Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/506094
14 "THE only thing I ever wanted was to work as a journalist in my own country," Ahmed Nuur Ibrahim, 27 from Mogadishu, tells me as we face each other across a desk in the African Media Association's office in Hamrun. "I didn't want to come to Europe at all." In any other context this would seem a fairly humble aspiration, especially to someone who has done precisely that for years. But it was never going to be an easy option for Ahmed. The country he so dearly wishes to work in has been torn apart by civil war for the past 30 years; and it is a war fought as much through the media as with weapons on the streets. The main bone of contention in the Somali civil war concerns a power struggle between the Transi- tional Federal Government, elected in 2006, and a militant jihadist group called Al Shabaab. But like most civil wars, the reality on the ground is much more complex than that. The country is also deeply divided among various tribes and clans, many of which are engaged in private wars of their own. And Al Shabaab has also declared war on all 'infidels' in So- malia: including all Christians, and particularly targeting the United Na- tions' peacekeeping presence. In a country as volatile as that, at- tempting to faithfully report the news is often a fatal career decision. "My job is to report exactly what happens in my country," Ahmed resumes. "When there is fighting, I will report the truth of what hap- pened: how many died, how many were killed or wounded… but when you tell the people these things, they contact you, saying things like: 'when you tell the news, you damage the dignity of my clan…" Soon into his journalistic career, Ahmed was contacted indirectly by Al Shabaab with an offer to 'join them'. Failure to accept such an in- vitation, he adds, can and very often does result in death. "They killed 18 of my friends for refusing to join," Ahmed says. "Always you are threat- ened. You never know when you are going to die. You have to always be ready to die, when you are working as a journalist in Somalia…" Ahmed refused the invitation, and triggered off an intimidation cam- paign that escalated between 2007 and 2008. The last call on Ahmed's mobile was to inform him that he would be dead within three days. "When they called me, I was stay- ing with my mother. She heard what they said. Then she told me, 'Leave Mogadishu. Find a safer place.' I took her advice, and went to Bosaso [a city in the north-eastern Bari province of Somalia]…" There he landed a job as a corre- spondent for IRIN, a Nairobi-based humanitarian news agency run by the United Nations. "One day there was fighting – be- cause Al Shabaab still have a base near Bosaso, and their militia control the Gargala mountains. Every day the militia would come to Bosaso to kill. They kill religious leaders, they kill doctors, they kill journalists. It is easy for them, because there is no re- al security. No one to take responsi- bility for the safety of the people…" Once again, Ahmed was on the re- ceiving end of death threats. "One day they called and said, 'Stop. We know who you are: you were always against us, and now you are work- ing for the infidels'…" Then he was given an ultimatum: either quit his UN job and work for the Al Shabaab- controlled media instead, or face the consequences. But again he refused. "I said, 'I can't stop my work. I will continue, and you can't kill me. Do whatever you want.' And I switched off my mobile. It was 19 May, 2010. Two days later they called again: 'Ahmed, we know where your home is. We know where you work, we know the route you take when you go to the radio station. We know where you go to drink coffee, and even where you sit. We know. And we are going to kill you in 24 hours…' Then I was very afraid..." Ahmed spent that night in the home of a local police officer. The following morning he decided to leave Somalia altogether. Placing his wife and two sons in the care of his mother in Mogad- ishu, Ahmed crossed the border into Ethiopia; and finding much the same situation there, he eventually worked his way towards Khartoum in North Sudan. It was there that Ahmed first heard about the possibility of a trip to Eu- rope: it was also there where the real trouble began. "In Khartoum I was hoping to have a second chance, to get on with my life. But things are very difficult there, too. Sudan is a dictatorship, there is no freedom of speech. Still, I was not thinking about Europe back then... then one night I met other Somalis who wanted to cross the desert." Ahmed was introduced to one of the human traffickers. "He said: 'you pay only US$500, and you can go to Europe easily.' I said: 'It's not pos- sible. How can we cross the whole distance from Khartoum to Europe for only $500?' He insisted he would take full responsibility for all the trip, and that