War and corruption are responsible for famines, not droughts

[NASSIR]

War and corruption are responsible for famines, not droughts

2 Sep 2, 2011 - 11:01:54 PM

 

BY THOMAS KENEALLY

 

The first part of a week-long look at the crisis in the Horn of Africa

 

I have never quite believed that simplistic formula invoked in so many modern famines: “caused by a severe drought.”

 

Not that there isn't a severe drought now in southern Somalia, neighbouring Ethiopia and parts of Kenya. There undeniably is. Last October to December, rains did not appear at all in the area. The March-April rains this year were late. My skepticism arises, though, because I come from perhaps the driest continent on Earth, which has suffered recurrent droughts from earliest settler experience, including the El Nino-influenced drought that seemed to run nearly non-stop from the early 1990s to last year. Many of our farmers were forced off land their families had held for generations.

 

There has always been drought-induced anguish in the Australian bush. But no one starves. Malnutrition, undeniably, and particularly in indigenous communities, but no famine.

 

How is it the citizens of drought-stricken homelands in Somalia and the “triangle of death” have none of the guarantees my drought-stricken compatriots have? It's because, as the famed aphorism of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen puts it, “no famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.”

 

Similarly, an Irish friend of mine, a respected historian of famine named Cormac Ó Gráda, writes, “Agency is more important than a food-production shortfall. Mars counts for more than Malthus.” In contrast to Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, the 19th-century population theorist who blamed overpopulation and land overuse for the Irish famine, Mr. Ó Gráda sees war and other human actions as the engines of famine. His point is evident in the Horn of Africa now.

 

One of the affected areas of Ethiopia is, for example, the ******, whose people consider themselves kinsman of the Somalis and are similarly Muslim. It is in their territory that conflict between the Ethiopian army and Somali rebels has occurred over recent years, with many savageries and violation.

 

The central regime in Addis Ababa has never felt kindly or acted tenderly toward the ******ians anyhow, nor given them a decent share of roads or clinics or schools. Is it a priority now to feed and care for them?

 

All famines share common qualities, a similar DNA, that reduce acts of God like drought from real causes to mere tipping or triggering mechanisms. Famines often occur where farming and grazing are suddenly disrupted to fit some ideological plan of the leaders of the country, as in Mao's Great Leap Forward in the 1950s, Ethiopia in the 1980s and North Korea repeatedly since the mid-1990s.

 

Famines also strike in areas where people live in hunger and malnutrition year after year. Malnutrition is a sensitivity-numbing word – it does not capture the swollen joints, flaking skin, retarded growth, porous and fragile bone, diminished height, lethargy and disabling confusion of soul that characterize it.

 

As it's been said, a malnourished child can still howl out; a starving one has no strength to.

 

As many as 60 per cent of North Korean children aged six months to seven years were malnourished in 2010, so they were set up to become the victims of famine over the past year. Once again, ideology and military priorities offer a better explanation than mere food shortage: The regime's re-evaluation of its currency wiped out the spending power of families, all to sustain itself and its army.

 

Similarly, southern Somalia, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, had the highest level of child malnutrition on Earth in July this year. A few unlucky factors, and malnutrition becomes famine.

 

People in that rural hinterland already lived off only a few food staples. Among some pastoral people who survive by livestock holdings, death of animals by June this year was reaching 60 per cent. The value of a cow relative to how much grain a family could buy with it had fallen by two-thirds. Grain and lentils are what farmers live off there. As with the Irish and their buttermilk and potatoes long ago, the East African diet is balanced on a two-legged stool. Still, if drought were the cause, we could just help them until the rains returned. But it's the helping that is complicated. Climate isn't the complication; humans are.

 

REFUSING AID FROM AN IDEOLOGICAL ‘ENEMY'

The Ethiopian army invaded a civil-war-savaged Somalia in 2006 and, after a hard-fisted occupation, installed an unpopular and only partly successful transitional federal government. Assorted militias, such as the oft-mentioned al-Shabab (“the youth”), retained the hinterland, where conflicts, raids and molestation of citizens by both sides have been common ever since.

 

Al-Shabab has been driven from Mogadishu, but it is the most commonly cited military villain in this famine. Al-Shabab believes that many Western agencies oppose it because of its desire to make Somalia an Islamist state.

 

Therefore, it restricts the entry of agencies and non-governmental organizations into its area to those it considers neutral – Red Cross and Red Crescent in particular. It rules out the World Food Program and UNICEF and agencies such as CARE. It has created its own Office for the Supervision to Regulate the Affairs of Foreign Agencies.

