UN Declares Official Famine In Somalia

Famine In Africa: U.S. Eases Terrorism Rules To Speed Aid To Somalia

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration sought to assure aid groups Tuesday that they can deliver desperately needed food to famine-stricken parts of Somalia without fear of prosecution, even if some assistance is diverted to al-Qaida linked extremists blamed for helping deliver hundreds of thousands of people to the brink of starvation.

Administration officials said the U.S. has issued new guidelines on laws prohibiting material assistance to al-Shabab, which have been criticized by humanitarian organizations as a contributing factor the crisis. Charities must only pledge their best efforts to combat attempts by al-Shabab to hoard aid or collect taxes on supplies, they said.

The officials briefed reporters on condition of anonymity because details of the changes haven't been finalized.

Drought has left some 12 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia needing help, though official famine zones are only in Somali areas controlled by al-Shabab. That has challenged aid groups because of al-Shabab's hostility to them and the perceived threat of American prosecution in cases of inadvertent support for a U.S.-designated terrorist body.

No U.S. law specifically prevents aid to southern and central Somalia, where the U.N. food agency says it cannot reach 2.2 million Somalis in areas under al-Shabab's control and fears that tens of thousands may have already perished. But bribes, tolls and other typical of costs of doing business in the largely lawless and chaotic country could have been punishable, even if extracted under coercion, after the State Department officially declared al-Shabab a terrorist organization in 2008.

The officials said the focus now should be on getting food to those in need as fast as possible. While some al-Shabab officials have suggested that relief groups are welcome to return, one official said it was unlikely that any "grand bargain" could be struck that would open up all of Somalia for operations with U.S. government-funded aid. Targeted, piecemeal interventions are more likely, directed toward areas where the level of security and acquiescence of local authorities is deemed acceptable.

The shift could allow more U.S. aid to be directed toward the World Food Program's operations in Somalia. The U.N. said Tuesday that unless it sees a massive increase in donations, the famine will spread inside Somalia. It called for another $1.4 billion in support.

Somalia has been mired in conflict since 1991 when dictator Siad Barre was overthrown by warlords who then turned on each other. Islamist militants led by al-Shabab are trying to overthrow the weak U.N.-backed government that is being propped up by about 9,000 African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi.

Famine In Africa: U.S. Eases Terrorism Rules To Speed Aid To Somalia
 
Somalia Drought Spreads As Fighters Warn Of Militant Cruelty

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MOGADISHU, Somalia — The former al-Shabab foot soldiers assigned to a drab cement housing bloc are young – too young. One is only 9, yet they were enforcers of harsh edicts from Islamist militants who are preventing thousands of Somalis from escaping famine.

The Associated Press obtained rare access to the former fighters at a government rehabilitation facility in Mogadishu last week, providing a unique view into the workings of the al-Qaida-linked group whose presence in much of Somalia is stymieing international efforts to provide emergency aid. Millions risk starvation amid Somalia's worst drought in 60 years.

The U.N. declared three new regions in Somalia famine zones on Wednesday and said the crisis is likely to spread across all of southern Somalia in coming weeks. Getting aid to the country has been difficult because al-Shabab controls much of the country's most desperate areas.

The hardline militant group routinely recruits young teenagers, kidnapping them from schools and forcibly removing them from homes. Last week three teenage fighters surrendered to the African Union military force during a military offensive.

The most recent arrival at the rehab center, 17-year-old Abshir Mohammed Abdi, said "there was no life, no prospects" inside al-Shabab, which he belonged to for 1 1/2 years before escaping to the camp last week. Abdi is from the country's south – Kismayo – where Somalia's famine is hitting hardest.

Abdi said many there are suffering, with al-Shabab fighters trying to stop the flow of refugees toward food, an outflow that threatens to diminish the population from which al-Shabab draws its conscripts and collects its taxes. Al-Shabab has denied a famine is taking place.

"Even with women and children suffering from drought, al-Shabab would stop them, stop them, stop them until they couldn't stop them anymore," Abdi said, suggesting that the wave of famine refugees was too much for the militants to stanch.

