No Comrade of ours

Muhammad Siyad Barre had been from 1969 until this day in 1991, when fhe was forced to flee, the dictator of the Somali Democratic [sic} Republic.  He came to power with the assassination of Abdirashad Ali Shermarke by one of his own bodyguards. Shermarke's death led to an unopposed, bloodless coup d'état by the Somali Army commanded by one Major General Barre, who liked to be known as Comrade Siyad.   No Comrade of our class, he sought to blend the immiscible: the Qur'an and Somali nationalism with Marxism.   In reality, this led Somalia to develop state capitalism under Russia's sphere of influence.   His achievements were recognised three years later when presented with a gong: the Order of National Flag, First Class, of the Democratic [sic} People's Republic of Korea.   The relationship with Russia soured in 1978 as a result of Barre's pursuit of  Greater Somalia and the invasion of Ethiopia. Given Somalia's strategic position at the Horn of Africa, the USA became the main supplier of economic and military aid.   Literacy and nutrition improved with the development of capitalism, but Barre's priorities were military, to the extent that in 1985 they ate 65 per cent of the budget.   War abroad was soon followed by civil war.  Barre fled, first to Kenya and then Nigeria.   He died there in 1995 at the age of 75.  

The average life expectancy for men in Somalia is 45.   The ongoing civil war has resulted in 500,000+ deaths and more than 1,100,000 people being displaced.

Protect Refugees

ONE WORLD, ONE CONTINENT, ONE PEOPLE

Kenya said in May it sought to shut down the Dadaab refugee camp, the world’s largest refugee site, which hosts more than 300,000 Somalis, by the year’s end. Kenya has also insisted that the evacuation of Dadaab is being conducted in accordance with international law.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Monday that a “voluntary” process that sees Somali refugees at a huge camp inside Kenya returned to their country is no more voluntary.

“The voluntary returns process does not meet international standards,” the NRC said. The agency said that aside from being forced to return to Somali, the refugees also face insecurity back home, where violence and inadequacy of basic services are rampant.

Jan Egeland, the secretary-general of the NRC, has countered by saying, “The pressure to push more than 280,000 registered refugees from Dadaab camp has led to chaotic and disorganized returns. From what we have seen on the ground, it is no longer voluntary, dignified nor safe,” referring to the repatriation process.

“The number of vulnerable Somalis planned for return far outstrips the resources available to support them in Somalia,” Neil Turner, the NRC’s Kenya country director, explained.

Human Rights Watch also slammed Kenya’s repatriation program, saying it did not meet international standards for voluntary return.

Somalia's Tragedy

The UN just announced that due to drought and famine over 300,000 Somali children are suffering from severe malnutrition. This means that over 100 children are already dying everyday from starvation. Soon the number will reach many hundreds a day, bringing back memories of the most recent Great Horn of Africa drought in 2011-12 when the UN admitted that 250,000, almost entirely children, died from starvation. And this drought and famine is worse.

The reason so many Somali children are starving to death is triggered by the latest climate disaster in the form of the El Nino drought. But the fact that Somalia itself, this meaning from the former capital Mogadishu south to the Kenyan border, is in a state of foreign occupation and war is exacerbating the situation.

Somalia's food crisis

Nearly five million people in Somalia are suffering from a shortage of food due to poor rainfall, floods and displacement, the United Nations says.

More than 300,000 children under the age of five are severely malnourished and require urgent assistance.

Malnutrition levels in Somalia have increased over the last six months with nearly half the population affected.

The number of people without enough food has increased by 300,000 since February.

Funding for the Somalia Humanitarian Response Plan has reached just 32% of its target.

The numbers could go higher if the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya is closed down and thousands are forced to return to Somalia where they have no homes or livelihoods.

Somalia's children in need

The United Nations has warned that over 58,000 children would starve to death in Somalia if they are not provided with urgent humanitarian assistance. 

UN aid chief for Somalia Peter de Clercq said that more than 300,000 children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. The UN official also said that they urgently need medical, food, and other humanitarian support.

"The level of malnutrition, especially among children, is of serious concern, with nearly 305,000 children under the age of five years acutely malnourished," the official said, adding, "We estimate that 58,300 children face death if they are not treated."

The UN has said that nearly one million people are struggling every day to meet their food needs. 4.7 million people, or nearly 40 percent of Somalia, stand in need of humanitarian aid.

The grim assessment comes as severe drought continues to hit several regions in the impoverished war-torn country. Northern Somali areas are especially hard hit by the ongoing drought. The drought has been exacerbated by by an exceptionally strong El Nino weather pattern.

"The food security and malnutrition situation in Somalia is alarming, especially in parts of Puntland and Somaliland, which have been hard hit by drought exacerbated by El Nino," the UN said in a statement, adding "We are deeply concerned...with severe drought conditions intensifying in Puntland and Somaliland, many more people risk relapsing into crisis."

The UN has appealed for urgent support and humanitarian assistance. The world body is calling for USD 885 million in aid to assist people in conflict- and disaster-affected regions.  

Dadaab - A refuge?

When people fled the civil war in Somalia they hoped their  stay across the border in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp would be short-lived. Twenty-five years and three generations on of refugees 350,000 Somalis call this barren, dusty settlement, home. Dadaab was initially established as a temporary haven for some 90,000 refugees fleeing the 1991 clan fighting. It is now a sprawling, bustling complex of five camps, boasting cinemas and soccer leagues – the third largest city in Kenya, after Nairobi and Mombasa. Dadaab is the world’s largest refugee complex. It is a commercial hub, with refugees running successful businesses from bakeries to designer boutiques. It provides services and a ready market for locals, and a huge tax return to the Kenyan government. A report commissioned by the governments of Norway, Denmark and Kenya in 2010 found that the camps’ businesses generated an annual turnover of around $25 million. The host community earned some $1.8 million from the sale of livestock alone to refugees.

