While they are not as numerous as the Afghan or Burmese refugees in India, the Somalis, like them, started arriving back in the early 1990s when fighting between clans intensified and Somaliland, a significant territorial chunk in the upper left corner of the country, declared itself independent unilaterally. The numbers have increased though as Islamists added to the chaos by launching a violent campaign to take over the country. It is estimated that around 600 refugees from Somali are presently in India, mainly in New Delhi and in Hyderabad, but that number is disputed.
30-year-old Daud Suleiman left his mother, brother and sister, also refugees, in nearby Ethiopia to come to India in 2002. “My mother wanted me to get out, study and hopefully pull them out of their miserable situation,” he says. The family was forced to move out of the UAE, where his father worked as a clerk, after he died of a kidney failure in 2000. Things haven’t quite gone according to plan. While he did manage to study IT at a private institute in Hyderabad, using his father’s savings, Suleiman has had no contact with his family since 2004. “I found out from some friends in Ethiopia that they were forcefully repatriated to Somalia,” he adds.
It’s not without reason that Somalia has become synonymous with pirates. Located on the eastern flank of Africa that juts out into the Arabian Sea, it has the longest coastline on the continent at over 3,300 kilometres. Its prolonged state of lawlessness and poor economic development offer ideal conditions that encourage the young unemployed to take up piracy. “Anybody can buy an arm,” says Suleiman. And the spectacular success stories of pirates who have moved on from tattered shoes to gleaming Land Cruisers only convinces the young not to abandon a career path fraught with danger. However, piracy, the most lucrative job in this part of the world, has been monopolised by the majority clans in Somalia – the Daroods and Hawiyes. Most refugees in India, on the other hand, are from the minority ones like the Tunnis, Shekhals and Tumaals.
Back in the Nizamuddin room, one of these refugees , the 42-year-old Bile Warsame says he ran away from the persecution of the majority clans and arrived in India in 2005. But he finds there is little solace here, as piracy thousands of miles away begins to have a direct bearing on his life in India. Since their nationality is known in the neighbourhood, some Somalis say they have been called 'pirates' by their neighbourhood grocer or asked to 'go back home' by others . “While attacks have been verbal so far, I fear it can now become physical,” he adds. What many fear the most are reprisal attacks that may follow a recorded killing of an Indian hostage by Somali pirates, one that is then played out, nightmarishly for them, on Indian televisions. The continued detention of seven Indian sailors from the vessel Asphalt Venture since September last year despite the payment of ransom has many refugees here on tenterhooks.