tagged w/ Somalia
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"Below I give some interesting and generally unreported facts that give important background on many of the failing states regularly in the news. For example, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, Palestinian Territory and Afghanistan. It also includes Pakistan and Iran." - Brian McGavin, writer and analyst"Below I give some interesting and generally unreported facts that give important... more
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http://bcove.me/sxi31pzq (For video)
—The medical chart Abdisalam Osman’s mother uses to flick away flies says her youngest son suffers from acute malnutrition and the measles. A chest X-ray will soon reveal he also has tuberculosis.
When he arrived at Mogadishu's Benadir Hospital, 3-year-old Abdisalam weighed only 14 pounds. Each laborious breath made his tiny rib cage stick out even farther.
He lies beside his mother, unable to cry; all his energy reserved for his weak gasps.
“A 50-50 chance,” says Dr. Shafie Mohamed Jimale, gently touching the little boy’s emaciated arm. The 30-year-old Somali pediatrician, trained in Sudan, became a father two months earlier; his son was born at the height of the famine that is mainly killing children.
Many of his patients have died. About 50-50.
When Somalia’s famine was declared in July there were emergency calls for help and shocking statistics: 29,000 children had died in the worst drought in 60 years.
A global relief effort has helped save some. Last Friday, the United Nations Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit downgraded famine declarations for three southern regions, thanks to the rains that have finally come and emergency food aid.
But the UN warns that 250,000 are at risk as cholera, malaria and other diseases spread through crowded hospitals and camps. Tens of thousands of others still face starvation.
This famine should not have come as a shock. And if its roots are not understood and the world looks away again, Somalia’s cycle of despair — corruption, starvation, war, death — will continue, dragging children like Abdisalam into its abyss.
So what caused the famine?
Back-to-back droughts killed the livestock and destroyed the farms throughout the Horn of Africa, like the one Abdisalam’s family tended.
The southern region of the country is also warring with Al Shabab, the militant Islamic group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, and starved its own people by blocking outside foreign aid.
These are the easy answers.
These are the hard ones: Somalia’s rampant and criminal government-corruption; a war on terror at the expense of aid; and a lucrative crisis industry that spends millions that Somalis will never see.
This is why this country has topped Foreign Policy’s index of failed states for the last three years and why a drought that affected the entire Horn of Africa became a famine only in Somalia.
The scope of the tragedy is overwhelming. Last Friday’s UN announcement on easing famine conditions did not include Mogadishu. The city remains a famine zone.
Tents made of sticks and cloth, pitched between dilapidated buildings, house the starving and desperate. The sea of people in the camps ripples endlessly. It is difficult to get an accurate estimate, but it is believed that more than 100,000 have arrived since July.
Water is still scarce and largely contaminated. Mounds of human feces dot walkways between the shelters. Security is a problem. Rapes and abuses have been reported. Few foreign aid groups have come, with the exception of the Turks, who have taken over a large region of the city now called “Little Istanbul.”
Across the street from Tarabunka, a sprawling camp of more than 16,000, the graveyard is already near capacity. Ali Kafi, one of the farmers-turned-gravediggers, says he hunts untouched patches of red earth to find burial plots. Before 10 on one October morning, three babies and a young woman, nine-months pregnant, were buried. It was a typical day.
The good news for Mogadishu is that there are few visible remnants of the Shabab, which has waged war against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for nearly three years.
Weakened themselves by the famine and claiming to withdraw for “tactical” purposes, hundreds of Shabab fighters abruptly left the capital this summer.
This is why Abdisalam’s family trekked here from the south, believing there would be help in Mogadishu from the TFG, the UN-backed parliament of 550, propped up by a 9,000-member African Union peacekeeping force of Burundian and Ugandan soldiers.
The TFG had an opportunity to repair its badly damaged reputation and make the famine a priority. That didn’t happen.
As people began to starve earlier this year, the country’s president and its parliamentary speaker — President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Speaker Hassan Sharif, who are known as the “Two Sharifs” — were locked in a dispute, trying to shore up political support as they debated at conferences in Djibouti, Kenya or Uganda.
