By Jason McLure Newsweek Web Exclusive
Worse than Darfur. That was the assessment two weeks ago of the United Nations' top refugee official in Somalia, who called the country Africa's worst humanitarian crisis. Somalia has been without a functioning central government for 17 years and has effectively splintered into three separate states: Somaliland in the north, Puntland in the center and chaotic southern Somalia. In December 2006, U.S.-supported Ethiopian troops invaded the country to oust an Islamist government that briefly controlled Mogadishu and the south, triggering a civil war. Islamist and clan-based militias have battled Ethiopian troops and supporters of the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG). A small force of African Union peacekeepers has been powerless to halt the violence. The war has forced 1 million people from their homes.
The transitional government's Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, who took office three months ago, faces the challenges of reconciling Somalia's warring clans, keeping Islamic terrorists out and squelching a boom in piracy along the coast. And he must survive, of course—when he made the symbolically important step of moving the TFG back to Mogadishu last month, insurgents promptly shelled Somalia's presidential palace. Hussein, previously the chairman of Somalia's Red Crescent society, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross, recently spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jason McLure about the humanitarian crisis, his relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency and Somalia's tourism industry. Excerpts:
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