Conflict in Somalia's Bari region is disrupting one of the country's most traditional rural livelihoods, leaving frankincense farmers unable to reach the trees they depend on for income and food. According to ERGO reporting carried by Hiiraan Online, the fighting between Puntland forces and Islamic State militants has intensified since last December and is now blocking access to groves in the hills around Isku-shuban and nearby areas.
The disruption matters because frankincense is not a marginal crop for the families involved. It is the basis of trade and daily subsistence for thousands of people in the region, and the reporting says about 2,500 rural families who trade in frankincense have been struggling since the war stepped up. For households with little other cash income, losing access to the trees means losing both a marketable product and a source of emergency food support.
The report indicates that the pressure is not being felt only in the most exposed villages. It is affecting the wider chain of households that depend on seasonal harvesting, local trading and the ability to move between settlements and hillsides without interruption. Once those routes are cut off, a crop that normally helps rural families endure lean periods can quickly become inaccessible.
One farmer, Fowsi Abdullahi Abdirahman, described the strain of displacement on his family of 12 after fleeing the area. He can no longer reach his five frankincense trees in the hills of Isku-shuban, about 86 kilometres east of Qandala. With no work and no income, he is relying on food shared by neighbours and says the family is down to one cooked meal a day when enough is available.
That description shows how quickly a security crisis becomes an economic one. The problem is not only that people are forced to move; it is that they lose the daily access that lets them keep working while living in a difficult environment. In practical terms, conflict can erase a household's cash flow in a matter of days if the path to the trees is no longer safe.
The story also points to the limited room rural households have to absorb shocks. There is no indication in the supplied report that aid is arriving at scale or that farmers have been able to return to normal harvesting. Instead, the immediate evidence is of dependence on neighbours, reduced meals and a growing gap between what the land can still produce and what the displaced families can safely collect.
The report does not provide a broader casualty count or battlefield summary, and it does not say when farmers will be able to return. What it does show is that the war's economic damage is already visible in household budgets and food security. For families in Bari region, the conflict is no longer only a security crisis. It is also a direct threat to the income streams that keep rural communities functioning.
The latest account leaves the central problem unchanged: if farmers cannot safely reach their trees, one of the region's oldest rural economies stalls with them.