“They say the fish starts rotting from the head,” says Abdi Rashid, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “At the height of the famine, there was a president who was busy holding meetings with clan elders, not talking about the famine, but about the struggle with the speaker of parliament.”
But the “Two Sharifs” are not the only members of the TFG accused of political gamesmanship or corruption.
One senior TFG official says he is disgusted with his government’s continued focus on politics and power.
“What are we doing?” he asks. “People are dying and we’re focusing on passing a road map?”
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Still, there is confusion, says Joe Belliveau, operations manager in Somalia for Médecins Sans Frontières. “The bottom line is that it certainly does not encourage humanitarian action,” Belliveau says. “It’s fine to say that these conditions are lifted and maybe that will help in the short term, but the fact that those laws are on the books remains a major deterrent.”
Abdisalam is defying the odds that have conspired against him — the war against the Shabab, corruption, ineffective aid groups and a famine that the world failed to stop but is now trying to ease.
The nutrition supplements provided by the hospital have made him stronger and TB medication has calmed his breathing.
“He’s a fighter,” said Jimale, the doctor who has volunteered at the city-run Benadir Hospital for the last two years.
Abdisalam was discharged from the hospital three weeks ago and Jimale said the little boy’s odds of survival had increased to more than 80 per cent.
But Abdisalam and his family haven’t returned home. The rains may have come and eased the drought, but a Kenyan-led offensive to fight the Shabab has left the region war torn again.
Abdisalam now lives in one of the camps, just one of thousands getting by, waiting for help.http://bcove.me/sxi31pzq (For video)
—The medical chart Abdisalam... more
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Men claiming to be al-Qaida operatives are moving into the humanitarian vacuum in Somalia, distributing aid and cash to drought victims in an attempt to win hearts and minds, a Guardian investigation can reveal.
On a visit to the sprawling Ala-Yasir camp in the south of the country, the Guardian saw an al-Qaida unit handing out rice, flour, oil, dates and milk as well as Islamic books and clothes to some of the more than 4,000 people made destitute by this year's drought.
This was the first time the group has spoken publicly in Somalia, and the first time it has distributed aid. The unit's leader was introduced to the Guardian as al-Qaida's official envoy to Somalia.
Representatives of al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist group trying to seize power in the country, called him Abu Abdullah Muhajir, and said he was a white American. It was impossible to verify his identity or nationality.
Al-Shabaab is closely affiliated to al-Qaida and, after the killing of Osama bin Laden, the group vowed to avenge his death. A number of US citizens are known to have joined al-Shabaab in Somalia, including a suicide bomber from Minneapolis who attacked African Union troops in Mogadishu on Sunday.
Reading from a prepared statement, in American-accented English, Abu Abdullah Muhajir told the crowd: "To our beloved brothers and sisters in Somalia: we are following your situation on a daily basis. And, though we are separated by thousands of kilometres, you are consistently in our thoughts and prayers."
He then handed out the contents of bags full of Somali shillings to the equivalent of $17,000 (£10,600). The al-Qaida unit also brought along a fully staffed ambulance. Al-Qaida regards the young boys stuck in the camp after being driven from their villages by the drought as potential recruits. The boys gave Abu Abdullah Muhajir a rapturous welcome: "God is great! God is great!"
Osman Hassan, 16, clutched dates, milk and the Qur'an, gifts from al-Qaida. He said: "I pray for them to win over their enemies."
Muhammad Barre, nine, said: "I ask God to make al-Qaida victorious over their enemies."
After a decade-long war that has hobbled al-Qaida in eastern Afghanistan, the west's main concern is that the movement may be able to regroup in Somalia, which has had no functioning central government for more than two decades. The Ala-Yasir camp was set up in response to the worst regional drought in 60 years, which has affected (according to the latest UN report on Somalia) 4 million Somalis. It is located in the southern part of country, an area controlled by al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab members run the camp, having banned some of the international agencies from distributing aid.
The UN World Food Programme says it pulled out of the area because of threats to staff, and demands of informal taxes by the group. Al-Shabaab denies the claims.
Among the dozens of men accompanying the American visitor were several other foreigners, including some with English accents.
Also with them was a member of al-Shabaab calling himself Abu Omar, who was directing the food distribution.
He said he was British, but it was impossible to confirm this independently.
