As drought compounds security woes, Somalis flee to Ethiopia‏

Crop failures, livestock die-offs, and Al-Shabab extortion demands are driving thousands of farmers and pastoralists to abandon their lands and seek refuge.

When drought killed most of Barwako Noor Abdi’s cows and goats eight years ago, she had no choice but to abandon her home in Somalia’s parched Gedo region and seek help elsewhere in a country suffering from decades of insecurity.

When the next major drought hit in 2016/17, she found she could not even sell her surviving animals as there was no longer demand for them.

Then this year, as the rains failed once again, she had no option but to sell up the little piece of land that remained to her, and flee across the border to Ethiopia.

“There was nothing we could do to survive,” the 38-year-old said as she tended to the youngest of her nine children, a toddler crying for milk. “I left because of my children.”

With already poor security and now a worsening drought, more than 5,000 Somalis have sought refuge in Ethiopia so far this year – about four times the total number that crossed the border in search of safety in 2018.

More families are expected to flee to southern Ethiopia in coming months, as the Horn of Africa country faces its worst harvest since the 2011 famine.

The fragile situation is being aggravated still further by militant group Al-Shabab, which determines what crops farmers can grow and levies “taxes” – extortion payments — on already struggling rural communities.