Veiled women walk past a mosque under construction in the district of "Little Mogadishu", home to many Somali refugees in Addis Ababa, January 12, 2007.
REUTERS/Andrew Heavens
FEATURE-Somalis in Ethiopia hesitant to return
By Andrew Heavens
ADDIS ABABA, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Abdulrahman Abdulqadir was watching his favourite football team Arsenal on satellite television when the seven gunmen burst into his shack in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.
"They were shouting 'This is not allowed', 'This is against Islam'," said the 18-year-old electrical engineering student. "We ran out and they started firing their Kalashnikovs over our heads. That's when I decided I had to leave."
Back in December, when the Union of Islamic Courts was strengthening its grip on the city, the decision to leave was easy.
Abdulrahman joined scores of other Somalis on a 15-day trek by rented car and packed minibus north from Mogadishu to Somaliland, then west to the sanctuary of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.
Today, a month later, with the Islamist forces largely defeated and a resurgent national government claiming control of Somalia, Abdulrahman and his fellow Somali refugees are facing a much tougher choice: whether to go back home.
"At the moment, the arms are in the hands of the people," he told Reuters. "I won't go back until everyone is disarmed."
Not that he is pessimistic. "That will happen. It will take a month. I'm happy that the transitional government has taken over," he said.
"Now that the government is in the capital, I can't see how the Islamic Courts will come back. I'd like to go back to continue my studies. But I'm still deciding."
Abdi Abdullah flew out of Mogadishu in October, after scraping together cash for the flight from friends and family in the city. The 16-year-old's first priority is to try to get passage to the United States to stay with family in Minnesota.
If that fails, he is not sure about returning to Mogadishu.
"It's not safe enough yet -- there are still some parts of the Union left. When everyone is defeated, that's when I might go back."
SOMALI COMMUNITY
Both men were speaking at the headquarters of Somali Community Ethiopia, an Addis-based charity that raises funds for what it says is a 60,000-strong Somali community in the Ethiopian capital.
Over the past few months, that number has been increasing by more than 150 a day -- all refugees from Somalia -- according to the charity's chairman Mohmaud Issa.
Reliable estimates of the total number of refugees coming over the border are hard to come by. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has sent a high-level mission down to Ethiopia's remote and porous border with Somalia to gauge their number.
"There are thousands of people who have come here and other major towns for safety. They are stuck here and they cannot go back to the south," said Issa.
The numbers of refugees started increasing dramatically seven months ago, he added, when the Islamic Courts took control of large swaths of central and southern Somalia.
"The first people who came were the artists, the singers, the comedians, the musicians - because they were banned by the Islamic Courts. They became the first target.
"Then it was the moderate people - the people who chew chat (a mild narcotic also banned by the Islamic Courts), the people who drink -- most professionals, people with a western education. They saw a Taliban-style administration which they couldn't live with."
According to the UNHCR, the flow of Somali refugees to Ethiopia was less significant in 2006 than the 34,000 who went to Kenya. At the peak of the Somali influx into Ethiopia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, more than 250,000 Somalis fled to Hartisheik camp in eastern Ethiopia -- then billed the world's largest refugee camp.
Mohammed Ali, of another community association, The Somali Literacy Centre, estimates there are currently around 20,000 Somali refugees in the Addis area alone. "Most have friends and family to stay with. Some are living up to seven in one room."
Both associations are based in Addis Ababa's 'Little Mogadishu' district, the biggest of around 10 Somali population clusters in the capital.
It is a tangle of dusty streets packed with Somali restaurants and cafes, leading up to a half-built mosque which is being constructed to cater for the area's growing Muslim population.
The walls of the Somali Community Ethiopia centre are plastered with posters listing details of how to apply for asylum or citizenship in Canada. But Somali Community Ethiopia's Issa says many of the new refugees would be much happier going back to Somalia.
"They are waiting and looking for improvements in the capital. When they see disarmament they will start to go back -- gradually. There's a lot of opportunity.
"There are lots of natural resources, the longest coast line in Africa. It has uranium, it has petrol, it has gas.
"It has four major ports. Anyone, even with the smallest investment, can make a good business.
"But if the international community doesn't intervene -- if Somalia goes back again -- it will be a disaster that will affect Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Yemen -- who knows where it can reach."