Somalis who have fled the famine zones and reached Mogadishu told AP that militants are threatening refugees who leave the south and often stopping – and sometimes killing – the men, leading to a disproportionate number of women and children in displaced-persons camps in the capital. One of the young former fighters, who spoke to AP through an interpreter while standing under a shade tree at the rehabilitation facility, said al-Shabab also uses threats to keep Somali men within the famine zones.

"What they would tell the men is that your women and children would be killed if you leave," said Ali Hassan, who like many of the former teen fighters wore a colorful track suit that looked like it was made by Nike but instead said "Nile Sports."

Somalia Drought Spreads As Fighters Warn Of Militant Cruelty
 
29,000 Somali Children Under 5 Dead In Famine: U.S. Official

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NAIROBI, Kenya -- A U.S. official says the famine in Somalia has killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5.

The United Nations has said that tens of thousands of people have died in the Horn of Africa's drought and famine, but the U.S. estimate is the first precise death toll offered in the crisis.

Nancy Lindborg, an official with the U.S. government aid arm, told a congressional committee in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. estimates that more than 29,000 children under age 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia.

The U.N. on Wednesday declared three new regions in Somalia famine zones. Out of a population of roughly 7.5 million, the U.N. says 3.2 million Somalis are in need of immediate lifesaving assistance.

29,000 Somali Children Under 5 Dead In Famine: U.S. Official
 
Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine

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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.

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.

Much of the Horn of Africa, which includes Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, has been struck this summer by one of the worst droughts in 60 years. But two Shabab-controlled parts of southern Somalia are the only areas where the United Nations has declared a famine, using scientific criteria of death and malnutrition rates.

People from those areas who were interviewed in Mogadishu say Shabab fighters are blocking rivers to steal water from impoverished villagers and divert it to commercial farmers who pay them taxes. The Shabab are intercepting displaced people who are trying to reach Mogadishu and forcing them to stay in a Shabab-run camp about 25 miles outside the city. The camp now holds several thousand people and receives only a trickle of food.

“I was taken off a bus and put here,” said a woman at the camp who asked not to be identified.

Several drought victims who have succeeded in making it to Mogadishu said that the Shabab were threatening to kill anyone who left their areas, either for refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, or for government zones in Somalia, and that the only way out was to sneak away at night and avoid the main roads.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/world/africa/02somalia.html?ref=africa
 
As with blacks in America, can't we just give them food stamps?
 
Shit, the black folks in Africa are dying from starvation, and the black folks in America are dying from obesity.

Ain't that a bitch?
 
Shit, the black folks in Africa are dying from starvation, and the black folks in America are dying from obesity.

Ain't that a bitch?

Well the food that Black Americans eat usually has high calories, the soul food dishes like fried chicken, corn bread, pork chops with gravy, greens, biscuits etc can get you fat if you don't regulate your diet and/or work out, people in Africa don't eat the same food as Blacks here in the US and don't have access to as much even if they wanted to. I met a kid from Eritrea in high school and he said he would make due with some bread and cheese with a cup of tea for dinner usually, unless his family would get lucky and get some meat, chicken or fish for them to eat. People here really don't know how lucky they are.
 
You mean blacks in America don't know how lucky they are.

Us white folks know luck has nothing to do with it.
 
You mean blacks in America don't know how lucky they are.

Us white folks know luck has nothing to do with it.

Well I think it goes both ways, whites in the US are definently better off than whites in places like Slovakia, Romania, Albania or Tazikistan.
 
Ya but, no one is doing as poorly as blacks in black countries
 
I don't know what good it does to feed them, they will just breed more and then there will be even more to feed
 
I don't know what good it does to feed them, they will just breed more and then there will be even more to feed

I hate to say it but you are correct, if we just hand out food and spend billions we will be back in 20 years doing the same thing. We have been through this drill before with Somalia in the early 90s, obviously just giving money and food is a short term solution to a long term problem.
 
Somalia: Famine Helps Al-Shabaab To Find New Recruits

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GENEVA — Islamic militants in Somalia who deny there's famine and block most aid are enjoying a boon in recruitment by giving people money at a time of rising food prices, United Nations officials said Friday.

