'THE TIME HAS COME TO DISARM. LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS'
By Maggie Black
In Somalia 95% of girls undergo female genital mutilation. The war against the circumcisers was proving effective - until its key figure was murdered.
Maggie Black reports

January 26, 2004 – (The Guardian) In the school hall in Berbera, a sweltering Somali port on the Gulf of Aden, the audience is jam-packed and sweating. Women swathed from head to foot in bright colours chatter noisily and wipe their faces with the ends of their scarves as they wait for the ceremony to begin. On the wall posters declare: "The time has come to disarm! Put down your weapons!"

The mayor takes his place on the platform and the hubbub subsides. His speech opens the occasion. "I want to make it clear that we, in the regional authority, are with you in this war." The war the mayor is referring to is not the type all too familiar in this part of the world, but the war on female genital mutilation.

The "weapons" to be laid down are not the guns that are so prolific in this society, but the scissors, knives, razor blades, needles and surgical thread used by those who, until now, have cut and stitched girls' genitalia as their profession. Military images carry over seamlessly.

A few years ago, for a man to stand on a platform anywhere in Somalia and talk about this subject would have been unthinkable. This is a land where the discussion of sexual issues - especially female ones - remains shrouded in taboo. Slowly, they are emerging from the shadows. Here, at the age of seven or eight, 95% of girls still endure a traditional surgical operation to excise their external sexual organs and almost completely close their vaginal aperture. The practice, mistakenly thought to be sanctioned in the Koran, is an extreme form of protection against male sexual predators in the desert, where the nomadic herding life is pursued. Today, women activists and many health workers know it is harmful and redundant - and not ordained in Islam.

The mayor sits next to colleagues from city hall, doctors and sheikhs, and is not the only man in the hall. But for him to have come and spoken out on the subject is important. He soon slips away, and there follows a theatrical display of speeches, witness statements, loud applause, laughter, songs, and mopping of brows. Sado, the local head of maternal and child health services, is the first to greet the six circumcisers of Berbera in whose honour the event is being held. Each carries a bag containing her instruments; each has volunteered to disarm.

Among the speakers are the members of the anti-mutilation team from Borama, a town to the north. They were the pioneers of this campaign. Zahara Abdillahi, a midwife, explains why she is involved. "I have witnessed the difficult experiences of mutilated women throughout my career - with menstrual blood, with urination, with giving birth. We all know what we have gone through." The cutting, healing and scarring involved in mutilation narrows the birth canal and makes it inelastic. Labour often lasts for days and stillbirths are common.

"All those experiences have touched my life," says Zahara. "In 1985, I went to Yemen to work. I attended a woman at her first birth, and I took all my tools. Then I saw that a woman who had not been mutilated had no problem - she gave birth perfectly. I had never seen such a thing before. That is when I became active in this work."

When Zahara returned to Somaliland, she went to Borama. There she met an Italian woman, Annalena Tonelli. Annalena, the best-known foreign health worker in Somaliland, who last year received the UN's Nansen Refugee award, dedicated herself to all the health issues and diseases that others did not like to touch. She ran a 250-bed TB hospital in Borama with a good record of curing TB, and used it as the hub of many other health-related outreach programmes. Zahara joined Annalena's hospital staff. It was Annalena who proposed to Zahara that they institutionalise anti-mutilation work.

Annalena brought together Zahara, a local sheikh, Haji Mohammed Sayeed, and a social worker. In 2001, an office was opened in Borama with a
board outside: "This is the office against mutilation." Within months, the team had managed to persuade 24 circumcisers to lay down their tools.
Almost all Somali women of the older generation believe that without being circumcised, no girl can find a husband. She will be seen as unclean, and on her wedding night the bridegroom will reject her: indeed, rejections are far from unknown. Sheikh Mohammed Sayeed has frequently been taunted by women out in the villages: "What are you doing, taking money from gals (foreigners) to come here and talk about our girls' vaginas? Have you nothing better to do?" Annalena knew that traditionalists like to dismiss the campaign to end mutilation as the pernicious work of outsiders. So, having set up teams in Borama, Gebile and Berbera and found them financial support, Annalena remained resolutely in the background. But almost all the speakers at Berbera refer to her as a vital facilitator of what they are doing.

Sheikh Mohammed Sayeed has taken the lead on the religious side. In 2000, Unicef brought many mosque leaders together in Hargeisa to discuss whether the practice was sanctioned by Islam. "They divided into two groups, the traditionalists, and those like myself who say that female circumcision is killing people." He knows this is true: his own wife brought six pregnancies to term, but all the babies were stillborn because the birth canal was too tight. "We say: 'Are you better than God that you tamper with His work? Allah opened the mouth. Would you cut and stitch that too?'"

After the meeting, Unicef paid for some sheikhs to visit Cairo and take instruction from learned Islamic scholars. "They were told that in Egypt and Sudan, it is not approved or normally done."

