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Somalia: Updates and Reflections
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Aug 5, 2011 (110805)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
It is difficult to get beyond dichotomies. Either focus on
responding to undeniably massive life-threatening famine or
on understanding the multiple causes and the reasons that it
is happening again. Highlight one cause or another among the factors
responsible: drought, global warming, war, failures of
governments and international agencies, and more. Nor is it
sufficient to say "all of the above."
AfricaFocus only rarely publishes more than two issues on
the same topic close together, and in the two issues on
Somalia on July 24, I tried to include a range of aspects
on this complex topic. But there are two reasons to return
to the subject so soon, both the complexity of the
discussion about causes and the continued urgency of
immediate response. Whether from aid fatigue or other
reasons, the international response to the immediate crisis
is still both slow and under-funded. The African Union just
postponed for two weeks a summit intended to galvanize
response by African governments. And some may misinterpret
discussions about more fundamental causes or the failings
of the aid industry as an excuse to avoid the need for
immediate response.
This issue of AfricaFocus includes several current updates
and reflections I have found most helpful (thanks to
AfricaFocus readers for calling my attention to some of
them). I have also included a selection of links to other
sources with an even broader range of views. Each of these,
in my opinion, is worth your time, although I don't always
agree with the nuances and have sometimes added a brief
note of my own to contextualize the link.
Those included here are (1) a brief commentary by Muthoni
Wanyeki, the outgoing executive director of the Kenyan
Human Rights Commission, (2) a very clear analysis of the
multiple causes of the escalation of drought into famine,
by leading Somali scholar Abdi Samatar, and (3) an update
from the Survival Backpacks project
(http://tinyurl.com/62xpqpl), a project by Somali
filmmakers in Nairobi to support refugees making their way
from inside Somalia to camps in Kenya. Many AfricaFocus
readers contributed to this project after the last
Bulletin, and it has now raised more than $18,000 of its
modest $25,000. The trailer for the film they are working
on is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
QR_1G1yOEbA
The earlier AfricaFocus Bulletins on Somalia from last
month are at http://www.africafocus.org/docs11/som1107a.php
and http://www.africafocus.org/docs11/som1107b.php Previous
AfricaFocus Bulletins on Somalia, including those from the
Africa Policy E-Journal from 1999 to 2002, are at
http://www.africafocus.org/country/somalia.php An analysis
of U.S. policy from 2009, by William Minter and Daniel
Volman, is at http://www.africafocus.org/editor/som0906.php
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
Kenyan lives are cheap, Somali lives even cheaper
Muthoni Wanyeki
2011-08-03, Issue 543
Pambazuka News
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/75420
[Muthoni Wanyeki is the outgoing executive director of the
Kenya Human Rights Commission.]
'Life is cheap. And so we are lethargic - until the numbers
become too large to ignore,' writes Muthoni Wanyeki, as
Kenyans fail to heed the plight of either their fellow
citizens or neighbouring Somalis during the region's worst
drought in 60 years.
KCB, the Media Owners Association and the Safaricom
Foundation this past week launched 'Kenyans for Kenya' an
appeal to ordinary Kenyans to raise half a billion
shillings to help mitigate the effects of the drought in
northern Kenya.
It's not clear whether they were aware that 'Kenyans for
Kenya' was originally a campaign launched by Kikuyus for
Change to create a sense of national purpose and solidarity
in the polarised aftermath of the 2007 general election and
the violence that followed. But it is clear their
motivation comes from the same place - a sense of outrage
that Kenyans are dying (this time from starvation) and a
sense of moral duty to help stop those deaths.
But beyond acknowledging the effort we should also ask
ourselves some harder questions: What does it take to move
us? And why does it take so long to be moved? It is not
like the urgency of the situation was unclear. Our
meteorological department had told us that this was the
worst drought in 60 years. The humanitarian and relief
organisations - international and national - had been
ringing the bells for at least a couple of months. The
media - again, both international and national - had been
sharing those so familiar and yet so terrible images of
people reduced to skin and bone.
Maybe that was the problem - the familiarity of those
terrible images. They are not new to us. They are like an
almost ever-present backdrop to our lives to which we have
become so accustomed that we ignore it. That is why our own
government's response seems so ploddingly, routinely
unbothered. There is drought. People are dying of hunger up
north. Send them some maize. Discuss where to get the
maize. Make the deals (and the inevitable profits from the
deals for big brokers and middlemen). Expect that some of
it will end up off the supply route, being sold instead of
distributed. Profess shock. Produce the figures to show
that, regardless, the government has done what it can.
