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.
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Somalia (2008) Dispatches - Warlords next door Part 3.aviby xassanbille1,385 views
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