“We pay a heavy tax to the government every year. Much more money than what they collect from the locals. Yet they don’t give back anything to us,” said Ali Kasim, a member of one of Dadaab’s business associations. “We cannot challenge them. Unlike the host community, who are not afraid to demand their rights.”

One reason for Dadaab’s growth is the Kenyan government’s strict encampment policy, which prevents refugees from settling outside. Most governments have traditionally seen this as convenient logistically, and as a way to reduce potential friction with host communities. It’s increasingly argued that refugee camps should only be a last resort as they create more problems than they solve. They are not only unsustainable over the long term – damaging to the environment and a turn-off for donors – but in corralling refugees behind their gates, they also deny them basic rights and freedoms.

Dadaab is under the overall control of the Kenyan government and UN refugee agency, UNHCR. But its five camps – Dagahaley, Hagadera, Ifo and more recent additions Ifo II and Kambioos – are in practical terms run by democratically-elected community volunteers.

“We work hand in hand with the aid agencies. We have developed a very smooth system where we coordinate all the activities of the camps ranging from sanitation to security,” explained Rukia Ali Rage, the chairwoman of Ifo camp. "It would be impossible for UNHCR and its partner agencies to implement their programmes without the support of the community leaders,” she told IRIN. 

Rage took over the leadership of Ifo in a camp-wide election in 2014, and is due to step down when her term ends later this year. It’s a lesson in democracy that the Somali government in Mogadishu, where elections are also due this year, will hopefully emulate.

The role of community leaders became significant out of necessity. UN staff temporarily pulled out of Dadaab in 2011 following the kidnapping of aid workers, and youth volunteers took over running the camps' basic services.

“We have an umbrella youth consortium consisting of several youth groups. Each group carries out a project that is similar to the ones run by the UN and its implementing partners,” said Ali Hussein, deputy chair of the Ifo youth consortium. “In this way, we not only develop our capacity, but we also hold the agencies accountable and help our community in return.”

But while that is positive, “the biggest challenge we have is that we are not involved in the initial design of the projects,” said Rage.  “We would like to be given a more active role in the decision-making at the early stage so that we can better represent the interest of the people of concern.”

A big threat hangs over Dadaab. With the rise of al-Shabab and its high-profile attacks inside Kenya, politicians have been quick to accuse the camps of providing sanctuary and support to the jihadists. That ignores the fact that al-Shabab also recruits - highly successfully - among non-ethnic Somalis in Kenya. In April last year, Deputy President William Ruto ordered the closure of Dadaab and the return of all refugees following an al-Shabab attack on Garissa University – 100km to the southwest – that killed 142 students. Under international pressure, and following an uproar from human rights groups, he backpedaled.

Only a modest 5,000 refugees have taken advantage of a repatriation programme that began in December 2014.  Most of those who have volunteered are the relatively new arrivals that entered Dadaab between 2006 and 2011, fleeing violence and famine.

“We have been here for more than 20 years and we have nowhere to return to. Our homes were destroyed during the conflict,” said Abukar Ahmed, a long-term resident of Ifo camp. “Those who are returning arrived only a few years ago and have all their belongings intact.”

Abdirashid Abdullahi, with Dadaab’s Gargaar humanitarian FM radio, explained.

“For a significant number of refugees, the only home they know is Kenya. So keeping them in camps against their will is not helping them,” he said. “It’s time to review the repatriation process and look for other sustainable solutions to bring an end to the world’s largest refugee complex.”

UK Oil Corruption in Somalia

A British oil company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars which went to senior Somali civil servants, according to a UN report. UN investigators say the payments by Soma Oil & Gas amount in some cases to "acts that undermine Somali public institutions through corruption". The firm’s chairman is the former Conservative Party leader Michael Howard.

The report details payments totalling $490,000 (£315,000) from Soma Oil & Gas to the Somali Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, beginning in June 2014. The money was ostensibly intended to cover the salaries of a small number of experts, including geologists and geoscientists. In reality though, the United Nations investigators say the scheme appears to have been used to "fund systematic payoffs to senior ministerial officials", some of whom were "instrumental in both securing the company's initial contract, and negotiating subsequent agreements".

One recipient of money under the scheme was Dr Farah Abdi Hassan, the director general of the ministry. He received $36,000 (£23,000) over a period of 12 months - about three times his Somali government salary, which investigators say he continued to draw. The report claims that Mr Hassan suggested in emails that Soma's contractual agreements with the government - both past and prospective - could be subject to review if financial "assistance" was not forthcoming.

The extent of Somalia's oil and gas reserves are unknown, but some estimates put it at as much as 110 billion barrels - nearly half that of Saudi Arabia. The United Nations in 2013 called for a moratorium on oil deals, saying that, in the absence of a legal and regulatory framework to share energy resources, such agreements could fuel violence and corruption in a country still struggling with clan tensions and battling an Islamist insurgency.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33766676

Blowback From Somalia: Kenya’s Sorrow

Blowback From Somalia

Kenya’s Sorrow: the US Connection

by CONN HALLINAN

The systematic murder of 147 Kenyan university students by members of the Somalia-based Shabab organization on April 2 is raising an uncomfortable question: was the massacre an unintentional blowback from U.S. anti-terrorism strategy in the region? And were the killers forged by an ill-advised American supported Ethiopian invasion that transformed the radical Islamic organization from a marginal player into a major force?

