Somalia’s Agony Tests Limits of Aid

[Baashi]

Somalia’s Agony Tests Limits of Aid

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: November 1, 2011

NYT

 

BENADIR HOSPITAL is a chunky block of a building in downtown Mogadishu, built in the 1970s by the Chinese. It has cracked windows, ceiling fans that don’t turn and long, ghostly hallways that stink of human excrement and diesel fuel — all that the nurses have to wash the floors. Each morning, legions of starving people trudge in, the victims of Somalia’s spreading famine. Many have journeyed from hundreds of miles away. They spent every last dollar and every last calorie to make it here, and when they arrive, they simply collapse on the floor. Benadir’s few doctors and nurses are all volunteers and all exhausted, and many wear tattered, bloodied smocks. The minute I walked in, I had a bad feeling I would find what I was looking for.

 

As the East Africa correspondent for The New York Times, my assignment has been to chronicle the current famine in Somalia, one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the last two decades, hitting one of the most forlorn and troubled countries in modern times. My job is to seek out the suffering and write about it and to analyze the causes and especially the response, which has been woefully inadequate by all accounts, though not totally hopeless.

 

In Benadir, there is a room full of old blue cots, one after another, where the sickest children lie. On each bed, a little life is passing away. Some children cry, but most are quiet. The skin on their feet and hands is peeling off. All their bones show, like skeletons covered in parchment. I was standing just a few feet away from Kufow Ali Abdi, a destitute nomad, as he looked down on his dying daughter, and when the time came, there was no mystery, no fuss.

 

I watched Mr. Kufow carefully unhook the I.V. that was attached to her shriveled body and then wrap her up in blue cloth. Her name was Kadija and she was 3 years old and probably not more than 20 pounds. Mr. Kufow walked out of the room, lightly carrying Kadija’s body in his arms.

 

At least five children died that day in Benadir. At a camp not far away, where people are housed in twig huts and stare listlessly at the road, hoping for an aid truck to arrive, I was told that 10 had died. Across Somalia, it’s hundreds a day.

 

Much of Africa, Somalia in particular, has had a tough time since independence in the 1960s, becoming synonymous with staggering levels of misery and leading many people to simply shrug and mutter “here we go again” when they hear of a new drought or a new war. But this current crisis in Somalia is on a different order of magnitude than the typical calamity, if there is such a thing. Tens of thousands of people have already died, and as many as 750,000 could soon starve to death, the United Nations says, the equivalent of the entire populations of Miami and Pittsburgh.

 

One reason the situation has gotten this grim is that most of the big Western aid agencies and charities, the ones with the technical expertise and so-called surge capacity to rapidly distribute aid, have been blocked from working in the famine zones. At a time when Somalia is suffering from the worst drought in 60 years, a ruthless militant group called the Shabab, which is essentially a Qaeda franchise, is on such an anti-Western tirade that it has banned Western music, Western dress, soccer, bras and even Western food aid. The Shabab are a heavily armed complication that differentiates this crisis from previous famines in Somalia, Ethiopia or Sudan and from other recent natural disasters like the tsunami in Indonesia or Haiti’s earthquake, where aid groups were able to rush in and start saving lives within a matter of hours.

 

That said, it is not as if American or European aid agencies are simply giving up on Somalia. It’s the opposite. They’re stepping up operations and scrambling to find ways to get around the Shabab restrictions, turning to new technologies like sending electronic money by cellphone so people in famine zones can buy food themselves from local markets.

 

Western charities are also teaming up with the new players on the aid scene, like Turkish groups and other Muslim organizations that are allowed into Shabab areas. It all calls for more hustle and definitely more imagination: in Somalia there are a million impediments to the aid business — the Shabab, the broken-down state, dilapidated ports and airports, American government sanctions, a legacy of corruption and the sheer dangers of working in full-fledged anarchy haunted by militias, warlords, glassy-eyed gunmen and even 21st-century pirates. But charity groups say they are beginning to turn this famine around. They just need more resources and more time.

 

“One thing is clear,” said Elhadj AsSy, a Unicef official. “With continued support from our donors and partners, our combined efforts to save lives, livelihoods and ways of life will make a difference.”

 

But support — meaning dollars — has been frustratingly scant. While many more lives are at stake in Somalia’s crisis, other recent disasters pulled in far more money. For instance, Save the Children U.S. has raised a little more than $5 million in private donations for the Horn of Africa crisis, which includes Somalia and the drought-inflicted areas of Kenya and Ethiopia. That contrasts with what Save the Children raised in 2004 for the Indonesian tsunami ($55.4 million) or the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 ($28.2 million) or even the earthquake in Japan earlier this year ($22.8 million) — and Japan is a rich country.