"It's a religious obligation. It's a duty upon us," he said. "I mean, we left our countries. I left, we left our jobs [and] ... all these places just to come here and help our people. I'm an aid worker, basically … typical aid worker, as you say in the west."Men claiming to be al-Qaida operatives are moving into the humanitarian vacuum in... more
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Did Libya have a humanitarian crisis back in 2007 when Wesley Clark admitted to Amy Goodman of the Neocon cabal's plot to destroy seven nations in five years?
The plot to destroy Libya in addition to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, And Iran
hav been in the works for years, if not a decade or more before the "spontaneous" Arab Spring uprisings.Did Libya have a humanitarian crisis back in 2007 when Wesley Clark admitted to Amy... more
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Warning comes a day after hundreds of Kenyan troops crossed into Somalia to pursue al-Shabab fighters.
Fighters from Al-Shabab will attack Kenya unless it withdraws its troops from Somalia, a spokesman for the group has warned. Analysts say the group will try to follow through on its threat.
Hundreds of Kenyan troops entered Somalia on Sunday, backed by helicopters and tanks; officials in Somalia also said that jets had bombed al-Shabab camps, though Nairobi would not confirm the jets were theirs.
The troops are reportedly advancing towards Afmadow, a town about 120km east of the border. Kenya's government says they have been ordered to attack al-Shabab bases in southern Somalia. The group has been linked to several recent kidnappings in Kenya.
Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, a spokesman for Al-Shabab, told Kenya to withdraw its troops.
"Kenyan troops have entered 100 kilometres into Somalia and their planes bombarded many places and killed residents," Rage was quoted by the Reuters news agency on Monday. "We shall come into Kenya if you do not go back."
His claims about the Kenyan offensive could not be independently verified, and Kenya's defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Somalia's transitional government has endorsed the raid: Nur Ahmed, the Somali ambassador in Nairobi, said Kenya "has a right to defend its people."
'The restraint would be gone'
Al-Shabab has attacked Kenya's neighbours before - it killed more than 70 people in twin bombings last year in Kampala, the Ugandan capital - but the group has been reluctant to attack Kenya, despite repeated threats, because it feared reprisals from the Kenyan army.
But with that army already inside Somalia, analysts say al-Shabab might be more likely to carry out an attack inside Kenya's borders.
"Shabab was fearful that it would trigger a robust Kenyan response," EJ Hogendoorn, an analyst at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, said. "If in fact you've already triggered that response, then to some degree the restraint on Shabab would be gone."
Sunday's Kenyan raid is largely a response to a recent spate of kidnappings in the country's coastal regions and along the border with Somalia.
Two Spanish aid workers were kidnapped last week, and their driver was wounded, in an attack on Ifo refugee camp in Dadaab, which houses tens of thousands of Somali refugees. Earlier this month, a French woman was kidnapped from her home in Manda, on Kenya's northern coast.
And last month, a British tourist was kidnapped from the resort of Kiwayu; her husband was shot dead.
"This is affecting their tourist industry and the security of international staff working for various aid agencies," Hogendoorn said. "If this affects regions along the coast, it's an enormous hit on their economy."
An Ethiopian parallel?
This is hardly the first Kenyan incursion into Somalia: Troops have pursued al-Shabab fighters across the border before. But those raids are usually brief and involve limited numbers of troops.
Sunday's incursion, on the other hand, was much larger, and it was announced in advance: George Saitoti, Kenya's interior security minister, held a press conference on Saturday and promised Kenyan forces would attack al-Shabab "wherever they will be."
Roger Middleton, a regional analyst at Chatham House, drew a parallel between the Kenyan incursion and Ethiopia's 2006 invasion of Somalia.
"It's a substantial and longer-lasting intervention, and if that's the case, the first thing that springs to mind is, Ethiopia tried this and it did not turn out too well," Middleton said.
The Ethiopian invasion, and the years-long occupation that followed, is widely credited with strengthening al-Shabab, which was able to portray itself as a resistance movement fighting an occupying power.
And the group is already attempting to frame the Kenyan incursion in the same way: A radio station controlled by al-Shabab asked Somalis if they were ready to "live under Christians" and urged them to fight.
