to camps operated by the UN High Commission for Refugees, where rations have been cut by 30% and malnutrition runs at over 22%, well above the emergency threshold. That’s driving many of the refugees back to the war-zone.
My Comment
This was sent to me by a young Somali friend, who urges everyone to help in any way they can.
Now, my focus in this blog is on mass thinking, but the organization of crowds (through state propaganda, coercion, and surveillance) has as its other face, the dis-organization of crowds in times of crisis, often state-produced crisis, such as at New Orleans during Katrina, or here. Among people on the move in large groups, refugees are probably the largest group.
What is amazing to me about crowds of refugees is that they move peacefully, giving the lie to fear-mongering imagery of masses of people overwhelming civilization. That’s the sort of imagery usually conjured up by authoritarians when discussing mass migration or mass movement of any kind.
Lila, once again I want to thank you for your blog.
I hesitate to comment on this one because I can’t find my sourse. I thought I could find it as a statement in the front of Jean Raspail’s book “The Camp of the Saints.” It’s not there so I go from memory: “Two million unarmed Morrccans marched into Spanish Sahara.” I don’t think it ended civilzation but it ended Spanish rule.
Thanks, Gene. No, I’m sure it’s alarming but numbers have power..just as money has power…and it’s natural that those without money will express their power in the only way they can – through numbers. But they weren’t violent….
so they didn’t deserve a response that was violent.
My point in this piece is that large movements of people are depicted as threats, when there is no necessary reason why they should be..
Here’s the real story of Somalia:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/132942.html
Most of their problems arise from the UN trying to impose a western government on them.