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Somali Aid Workers Flee Terrorists

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The New York Times

Published: July 20, 2008

NAIROBI, Kenya - At a time of drought, skyrocketing food prices, crippling inflation and intensifying street fighting, many of the aid workers whom millions of Somalis depend on for survival are fleeing their posts or, in some cases, the country.

They are being driven out by what appears to be an organized terror campaign. Ominous leaflets recently surfaced on the bullet-pocked streets of Mogadishu, Somalia's ruin of a capital, calling aid workers "infidels" and warning them that they will be methodically hunted down. Since January, at least 20 aid workers have been killed.

U.N. officials are especially worried by the recent attacks because they say Somalia is heading toward another full-blown famine. Without professional workers to distribute food or tend to the sick, the country could sink into a catastrophe reminiscent of the early 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of people starved.

"This couldn't be happening at a worse time," said Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program.

It is not clear who is behind the terror campaign. The leaflets and accompanying e-mail messages sent to several aid organizations seem to signify a new degree of organization.

Some of the warnings were signed by a little-known group called the Martyrs of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which takes its name from the notorious Jordanian terrorist killed by American forces in Iraq in 2006.

The group said the aid workers were conspiring with "infidels," and Western diplomats said the killings might be intended to make Somalia seem so chaotic that Western countries would abandon it.

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