 

“Americans are incredibly generous when they understand that children are in desperate need,” said Carolyn Miles, president of Save the Children. “If they knew millions of children were facing death in East Africa, I believe they would give. But I don’t think Americans understand the scale of this disaster.”

 

Rachel Wolff, a spokeswoman for World Vision, explained that “rapid-onset disasters,” like a sudden earthquake, tend to get more attention and more donations. And Somalia’s crisis was hardly rapid. This was a catastrophe 20 years in the making.

 

The central government collapsed in 1991, pulled down by clan warlords who then turned on one another and plunged Somalia into anarchy. The hospitals are now shot-up wrecks, the roads are abysmal and the airports and ports barely function, complicating the efforts to bring in life-saving supplies. Somalia’s economy has been so shattered by war that there are few paying jobs, which leads to the pilfering of humanitarian aid, another serious problem here, because the black market of stolen food aid has blossomed into one of the country’s few moneymaking industries, along with, of course, piracy.

 

Farms are ruined and much of the food Somalis survive on is imported, leaving them highly vulnerable to swings in global food prices, which are near record highs. Somalia is also probably one of the most violent countries on the planet. Whenever I come, I have to hire my own private mini-army to guard me, usually 10 to 15 gunmen, who start shadowing me the minute I step off the plane. Many aid workers have been killed or kidnapped in Somalia, which has scared aid organizations away.

 

“We are beyond frustrated to not be able to reach children who are dying, not be able to fulfill our humanitarian mandate within the worst-hit areas of the Horn drought crisis,” said Mrs. Wolff of World Vision, which the Shabab has banned. “Since February, when we warned of the drought crisis, we have been exploring various options but do not have a breakthrough solution at this point.”

 

In the other crises I’ve covered, there’s a certain routine: check in with the United Nations upon arrival, get a security briefing, take an aid worker out for a drink and then, come next morning, hitch a ride to the field in an aid agency Land Cruiser with the name stenciled on the side.

 

In refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan or the many besieged Congolese towns I’ve worked in, it’s hard not to stumble across other Westerners, many wearing mesh vests emblazoned with the name of their organization or the acronyms — Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, Unicef, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Rescue Committee, War Child — overseeing food deliveries, taking surveys or slipping a feeding tube up the nose of a starving child. But in Somalia, these big agencies are virtually absent.

 

The day a photographer and I visited the Badbaado camp in Mogadishu, many people thought we were the aid workers. We passed rows of tiny huts built literally out of sticks and rags, stepping over piles of human waste because these camps of starving people have sprouted up so fast there are few latrines, water taps or any real planning, and we met one emaciated person after another. They stumbled forward, sometimes hugging me for support or pulling the tight skin at their throats to show they were starving. One man reached out and jerked my arm.

 

“Look!” he said, pointing to a small bundle in the corner of his tent. I peered in. It was the corpse of his 2-year-old son, Suleiman, who had just died.

 

I heard many bad stories about the Shabab in these camps. Most people here fled Shabab zones, often starting out their journey with five or six children and arriving in Mogadishu with just one or two left. There is nothing else they can do. They either buried their children along the way or left them dying under a tree.

 

 

Read on @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/02/giving/some-aid-trickles-into-somalia-surrounded-by-death-and-disease.html?_r=1&hp

[Baashi]

Tragedy of monumental proportions! Disaster that's two decades in the making. For the long term, the so called coordinated triangle offensive -- Kenya forces from the south, Ethiopia forces from the west, and African Union forces from the North aided by sophisticated drones-- has a good chance to work. For the short term, famine-stricken region is in for a painful and deadly season. With rainy season (I know the area for I grew up there) all movement will come to a standstill. Torrential rain after drought in Juba valley is something I can't convey through posts. My heart goes out to unfortunate souls that are caught up between clueless Kelligii Muslims and ruthless regional and world powers that could care less human toll in this war-raveged poor nation.

 

Why can't they wait three more months and spare lives? Why restrict funding to aid organizations that are allowed to operate in Kelligii Muslims controlled district? Awoowe halkee bay iska qaban la'dahay. Maaney dadkani insaan ahayn

 

Sad situation all around.

[Alderman]

BENADIR HOSPITAL is a chunky block of a building in downtown Mogadishu, built in the 1970s by the Chinese.

I thought those were the 'golden decades'. Where they relying on aid back then too? How sad if that is true.

[Baashi]

If it makes you sleep better YES Somalia was always a poor nation in need of assistance.