MSF pulls out of Somalia after 22 years
Print Edition
In announcing a pullout from Somalia after 22 years, Doctors Without Borders said yesterday that armed groups are killing and abducting aid workers. And in a scathing indictment of Somalia’s leadership, the aid group accused civilian leaders of condoning or even supporting the attacks.
The pullout goes against the narrative of a Somalia emerging from decades of anarchy and violence amid military gains against Islamist insurgents, but it underscores the violence that persists. Some two dozen local journalists have been killed since the start of 2012. In June, a truck bomb and gunfire attack on the main UN compound in Mogadishu killed eight UN staff and five Somali civilians.
Doctors Without Borders, the winner of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize and known by its French initials as MSF, said the pullout will cut off thousands of Somali civilians from humanitarian aid. For example, in Mogadishu, MSF runs the only pediatric intensive care unit, while in Jowhar, women will have nowhere to go for emergency Caesarean sections.
The decision comes after the release from prison of a Somali man convicted of killing two MSF staff. In December 2011 a Somali employee of MSF who learned his contract would not be renewed shot and killed a Belgian and an Indonesian worker at an MSF compound. Though he was convicted and sentenced to 30 years, he was set free from prison after only three months, MSF said.
In a blunt statement, MSF denounced “extreme attacks on its staff in an environment where armed groups and civilian leaders increasingly support, tolerate, or condone the killing, assaulting, and abducting of humanitarian aid workers.”
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