"Get out of your homes and defend your dignity and religion. Today is the day to defend against the enemy," an al-Shabab official said in the radio broadcast, according to the AFP news agency.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/10/20111017171543493140.htmlWarning comes a day after hundreds of Kenyan troops crossed into Somalia to pursue... more
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This satirical video, "Sympathy From the Devil. Dafur", was produced over 2 years ago, and I'm sad to say that we only need to change some of the names of affected areas and it would be as true today as then. Add Somalia to the list of countries where inhabitants are living in dire conditions....
http://youtu.be/SCF4Xrc7J_8This satirical video, "Sympathy From the Devil. Dafur", was produced over 2... more
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The United Nations announced Monday that Somalia’s famine had spread to a sixth area within the country, with officials warning that 750,000 people could die in the next few months unless aid efforts were scaled up.The United Nations announced Monday that Somalia’s famine had spread to a sixth... more
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Famine has spread into one more region of Somalia and more than four million Somalis now need aid, the United Nations said Monday.
Hundreds of Somalis are dying every day, the UN Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia found in its latest surveys. At least half of them are children.
About 750,000 more people may die from famine in the next four months if there is no adequate response, the UN report said, an increase of 66 per cent from July.
Famine
Learn more about how the UN determines if food crisis has reached the level of famine.
The top humanitarian official for Somalia described getting aid to the starving as a "race against time" and warned the famine would probably spread before the end of the year.
"This isn't a short-term crisis," said Mark Bowden, who heads the UN office coordinating humanitarian aid to Somalia.
Bowden said the four million Somalis needing aid represent more than half of Somalia's population. He said it is also an increase from 3.7 million Somalis who needed aid in July.
The southern Bay region is the latest area to be declared a famine zone. Nearly 60 per cent of people there are acutely malnourished — four times the rate at which an emergency is declared, said Grainne Moloney, head of the food security unit.
"I've not seen anything like it," said Moloney.
Famine in 6 areas
Famine has now affected six areas, including four southern Somali regions and two settlements of internally displaced people.
The UN says tens of thousands of people already have died in Somalia due to the severe violence, drought and famine. More than 150,000 refugees have sought aid in the last few months. Families in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti have also been affected.
Somalia has been hit hardest, its problems compounded by more than 20 years of civil war and Islamist insurgents that banned many aid agencies, including the UN's World Food Program, from their territory.
Maloney said a bad drought meant that harvests there are a quarter of normal levels — the worst for 17 years. The price of a day's casual labor had dropped from 15 kilograms of cereal to three kilograms, she said.
Bowden said access to areas in the south held by the al-Shabab insurgent militia was improving, and that there were some aid agencies that were able to work there.
more at the linkFamine has spread into one more region of Somalia and more than four million Somalis... more
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Outbreaks of measles and cholera are striking down Somali children already weakened by hunger, resulting in dozens of new fatalities. News of the fast-spreading diseases has caused alarm among aid workers, who are struggling to deal with the humanitarian crisis brought on by the severe drought and conflict in Somalia.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled into overflowing refugee camps in recent months in search of food and sanctuary, but many more remain in rebel-held famine zones where aid agencies have only limited access.
The World Health Organisation said on Friday that Somalia was experiencing a cholera epidemic. Linked to dirty water, poor sanitation and crowded settlements, the intestinal infection causes dehydration and is often fatal.
In just one hospital in Mogadishu, there have been 4,272 recorded cases of acute watery diarrhoea, a key indicator of the risk of cholera, causing 181 deaths. Most of those who have died were aged under five. Laboratory tests conducted on a sample of the cases this week suggested 60% of the infections were cholera.
While Somalia has experienced seasonal cholera outbreaks in recent years, this one is much worse. "The number of cases is two or even three times what was there last year," Dr Michel Yao, WHO's public health adviser, said in Geneva on Friday. "So we can say that we have an epidemic of cholera going on."
Yao said that the risk of the disease spreading was high since people were still moving around in search of food aid. At least 100,000 Somalis have fled to Mogadishu from the countryside in the last two months. An even greater number have travelled to sprawling drought-affected refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. In Kenya's Dadaab settlement, about 1,400 Somalis arrive every day, pushing the number of recorded refugees past 400,000. A further 38,000 people still await registration.
