“Expatriates have bankrolled Internet cafes in Somalia and helped build one of the most reliable and inexpensive phone networks in Africa…”

The Washington Post
With Web, a lifeline home
Technology advances help immigrants track Somali crisis, aid families
By Sudarsan Raghavan

Updated: 12:30 p.m. ET June 6, 2006
Dayib Mohamud Sheikh lives on a calm, tree-lined street in Silver Spring, and his aging mother is thousands of miles away in a turbulent war zone in their native Somalia. Yet for the past three weeks, he has lived through her nightmare morning, day and night.

One day, he learned his mother’s house was hit by a missile. She was fine. Another day, the fighting was nearing her neighborhood in the capital, Mogadishu. He was not so fine. Yesterday, Islamic militias captured Mogadishu.

He scoured Web site after Web site, driven by one question: Is my mother safe?

Then he picked up the phone. He would soon find out.

For nearly three weeks, Mogadishu has been the scene of some of the worst clashes since U.S. soldiers withdrew from Somalia in 1994 after a failed intervention.

Closer than ever
But unlike then, the chaos in the East African homeland is closer than ever for thousands of Somalian immigrants in the Washington region and across the nation. Technology is propelling the conflict into their living rooms and offices, providing a painful ringside view of the crisis as well as ways to help relatives in danger.

It’s the latest manifestation of how immigrants in the region, from Ethiopians to Salvadorans, from Liberians to Iranians, are increasingly connected in real time to violence and political upheavals unfolding in their home countries.

“Everything that happens in Somalia is now instantaneous,” said Dahir Amalo, 43, a mortgage banker.

Today, several dozen Internet sites follow every twist and turn of the conflict. They post digital photos of the chaos, blogs and round-the-clock news. It’s easy to listen to online radio and video broadcasts from the BBC and Voice of America.

Expatriates have bankrolled Internet cafes in Somalia and helped build one of the most reliable and inexpensive phone networks in Africa, where cellphone and online use is rapidly growing. It’s cheaper for Somalis in Mogadishu to phone the United States than the other way around, said immigrants here. And they use text messaging, e-mail and instant messaging to further cut costs.

Sheikh knows. He has become a virtual sentry, monitoring his mother’s safety with every click of his mouse.

“If it gets worse, I’m planning to get my mother out,” Sheikh, 47, an account manager for a private tourism operator, vowed last week.

Like many Somali Americans, he came to the United States in the 1970s seeking higher education. He watched the central government collapse in 1991 after the overthrow of the military regime of Mohamed Siad Barre, ushering in lawlessness. The recent clashes, some analysts have said, pitted U.S.-backed warlords against Islamic militias.

The Washington region has about 6,000 Somalis, according to community leaders, including refugees who have fled the violence in recent years — the fifth-largest African community in the region. In the 1980s and 1990s, they paid $10 a minute to phone relatives back home. News was often delivered months later through word of mouth.

“People used to send letters to tell us what’s happening. It was like the Pony Express,” recalled Mohamud Haji, 49, who runs a technology company. “Nowadays, they use e-mails, faxes, text messages, even Skype,” software that enables free phone calls over the Internet.

But the ease and speed of communicating with loved ones can be distressing. Ahmed Afra, 63, recalled the phone call last week from his sister in Mogadishu.

“We’re listening to the news. Is it true or not?” Afra asked her about the situation that day.

“Yes,” she replied.

“We’re praying to God that everything will be okay,” he told her with tears sliding down his face.

His sister told him that she was fine. The fighting, she said, was unfolding in another section of Mogadishu. But he has been logging on to Web sites, getting his daily dose of the mayhem. And he wondered whether she was playing down her plight for his sake.

“You cry over the cellphone. What else can you do?” he said.

Ahmed Eyow, 51, remembers that in pre-Internet days, his imagination would run unfiltered during any upsurge in violence.

Today, he surfs Somalian Web sites such as hiiraan.com. He knows the clashes are confined to some parts of Mogadishu and finds that reassuring.

On Friday, Haji and more than a dozen Somali American men met, as they usually do, at a Caribou coffee shop in Silver Spring.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to their homeland, what the latest news was on Web sites and which blocks of Mogadishu warlords controlled.

Haji spoke about his hopelessness.

“We feel like: When is it going to end?” he said. “It’s a sense of despair that we can’t do anything. You feel helpless. You want to do something. The conflict brings this to us more vividly — in real time.”

Amalo spoke about his cousin, Abdul, who had traveled from the Washington region to Somalia to visit his relatives. Then the war erupted, and he found himself on a different mission. He had to evacuate his mother, sister and 10 nephews and nieces.

Before he left, he deposited about $10,000 with a Somalian money transfer service in Alexandria, part of an informal, ancient global banking system called hawala .

Each time Abdul needed money, he e-mailed the hawala broker, and the broker e-mailed him a password. Then, he went to one of the broker’s partners in Somalia to get the cash, Amalo said.

Abdul rented housing in a safer part of the country, bought airline tickets and evacuated his relatives, Amalo said.

Yesterday, Sheikh was also thinking of getting this mother out.

He has tried to make her leave Somalia, but she has refused.

Now he was on the phone with her. He had four minutes left on his $5 phone card. He allowed a reporter to listen to the conversation as he translated.

Sheikh: “How are you?”

Mother: “I’m fine.”

Sheikh: “What’s happening there?”

Mother: “The ulama [Islamic religious leaders] now control Mogadishu. I’m not hearing any bullets now. Everything is quiet.”

Sheikh: “What time is it?”

Mother: “It’s 8 o’clock at night.”

Sheikh: “How do you feel about the ulama ?

Mother: “Whoever brings the peace, we support them.”

Then the connection went dead.

Sheikh knew there would be more information and more calculations in coming days, but he felt at peace, like his mother.

“I’m very happy to hear that she’s okay,” he said.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company