Life is cheap. And so we are lethargic - until the numbers
become too large to ignore.
This too explains the otherwise incomprehensible situation
at our border with Somalia. Kenyans are dying of hunger -
that fact is unremarkable. So why would the fact that
Somalis are also dying of hunger be remarkable to us? And
why would that allow Somalis special dispensation to cross
over into our territory? They can do what we are doing here
on their side of the border. Anyone who does find their
deaths remarkable can do what they want to do about it on
the other side of the border. Why here?
It seems callous - but that is the basic and underlying
perception of the problem. We are unmoved - why would we be
otherwise? Compound that perception with other facts.
Refugees, particularly those of Somali extraction, are a
security problem, all carrying with them the noxious whiff
of Al Shaabab. Conveniently ignoring the fact that the
majority of Somali refugees are seeking refuge because of
Al Shaabab and the huge mess that is the so-called Somali
state. And that we are obligated to receive asylum-seekers.
'Kenyans for Kenya' has forced us to do so with respect to
our own deaths by starvation. What will do so with respect
to our neighbours' deaths by starvation? 'Kenyans for
Somalia?' 'Kenyans for Africa?' What?
Genocidal politics and the Somali famine
The blame for Somalia's devastating famine should not be
levelled at the weather, but at geopolitics and armed
militia.
Abdi Ismail Samatar
30 Jul 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/3nsfrt8
Abdi Ismail Samatar is a professor of geography at the
University of Minnesota and a research fellow at the
University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Droughts are common in the Somali peninsula, but only an
exceptional one produces famine. For instance, the Horn of
Africa drought of 1984 did not produce famine in Somalia,
while the Ethiopian population was devastated. The latter
country suffered famine because the military government of
the time was engaged in a civil war, and did not come to
the rescue of its people.
Ten years earlier, in the mid-1970s, there was a prolonged
drought, known as "dabadeer" ["the long-tailed"], in
several parts of Somalia. Fortunately, this drought did not
lead to mass starvation because the Somali government moved
quickly to assist the people. They mobilised the population
and sought the assistance of international allies to
deliver food and water to the needy.
Somalia's last major famine was in 1992 and was not caused
by drought. Nearly 300,000 innocent people starved to death
because of sectarian politics. The epicentre of that famine
was in Bay, one of the country's most productive
agricultural regions, and starvation was induced by
warlords who used food as a weapon against farmers and
pastoralists.
Marauding gangs had invaded the region after the collapse
of the Somali state in 1991 and looted farmers' harvests.
The country's major warlord wanted to capture the region,
so did not allow food aid to reach the desperate
population. Reports told of unimaginable suffering long
before TV images of ruined lives reached millions around
the world. It was only then that US president George HW
Bush decided to send US troops to the country to enable
food to reach the indigent population.
The climatic record show that droughts frequently occur in
the Somali peninsula, but have not produced famines over
the past fifty years, until 2011. However, the UN and other
international actors have been arguing about the
devastating drought in the area for nearly a year, while
only a handful of scholars and activists were alarmed by
the creeping famine. What thoughtful people must ask is:
"Why famine now?"
Who is to blame?
The Somali people in the affected regions have been made
vulnerable to ecological disturbances because of several
political and military forces. These include the US "War on
Terror", the al-Shabaab terrorist group, Somalia's
Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the Ethiopian
invasion of Somalia and its continuous political and
military involvement there, and finally East Africa's
Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the
UN.
These actors have created circumstances in which local food
resources were exhausted and assistance from outside was
denied or delayed until tens of thousands of people
starved.
Exactly what role did each of these forces play in
manufacturing the famine? First, the US agenda in Somalia
has been to fight what it calls "Islamic terrorists", and
al-Shabaab in particular. Since the bombing of the US
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and especially
since 9/11, clandestine operations were conducted to snatch
"terrorists" and dry up their support base in Somalia.
These operations sought assistance from several of
Mogadishu's warlords, who formed the "Alliance for the
Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism" in 2005.
Somalis despised this alliance and their patron, and
ultimately turned against them under the leadership of the
Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in 2006. The UIC defeated the
warlords, restored peace to Mogadishu for the first time in
15 years, and brought most of southern Somalia under its
ambit.
