In a crammed room, shared by three Somali men, 22-year-old Sadaq Mahmood finds just enough space to spread his rug as the evening call to prayer rings out from the nearby mosque in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin neighbourhood. Separated from his family back in Somalia by thousands of miles and unaware if they have survived the incessant conflict ever since he fled to India in 2007, it isn’t difficult to unravel his prayers. “Please let me go back. I am not happy here. At least, I can search for my family. I do not even know if they are alive. There’s so much fighting every day. I don’t know what to do,” he later says helplessly. Without the money to buy a ticket back home and a job to earn any, there is little he can do but pray.
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As daylight fades, Mahmood is going to descend, for the first time in the day, along a narrow flight of steps into a neighbourhood that has always been unfriendly but one that has now also become threatening. Being an African in India has always meant inuring oneself to daily jabs about race and colour. But being Somali in India is proving twice as difficult as India discovers and vilifies its new enemy – the pirates from Somalia who have broken into merchant vessels in international waters and kidnapped many Indian sailors. As television screens across India loop visuals of weeping relatives of sailors, the few hundred Somali refugees here have grown increasingly concerned about any retaliatory attacks. “I only step out when it’s dark and there are less people in the lanes. I cannot take their taunts anymore,” Mahmood says. “l just tell them I am here to survive.”
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(L-R) Daud Suleiman, Bile Warsame, Harbi Abdullah and Sadaq Mahmood at a park near their home
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.
Harbi Abdullah with his daughter
While each one of these refugees waits to be relocated to a more prosperous country in the west, the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in New Delhi is finding it more difficult to resettle people as offers from developed countries to take in refugees dwindle allegedly because of a sluggish economy. Meanwhile, the piracy problem had only added to the Somalis’ existential woes. Allowed no work permits by the government of India, refugees cannot take up jobs officially in India. But Somali refugees have a worse deal; the government of India doesn’t even offer them a residence permit. “The Afghan and Burmese get it but we don’t. All we have is a UNHCR certificate that declares us as refugees, a paper that many in India, especially those among the authorities, do not recognise,” says Suleiman. Without a residence permit, even mundane chores seem impossible to achieve, like renting a room or getting a cellphone connection. Illustrating the nuisance this leads to, Harbi Abdullah, another Somali refugee, points out that services to this mobile are discontinued every now and then because he doesn’t have the required proof of address. Warsame points out that Somali refugees also find it more difficult to integrate locally, not just because of racism but also because of their different physical features. “The Afghans and Burmese have features similar to some Indians. They can integrate into the Indian society more easily, not us. We always stand out,” he says.
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Having spent most of their savings to escape violence – agents can charge anything upwards $1,500 for a one-way ticket out of Somalia – refugees here are left with little money. Even the monthly assistance of about Rs 2,250 from UNHCR has been shelved since January last year, refugees say. Many work in an income generation programme that the UNHCR runs with its local partners in Lajpat Nagar, where refugees are taught to make things like disposable plates. For many it’s their only way out of penury even though they make just about Rs 15 for every hour of work. However, there are some fortunate ones who speak English fluently and earn some extra money working as an interpreter for Arabic-speaking businessmen who come from Africa or those who come for medical treatment here.
When it comes to their healthcare, most refugees have to depend on Indian public hospitals, institutions that are already overstretched trying to cope with the locals’ demands. When lucky enough to get attention, they struggle to communicate in English, resulting, at times, in misdiagnosis and wrong treatment. When things get worse, they are forced to go to private hospitals and then have to run around various Arab embassies here to try and raise donations. 47-year-old Habiba (name changed on request) finds it particularly difficult. Suffering from diabetes and blood pressure, she can hardly work to earn to feed herself. She depends, instead, on the kindness of another Somali family who has taken her in. “I have been moving from house to house. When I fall there is nobody to give me a glass of water. There are times when I have thought that killing myself is my only escape route,” she says.
In the last three years, around 50 Somali refugees have been successfully resettled in the west with help from the UNHCR, which doesn’t support a return to Somalia because of the continuing violence. Most of these refugees in India, like Habiba, continue to be stuck in limbo without any official support from the government to rebuild their lives here. Their only hope is a fortuitous interview call from a western embassy in India. “We hope the Indian government and the UNHCR realise they are our only source of help. They cannot just leave us helpless in the situation we are now,” says Suleiman. What if the Indian government were to decide to give them residence permits and work permits too? Would that hold them back here? Give them the hope that they could rebuild their lives in India? “Even if you give me a residence and work permit, you’ll just give me a piece of paper,” says Abdullah promptly. “It isn’t going to change the way Indians view and treat us.”
