Civilians in Jilib say drone strikes are pinning them beside a swelling River Juba, raising a hard question about whether the floods are being weaponised.
In southern Somalia, a story is unfolding that every African should be paying attention to. In the city of Jilib, families say they are caught between aerial bombardment and a river that keeps climbing, with El Niño-driven flooding pushing water levels higher along the Juba.
Cayni Ali, a 27-year-old mother of six, lives five metres from the river. When the water reached her waist, her home was already lost. She says there was nowhere safe to run, because the strikes on al-Shabaab-held territory keep civilians hemmed in along the riverbank. 'The drones come all the time,' she says, describing a constant buzz overhead. She says animals and civilians are being killed, and that although the town is big, destruction is everywhere.
That testimony sits at the heart of a serious accusation: that US forces are effectively 'weaponising' the floods. The claim is that coordinated airstrikes are herding women and children toward the most dangerous ground, where the rising water threatens them as much as the bombs do. Whether this is a deliberate military strategy or a catastrophic side effect of the campaign is the question now being asked.
The accusation is still just that, and it raises hard questions about civilian protection, accountability and who pays the price when geopolitics collides with climate disaster. For people like Ali, those debates are distant. Her family's survival depends on the river level, the sound of drones and whether anyone is watching.