Consequently, the US and its Ethiopian ally claimed that
these Islamists were terrorists and therefore a menace to
the region. In contrast, the vast majority of Somalis
supported the UIC and pleaded with the international
community to engage them peacefully. But the peace did not
last. The US-supported Ethiopian invasion begun in December
2006 and displaced more than a million people and killed
close to 15,000 civilians. Those displaced then are part of
today's famine victims. Somalia counterattacked, and
Ethiopia was compelled to withdraw the bulk of its troops
from Somalia. But the dynamics generated by the Ethiopian
invasion continue to destabilise the country.
Second, IGAD and the international community picked up
where the Ethiopians left off, by designing a new TFG - led
by the faction of the UICs most amenable to the
international community, and particularly to the US agenda.
The new regime marginalised the forces that compelled
Ethiopia to withdraw from Somalia. Consequently, the TFG
came to control only those areas in Mogadishu under the
command of the African Union force.
A new civil war ensued between the TFG and its opponents,
and within a month much of southern Somalia fell under the
sway of al-Shabaab and its affiliates. Once in power, the
TFG became known for its corruption, incompetence, and
internal strife. Propped up by the international community,
the regime in Mogadishu has been oblivious to the growing
crisis, which ultimately led to the death of nearly 80,000
of its "citizens". It has yet to articulate a plan of
actions to rescue its population. Engulfed in an internal
power struggle, the regime has failed to put aside
sectarian politics to save the population.
Al-Shabaab fails to govern
Third, al-Shabaab - originally the youth wing of the UIC -
declared its affiliation with al-Qaeda, and were identified
as a terrorist group by the UN and the US, and have been
consequently targeted by US forces. The UN and the US have
blocked food shipment to the areas that al-Shabaab controls
in order to deny them these supplies. Al-Shabaab wants to
establish an Islamic state, but unfortunately, it has
failed to put in place even the most rudimentary
infrastructure to govern the region or provide services.
Furthermore, al-Shabaab has denied the population the
opportunity to organise itself to meet the challenges of
the livelihood crisis. Thus, despite the fact that the two
epicentres (Lower Shabeele and Bakool) of the famine are in
al-Shabaab hands, they have failed to appeal even to the
Islamic world for assistance. Most insidiously, they
continue to deny the existence of significant famine
conditions in the area and have consequently reneged on the
permission they recently gave to the world community to
deliver food to the starving.
Normally, societies have three lines of defence against
mass starvation: local capacity, national government and
the international community. When a disaster hits a region,
the first help comes from local administrations and the
communities themselves. If events overwhelm the first
responders, then the national government takes charge of
operations; and when the crisis exceeds the wherewithal of
the nation, international actors come to the rescue.
It is clear that all three levels of livelihood protections
have failed in Somalia. Al-Shabaab has prohibited the local
population from organising their municipal governments and
charities to fend off the disaster. Similarly, Somalia's
national government, which is beholden to sectarian
leadership and international patrons, has been oblivious to
the emerging calamity, and has thwarted the international
community from coming to its aid.
The African Union, the UN, the EU, and the US continued to
describe the famine as a drought until July 18, when it was
no longer possible to conceal the deaths of almost 80,000
people from starvation. The United States and its allies
have been so obsessed with defeating al-Shabaab that they
have ignored the fate of the millions of people who live in
areas controlled by al-Shabaab.
Finally, callous uses of military and political power by
all actors against poor people have produced a catastrophic
famine. Altering the behaviour of the powerful would be
tantamount to a revolution. But before such a
transformation can be imagined, lives must be saved by
immediately dropping food and water in villages and
settlements in the region. Such urgent distribution of
life's necessities will keep people in their homes before a
humane scheme of reconstruction could begin.
What is ultimately required is the establishment, by
Somalis with the genuine assistance of others, of a
national government that is accountable to the people. Such
a government is the best defence against famine, as well as
against terrorism.
Deeq Afrika explains WHY Global Somali Response
By Deeq Afrika - Co-coordinator Survival Backpacks project
http://www.globalgiving.org / http://tinyurl.com/62xpqpl /
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=233316180032497 /
ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR_1G1yOEbA
Fed up of watching -from the comfort of our living roomsuntold
horrors unfold in the Horn of Africa, fed up of
hearing plans made but not seeing much done, fed up of
making excuses for ourselves -excuses like we were too
young or too poor or too far away from the problem to make
a difference- we, young people from Somalia, Kenya,
America, Australia and the UK formed the Global Somali
Response.