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Famine conditions exist in two large regions of Somalia, as well as three smaller areas, including parts of Mogadishu where there are large concentrations of displaced people. Other regions of southern Somalia are expected to be declared famine zones in the next month or two.
The aid effort in Mogadishu was eased slightly last week when most of the al-Shabab militias withdrew following an offensive by African Union troops and pro-government forces. The Islamists claimed that the move was strategic, and said their fighters would adopt guerrilla tactics from now on rather than trying to hold ground in Mogadishu against the better-equipped AU peacekeepers.
But the rebels have been rocked by divisions due to their handling of the food crisis. Some of the hardline leaders, who come from the north of Somalia, have denied there is a famine in the south and refused to lift a ban on organisations such as the World Food Programme, the agency best equipped to manage a hunger emergency. This has angered local al-Shabab leaders, who want the people to receive help, even if it comes from the west. Interviews with refugees suggest that the rebels' restrictions on aid, as well as their policy of taking food and animals as "taxes", has eroded whatever support they may once have enjoyed.
Despite the withdrawal from Mogadishu, the Islamists still control much of southern Somalia, including the main famine zones.Outbreaks of measles and cholera are striking down Somali children already weakened by... more
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This week, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has sent medical teams and four charter planes carrying 55 tons of medical equipment, medicines and therapeutic food to Mogadishu in response to the crisis in Somalia. In the past weeks, an estimated 100,000 people have fled from south and central Somalia to the capital to seek assistance. They are settling in numerous camps in and around Mogadishu, with little or no access to health care.
MSF has started measles vaccination campaigns in dozens of makeshift camps where thousands of people have gathered after fleeing the exceptional drought and the violence in other parts of the country. Almost 3,000 children were vaccinated so far. Of the nearly 1,000 children screened for malnutrition, more than half were malnourished.
“MSF is extremely worried about the situation of the displaced. The situation is critical. MSF has begun reinforcing its operations in Mogadishu and is assessing areas around the capital in order to adequately respond to this crisis,” said Dr. Unni Karunakara, International President of MSF.
Through a mobile clinic, MSF staff started to provide medical care to around 100 patients daily. The teams are also distributing of relief items, such as hygiene materials and plastic sheeting for temporary shelter.
For years MSF has been providing medical care in the capital, through health facilities in Daynile and Darkheley where more than 370 medical consultations were provided last week. To address the increasing medical needs, MSF will open inpatient therapeutic feeding centers, a measles treatment unit as well as a 50-bed cholera treatment center in Mogadishu in the coming days.
MSF has worked continuously in Somalia since 1991 and currently provides free medical care in eight regions. Over 1,400 Somali staff, supported by approximately 100 staff in Nairobi, provide free primary healthcare, surgery, treatment for malnutrition, as well as support to displaced people through health care, water supply and relief items distributions in nine locations in south and central Somalia.
MSF is also providing medical care to Somali refugees in Kenya (Dagahaley and Ifo camps) and Ethiopia (Liben). In Dagahaley camp, MSF is the sole provider of medical care for the 130,000 people and currently treating 6,400 children for malnutrition. In Ifo, MSF provides medical care to the 25,000 refugees gathered on the outskirts of the camp. In Liben, MSF is providing medical care in the six camps where 119,000 refugees are gathered. Here, more than 10,000 children are enrolled in nutritional programs.
More at the linkThis week, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has... more
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Amid the graves of Somalia's children
CNN...
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Burying a child: A mother's unending grief
Sanjay Gupta MD
By Sanjay Gupta, M.D., Chief Medical Correspondent
August 11, 2011 11:25 a.m. EDT
Fight to save Somali kids
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Gupta's visit with Somalian refugees brings disturbing memories
He recalls the grieving mother of a boyhood friend who died
Thousands of Somalian parents have buried their children this summer
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Editor's note: Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes you deep inside the misery of the largest refugee camp in the world, "SGMD," Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 a.m. ET
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Dadaab, Kenya (CNN) --
When I was in the third grade, a classmate of mine died of leukemia. None of us knew he was sick, only that his mother hadn't let him attend school in a while.