The hardline militant group al-Shabab, whose control of much of southern Somalia and ties to al-Qaida discourages Western aid, is boosting its ranks as other options dwindle for Somali families who cannot find handouts or afford to pay for food, the U.N. refugee agency said.

The U.N. says tens of thousands of people have died from malnutrition in Somalia in recent months. But for al-Shabab, whose ban on outside aid groups except the International Committee of the Red Cross has contributed to the famine, the unfolding tragedy brings some advantages.

Bruno Geddo, the U.N. refugee agency's representative in Somalia, said a scarcity of food is triggering an uptick in recruitment by al-Shabab, which also is blocking groups of people from moving past its roadblocks, only allowing individuals to move past.

The militant group recruits young teenagers, kidnapping them from schools or forcibly removing them from their homes, while trying to stop the flow of refugees toward food, since the militant group draws its conscripts and taxes from the population.

"Because of the increase in food prices, this has been a boon for al-Shabab's recruitment campaign because when you don't have purchasing power to buy the food, you will be encouraged to be recruited because then you will be saved, and you can use that salary or you could be given food," Geddo said by telephone to reporters in Geneva. "It looks like quite a reality."

But the flow of famine refugees out of Somalia continues to increase. Ethiopia opened a fourth camp Friday to receive up to 15,000 arrivals from Somalia now living in an overcrowded transit center in the Dollo Ado area of eastern Ethiopia, said Andrej Mahecic, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Mahecic said some 1,500 Somalis arrived in Kenya daily during the first four days of August, up from 1,300 a day in July, and health workers have reported an outbreak of measles in the Dollo Ado camps that has claimed about a dozen lives so far.

The U.S. estimates the drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 in the last 90 days in southern Somalia alone. Millions face the risk of starvation amid Somalia's worst drought in 60 years.

The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, suggesting the death toll of small children will rise, and the crisis is likely to spread across all of southern Somalia in coming weeks.

Somalia: Famine Helps Al-Shabaab To Find New Recruits
 
Somalia Famine: U.S. Set To Announce $100 Million In Aid

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DADAAB, Kenya — Hundreds of thousands of Somali children could die in East Africa's famine unless more help arrives, a top U.S. official warned Monday in the starkest death toll prediction yet. To highlight the crisis, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden visited a refugee camp filed with hungry Somalis.

Jill Biden is the highest-profile U.S. visitor to East Africa since the number of refugees coming across the Somali border dramatically increased in July. Biden, who traveled to the camp in a C-130 military transport plane, said she wants to raise awareness and persuade donors to give more.

"One of the reasons to be here is just to ask Americans and people worldwide, the global community, the human family, if they could just reach a little deeper into their pockets and give money to help these poor people, these poor mothers and children," said Biden, who met with two Somali mothers and their eight children.

As a long convoy of SUVs drove through the sand to bring her to the camp, small wildebeests scurried off to the side and women tended a herd of goats. Biden was then taken on a tour of the refugee camp by personnel.

"There is hope if people start to pay attention to this," said Biden, who also met with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

A drought has turned into famine because little aid can reach militant-controlled south-central Somalia, forcing tens of thousands of Somalis who have exhausted all the region's food to walk to camps in Kenya, Ethiopia and the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

Washington is preparing to announce roughly $100 million in new famine aid, two U.S. officials who could not be identified before the official announcement said.

USAID administrator Raj Shah, who accompanied Biden, said hundreds of thousands of children could die from the famine. Shah said the world has a unique opportunity to save tens of thousands of children's lives by expanding humanitarian activities inside Somalia, though he noted that it would be a challenge for aid providers to get into al-Shabab-controlled south-central Somalia.

Given the camp's proximity to the uncontrolled and sometimes dangerous Somali border, a well-armed security team, some carrying sniper rifles, had secured the camp where she visited.

More than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia alone, according to U.S. estimates. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, suggesting the death toll of small children will rise.

The famine, Shah said, is the result of the a drought being superimposed on an environment where the government could not protect its own people.

More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of immediate food aid, including nearly half of Somalia's population.