The purpose of the Global Somali Response is to identify
the major gaps in the existing emergency responses so as to
mobilize the Somali community in the diaspora to stand up
and take ownership and responsibility for their people, to
drive resources where they matter the most -en route to
Dadaab rather than just in Dadaab itself- and to restore
the dignity of the Somali people.
The road to Dadaab is paved with open graves saying ii
kaalay ... ii kaalay ... (come to me ... come to me ... There, we met
people that were faced with the difficult choice of sitting
and waiting for death, or getting up and walking towards
it. We met families that had walked for 22 days straight
and were willing to walk another 90km to Dadaab. We met
mothers that had left their children on the roadsides to
die alone, and fathers that had no more energy left to feel
grief for their lost children. The most appalling thing was
that no aid agencies were there in the routes to Dadaab to
help these people.
We are putting together a series of appeal clips and
documentaries to raise money and awareness on the plight of
the refugees. We are also raising funds to fill Survival
Backpacks with essential supplies; water, glucose,
slippers, blankets and some dry food. These survival
backpacks shall be distributed to refugees in transit from
Somalia to Kenya. This is because most deaths occur during
transit, not at the destination. Only six out of ten
refugees make it to Dadaab refugee camp. The Survival Packs
are meant to alleviate the suffering and decrease the
number of deaths.
The Global Somali Response holds the values of initiative,
quick response, and genuine care and concern. Our efforts
are starting to bear fruits. All over the world, young
people are taking the initiative. They are stepping in to
save lives. Somalis are choosing to be responsible for
their own people. Young people are offering their time,
money and skills to the initiative. What is unique about us
is that, thanks to volunteers, the raised funds go directly
to the victims unlike some other agencies that have high
administration costs. It is no wonder that the
international media is taking notice.
People are listening and taking action. We identified
Dhobley in Somalia as one of the gaps in the emergency
response, and already, the international media as well as
relief organizations are beginning to focus their attention
on this area. We shall continue to identify other gaps in
the emergency response and find ways of filling them.
Please email us on globalsomaliresponse@gmail.com to find
out how YOU can help. Join our Facebook page Global Somali
Emergency Response for more updates or follow us on twitter
@dadaab_response.
Additional news and commentary
Ken Rice, "Somalia famine relief effort hit harder by food
aid delays than by rebels," August 4, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/3tdk857
Horn of Africa Fast Facts about the Drought, Aug 5, 2011
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93426
Useful update and background information. Regular reports
from IRIN available at
http://www.irinnews.org/Country.aspx?Country=SO
UNHCR, "Fleeing from Dust and Starvation," Aug 2, 2001
http://allafrica.com/stories/201108030009.html
A better than usual report, despite the familiar themes.
But also notes support being given to newly arrived
refugees by other refugees themselves.
Jeremy Scahill, "The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia," The
Nation, August 1-8, 2011
http://www.thenation.com / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/5tvfowy
Detailed investigative reporting on U.S. military and
intelligence involvement.
"Famine and Drought", Owen Abroad, July 27, 2011
http://www.owen.org/blog/4818
On why Ethiopia is better prepared to deal with the drought
this time. Read the comments as well as the original blog
post.
"Famine by man not drought," Africa Answerman, Aug 4, 2011
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/75437
Title is misleading. It's both, which the author
acknowledges.
"Famine in Somalia: The story you're unlikely to hear any
time soon", Rasna Warah, Aug 3, 2011
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/75419
The article's valid points about media hype and the aid
industry are undermined by the hype in this article itself,
which expresses these critiques in simplistic (and actually
very common) language.
"East Africa&a's drought response: [African] Union members
must arise," Anne Mitaru, Aug 3, 2011
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/75413
Calls for African states to take leading role in responding
to crisis.
Karen Rothmyer, "Hiding the Real Africa", March/April 2011
http://www.cjr.org/reports/hiding_the_real_africa.php
Focuses on the effects of NGO & UN agency fundraising needs
and dependence of journalists on these sources on the
tendency to oversimplify "Africa" as an unrelieved disaster
zone.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic
publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on
African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and
international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by
William Minter.
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