More than 30 years later, I still remember the awful day my mom told me my friend had passed away. I made a card for his mother, and walked to their house to deliver it. She was too overcome to take any visitors, but thanked me and took the card. I can recall her broken up face when she shut the door.
Over time we lost touch, but during the holidays a couple of years ago, I stopped by her home to pay a visit. She recognized me right away, smiled and invited me in for a cup of coffee. And then, while hanging my jacket, she began to tremble and cry.
So many years later, the sorrow was just under the surface. The experience left an indelible impression on me, one that I better understood after becoming a parent myself. It violates a natural order of life to bury your own child, and I am not sure the grief ever goes away.
That's the position 30,000 Somali parents found themselves in this summer. And, 600,000 more children may be buried before the end of the year. In just about any other place on Earth, those numbers would scream out from international headlines, but not here in East Africa.
Inside the Dadaab Refugee Camp, a mass burial site sits within walking distance of the close cluster of tents. Amin Hassan took me to see the tiny burial site of her 1-month old daughter, Addison.
It was nearly lost among all the other shallow, hastily dug graves. Small sticks mark these raised plots of dirt with nothing else except bits of colored plastic trash stuck in the ground and blowing in the wind.
There are no nameplates, no flowers and no reminders of their lives. People here just vanish.
"She was perfectly healthy when she arrived," Amin told me.
They had left Somalia in search of food and water, and felt relief when they finally reached the camp. It may have been contaminated water that caused little Addison's intractable diarrhea and vomiting or an overwhelming infection.
Pertussis or whooping cough is something they see quite often here. "And measles," one of the doctors told me.
Many of these infections are wildly contagious, especially among the hundreds of thousands of un-vaccinated kids in these camps.
As I stood and spoke to Hassan, with all those tiny burial sites around us, I couldn't help but think of my friend and his mother. I thought of that unnatural order of parents burying their children.
I thought about Hassan's lifelong grief.
Amin Hassan dug the grave for her daughter by herself.
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.Amid the graves of Somalia's children
CNN...
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Burying a child: A... more
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While the world's attention this week has been focused on the global economic impact of the U.S. debt ceiling deal, credit downgrade and subsequent market woes, the drought crisis in the Horn of Africa continues to deteriorate.
Children are dying at an alarming rate.
The United States estimates that as many as 29,000 Somali children died just in the last 90 days.
Three more areas in Southern Somalia have been added to the famine zone and the UN warns that without urgent intervention all of Southern Somalia will be engulfed in famine, resulting in the likelihood of tens of thousands of Somalis literally starving to death.
There have also been hopeful developments.
The retreat of the Al Qaeda-backed group Al Shabab from Mogadishu means that aid groups will have an easier time reaching the more than 500,000 people living either near or inside the capital city suffering from famine.
It's also significant progress for the current weak central government being backed by African Union troops.
For four years the fiercest battles for the soul of the country have taken place in Mogadishu.
"We have been dreaming of this day for more than three years," Somalia's Prime Minister Prime Minister Dr. Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said in a statement."This is a big day, and a tremendous step forward, towards a more stable Somalia. By their actions in the past hours the extremists have shown that they never had a place in a peaceful Somalia...And the people do not want them here," he said.
Virtually no one believes the retreat will be permanent, a point punctuated by an Al Shabab spokesperson who called the pull-out a "tactical" decision and told reporters the group will continue to fight the government and AU troops using guerilla warfare.
"We shall fight the enemy wherever they are," Ali Mohamed Rage, reportedly told a local radio station. He also emphasized the militant group will be tightening its control in Southern Somalia, where Shabab rules unabated.
But even within the Islamist insurgency there remains a long-standing conflict within the leadership made up of mostly foreign Al Qaeda fighters, who want Shabab to play a bigger role in waging global jihad and Somali clan leaders who want to keep the movement Somalia-focused, defeating the current government and AU forces and impose strict sharia law.
The confusion over whether the militants will allow foreign aid agenciesto operate in areas they control has highlighted the rift, with some local clan leaders insisting that they won't let their people starve.
Some humanitarian organizations like UNICEF are already operating in Shabab-controlled areas, and more aid agencies are working on getting access to the most needy.