As Kenyans were mourning their dead, opposition figures were openly opposing Kenya’s occupation of southern Somalia and bringing into question Washington’s blueprint for fighting terrorism: drones, Special Forces, and regional proxies.

Speaking in the port of Mombasa, former prime minister and opposition leader Raila Odinga called for the withdrawal of Kenyan troops, as did the Speaker of the National Assembly, Justin Muturi. Speaking at the funeral for one of the victims, Senator James Orengo said, “We know very well the consequences of a war of occupation. We must withdraw our troops from Somalia to end this.”

Absent from most of the mainstream American media was an examination of exactly what role the U.S. has played in Somalia over the past decade, and how Washington has helped create the current crisis.

A little history.

When military dictator Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991, Somalia fell into the chaos of clan warfare, sparking off a U.S. military intervention in 1992. While billed as a “humanitarian intervention,” the Americans aggressively sought to suppress the plague of warlords that had turned the nation’s capital, Mogadishu, into a shattered ruin. But the expedition derailed in 1993 after 18 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of Somalis were killed in the infamous Black Hawk down incident. The U.S. withdrew the following year.

Which doesn’t mean the U.S. went away, or that it didn’t apply a new strategy for Africa, one designed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. The genesis of that plan came from James Carafano, a West Point graduate and head of Heritage’s foreign policy section, and Nile Gardiner, director of the think tank’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, who drew up a document entitled “U.S. Military Assistance for Africa: A Better Solution.”

The strategy called for the creation of a U.S. military command for Africa, a focus on terrorism, and direct military intervention using air power and naval forces. The authors argue against putting U.S. troops on the ground, instead enlisting those of allies. Those recommendations were adopted by the Bush administration—and later the Obama administration—lock, stock and barrel. African Command (Africom) was created, as along with the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative, to train troops in 16 nations that border the vast area embraced by world’s biggest desert.

While targeting “terrorism” is the strategy’s public face, Carafano and Gardiner argue that U.S. “vital interests” are involved on the continent, “With its vast natural and mineral resources,” Africa, say the two scholars, “remains important to the West, as it has been for hundreds of years, and its geostrategic significance is likely to rise in the 21st century.”

A major rationale behind the strategy is to checkmate Chinese influence in Africa and short circuit Beijing’s search for raw materials. China gets about one third of its oil from Africa, plus platinum, copper, timber and iron ore.

The new policy made its début in Somalia when the U.S. actively aided Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion to support the unpopular and isolated the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFGS). The invasion overthrew the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which had brought Somalia its first stable government in 15 years.

The ICU was a coalition of Islamic organizations that included a small group calling itself the “Shabab,” Arabic for “Youth.” While the ICU was Islamic in ideology, it was more moderate than the Shabab. The ICU also had more support than the TFGS, because it had routed the clan warlords who had dominated Somalia since 1991.

However, those warlords—united in an organization incongruously called the “Alliance for Restoration of Peace and Counter-terrorism”—were strongly supported by the U.S. CIA. Claiming that the ICU was linked to Al-Qaeda, Washington leaned on Ethiopia to invade. When they did, U.S. Special Forces based in Djibouti accompanied them and gave them intelligence and equipment. The U.S. Navy shelled a town in Southern Somalia, killing, according to Oxfam and the United Nations, 70 civilians and wounding more than a 100. While the New York Times claims that U.S. support for the invasion was “covert,” it was anything but.

The powerful Ethiopian Army crushed the ICU, but the brutality of the occupation that followed fired up a resistance movement led by the Shabab. Given that Ethiopians and Somalians are traditional enemies, and that the former is largely Christian, the latter overwhelmingly Muslim, one wonders what Washington was thinking when it backed the invasion.

It was the 2006 Ethiopian-U.S. invasion that turned the Shabab into a major player, just as the invasion of Iraq fueled the creation of, first, Al-Qaeda and then the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.

The Shabab quickly took over most of southern and central Somalia, although their brutality and strict interpretation of Islam eventually alienated them from much of the population. However, the one thing that Somalians could unite around was expelling the Ethiopians, and after two years of ambushes, roadside bombs and suicide vests, Addis Abba withdrew most its forces.

At the time, the Shabab was not affiliated with Al-Qaeda—it did not do so until 2012—and its concerns were mainly local. The organization was more like the Taliban in Afghanistan, albeit with a more extreme interpretation of Islam. But that distinction was lost on Washington, which pressed the African Union (AU) to send in troops. In 2007, the AU, with UN compliance, established the African Union Mission in Somalia (AUMIS) and deployed 9,000 troops to support the TFGS.

It is no coincidence that the bulk of AUMIS troops are from Uganda and Burundi, two countries that receive U.S. aid, as does Ethiopia. From 2009, U.S. military aid to Addis Abada jumped 256 percent.

The U.S. also footed the bill for private mercenary organizations, like Bancroft Global Development, to train Ugandan and Burundi troops in counter-insurgency warfare. The fact that Bancroft is a private company shields it from public scrutiny, including by the U.S. Congress.

While the initial AUMIS deployment was not very successful, it finally drove the Shabab out of the nation’s capital, Mogadishu, although that was, in part, a reflection of the Shabab’s loss of support among Somalians, alienated by the group’s brutality. Eventually the organization was driven out of all Somalia’s major cities. But even with numerous setbacks, a recent attack in the capital that killed 15 people and wounded 20 demonstrates the Shabab still has a bite.

