A Diplomatic Surge to Stop Somalia’s Famine
in
* Peace
* Prevention
* Somalia
* Strategy Papers
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Sep 21, 2011
By Ken Menkhaus
Ken Menkhaus is a professor of political science at Davidson College
and a specialist on
Somalia and the Horn of Africa. He worked on famine response policy in
Somalia in 1991
and served as a political advisor in the U.N. Operation in Somalia in
1993-94. He is author of
over 50 monographs, chapters, and articles on Somalia and the Horn of
Africa, and has testified
five times before congressional committees on aspects of the Somali crisis.
Read the Full Report >
Somalia is dying. Three-quarters of a million people are at immediate
risk of famine;
another 750,000 are refugees in neighboring countries, and 4 million –
half the total
population – is in need of emergency aid. It is a calamity that could
join the ranks of the
Rwanda genocide and the Darfur crisis in terms of scale and human
suffering. And for
Somalia it is a terrible repeat of the 1991-92 famine that claimed
240,000 lives.
The international response to date has been shockingly inadequate –
not just because
funds for humanitarian aid have fallen short, but because of the
absence of political will
to take bold diplomatic action to remove impediments to the delivery of aid.
Unless this changes, the 2011 Somali famine will be to the Obama
administration what
the 1994 Rwandan genocide was to the Clinton administration – a
terrible stain, an
unforgiveable instance of lack of political will to push policy beyond
incrementalism.
And for the Islamic world, al-Shabaab’s role in the Somali famine will
be remembered as
the Islamic Khmer Rouge, in which an armed group with a deeply twisted
interpretation
of the faith presides over the mass deaths of its own people.
The core of the problem is this: Aid agencies have very limited access
to famine victims
and very limited capacity to monitor food aid deliveries. In the
countryside, where 70
percent of the famine victims live, the jihadist group al-Shabaab
blocks most aid agencies
and severely curtails the activities of the few that remain. Its
leadership has denied
that famine exists, views food aid as a Western conspiracy to
undermine Somali farmers,
and tries to block famine victims from fleeing to areas where food aid
is available. The
aid that does manage to get to into Shabaab-controlled areas, through
delicate bi-lateral
negotiations by individual aid agencies, is not nearly enough.
Areas controlled by the Somali allies of the U.S. government and the
United Nations
are little better. In the capital Mogadishu, where famine victims are
piling into internally
displaced persons camps, paramilitaries nominally affiliated with the
U.N.-backed
Transitional Federal Government, or TFG, divert food aid, prey on
famine victims, and
fight among themselves. Rival politicians are setting up their own
camps to use as bait
for food aid, which they can then divert. No famine is complete
without vultures.
In consequence, the bulk of international relief efforts operate on
the edges of the crisis,
especially in the burgeoning refugee camps on the Kenyan-Somali
border, which have
now grown to an astonishing 470,000 refugees. This is not a famine
relief strategy – it
is a macabre game of “Survivor,” rewarding those lucky and strong
enough to straggle
across the border with a prize of shelter, food rations, and the
prospect of being warehoused
in a refugee camp for the next 20 years.
We can – and must – do better.
Read the Full Report >
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