Experts: Civil war also to blame in famine

TheChronicleHerald.ca 
Friday, July 22, 2011

Somalian soldiers beat back desperate families with gun butts Thursday as they fought for food supplies in front of a weeping diplomat, a day after the UN declared parts of the country were suffering from the worst famine in a generation.

"I will knock on every door I can to help you," the African Union envoy to Somalia, Jerry Rawlings, told the gathered families in the capital of Mogadishu.

Somalia’s 20-year-old civil war is partly to blame for turning the drought in the Horn of Africa into a famine. Analysts warned that aid agencies could be airlifting emergency supplies to the failed state 20 years from now unless the UN-backed government improves.

"Corruption is a major part of the problem in Somalia," said Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group. "This drought did not come out of nowhere, but the (Somali) government did not do anything to prepare for it. Instead they spent all their time fighting each other."

The UN has appealed for $300 million to over the next two months and aid agencies warn it will take at least $1 billion to provide emergency food, medicine and shelter for 11 million people in East Africa until the end of the year. Pictures of skeletal children and grief-stricken mothers stare out from Western newspapers in mute appeal.

The suffering is real. The UN believes tens of thousands have already died in the inaccessible interior, held by al-Qaida linked Islamist rebels who denied many aid agencies access for two years. The thorny scrub around the overflowing refugee camps in Kenya is littered with tiny corpses abandoned by mothers to weak to even dig their children a grave.

But Somalis will continue to suffer unless the international backers who support the Somalian government also demand that it does a better job, said Abdirazak Fartaag, who headed the government’s finance management unit until he fled the country after writing a report detailing tens of millions of dollars in missing donations from Arab nations.

"The Somalis are very grateful for what the international community is doing for them, but they need to be a bit more forceful in holding our politicians to account," Fartaag said.

Currently, the government only holds half of the capital with the help of 9,000 African Union peacekeepers. The salaries of 10,000 Somali soldiers are paid by the U.S. and Italy, and police are paid by the European Union.

The rest of south-central Somalia is held by insurgents who kidnap children to use as child soldiers and carry out stonings and amputations. Last year, the group claimed responsibility for their first international terror attack, killing 76 people in Uganda.