Aid is only reaching about 20 percent of the 2.6 million Somalis who need it, Mark Bowden, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official for Somalia, said on a visit to Mogadishu on Monday. The situation is better in the Somali capital, where about half the city's 600,000 inhabitants are receiving aid, he said. Still, camps in Mogadishu for displaced people are among the five declared famine zones in Somalia.

Transport and security are the two main problems, he said, and it is unclear what the effect will be of the withdrawal of Islamist insurgents from their bases in the capital on Saturday. The city is awash in gunmen and there have been several shootouts at aid distributions recently. At least 10 people have been killed.

"An absence of conflict does not mean that there is security here," he said. "There's always been factions and militias."

A senior U.S. official traveling with Biden said the U.S. believes it is too early to tell what al-Shabab's intentions are, but that the reported withdrawal could be a sign that more aid could soon reach those in need.

Former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who also joined Biden on her trip, said that even though Americans are focused on domestic financial troubles, Americans still will dedicate money to worthwhile international programs like health issues. Frist, a medical doctor, noted that measles outbreaks are being seen in Somali camps, but that such outbreaks can be controlled through modern medicine.

In other developments, the U.N. refugee agency on Monday flew 31 metric tons of shelter materials into Mogadishu, the first UNHCR aid flight into Somalia's capital in five years. A spokesman, Andrej Mahecic, said more flights will follow in coming days because aid deliveries by land and sea were too slow to cope with the dramatic influx of famine refugees to Mogadishu.

Somalia Famine: U.S. Set To Announce $100 Million In Aid
 
Somalia Famine Refugees Prone To Attacks And Rape

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DADAAB, Kenya — Marauding gangs and criminals are attacking Somali famine refugees more frequently as they flee across the border to Kenyan camps, but Kenyan police say they don't have enough manpower to stop them.

The lack of manpower underscores a larger problem for Kenya: Officials here say they are being overwhelmed by the influx of tens of thousands of Somali refugees, and can't stem the attacks. One 30-year-old woman who watched two of her five children die as they trekked through Somalia was raped after reaching what she hoped would be the safety of Kenyan soil.

"I constantly ask myself, 'Would this have happened to you, or would you have lost your children if you had been in your country?'" said the woman. "My mind always says: 'You ran away from a problem and ran into another.'"

Kenya now hosts nearly 500,000 Somali refugees, and while U.S. and U.N. officials are quick to praise Kenya for their response to the famine crisis, Kenyan officials are just as quick to tell the U.S., U.N. and world leaders that they can't take many more.

President Mwai Kibaki told the U.S. vice president's wife, Jill Biden, during her visit to Kenya on Monday that the Somali refugee population was placing Kenya under extreme pressure and burdening its resources. Echoing local Kenyan officials who live close to the border, Kibaki advocated that refugee camps be set up inside Somalia near the Kenyan border, so Kenya does not have to accept the thousands more Somalis who arrive each week.

The Dadaab refugee camp – the largest in the world – was built for 90,000 people. The current population is over 400,000 with thousands of new arrivals crammed into areas outside the refugee camp, waiting to be formally admitted.

The police commander at Dadaab, Nelson Shilunji Taliti, said it is hard for authorities to adequately patrol the long and porous border with Somalia, leading to a rise in rape and other types of attacks. He said police cannot specifically say who is behind the attacks but criminals – both Somalis and Kenyans – operate along the border.

"Most of the victims are the ones who evade border points and pass through areas they believe are unmanned," Taliti said, advising refugees to use official points.

A pregnant mother of three who spoke to AP in Dadaab said she was gang-raped by five men after a group of families traveling together was ambushed. The Associated Press does not identify rape victims.

"The gunmen issued strange orders. They asked each women to be raped by her brother. 'Do it immediately,' they ordered," said the woman, whom the AP is not identifying. "Some men are more audacious than others. When they were ordered to rape their sisters, they raped them to save their lives. ... Death is better than doing that."

The attackers ordered her brother-in-law to rape her but he refused, saying: "You are men and I'm a man, and life and death is in the hands of God. Either kill me or spare me."

They killed her brother-in-law and left his body unburied.

Somalia Famine Refugees Prone To Attacks And Rape
 

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