Kenya—another recipient of U.S. aid whose soldiers are trained by U.S. Special Forces—invaded southern Somalia in 2011 and seized the Shabab-controlled port of Kismayo . While publically the reason for the invasion was Shabab kidnappings of Kenyans and tourists, apparently Nairobi has long had its eye on the port of Lamu as part of a development plan for the northeast part of the country.

Again, the Shabab was scattered rather easily, but only then to resort of guerilla war and attacks on civilian targets in Kenya and Uganda. In 2011, it set off two bombs in Kampala, Uganda, that killed 76 people. In 2013, it killed 67 people in a shopping mall in Nairobi and then topped that with the massacre at Garissa University.

The response of the Kenyan government has been targeting ethnic Somalians living on the Kenyan side of the border with Somalia, threatening to close down one of the largest refugee camps in the world, and squeezing the country’s Muslim. Those are actions liable to alienate Kenya’s large ethnic Somali population and its minority Muslim communities. “Shabab needs to create an atmosphere of fear and suspicion to gain a foothold,” security analyst Mohamed Mubarak told the Financial Times,” “And they may succeed if the Kenyan response is not thought out carefully.”

The blowback attacks have soured most Kenyans on the invasion. A poll taken last fall, six months before the Garissa University bloodbath, found that a majority of the country wants its troops out, and two in three Kenyans thought there would be more terrorist attacks.

What seems clear is that the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for using military force in Africa has been a disaster. It has destabilized Somalia by overthrowing the ICU, spreading the war to Uganda and Kenya. It turned Libya into a failed state, which in turn unleashed a flood of arms that have helped fuel civil wars in Mali, Niger and the Central African Republic.

The widespread use of drones may kill some terrorist leaders, along with large numbers of civilians, and, rather than destroying organizations like Al-Qaeda and the Shabab, it ends up atomizing them into groups that are smaller and harder to track, but no less capable of committing mass murder. Indeed, for organizations like the Shabab and Al-Qaeda, drones have proved to be the 21st century’s most effective recruiting sergeants.

Military occupation sows the seeds of its own destruction, and, while using drones and proxies may keep the American death count down, that strategy ultimately creates more enemies than it eliminates.

The solution in Somalia (and Syria and Yemen) is political, not military. According to Bronwyn Bruton of the Council On Foreign Relations, the Shabab is “not a monolithic movement,” but includes leaders from the old Islamic Courts Union that the U.S. and it allies so disastrously overthrew. “Some of these leaders are extremists, and the idea of talking with them is unappetizing. But the United States can and should negotiate with them directly.”

In short, talking beats bombing and works better.

 Taken fromCounterpunch

More of Conn Hallinan can be read at his website 

The Horns of a Dilemma

All of the governments in Africa which have maintained military relations with AFRICOM and NATO countries are in no way more stable and secured from instability.

Since 2007, the U.S. and its allies in Britain and France have carried out numerous execution-style attacks in Somalia in search and destroy missions. The African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) has approximately 22,000 troops in the Horn of Africa state. These troops come from numerous states including Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sierra Leone and others (Sierra Leone troops will be withdrawn due to the Ebola epidemic in that country. Forces participating in AMISOM were trained by the U.S. Army Africa, a component of AFRICOM. Most of the funding, supplies and coordination of AMISOM is carried out by the Pentagon, the CIA and private military and intelligence contractors, such as Bancroft Global Development, a security firm with close ties to the Pentagon.

 In neighboring Djibouti, AFRICOM has established a base at Camp Lemonnier where 4,000 troops and intelligence personnel are stationed. This military base is undergoing a major refurbishment indicating that the Pentagon and CIA penetration of the Horn of Africa is destined to continue for an extended period. The Obama administration said it had signed a 20-year lease on it. Despite this presence a series of strikes by guerrilla forces from Al-Shabaab have created tensions in both Djibouti and Somalia. Since the presence of the Pentagon-backed AMISOM operation in Somalia, millions of Africans have been dislocated due to hostilities between Al-Shabaab and the Federal Government which is propped-up by Washington and Brussels.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/africa-2014-the-quest-for-unity-and-the-role-of-imperialism/5422207

Somalia's Child Labour

War and famine in Somalia have forced Halima, and thousands of others like herself, to abandon the dream of education and become workers instead. UNICEF statistics from 2011, the last time such data was collected, show that half of all children between the ages of five and 14 hailing from the country’s central and southern regions are employed. In Puntland and Somaliland, which have been more stable than other parts of Somalia for the past two decades, more than a quarter of all children work for a living.

The grueling jobs for which they are hired – mostly manual and domestic labour – pay little but demand a lot. Twelve-year-old Halima Mohamed Ali says she works as a nanny for five children from “sunrise to sunrise”, cooking, ironing, washing floors, bathing the children, and finally putting them to bed before calling it a day.  Her 50-dollar monthly salary is a lifeline for her family of five, who have no other breadwinner.  Ali told IPS, “If I miss even a single day of work, my family will go to bed hungry.”

 According to Mohamed Abdi, programme manager of Somali Peace Line, an organisation that promotes and protects the rights of children, “Hundreds of girls are brought to Mogadishu from rural areas where there is extreme poverty and famine conditions … to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes. They work long hours for food, lodging and low wages, which they send back to their families.” The “Lucky ones” like Ali get paid on a regular basis many others have their meagre salaries withheld for months, are cut off from their families, abused and treated like slaves. “When we try to convince parents not to send their children to work, they ask us for alternative sources of income, which we cannot provide,” he admitted.

