DOLLOW, Somalia (AP) 鈥� A man in a donkey cart comes wheeling through the dust, carrying two small, silent boys. The sky is overcast. It could rain. It won鈥檛. It hasn鈥檛 for a very long time.
Mohamed Ahmed Diriye is 60 years old, and he鈥檚 completing the grimmest journey of his life. He set off from a seaside city on the northern edge of Somalia two weeks ago. People were dying. Livestock were dying. He decided to abandon work as a day laborer and flee to the other end of the country, crossing a landscape of carcasses and Islamic extremist-held territory along the way.
Seven hundred miles later, he is exhausted. The food has run out. He clutches a battered stick in one hand, the nearly empty cart in the other. His boys are just 4 and 5.
They had tried to escape, Diriye says. 鈥淏ut we came across the same drought here.鈥�
More than and discovered that, too.
___
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
___
Somalis say is worse than any they can remember. It has astonished resilient herders and farmers by lasting four failed rainy seasons, starting two years ago. The fifth season is underway and likely will fail too.
A rare could be made as soon as this month, the first significant one anywhere in the world since Somalia鈥檚 famine a decade ago. Thousands of people have died, including nearly 900 children under 5 being treated for malnutrition, according to United Nations data. The U.N. says half a million such children are at risk of death.
As the world is gripped by food insecurity, Somalia, a country of 15 million people shaking off its past as a failed state, can be considered the end of the line. It stumbles amid several global crises descending at once.
They include climate change, with some of the harshest effects of warming felt in Africa. Russia鈥檚 invasion of Ukraine, which stalled ships carrying enough grain to feed hundreds of millions of people. A drop in humanitarian donations, as to the war in Ukraine. One of the world鈥檚 deadliest Islamic extremist groups, which limits the delivery of aid.
The Associated Press spoke with a dozen people in rapidly growing displacement camps during a visit to southern Somalia in late September. All say they鈥檝e received little aid, or none. A day鈥檚 meal might be plain rice or just black tea. Many camp residents, overwhelmingly women and children, beg from neighbors, or go to sleep hungry.
Mothers walk for days or weeks through bare landscapes in search of help, at times finding that the withered, feverish child strapped to them has died along the way.
鈥淲e鈥檇 grieve, stop for a while, pray,鈥� Adego Abdinur says. 鈥淲e鈥檇 bury them beside the road.鈥�
She holds her naked 1-year-old in front of her new home, a fragile hut of plastic sacks and stripped branches. It鈥檚 one of hundreds scattered over the dry land.
Abdinur and her six children walked 300 kilometers (186 miles) here, following rumors of assistance along with thousands of other people.
鈥淲e have seen so many children dying because of hunger,鈥� she says.
At the heart of this crisis, in areas where famine likely will be declared, is an Islamic extremist group linked to al-Qaida. An estimated 740,000 of the drought鈥檚 most desperate people live in areas under al-Shabab鈥檚 control. To survive, they must escape.
Al-Shabab鈥檚 grip on large parts of southern and central Somalia was a major contributor to deaths in the 2011 famine.
In a surprise comment on the drought in late September, al-Shabab called it a test from Allah, 鈥渁 result of our sins.鈥� The group claimed it had offered food, water and free medical treatment to more than 47,000 people since last year.
But in rare accounts of life inside al-Shabab-held areas, several people told the AP they had seen no such aid. Instead, they said, the extremists continue their harsh taxation of families鈥� crops and livestock even as they withered and died. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Some flee at night to escape the fighters鈥� attention, with men and even young boys often being forbidden to leave. One woman says people who received assistance from the outside would be attacked. Weeks ago, she says, al-Shabab killed a relative who had managed to take a sick parent to a government-held city and then returned.
Those who escaped al-Shabab now cling to a bare existence. In the only treatment center for the most severely malnourished in the immediate region, 1-year-old Hamdi Yusuf is a sign of hope.
She was little more than bones and skin when her mother found her unconscious, two months after arriving in the camps. 鈥淭he child was not even alive,鈥� recalls Abdikadir Ali Abdi, acting nutrition officer with the aid group Trocaire.
Now the girl is revived. But the ready-to-use therapeutic food so crucial to the recovery of children like her could run out in the coming weeks, Abdi says.
The girl鈥檚 mother, 18-year-old Muslima Ibrahim, anxiously rubs her daughter鈥檚 tiny fingers. Survival will require the kind of support she still hasn鈥檛 seen.
鈥淲e received a food distribution yesterday,鈥� Ibrahim says. 鈥淚t was the first since we arrived.鈥�
Hundreds of families continue to emerge from the empty horizon across Somalia, bringing little but grief.
One day in mid-September, 29-year-old Fartum Issack and her husband carried a small body along a dusty track to a graveyard. Their 1-year-old daughter had arrived at camp sick and hungry. She was rushed for treatment, but it was too late.
The graveyard opened in April and already had 13 graves. There鈥檚 easily room for hundreds more.
Issack and her husband buried their daughter in the middle of the empty ground.
鈥淲e wanted to easily recognize her,鈥� Issack says.
At the camp, eight other hungry daughters are waiting.
___
Associated Press writer Omar Faruk in Mogadishu, Somalia, contributed.
Cara Anna, The Associated Press
