Zahra Abdulla manages to return to Finland from Mogadishu

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Helsinki City Council member Zahra Abdulla (Greens) returned home from Mogadishu on Sunday after an unexpected development of events.
      Initially, leaving the embattled Somali capital was difficult, as all flights had been suspended. Once the country's airspace was open again, she had to take a long and dangerous trip to the airport at night and to buy an exceptionally expensive plane ticket.
     
Eventually the aircraft could set off, taking Abdulla - along with several other Finnish citizens - first to Djibouti and from there to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
      In Dubai, Abdulla had to stay overnight and then buy new air tickets on the route from Doha, the capital of Qatar via Frankfurt to Helsinki.
      Abdulla says that the extra charges and delays were nevertheless not the worst hardships during her trip.
     
"The worst of it was when people saw that I am a Somali, and their attitudes turned really negative everywhere", she reports.
      Apparently, a travelling Somali was automatically regarded as a refugee trying to enter the country, and Zahra Abdulla had to prove everywhere that she was really travelling on genuine documents. Her passport was photographed on several occasions, and she was given a first-hand experience of the sense of guilt associated with just being a refugee.
      Only on arrival at Helsinki-Vantaa did the Finnish-speaking Abdulla not need to explain her travelling.
     
Now she is worrying over her family members in Mogadishu, as the situation there looked really bad.
      Zahra Abdulla also said that the humanitarian organizations appeared to operate outside the areas where the need for help was at its most acute. People were seen living on streets in cardboard shelters without food and money, being left for dead, while at the same time others were engaged in a war.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  No evacuation planned for Finnish citizens trapped in Somalia (3.1.2007)

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