In addition to being vulnerable to informal labour conditions such as long hours, children like 11-year-old Hassan Abdullahi Duale also receive lower wages than their adult counterparts, even when they perform all the same functions. Duale – the only boy in the family – left school and took a job in a car-repair centre where he works 12-hour days to support his mother and two young sisters. “On a good day, when there are lots of cars to fix, I earn 50 Somali shillings (about 2.5 dollars) a day. On bad days, I am just given my lunch and sent home with nothing,” said Duale

 70 percent of the population of 10.2 million are classified as “low-income”, with 73 percent of all Somalis living on less than two dollars a day. The unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world, with 54 percent of all Somalis between the ages of 15 and 64 out of work. The director-general of Somalia’s ministry of human development and public services, Aweys Sheikh Haddad, said his country’s constitution bans child labour, adding that the government recently ratified an International Labour Organization (ILO) convention forbidding the worst forms of child labour. But challenges in law enforcement mean these commitments on paper have not amounted to much in practice. Various studies and reports have found children as young as five years old engaged in virtually every industry, from construction to agriculture. Only 710,860 youth out of 1.7 million primary school-aged children are enrolled in any kind of education.

Aiding who?

Imagine. You're an international humanitarian aid worker in a war zone and faithful to the principle of the Red Cross, as any good humanitarian should be. In other words, you're impartial neutral and independent. it's your responsibility to relive human suffering , irrespective of the people involved and the situation on the ground. You do what you can for the victims, but soldiers exploit your efforts. The demand money for every well you dig and levy sky-high taxes, thought up on the sport, on all the sacks of rice and tents and medicine you arrange to have flown in. They consume a slice of your aid supplies and sell another slice.  Among the items they buy with the proceeds are weapons, which they use to drive yet more people into your refugee camp or even to their death. What do you do?

In Somalia al-Shabab, considered a "terrorist" group by the US, sought to control aid agencies through a system of regulation, taxation and surveillance. Aid groups were forced to pay as much as $10,000 to 'register' their work. They would then have to disclose project details, their budgets and even staff members' names. They were sometimes forced to pay so-called additional 'taxes', and in many cases al-Shabab insisted on distributing aid, and kept much of it for themselves. Aid agencies have to make deals and accept unpalatable conditions from all sides just to function, and at times simply to survive. That means they sometimes end up paying the ransom that armed groups demand. But the alternative is to do nothing, and see many more people suffer and die.

“The al-Shabab group had set up a government, they had policies around there. They had a humanitarian coordinating office. They are acting as a local authority. And we negotiate with them.” explained Marc Dubois, executive director, Doctors without Borders

"These famines, particularly war-caused famines, are amazingly good opportunities for fundraising. If you [as an aid agency] can get your logo there and say we are helping out, your funds will just go through the roof ...I am just very suspicious about aid agencies who make huge claims for what they are doing without mentioning this dark side, the difficult side, where they know may be 20 to 30 percent or 40 percent or more perhaps is actually being siphoned off - may be spent on guns, will be spent on war - and they have to accept that. I think the only option is to be completely open about it." said Richard Dowden, director at the Royal African Society

Nor is it only the terrorist groups that take advantage of aid organisations.  In the weeks before the al-Qaeda leader was killed, the CIA told a Pakistani doctor to set up a fake vaccination scheme in the town of Abbottabad so they could try to gain access to Bin Laden's house. When news got out it cast doubt on the integrity of aid workers in general, 200 US aid groups wrote to the CIA blaming the ploy for a polio crisis in Pakistan. Since then at least one aid group, Save the Children, has had to pull out their staff because of concerns over their safety.

From AlJazeera

Somali Refugees to be sent back

More than 500,000 Somali refugees living in Kenya are to be deported returned their home country. Two of the camps they live in, Dadaab and Kakuma, are now so large they are more like towns. There is also a suburb of Nairobi - Eastleigh - that is known as "mini Somalia" because so many Somalis live there. Many of them were born in camps and have never set foot inside their home country. The BBC says the main problem with the agreement is that most of the refugees know that Somalia is still not safe and probably would not want to return. 

Although the Kenyan government and the UNHCR have signed up to the agreement they are not acting entirely altruistically. Since the attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi in September, the Kenyan government fears that the Somali community poses an even greater security threat and is shielding potential perpetrators of similar atrocities. Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto says refugees have become a shield for those who pose a security threat to Kenya. The UN in turn has had to scale down rations in the Dadaab refugee camp because of a lack of resources.

Somalia's Constant State Of War

‘Does al Shabab Pose a Threat on American Soil?’ So read a headline in the New York Times’ blog, Room for Debate. Despite its name, Room for Debate rarely shows any true differences of opinion on whatever issue of the day is considered significant to the Times’ editors. None of the supposed debaters on this topic actually addressed the central issue of al-Shabaab’s existence and what it says about the United States behavior around the world. A better question would be why the United States turned Somalia into a ruin and why does it keep killing people there.

Sometimes we get the opportunity to see violence up close as in the recent al-Shabaab attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. But in the absence of good reporting, scenes of carnage tell us nothing. Thanks to liar presidents and their partners in the corporate media, Americans know nothing about Kenya or its role as American partner in keeping Somalia in a constant state of war.

Americans don’t know that their government instigated an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia in 2006 which destroyed that nation and prevented it from emerging from turmoil and humanitarian disaster. They don’t know that Kenya was enlisted in this occupation in 2011 and also gained the enmity of the al-Shabaab resistance. They don’t know that the United States government prevented food from reaching starving people. They don’t know that the so-called pirates [8] in Somalia are fighting in vain to keep European nations from stealing even the fish they need to survive.

