Everybody will try to catch you. You have no friend."
-- Marc Aubriere, a French security adviser who was held hostage in
Somalia for more than a month but escaped after his captors somehow
overlooked an unlocked bolt. Aubriere and a colleague — who is still
in captivity, being held by a separate radical Islamist group — had
come to Somalia on behalf of the French government to help train the
security forces of Somalia's fledgling government. But the two were
snatched from a Mogadishu hotel on July 14 by rogue security forces
who had defected to the insurgency. For many people in Somalia, his
yarn was too much to believe, with doubters contending that Aubriere
made up the story after being released for cash. The most unlikely
part of his midnight escape, they argued, was the five-hour odyssey
through the bullet-riddled maze of central Mogadishu, where hundreds
of thousands of people live in the ruins of a city that has been
relentlessly strafed and bombed throughout 18 years of civil war.
Mogadishu is one of the world's most dangerous cities and has a
history of kidnappings of foreigners, mainly aid workers and
journalists. Amanda Lindhout, a young Canadian journalist, has now
been held hostage in Somalia for a full year, but hostages have
normally been released for substantial ransom payments after days or
weeks in captivity. Somali kidnappers on Aug. 12 released six foreign
hostages, four European aid workers and their two Kenyan pilots, after
eight months of captivity. Action Against Hunger is one of a few aid
groups that have continued working in the country. "As most of the
NGOs working in Somalia, most of these programs are running in rebel
controlled territory, so there are no expatriates currently in
Somalia," said spokesperson Sylvain Trottier. "They just make some
quick visits from time to time."
Peter L. Baldwin
www.peterbaldwin.info
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