SOMALIA: Reducing fear in Garowe

Why does MAG work in Somalia?

Fatima Farah has lived in fear for the last five years, knowing that there has been a dangerous hand grenade inside the metal shipping container lying outside her house where her family keeps its supplies in Garowe, the capital of Puntland State.

MAG safely destroyed this grenade after it was reported via the 'UXO hotline'.

"This has been an obstacle for a long time for my family and me. I am so thankful to the team for doing this work" – Fatima Farah.

[Photos: Simon Wooldridge, Project Manager, MAG Somalia]

There is lots of unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Puntland – a legacy of years of conflict and insecurity.

Until MAG started working with the Puntland Police in Garowe, there was no-one Fatima could turn to for help. The picture below shows Fatima’s children next to the container containing the grenade.

The MAG team was called on the ‘UXO hotline’ set up specially for the community in Garowe to alert MAG to tasks like this one.

Consisting of six members of the Puntland Police – seconded to MAG to be trained as Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) operators and supervised during operations throughout Puntland – the team is trained by two Technical Field Managers, one from Canada and one from Finland.

Recently, security in Puntland has improved, allowing MAG's full operations to be resumed. Once Fatima had called the team, an assessment of the task was carried out and an implementation plan put together.

After a couple of hours of carefully clearing through piles of very dusty spare car parts, household items and building supplies, the grenade shown in the picture above was located. It is ‘unfused’, so though it still contained explosive it could be safely moved by the team from outside Fatima’s house and taken to be destroyed at the demolition site outside of town. In addition, as the team searched the site they also found a projectile casing which was also taken away for destruction.

Fatima was overjoyed that she has use of her sea container again and doesn’t have to worry about her children finding the grenade and injuring themselves.

‘’This has been an obstacle for a long time for my family and me. I am so thankful to the team for doing this work. I hope that they will continue to make Garowe a safer place for everyone now that we have some peace.’’ As she said this, she was happily clutching a favourite pan for cooking rice that was found in the container and she had missed for the last five years!