Al-Shabaab is dedicated to resisting American aggression and to punishing anyone who assists in that process. There is nothing mysterious about this group’s motives. They are fighting their oppressors be they in the United States or Kenya.

Of course we are shown pictures of murder victims at the Westgate mall in Kenya and hear the word al-Shabaab linked to their deaths. It is justifiable to show that suffering but the media never show the victims of American violence. They remain unseen and therefore unknown.

Various forms of media are now accessible to every person at any time of day or night, but we must hunt to see images of Iraqi, Afghan, Somali, Yemeni, Libyan, Palestinian, Haitian, and Syrian victims of American and American sponsored violence. Because they have been disappeared the American public are kept in a bubble of ignorance without knowing the role that their government plays in creating bloodshed.

When we do see the victims lying bloody in a Nairobi shopping mall we obviously feel sadness about their fates and perhaps anger at the perpetrators. Seeing people killed who were merely engaged in the mundane activities of life is terribly tragic. It would be enlightening and no less tragic to see the images and hear the stories of people who were going about their daily business when suddenly death struck them because of the American empire.

The consequence of propaganda and omissions in reporting mean that al-Shabaab are labeled as fanatical Muslims and evil terrorists and not people who have reason to be angry with Kenya for joining in the evisceration of their country. Their legitimate grievances aren’t addressed by killing weekend shoppers but unless all these facts are acknowledged the cycle of violence can only continue.

Al-Shabaab exists because of the terror the United States brought to Somalia. In 2011 more than 250,000 people died in that nation because of a drought, and an American policy of starving civilians in order to starve al-Shabaab fighters.

“Al-Shabaab are labeled as fanatical Muslims and evil terrorists and not people who have reason to be angry with Kenya for joining in the evisceration of their country.”

So the question isn’t whether al-Shabaab threatens America. The question is how Americans think they can be held harmless when their government goes on killing sprees and creates hatred and a desire for revenge.

When we need hard facts we get propaganda instead. Hollywood is using Somalia again as its backdrop for grotesque stories of exceptionalism and supremacy. A new film, Captain Phillips, tells the story of one brave American who with the help of overwhelming fire power and Navy SEALS overcame three Somalians in a life boat. It is doubtful that the Somalian side of the story will be told. One unlucky Somalian young man, Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, received a 33 year prison sentence when he chose to surrender instead of fighting the world’s only super power.

The truth is that our government bears responsibility for the loss of life at the Kenyan mall and for attacks on American vessels. Americans may live in ignorance but the rest of the world knows better. The United States first brought death to Somalia and is responsible for creating even more of it.

By Margaret Kimberley from here 
 

Withdrawal Of Medical Charity Impacts On 100,000s Of Somalis

Afgooye Hospital, situated in the agricultural town of Afgooye, 30 km southwest of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, is one of the many health facilities that used to receive support from the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders. Because of this support the hospital was able to provide free healthcare to the residents of Afgooye and surrounding areas. But it has been almost a month since MSF left Somalia because of security concerns for its staff, and the senior nurse at Afgooye Hospital, Aisha Ahmed, told IPS that the hospital was running out of basic drugs and vaccines.
The 20-bed Afgooye Hospital has only one doctor and seven nurses, who provide what services they can to the hundreds of patients who come through the doors every week.
"This is the place people who want free healthcare turn to, but since MSF left and no agency has filled its place we cannot support the health needs of the people here and in the town's periphery," Ahmed said.

The international charity had been one of the few providers of essential healthcare here for the last 22 years. Somalia has been through almost 20 years of war, and its citizens are affected by poverty and a lack of essential services.
The current government has had to function with limited financial resources and the continued threat of the extremist Islamist group Al-Shabaab, which has waged a number of recent terrorist attacks on the capital Mogadishu despite being ousted from key cities across this Horn of Africa nation.

In an earlier interview with IPS, presidential spokesperson Abdirahman Omar Osman explained that the government's monthly "revenue is roughly three million dollars from Mogadishu's seaport and the airport, and yet the budget we need to execute our daily activities is at least 20 million dollars each month."
The health centres supported by MSF were provided with various services, including free basic healthcare, malnutrition treatment, surgery, epidemic response, water and relief supplies.
MSF said more than 1,500 staff worked for its medical programmes across Somalia, including in Mogadishu and the two outlying towns of Afgooye and Daynille, as well as eight other towns across the country.
"In 2012 alone, MSF teams provided more than 624,000 medical consultations, admitted 41,100 patients to hospitals, cared for 30,090 malnourished children, vaccinated 58,620 people, and delivered 7,300 babies," MSF said in August in a statement announcing its decision to leave Somalia. But Somali doctors warn that the decision will adversely affect the lives of "hundreds of thousands of people".

Mohmaoud Yarow, a health officer in Mogadishu, said the impact of the MSF withdrawal was immediate and health centres that had previously received support from the international charity now have hundreds of people in need of care and many lack the drugs with which to treat them.
"I can understand how difficult it has been for MSF to leave Somalia, but the impact the pullout has had on the country's health sector is enormous … with time this could turn into a deadly health crisis," Yarow told IPS in Mogadishu.
Local media reported in August that Al-Shabaab fighters seized control of a former MSF-funded hospital in Marere, Middle Jubba Region, along with the medical equipment and drugs.

Medical officials also say that the MSF pullout further complicates the polio outbreak the country is facing as the medical charity had provided essential vaccines against the disease. Earlier this year, polio was detected in several areas in Somalia, including the eastern region of Puntland as well as southern and central parts of the country. The World Health Organisation has confirmed 101 cases here and a massive vaccination campaign against the viral disease was launched in August.

