Who is to blame for the situation in Somalia?

This extract is from New Internationalist, by Sally Healy. Views expressed are the author’s own.

In a world of plenty, famine is a very serious thing. It shouldn’t happen in the 21st century, but it is happening in Somalia. In simple terms, famine is declared when there is evidence of acute malnutrition affecting more than 30 per cent of children. In some parts of Somalia, levels have reached 50 per cent.

Drought conditions tipped vulnerable people into the shocking predicament the world has witnessed over the past few months, forcing them to leave the meagre comfort of their homes to search for help and to face the awful choice of leaving weaker children behind to save the stronger ones. But the reasons that no assistance was to hand were political rather than climatic.

The loudest voices blame Al Shabab, the radical anti-Western group that controls much of southern Somalia. Its suspicion of the West and its attacks on aid workers made access for UN and other Western humanitarian agencies well nigh impossible.

Others blame the US government for having passed legislation to stop any of its assistance reaching areas held by Al Shabab. This intimidated aid agencies, which feared that any humanitarian assistance could be seen as ‘support for terrorists’.

Still others say the famine represents a failure of the UN system brought about by the politicization of aid. The World Food Programme stopped its support to the most vulnerable people in southern Somalia just when they needed it most.

As starving people turned up in their thousands, filling makeshift camps in Kenya, Ethiopia and the Somali capital, Mogadishu, those responsible started to squirm and to cover up their part in the crisis. Al Shabab now declared that it would let aid in. Its leaders claimed they had no objection to the delivery of humanitarian assistance provided it came without a political agenda.

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