there wouldn't be any prob- lems…" Despite strong misgivings, Ahmed eventually came round to accepting the offer along with a group of fellow asylum-seekers. "We paid the mon- ey, and they brought us – 26 people – to a small car. We were driven to the desert, and when we got to the middle, we stopped at a base control- led by another gang of human traf- fickers. There, they asked everybody for another ransom of US$3,500…" Ahmed had effectively been kid- napped. "I told them I couldn't pay the money. My family is poor. My father died in 1991, my mother runs a very small cafeteria in Mogadishu. She also has to take responsibility for my wife and children, apart from my brother and two sisters. I felt ashamed having to call my family, especially my mother, to ask her to pay the ransom…" How does the racket actually function, I ask? How does a fam- ily in Mogadishu effect payment to a criminal organisation holed up in the middle of a desert flanked by four countries? "They give you a satellite phone and a bank account number. The smug- glers have bank accounts in different places: Khartoum, Tripoli, Dubai… so they give you an account number in one of those banks, and when you deposit the money, they have repre- sentatives there to confirm that the payment has been made…" These banks, he explains, are di- rectly implicated in the extortion racket. "They work like a network. Traffickers in Libya have contacts in the banks of Somalia, Eritrea, Ethio- pia. They are all connected." Ahmed's experience also attests to the sheer scale of the international human trafficking ring. The traffick- ers he encountered varied in nation- ality from Somali to Ethiopian, to Su- danese, to Egyptian, to Chadian. "They are different gangs, but they know each other, they work together, and they bribe government officials in different countries." Back in the desert, Ahmed soon found himself the last of the initial 26 who left together, after the other abductees all paid the ransom one by one. He had been captive for just over one month. New victims were being driven in all the time. "One day they beat me, then showed me the skeletons of the peo- ple who died already. They said, 'You see these people? They were just like you. If you want to join them, don't pay the money.' Then they beat me again, and gave me the phone. I called my mother and explained the situation. I told her that if she didn't pay $3,500, I would be dead within two days." Ahmed had already seen people being executed for failing to pay the ransom. "I saw them killed directly by the hand of the smugglers. I saw women being raped. People being tortured. And some children and a pregnant woman died, and were left in the desert." Later Ahmed would see several other corpses and skeletons on the long drive towards Libya. These, he explains, were the ones who died of dehydration or heat trauma on the way, and whose bodies were dumped out of the vehicle. But that happened only after his mother managed to raise the $3,500 by selling a small parcel of family- owned land in Mogadishu. "By then we were a group of 32 persons. They put us in a jeep, very overcrowded, and travelled through the desert for four days and nights. When we got to the first city in Lib- ya, Sabha, we were met by another group of smugglers. They also asked for a ransom, this time of $2,500." At every different stage of the jour- ney, it seems, different cells of hu- man traffickers would step in to take over the operation. And with each new takeover by a different gang, a new ransom would be demanded. "They put us in a small apartment on the fourth floor, and closed the doors and windows. There were over 200 of us in that hole, which was very small. When someone paid the ran- som, they would open the door and call out the name, and he would be free to go. Everyone else stayed in- side until the money was paid." One particularly hot night, panic broke out. "We all started shouting, 'open the door'… and they opened one of the windows. Myself and two others who couldn't pay the money took the decision to jump. There was a pile of sand near the building and I jumped on it, and started running. They fired shots at us but I was not hit…" Ahmed is unsure of the fate of the two other escapees, but he himself managed to reach central Sabha un- scathed. There he fell in with a small group of fellow Somalis; and after a second initial 'deposit' of $500, paid to another human trafficker in Interview By Raphael Vassallo maltatoday, SUNDAY, 3 MAY 2015 From Somalia with HUMAN TRAFFICKERS One day they beat me, then showed me the skeletons of the people who died already. They said, 'You see these people? They were just like you. If you want to join them, don't pay the money.' Always you are threatened. You never know when you are going to die. You have to always be ready to die, when you are a journalist in Somalia… DEATH THREATS