Monday, December 10, 2007

"A Wealth of Kindness"


Nearly a year after Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia with U.S. support to oust an Islamic movement there, the Somali capital of Mogadishu remains locked in a brutal urban war that has driven an estimated 600,000 people -- more than half the city's population -- into the countryside.

U.N. officials say Somalia has descended into the continent's worst humanitarian crisis, a situation veering toward famine in some areas. Yet in the narrow streets that wind through this town of whitewashed buildings, it is difficult to find even one encampment of displaced people or a family that has been turned away.