Do Eyelash Curlers Weaken

SOMALIA. A FORGOTTEN WAR

WHEN NOT TO PACIFIC 'RETURNS PICTURE

are called Harakat ash-Shabab Al-Mujahidin or simply Shabab, are less known but no less gruesome and dangerous of the most famous Taliban, which have in common with fundamentalist ignorance and hatred for the West - the United States and Israel in the first place - and perhaps That is why in Italy are identified by pacifist factions and extremism right and left as champions of freedom.

Since 1993, Somalia is literally in the lurch, quartered politically and geographically, without government authority and credibility with most areas of southern subjected to a violent and repressive Sharia .

In Somalia in 2007 is a military contingent of the African Union - AMISOM: African Mission in Somalia - which does not seem able not only to end the bloody war going on but it is not able to curbing violence and mitigate the desperate subhuman conditions in which for almost twenty years he lived the entire Somali population. Islamic fundamentalism, as has happened in Afghanistan of the Taliban , created misery and horror demolishing all civil and administrative structure and causing an exodus to Kenya that is creating significant problems and hardships along the border town, from which flow into dormant cells of Shabab now scattered throughout Kenya, where control various illegal activities.

Last week I reached Mandera, Kenya, on the border with Somalia, on board an aircraft of the Flying Doctors made available dall'AMREF who has supported me and Peter Del Re La Repubblica in making a documentary about the emergency in Africa.

Mandera is one of the hottest spots on the border with Somalia, where it has established the refugee camp Border Point One that receives not less than 8,000 Somali refugees. In Mandera are consistent Kenyan Armed Forces units and a curfew is in force, in order to move we had to ask permission from the Kenyan security forces who have given us an escort, and after a few hours we were informed that we had to fall within the compound where we took lodgings because he had already the news broke that two white men were wandering the city on board a pick-up escorted by two soldiers.

And here, in this age of no man's land, with two white camera that move under cover are the logical product for a kidnapping.

After two days, Saturday, February 19, 2011, we came back, always with the Cessna Caravan dell'AMREF at Wilson Airport in Nairobi and we have randomly seen action operated by medevac Flying Doctors of the wounded to return to Mogadishu AU (African Union ) but we could not make shots for the aggressive hostility EU officials present because: "Somalia Acuna matata" that "in Somalia, it's all right, nothing happens , everything is under control" and said furious as this was the blood that dripped from the stretcher just downloaded from the Cessna Citation .

On our return to Italy then we have received from our contacts at the Wilson Airport in Nairobi this email.

" you fight ... too much to Mogadishu.
On Sunday (February 20, 2011) we had an average of four flights a day to carry away the wounded.
Nairobi's hospitals do not longer have the ability to absorb the number of victims and yesterday's flights have started to bring patients to hospitals in Mombasa. "

Actually news agency - almost completely ignored in Italy Perhaps because the war in somalia does not make the point of view the media - speak of more than 50 dead and, according to eyewitnesses, were killed in Mogadishu alone no less than twenty civilians, caught in the crossfire of the contenders, while the same guerrillas Muslims have publicly displayed the corpses of five soldiers belonged Burundian AMISOM.

The following is a translation of an article by journalist WALTER Meny Agency Media Nation in Nairobi.

The staff of the Red Cross escapes death in a battle of the border.

The staff of the Red Cross to Mandera in Kenya has found itself under fire in firearms Friday ( the day after our departure from Mandera . ed.), The third day of heavy fighting on the border with Ethiopia and Somalia.

According to Abbas Gullet, secretary general of the KRCS (Kenyan Red Cross Society), their offices in the border city were joined by several strokes.

Six staff members had taken refuge there at the time, but Mr. Gullet said by radio that there were no casualties in the incident: "D Ivers shots were fired from the border hit the offices of the Red Cross of Mandera, where six members of staff had fled, along with many other inhabitants of the city .

The head of the KRCS, however, reported that "... there has been a victim scope already dead at the first boundary point and 10 other victims were transported to the hospital in the district of Mandera ".

"... the fighting began at ten o'clock this morning (Friday), and shooting rocked the city, bringing residents and refugees within the offices," said .

Mr. Gullet said she could hear the gunshots in the background of the call with the group coordinator KRCS Mandera at 3 pm.

The fighting, he added, have endangered the lives of humanitarian workers and other residents of the town of Mandera.

" We reported this last incident to the government and we hope that the offices of the KRCS, who also have a red cross on the flag mounted on the roof will be protected. The emblem of the Red Cross symbol is protected by the Geneva Convention and all the parties to a conflict are required to conform to " said.

In the recent past, and in the present, KRCS and other relief organizations that assist the people fleeing the Somali conflict. Hundreds of refugees are now scattered from the Kenyan side of the border, although it is risky to put them in camps until the end of the conflict.

Mr. Gullet said that the conflict has delayed the humanitarian response as well as refugees who need food and shelter can not access any help in this situation diffused.

Walter Menya

(With the collaboration of Francesca Vinciguerra)