More at the link.While the world's attention this week has been focused on the global economic... more
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One of the saddest clips out of the Horn of Africa. These foreign journalists entered Somalia and broke down in tears. The region already gripped by decades of war is suffering a major famine.One of the saddest clips out of the Horn of Africa. These foreign journalists entered... more
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It is always the children who are the victims of the world adults create and it is the greatest injustice. War ravages this region as it has for years it's affects now exacerbated by a drought the likes of which has been unseen for decades exacerbated as is the war by human behavior which was totally preventable. I know it is a place where terrorism thrives. I know it is a place where corruption and lawlessness thrive. And it is a poor area of the world seen as expendable as noted by the many hateful comments I have read from people on other news sites, some of which absolutely stunned me. However, it is also a place where humanity must thrive in order to spare a worse catastrophe.
As 12 million people most of them children face certain death if they get no help, we on this side of the world will throw out tons of uneaten wasted food without a thought. We will continue to be absorbed in our diversions that give us pleasure with little thought to what may be going on outside of our own worlds. And we will find some reason, any reason at all to dismiss the urgency of this drought war and ensuing famine to not have to do something no matter how small it may be to at least save one life.
These children did nothing to anyone. They are products of a world not of their creation. And they are also human beings like all of us who deserve to live life with hope. We must strip away all of the political, religious and ideological obstacles that prevent us from being human now. This is a humanitarian catastrophe of untold proportions and I simply cannot believe that the world willl sit by and allow these people to die. It is truly outrageous that geopolitics and foreign policy must always become more important than simply saving a human life.
Of course, the problems here go much deeper and will not be solved with just a 10 dollar donation to MSF to give them plumpy nut. This however is part of a greater war we now fight. A war against ignorance, hatred and intolerance. If we could only grasp how opening our hearts could release so many from the fear that grips our world and just look at the human beings in front of us we could solve anything. Right now however, these children need our help. Please do so if you haven't already. Humanity won't stand a chance if we can't be human, at least this once.It is always the children who are the victims of the world adults create and it is the... more
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Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: August 1, 2011
PHOTO: A malnourished child at Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. More than 500,000 Somali children are verging on starvation.
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Amid Famine, Dangers Hinder Aid to Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
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The group is widely blamed for causing a famine in Somalia by forcing out many Western aid organizations, depriving drought victims of desperately needed food. The situation is growing bleaker by the day, with tens of thousands of Somalis already dead and more than 500,000 children on the brink of starvation.
Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips — pediatric versions are hard to find — and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.
Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.
“This is worse than 1992,” said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir’s head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia’s last famine. “Back then, at least we had some help.”
Aid groups are trying to scale up their operations, and the United Nations has begun airlifting emergency food. But many seasoned aid officials are speaking in grim tones because one of Africa’s worst humanitarian disasters in decades has struck one of the most inaccessible countries on earth. Somalia, especially the southern third where the famine is, has been considered a no-go zone for years, a lawless caldron that has claimed the lives of dozens of aid workers, peacekeepers and American soldiers, going back to the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993, spelling a legacy that has scared off many international organizations.
“If this were Haiti, we would have dozens of people on the ground by now,” said Eric James, an official with the American Refugee Committee, a private aid organization.
But Somalia is considered more dangerous and anarchic than Haiti, Iraq or even Afghanistan, and the American Refugee Committee, like other aid groups, is struggling to get trained personnel here.
“It is safe to say that many people are going to die as a result of little or no access,” Mr. James said.
This leaves millions of famished Somalis with two choices, aside from fleeing the country to neighboring Kenya or Ethiopia, where there is more assistance. They can beg for help from a weak and divided transitional government in Mogadishu, the capital. Just the other day there was a shootout between government forces at the gates of the presidential palace. “Things happen,” was the response of Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, Somalia’s new prime minister.
Or they can remain in territory controlled by the Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and have tried to rid their areas of anything Western — Western music, Western dress, even Western aid groups during a time of famine.
CONTINUED...
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Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine
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Somalis flee famine along ‘roads of death’
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Vatican recalls envoy to Ireland over priest abuse scandalSomalis flee famine along ‘roads of death’
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare a famine, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
Famine, a highly technical term, means that the rate of child malnutrition and deaths in two areas of southern Somalia, a country riven by fighting and drought, has risen. Agencies appeal for aid.
