Burhakaba

Abaaru xunaa ka dhacay, majaaako soo dhow.

Haddaad aragteen 300,000 oo soo dhaaf ilaa iyo labo jeer ka badan ayaan waxaan tagay Buurhakaba.

Buurhakaba maxaa u tagay? Waxaan u tagay waxay ahayd xaalada markaas ka jirtu Buurhakaba ayaa ka daran xaaladaha gobolka intiisii kalaka jiray.

Waxaa markii ku qasbanay inaan Buurhakaba aan ku laalaabto sodma in shaqo ka qabato xiyadaha kalantooda aan ku qasbo inay tagaan.

Marka waa wax hadaad aragteen annagu waxaan ku shaqaynaa in xaalada markaas iyo meesha ka taagan iyo dhibku si uu u kara badan yahay ku shaqaynaa.

Siyaasadiinta gargaarka kuma xirna kaliya xagee la gaynaa iyo deegaankeey loo badinaa.

Yeah.

And I think the town of Buurhakaba, which for our listeners, is a town in south-central Somalia that is a kind of an outpost or garrison town for the AU peacekeeping forces.

So they control the town and kind of the immediate surroundings, but then all of the surrounding countryside is controlled by the Al-Shabaab militia.

So aid has to be flown in, and there's very little getting into the Al-Shabaab-controlled areas.

That is the one place where we heard there likely are famine conditions underway already, and we talked to four different aid organizations who had operations there who all told us very consistently they are seeing high levels of mortality, lots of people dying due to malnutrition, basically.

One very seasoned aid worker we spoke to said that he had been to Buurhakaba for a few days and going to the nutrition stabilization center there, and there's only one of them because the funding is not enough to sustain more.

And some of the kids that he saw one day were dead by the next day, and it was really grim.

Those were the kind of conditions we didn't really see in Puntland now, but I think it's also a warning of what could be coming on a larger scale for the country at large if things stay on the trajectory that they're on currently.