 

There is denial that famine actually exists too. “The UN wants Somalia to be in famine,” a spokesman, Ali Mohamud Rage, has said. “They want push pressure on us through such calls. We agree that there is hunger in some areas, but there is no famine in Somalia.”

 

Agencies and aid bodies are not always without their flaws, but it is al-Shabab, not drought, that stands between the starving and the food.

 

Al-Shabab not only threatens aid workers but tries to prevent and punish refugees who try to cross into so-called Christian countries such as Ethiopia and Kenya.

 

It must be terrifying for the men, women and children now trying to get into Kenya to find themselves surrounded by militia men emerging from the thorn trees.

 

Is the transitional federal government in Mogadishu an improvement or another face of the problem?

 

It seems that it is either too venal or too powerless to prevent the plunder of aid food.

 

Joakim Gundul, a Kenyan assessor of aid results, says, “While helping starving people, you are also feeding the power groups who make a business out of the disaster. … You're saving people's lives today so they can die tomorrow.”

[NASSIR]

long article....read & react to the author's premises. Does he have a strong point?

[NASSIR]

"As many as 60 per cent of North Korean children aged six months to seven years were malnourished in 2010, so they were set up to become the victims of famine over the past year. Once again, ideology and military priorities offer a better explanation than mere food shortage: The regime's re-evaluation of its currency wiped out the spending power of families, all to sustain itself and its army."

 

Good point -- What's known as starvation policy.

[walaalkis]

where innocent blood is shed, no single life will be living pleasantly in such environment. We will all pay the price for it. This person can make many reason as to why there is war and corruption are responsible for famines in Somalia, but I personally think peace and stability will never come to Somalia for hundred years pass. Lots of undeserved people were killed for basically nothing. It's all our responsibility as Somalis and Muslim people to denounce once for all , it didn't happen. every Somali person will experience the effect this caused. we can only pray Allah to forgive us all.

[The Zack]

Great article. Everything has a cause and an effect and the Somali Famine is no exception.

[Dabrow]

Agree with what you all said. And i will state the obvious, our leaders have failed us, but in the end, they are not really our leaders but puppets.

[NASSIR]

"The Ethiopian army invaded a civil-war-savaged Somalia in 2006 and, after a hard-fisted occupation, installed an unpopular and only partly successful transitional federal government. Assorted militias, such as the oft-mentioned al-Shabab (“the youth”), retained the hinterland, where conflicts, raids and molestation of citizens by both sides have been common ever since."

[burahadeer]

Famine is man made, knew all along.Good article.

[Nabad_dadaye]

dhibka dhan walbuu ka yimid ilaa eey noqotay in jiritaan soomaaliya uu qatar ku jiro .

dhan waa dagaalaha sokeeye ee wadanka 21 aafeeyay , dhiiga muslimka oo xaqdaro loo daadiday .

hey'ado dadka ka dhigay ineysan wax beeran .marwalboy dadka wax beertaan eey isdhahaan waa lagaaray xiligaad guran lahayd waxaa lakeeni jiray macaawino eey hey'adaha samafalka isku sheego keeni jireen .qofkii wax beeray markeey 2,3 mar ku baaraan wuxuu beertay wuu iska daafay oo macaawino ayuu iska sugay .

reer galbeed iyo alqaacida is bursaneyso ayaa dhibkii kusii darsaday ,alshabab waxey ka shakiyeen hey'adihii gargaarka weyna u diideen iney galaan ama wax ugeeyaan dadkii dhibaateysnaa ayagana wax eey ku taageeraan meysan helin .

mareykan wuu diiday in dhanka alshabab wax la geeyo si eeysan wax u helin ,dhibka u badan wuxuu ka dhacayaa dhanka eey alshabab heystaan .

dowladoon tabar sidaa u heynin ,iyo ayadoo xitaa ciidankeeda ka celin weyday in eey boobaan macaawinadii .

dowladahii carabta oo aad uga gaabiyay .

intaas markii laysku daro waxaa cadaaneyso in cuqubo eey galabsadeen qaar naga tirsan ciqaabteedii eey nagu wada dagtay .

cadow sidaan nala rabayna dhulka nala sii galay oo diyaariyay wax walba oo sidaan abuuri karo .

xerooyin aan wax fiican ka jirinna dadkoo dhan ayaa loo soo qixi si dalka uu faaruq u ahaado .

waxaan leeyahay Alle hanoo gargaaro .

[Yunis]

Yes in deed it was man made