PHOTO: Eleven-month-old Abdifatah Hassan, suffering from severe malnutrition, is cared for at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders at a camp housing Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya. The United Nations officially declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia, saying child malnutrition rates exceed 30% and as many as six children age 5 or younger are dying daily. The region is suffering its worst drought in 60 years and tens of thousands are feared dead.
(Roberto Schmidt / AFP/Getty Images / July 4, 2011)
By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times
July 20, 2011, 2:19 p.m.
Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa—
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For months, people have been trudging out of the desert, leaving their dead children behind and carrying those who have managed to survive. On Wednesday, the horror of hunger and death unfolding in the Horn of Africa officially got a name: famine.
It's actually a very technical term — unless you're one of those walking for weeks in a last-ditch hope to save your family.
For the United Nations to declare a famine, as it did at a news conference in Nairobi, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
According to Unicef, the U.N. agency that focuses on children, the rate of child malnutrition rate in southern Somalia has doubled in a single month; in some places it has reached 55% and infant deaths have increased to six per day.
Yet the global response has been dismal. An appeal late last year for $535 million to address the need is still more than $250 million short. Officials hope the famine declaration will help focus global attention on the Horn of Africa.
Across the country, about 3.7 million people, half the population, are facing starvation, with an estimated 2.8 million of them in the south. The agency says another 6.3 million in other countries in the Horn of Africa affected by hunger.
It's the worst African hunger crisis in 20 years, according the Rozanne Chorlton, Unicef's representative on Somalia. The last time things were this dire in Africa was 1991. Then, as now, it was in Somalia.
The U.N. famine declaration Wednesday formally covered two regions of southern Somalia, Bakool and Lower Shabelle, where farmers' crops failed and their livestock died. Malnutrition rates exceed 30% and more than six children age 5 or younger are dying daily in some areas. But in coming months, neighboring regions will inevitably fall into famine too, said Mark Bowden, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
U.N. and non-governmental agencies are appealing for $300 million in the next two months to increase their operations in the worst-hit areas.
If it seems extraordinary that millions of Africans can be facing starvation in 2011, despite the focus of a raft of humanitarian agencies and their early-warning networks, it is, Bowden said.
Part of the problem is that many donors had written off Somalia as too hard, he said in a telephone interview. Aid agencies must grapple with a long-running civil conflict and Somalia's extremist Shabab militia, which controls much of the south, where the worst hunger is.
"We have good warning systems, but we don't always listen to them, particularly if we put some countries in the too-difficult-to-deal-with basket," Bowden said.
Two decades with no government and the failure of successive efforts to restore peace have left donors cynical. The country's global reputation for piracy and mayhem have done it no favors.
The 1991 Somalia famine occurred after civil war destroyed agriculture and clan warlords hijacked humanitarian aid, leading to the U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope. That resulted in bloody fighting with militias in Mogadishu portrayed in the book and film "Black Hawk Down."
But Bowden, who recently met Somali refugees walking to Ethiopia, said the problem today was mainly one of successive drought, compounded by global warming.
"They are victims of drought. They are also victims of climate change. They're people who have lost everything after years of successive drought."
The situation is complicated by the Shabab, which in the past has imposed informal taxes on humanitarian agencies, limited their access, and demanded they send female staff home. The World Food Program withdrew early last year from areas controlled by the Shabab because of security threats and unacceptable working conditions. It recently announced it would resume it work there if conditions allowed.
Aid agencies have been negotiating access with local leaders, but security remains uncertain.
"We need predictability," Unicef's Chorlton said in a telephone interview. "The important thing is that those who are there [in Somalia] should be able to act unhindered to deliver the services to children and families that are so desperately needed."
Unicef has doubled its food, health and water programs in Somalia, she said.
"Somalis have always helped each other to cope in times of crisis, and they have been incredibly resilient over the years. I think what has not been quantified is that people's resistance has been so undermined over the last year, it's no longer adequate to the task," she said. "The issue is now we need donors to massively increase their contribution."
.U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare... more
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