The Somalia government has said that it was "deeply saddened" by the MSF decision to withdraw and has reiterated its commitment to providing a secure working environment to all aid agencies in the country. Abdelaziz Qafiifo, spokesperson for Somali Ministry of Human Development and Social Services, which is responsible for the health sector, told IPS: "It is unfortunate that the withdrawal of MSF is having an impact on the lives of the Somali people. We understand the reasons for its pullout but that decision, whatever may have been its justification, is now causing huge suffering in Somalia."
The Somali government said that the MSF decision has created "a critical vacuum that needs to be filled" and could "lead to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis", and has urgently called on the international community and donor countries to offer their support. But until support comes, many here will have to live without access to treatment.

From here

The Somalian Famine Toll

Nearly 260,000 people died during the famine that hit Somalia from 2010 to 2012, a study shows.


Half of them were children under the age of five, says the report by the UN food agency and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

An estimated 4.6% of the total population and 10% of children under five died in southern and central Somalia. In Lower Shabelle, 18% of children under five died and in Mogadishu 17%.

"The report confirms we should have done more before the famine was declared," said Philippe Lazzarini, UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia. "Warnings that began as far back as the drought in 2010 did not trigger sufficient early action,"

The number of deaths was higher than the estimated 220,000 people who died during the 1992 famine.

Famine - it need not happen

Up to two million people are estimated to have died in drought-related emergencies since 1970.


“Where there are normally successive failed rains; then you have a process whereby you have subsequent harvest failures then people adopt coping strategies," explained report author Rob Bailey. "They start selling off assets, running down food reserves, taking on credit - they get themselves into an increasingly desperate situation." After a period of time the coping strategies become exhausted, triggering a famine. The whole process can take 11 months from start to finish, and that is why there is an opportunity to intervene early. "Yet despite this very significant opportunity and despite analysis showing that when you do intervene early it costs less and you save more lives, it does not happen. Ultimately, early action requires government action."

"It requires donor governments - like the UK and US - to write a cheque early on before the crisis is at its worse phase, and that is a big ask for governments to do because governments are primarily concerned with managing the political risks to themselves.
The 2011 famine in Somalia was probably the single most documented and monitored evolution of famine in history. But still no early action happened. Early warning systems were first introduced in the Sahel and Horn of Africa regions in the early 1980s when it was first realised that it was possible to track the "chronology of famine". Things have got a lot more sophisticated so now there are early warning systems that use satellite to estimate harvests more effectively, how much pasture is available. We have more much more sophisticated weather forecasting models.They also use a lot more household-gathered data, where infants are weighed and malnutrition is quantified. Also, it is monitored whether certain coping strategies, that are recognised as pre-famine indicators, are becoming established. It is very rare that you can have a risk that can be so well understood and predicted, and give us such an opportunity to intervene and mitigate it.
Drought-related emergencies, particularly in the Horn of Africa and Sahel regions, are unlikely to go away in the future, projected scenarios show.


Taken from here

Somalia's drought was man-made

 Global warming may have contributed to low rain levels in Somalia in 2011 where tens of thousands died in a famine, research by British climate scientists suggests.  Between 50,000 and 100,000 people died from the famine.

 Peter Stott of Britain's Met Office said that the evidence is "very strong" that the planet is warming due to an increase in greenhouse gases. He noted that the study indicates that both natural causes -- La Nina and the short rains -- and man-made causes contributed to Somalia's drought. Between 24 percent and 99 percent of the cause of the failure of the 2011 rains can be attributed to the presence of man-made greenhouse gases, Stott said.

Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels -- coal, oil and natural gas -- which sends heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the air, changing the climate, of which the contribution of Somalian people is negligible yet they bore the brunt of the consequences.

Famine ends but hunger remains

400,000 famine victims who fled to the city for aid at the height of the crisis are still living in one of the many refugee camps outside Mogadishu. The WFP said on Jul. 18 that although there is currently no famine in Somalia and malnutrition rates have improved considerably over the last year,

One-year-old Miriam Jama was born just as the United Nations World Food Programme declared famine.  Weak and visibly malnourished, Miriam, like the rest of her family, hardly have enough food to eat.

“We get barely enough to keep alive. Famine may have ended, but for us hunger has not,” Hawa Jama, Miriam’s mother, tells IPS.  Her family receives only 25 kilogrammes of grain, 25 kgs of flour, and 10 litres of cooking oil for a month. It is hardly sufficient to feed this family of seven. But they are not the only ones hungry here. “I don’t want to be dependent on handouts from aid agencies, which are never enough here.

Water and sanitation are also poor at the camps as the number of toilets remains inadequate, and the water trucked in does not meet the international requirement both in quality and quantity, says Mohamed Ali, a local human rights activist. “I think what we have achieved since the famine was declared back in July last year is that people are not now dying because of hunger. But hunger is still there and there are no systematic programmes to help refugees stand on their feet by creating income schemes and repatriating them back to their communities,” The food situation has worsened as international aid agencies scaled down their humanitarian operations after the U.N. declared the end of the famine in February.

The U.N. Refugee Agency reported on Jul. 18 that the Somali refugee population has exceeded one million. Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex alone houses 570,000 people. And 3.8 million people in Somalia remain in crises and are in urgent need of assistance, while an estimated 325,000 children are acutely malnourished. Life in the camps is a difficult existence as refugees complain that camp administrators and local officials steal food aid and practice nepotism and favoritism in aid distribution. In addition, the Somali government’s national Disaster Management Agency, which was formed to deal with the famine, has been called ineffective and corrupt. “The agency has not been effective in its work and is one of the agencies that failed the people in need. Corruption is widespread among the organs of government and this agency has its share,” a local aid worker, who asked for anonymity, tells IPS. The official says “layers of corruption” from international agencies, their local partners, government officials, as well as those running the camps continues the cycle of hunger for the displaced refugees.