The three teams Annalena set up have anti-mutilation videos and a generator; they hold meetings, go to schools and people's houses. Sheikh Mohammed preaches against the practice on the radio and at Friday prayers. Mobilising circumcisers to give up is a key activity. "When we started, we made statistics of who was doing the cutting in Borama," he says. "We interviewed them and told them that what they were doing was against Islam. They were shocked. They said: 'If this is not in Islam, we are ready to give up. But our problem is that this is our living. How shall we survive?'

"We selected the cleverest and the most popular ones, and we gave each $200 for a new business. One opened a cafeteria, another traded in second-hand clothes, another in vegetables from Ethiopia. We helped each do whatever she wanted."

Annalena also paid for the school fees of their children so that their offspring would not lose out. "Then we said: 'Now you must put your hand on the Koran and swear not to circumcise or you will no longer be a Muslim.'" In the first ceremony in Borama, 24 circumcisers gave up their tools in public. Today Sheikh Mohammed is also on the platform.

"We talk about mutilation openly. We persuade people that the innocent girl is their responsibility - we ask them why they are harming her. The whole world, not only us, is against this practice." He defends Annalena's role: "Annalena is now a Boraman. We call her deeqa - gift. She has done so much: her TB centre, deaf school, a blind school soon to be opened. Allah loves if someone helps others. Although Annalena is a Christian, Allah loves her and her work." He knows not everyone shares this view.

Although the strategy of encouraging circumcisers to abandon their profession reduces the supply of services, the demand also has to be reduced, or others - who may be less proficient and therefore more dangerous to the girls on whom they operate - may take their place.

But despite some misgivings, the strategy has worked in Borama. Some former circumcisers have been recruited into the anti-mutilation campaign. One such is 70-year-old Kaladya Haji, described by Annalena as the "best-loved circumciser in Borama", whom she made a laundry supervisor at her hospital. Kaladya also addresses the assembly in Berbera.

"Young girls used to hate me. Every girl was praying for death when I was there. They called out against me; that makes me feel guilty now. When we learned from the sheikh that what we were doing was harmful and against Islam, I counselled with God and decided to give up. Annalena came to see me. I asked her: 'Now what shall I do?' She asked me to come to work at the hospital; she was worried I would resume. But I said to her: 'Please trust me. I am sincere. Allah and I have agreed.' We, the circumcisers, prayed together. We decided to go as a group to the satellite villages and become a model for others. Now I can say our whole area, rural and urban, is free of mutilation." She breaks off, exhausted by the heat.

The moment of renunciation comes. Sado turns to the six waiting circumcisers. "Do you agree to give up this practice?" "Ha!" they all cry, "Ha!" The first to come forward is Asha, the oldest. She lays down her gloves, her needle for suturing, sugar to dry the labia, local anaesthetic, a syringe, cotton wool and a clean razor blade. She makes her statement to loud applause: "I am praying to Allah to forgive me for what I have done before and I swear that I am not going to do it in the future." When all six have disarmed, it is time for singing songs against mutilation and dancing. A young girl leads the dancing: she is the promise of the future.

This anti-mutilation programme, which Unicef, Caritas International, and others support, is just one of the programmes that Annalena Tonelli initiated. Now Annalena is dead. She was murdered, at the age of 60, in the grounds of her hospital one Sunday evening last October. A gunman with a grievance against this foreigner, this gal, whose only crime was to go where angels fear to tread, had wreaked a pointless act of vengeance.
In Somalia, there are weapons more damaging than razor blades that members of this warrior society will never give up.

For scores of people such as Zahara Abdillahi, Sheikh Mohammed and Kaladya Haji, this appalling outcome of the hostility Annalena's work evoked among a few hardliners is not just a devastating personal loss. Her death strikes at their own working lives and the survival of the programmes to which - thanks to Annalena's genius for organisation - they became deeply committed. Not only did she champion victims of mutilation, TB cases and those with disabilities, but also people with HIV. For the stigmatised sick among the poorest of the Somali poor, Annalena Tonelli gave everything she had. Now that gift - that deeqa - has included the ultimate gift of her life.

Mutilation: the facts

· In Somalia there is no law specifically prohibiting female genital mutilation. Virtually all Somali girls and women undergo it.
· The most severe form, infibulation, consists of the removal of part or all of the external genitalia (clitoris, labia minora and majora), stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening, leaving an opening the size of a matchstick. The girl's legs are bound from hip to ankle so she remains immobile for 40 days to allow healing.
· Infibulation is the most common form in Somalia. But the majority (85%) of mutilations in Africa consist of a clitoridectomy (removal of all or part of the clitoris).
· 135 million women, mostly African, have undergone genital mutilation - about 6,000 a day.
· It can lead to haemorrhage, kidney damage, abscesses, gangrene, tetanus, chronic infections, infertility and death.
· The procedure is most commonly carried out between the ages of four and eight.
· The removal of the clitoris and labia - viewed as "male parts" - is thought by some to enhance femininity. Other justifications include a lowering of the libido and the chance of infidelity, and hygiene.
· In 19th-century England female circumcision was thought to cure hysteria or "excessive masturbation". Clitoridectomy was practised for these reasons in the US until well into 20th century.
· Sources: US Department of State; Amnesty.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,11812,1131181,00.html