Africa

By Al Jazeera Staff in Africa on August 13th, 2011

Al Jazeera staff and correspondents update you on important developments in the Libya uprising.

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Tags: Libya
By Haru Mutasa in Africa on July 30th, 2011
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

Dadaab camp in Kenya, the largest refugee camp in the world, is full. 

Opened in the early 90s, it was meant to hold 90,000 people, but it now 'houses' about 400,000 with many of the early arrivals still living in the camp. 

More people from Somalia stream in, escaping the prolonged drought and the conflict in their home country.

Dadaab is one of the poorest areas in Kenya. The heat is unbearable, it is dusty and the only vegetation is a few shrubs. It is depressing but it is home for thousands of Somalis.

They get tents, food, and water from aid agencies, the basics to survive until they can return home whenever peace returns to conflict-ridden Somalia.

As people try to find any patch of shade, under an aid worker's car for example, I look in the distance at buildings painted in white with their noticeable sky blue roofs.

Tags: Kenya, Somalia
By Peter Greste in Africa on July 17th, 2011

Wajir, Kenya - The people out here are tough, and so are their animals. But there is a limit to how much any human can take, and people like Alfon Abdulahi Mohamed have reached it.

We met Alfon as we drove towards what the aid agencies have called the "ground zero" of East Africa's devastating drought-hit areas.

Tags: Wajir
By Nazanine Moshiri in Africa on July 14th, 2011

A well known and respected journalist emailed me today complimenting our Al Jazeera team's work in covering the refugee and drought crisis in North Eastern Kenya and Somalia over the past week, describing it as "contextualised and moving, without being drippy or cliched".

Sometimes the pictures do just speak for themselves, but in news, behind the scenes, there are so many stories which often can't make it to the television screen.

In the Somali border town of Dobley, our team was faced with a dilemma. We were confronted with scores of hungry people, many of whom were very weak and frail, with absolutely no one to help them.

As journalists you, of course, have a duty to tell the story, but at the same time, you just cannot turn your back on humanity. Our time in the town was severely limited due to security concerns, and so we had to film as much as possible in the little time that we had.

Tags: Somalia
By Neave Barker in Africa on July 14th, 2011
The "suicidal plan" to destroy Tripoli if it falls has been ascribed to Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, the Libyan prime minister [AFP]

Hardly reassuring words from the man Russia's put in charge of mediating the conflict in Libya.

Mikhail Margelov, the president's special envoy to Africa, said in an interview with the Russian Izvestia newspaper that the regime of Muammar Gaddafi has "a suicidal plan” in place if rebels move to seize Tripoli.

“The Libyan premier told me, 'If the rebels take over the city, we will cover it with missiles and blow it up,'" he said.

By Evan Hill in Africa on July 13th, 2011
Rebels broke into and looted a hospital in the town of Rayayinah in mid-June [Sidney Kwiram/HRW]

Rebels in Libya's western Nafusa Mountains have burned and damaged homes, looted hospitals and shops and beaten suspected regime loyalists during fighting over the past month, according to a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) released on Wednesday.

The rebel military commander in the Nafusa, Colonel El-Moktar Firnana, admitted to HRW that his forces were responsible for the abuses but said the lootings and beatings had gone against orders and that some rebels had been punished as a result.

But he also sought to explain the attacks, saying they were a consequence of local residents' loyalty to the embattled regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

By Nazanine Moshiri in Africa on July 10th, 2011
The situation in the outskirts of the main camps have the makings of a humanitarian disaster [Azad Essa/Al Jazeera]

DADAAB, KENYA - After three days at Dadaab, it is hard not to be affected by what you see.

The crying sick babies; the young children caked in dust; their mothers doing everything on their own; their husbands either dead, or looking after what little they have left back in Somalia.

There are just so many stories of survival, but as soon as we spotted Habiba - a woman in her 90s - we knew her tale would be extraordinary.

Old and frail, with a walking stick in one hand and the other clasped by her daughter, Haretha, she walked all the way from the Somali border around a 100km away, and somehow these two women made it together.

It was love and a sheer desire to live that got them through; clinging to her mother, Haretha told us "she is the only family I have".

By Nazanine Moshiri in Africa on July 8th, 2011
This mother and child, like 370,000 others have come to Dadaab in search of help, peace and hope. [Azad Essa/Al Jazeera]

I have been to refugee camps before, but nothing on the sheer scale of Dadaab. The camp was only supposed to house tens of thousands, but according to the latest UNHCR figures there are now more than 370,000 people here.

An additional 10,000 or so people still unregistered - add that to the 1,000 or more arriving every single day.

The facility is just huge - split into three sections by kilometres of dark golden sand, swirling in the wind. One of the most famous of inner camps is called Dagahaley, this is where many of the people who have walked for days, first arrive.

What really strikes you is just how many women and children there are. Their faces, hands and feet covered in dust that has turned their skin a greyish colour. It is estimated that 80 per cent of the Somalis coming are women and children.

By Mohamed Vall in Africa on July 8th, 2011
Daniel Majak

Daniel Majak is a character to remember.

When we drove into the Gabarouna slum for displaced southerners outside Khartoum, Majak was the first person to emerge from the ruins of a mudhouse.

Frail and shabby and dejected … and seemingly out of a chronic famine – and yet Daniel is noble in spirit, hospitable by nature, easy going in character and ready to go out of his way to smile to us and to help us - a foreign crew who suddenly invaded his little world of ruins outside the town.

We walked around under the scorching July sun as he showed us a mound of mud and the remnants of a bathroom.

“This was my house” he said, “they destroyed it because it had no legal papers”.

During the early years of the civil war hundreds of thousands of southerners fled the south and chaotically lived around Khartoum.

Many like Daniel came here as children and grew up in utter destitution. Most of them did not go to a school.

By Sue Turton in Africa on July 8th, 2011
Photo by AFP

It was getting late for a foray to the front. There was perhaps an hour's light left in the sinking sun. Not much time to negotiate our way up there and back before dark.

But we had run into the same brick wall that was stopping all the media in Misurata from reporting at the frontline.

The military commanders had universally decided that the press did more harm than good after one of our colleagues gave away rebel positions in his report a couple of weeks earlier.

As we hung out at the makeshift hospital just back from the key checkpoint, one of the local tradesmen, who had supported the rebels with supplies since the beginning, lodged a complaint.

"Why do you call them rebels? They are not fighting men. They are civilians forced to pick up weapons." Mohammed was indignant.

"You need to tell the world that these men are normal people. Gaddafi has forced them to take up arms.

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