 “I don’t like to complain, but this is a matter of life and death for us. Those responsible for running our camp are not giving us all the aid and favour others. We tell every foreign official who comes to visit, but nothing is done about our predicament,” Mumino Ali,

When America and Al-Shabaab Agreed

When war-torn Somalia was also ravaged by a drought-induced famine last year, which killed tens of thousands and displaced over a million people, international media was quick to blame the Islamist Al-Shabaab for blocking humanitarian assistance from reaching its zone of control in southern Somalia.Although the group undoubtedly prevented assistance from reaching starving famine victims based on its claim that food aid was a Western conspiracy to drive Somali farmers out of business, Menkhaus, a specialist on the Horn of Africa, believes that was not the end of the sordid story. According to Ken Menkhaus, professor of Political Science at Davidson College in North Carolina, the United States’ counter-terrorism laws played an equally central role in obstructing assistance from reaching famine victims in desperate need of aid. Menkhaus said humanitarian organisations suspended food aid delivery to drought- struck areas controlled by Al-Shabaab for fear of violating the USA Patriot Act. Humanitarian groups were fearful that an accusation of "aiding terrorists’ could damage their entire organisation. In reality, the U.S. could have issued a waiver, protecting relief agencies from counter-terrorism laws; similar waivers have been issued for relief agencies in southern Lebanon and the West Bank of the occupied Palestinian territories, where Hezbollah and Hamas operate respectively. But in the case of Somalia, Menkhaus believes the U.S. administration did not want to give its Republican opponents any political leverage on the eve of upcoming presidential elections by appearing too "soft on terrorism". Instead, the U.S. government prepared a document that purportedly gave relief agencies protection from the law but which, upon close examination by legal experts, was found to contain no such protections, leaving those humanitarian agencies vulnerable to attack under the Patriot Act.

The tragic irony Menkhaus explained  "suspension of food aid into southern Somalia was the only thing that the U.S. government and Al-Shabaab could agree on, to the detriment of (millions) of Somalis" 




The humanitarian agenda is becomes secondary to the political agenda.
By 2008 Somalia was the most dangerous place in the world for humanitarian aid workers. "One-third of all humanitarian casualties occurred not in Afghanistan or in Iraq but in Somalia," Menkhaus said. The Kenyan refugee camp of Dadaab, with a population of 520,000, is now Kenya’s third largest city, and completely unsustainable. In addition, destitute nomads and farmers who can no longer find livelihoods in rural areas are drifting into urban centres. These people, who come with no technical skills into a barren employment landscape, are forming huge slums of several hundred thousand people in villages that previous housed only a few thousand residents.


http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107508

Piracy: From Somalia to Senegal?

Recently fishing unions in Senegal in West Africa warned that if unauthorized fishing by foreign trawlers in their waters is not reined in, piracy could take hold in Senegal and it could end up becoming an international threat to shipping like Somalia. The economic losses resulting from pirate attacks in Somalia is estimated at ten billion dollars. The British newspaper Guardian in a detailed article on this topic on April 3 focused on comparing the warnings issued by Senegalese fishers with the past warnings by Somali fishers and it concluded that the current warnings about the influx of Chinese, European and Russian fishing trawlers in North, East and West of Africa should be taken seriously.

The FAO, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, maintains that all the aquatic resources of West Africa have been exploited to the full capacity and even beyond. And currently over one and half million local residents of the region, whose lives depend on these resources, are facing deep economic hardship. Statistics reveal that European fishing vessels catch over 235 thousand tons of fish between the waters of Mauritania and Morocco alone while tens of thousands of tons are also caught with giant nets in the waters of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau and other countries.

The origin of piracy in Somalia goes back to the 1990s when the Siad Barre regime fell from power resulting in the disintegration of the navy and coastal guards.

At that time tens of thousands of people whose lives faced dire difficulties due to severe droughts and poverty in Somalia turned to coastal areas and formed fishing communities to provide for their needs and thus fishing became their only means of survival. When civil war broke out in Somalia, foreign fishing vessels began entering Somali waters illegally and catching large volumes of rock-lobster and other warm water fish along the tip of the Horn of Africa. In 2006 Somali fisher-men described the way illegal fishing trawlers not only deplete natural and aquatic resources, they also use various methods to stop local fishers from their activities. According to Somali local fishers, foreigners had torn their nets and made permanent bases for themselves near the coast. Now Senegalese fishers are stating similar statements and saying that catches are already down by 75 percent since 10 years ago because foreign illegal fishers have extensively depleted their aquatic resources and they are very worried about the approach of a big catastrophe.

Somali coastal residents who saw their livelihoods threatened by foreign trawlers took up arms and became a kind of coast guard. This however led to the creation of piracy in these waters. In time, ransom payments to poor fishermen of Somalia by these foreign fishing vessels encouraged the escalation of pirate attacks. Recently a number of local Senegalese fishers have warned that they will attack foreign vessels to protect their vital resources and local economy. They maintain that within the next ten years people will become armed and fishers will go fishing with guns aboard.

Therefore illegal exploitation of the natural resources, degradation of the marine environment, poverty and war created a vicious cycle of corruption, theft and destruction in Somalia and now the same may happen off Senegal waters.

http://www.payvand.com/news/12/apr/1109.html