Mohammed Adow

Mohammed Adow's picture
Mohammed Adow
Correspondent | Kenya
Biography

Mohammed Adow, based in Nairobi, has more than 10 years of experience reporting from across Africa.

Mohammed has filed exclusive reports for Al Jazeera about the Ogaden fighters who have been battling to achieve an autonomous state in eastern Ethiopia. He has also reported from the Rift Valley and elsewhere in Kenya about the post-election violence that rocked the nation, and covered the ongoing conflicts in Somalia and Sudan.

Latest posts by Mohammed Adow

By Mohammed Adow in Africa on October 7th, 2011
Degrading practices such as being restrained with chains are socially accepted [EPA]

With all the violence and chaos in Somalia, anyone could go crazy. The near daily fighting has taken its toll on the mental health of its people.

The evidence of this can be found almost everywhere, as most of Somalia’s mentally ill are either simply chained to beds or left to roam the streets, leaving them with permanent trauma and physical injuries.

Somalia has one of the world’s highest rates of mental-health disorders. An estimated one-third of its eight million people are affected by some kind of mental illness, yet there are only three trained psychiatrists in the entire country to care for them, according to the World Health Organisation.

 “Degrading and dangerous cultural practices such as being restrained with chains are not only widespread but also socially and medically accepted,” the WHO said in a recent study of Somalia’s mental health care.

By Mohammed Adow in Africa on June 28th, 2011

Dr Mohammed Yusuf, is one of Somalia's unsung heros. He is the director and chief surgeon of the Madina Hospital, one of Mogadishu's few operational hospitals, and the country's top trauma medical facility.

His work involves repairing broken limbs, intestines and uteruses. As a war in which the biggest casualties are civilians rages on outside, Dr Yusuf and his team work round the clock in the facility's emergency section.

He believes he is not normal.

"The difference between a robot and a human being are feelings," he observes. "I have grown numb to almost everything that goes on around me.

By Mohammed Adow in Africa on June 22nd, 2011
[Photo by Mohammed Adow]

I arrived in Mogadishu early morning from the capital of neighbouring Kenya, Nairobi.

The soft breeze from the Indian Ocean on whose shores Mogadishu's International airport is, for a moment made me forget that I had landed in what is arguably the world's most dangerous city.

The hasty steps of the rest of the passengers brought me out of my reverie. I joined them in a trot to the single terminal building at the airport.

It's very common for the anti-government fighters to target the airport with mortar attacks. We were lucky today. After our pictures and thumb prints were taken, we were whisked through to our waiting vehicle.

Outside the gate of the airport were huge concrete barriers that completely blocked off the road. Suddenly, a forklift driven by an African Union peace-keeper appeared almost from nowhere and lifted them for us to pass.

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By Mohammed Adow in Africa on January 7th, 2011
Photo by Reuters

Even before the south - where most of Sudan's prized oil reserves lie - secedes, the country's economy is feeling the pinch of a possible split in the upcoming referendum. Its currency is plummeting and prices of bread, sugar and essential goods are skyrocketing.

Most of the inflation is caused by uncertainty over the future of the North’s economy, which is currently dependent on oil. More than 75 per cent of Sudan's oil is in the south.

And to make matters worse, the Sudanese national assembly has waded in with a number of austerity measures.

Tags: Sudan
By Mohammed Adow in Africa on April 15th, 2010
Photo by Getty Images

Sudan’s controversial elections are in the penultimate day of voting.

The chaos that characterised voting from the onset has created voter apathy and hence, a low turnout continues to be registered at polling stations.

On the outskirts of Khartoum is the Wad Albashir camp for displaced people from South Sudan and the Darfur region, where the bulk of the city's poor and under-privileged live. Here there is no election fever, or any excitement to vote.

The conflict survivors, sheltering in mud and brick shacks, are feeling just as alienated by the running elections process.  Many feel the elections do not concern them. The poverty and hardship these people face, partly explains the muted response they have given to the elections, which present to many the opportunity to vote for the first time.

By Mohammed Adow in Africa on April 11th, 2010

In some of most strategic intersections of Sudan's capital Khartoum, there are huge campaign billboards with the picture of President Omar al-Bashir, and beside him, two wedding rings.

One is black and one is white and they are held together by a ribbon with the colours of Sudan's national flag.

The black ring symbolises the country's south, mainly inhabited by black African tribes, while the white one represents the mainly Arab north.

It's a message the incumbent president wants no one to miss, one he continually hyped up during a vigorous and well organised campaign that took him to most parts of the country: that he will keep the country united at whatever cost.

But unity is what seems to elude Sudan by the day.

The elections are a key component of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that was signed in Kenya in 2005 and brought the war two between the south and north to an end.

By Mohammed Adow in Middle East on November 27th, 2009

A well in the desert 4,000 years old and still providing water for millions all year round: that is the story of the Zamzam well in Masjid al-Haram, Islam’s holiest site.

Forty centuries after coming into being, the revered well – located within the mosque in Mecca - continues to provide thousands of gallons of water daily to pilgrims who descend on the city from across the world.

In the middle of the Arabian Desert and far away from any other source or body of water, the well’s self-replenishing ability has baffled many. Its water is served to the public through coolers positioned throughout the mosque.

Muslim scholars say there is nothing ordinary about this water – from how the well came into being in the middle of the desert, to its consistent supply over thousands of years.

Some swear that the water has medicinal values.

Tags: Abraham, Marwa
By Mohammed Adow in Africa on October 18th, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

I have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo for only five days, yet I cannot bear to listen to the stories of horror I am being told everywhere I go.

The country’s East is going through another of its convulsions of violence, and as ever, civilians are being systematically attacked on a scale rarely seen before.

The sheer numbers of deaths, the wholesale brutality and the culture of impunity are appalling.

The situation is so bad that the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Gutteres was forced to liken it to the 2004 Asian Tsunami. After visiting camps for the displaced, he told me that the conflict in Congo is taking more human lives than the Tsunami every six months.  Difficult to believe, but it’s an accurate representation of the situation on the ground.

By Mohammed Adow in Africa on September 22nd, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

This week two major incidents took place in Somalia.

Six American gun ships attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying suspected Al Qaeda militants and killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an Al Qaeda leader wanted for the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998 and an Israeli-owned Kenyan hotel in 2002.

The US helicopters swooped in on a convoy of vehicles and strafed them with heavy gunfire. A Land Cruiser carrying Nabhan and at least four other senior militants was badly hit as were a number of "technicals," improvised battle wagons made from pick-up trucks loaded with heavy machine guns, according to witnesses.

The attack took place close to the coastal town of Barawe, about 150 miles south of Mogadishu, deep inside territory controlled by Al Shabaab, an Islamist insurgent group.

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Biography

Mohammed Adow's picture
Mohammed Adow
Correspondent
Mohammed Adow, based in Nairobi, has over 10 years of experience reporting from across Africa.

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