Somalia's Thorny Food Conundrum Faces New Twist

Somalia has enough troubles: very little farmable soil, an increase in the length and strength of seasonal droughts, tsunami aftermath, sea theft, low resources for health and education, domestic violence, a damaged justice system, tribal feuding, piracy, political assassination, and a three-front civil war, to name a few.

Now the leadership of the leading Somali insurgent group, the Islamic youth militia known as "al Shabaab", has seized the core argument for reform of global food aid and twisted it to fit its agenda at the risk of a million people.

Over the past year, al Shabaab, which seeks an ultra-conservative Islamic government for Somalia and is believed to be linked to al Qaeda and global terror organizations, has increased attacks on the World Food Programme (WFP) and other aid agencies as they deliver food aid to hungry regions of Somalia. This week WFP announced that due to security threats it would withdraw from much of southern Somalia, leaving up to one million people without the kind of assistance they need.

Al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage claims WFP is creating dependency on external sources for food in Somalia. The organization uses this justification, among others, for blocking the reach of humanitarian agencies.

Not too long ago, African rights expert Alex de Waal made the case in his book, Famine Crimes, echoing the claims of many other reformers, that famines might be better prevented if agencies strengthened local and nearby markets, rather than dumping large amounts of imported grain into them. This is a complex argument that WFP has taken seriously. Al Shabaab has now simplified the argument to fit its Islamic nationalist goals to rally local support against foreign agencies.

WFP responded to my inquiry for detail on whether Rage's claims on food aid dependency were well founded.

"WFP does local purchase all over the developing world," said Emilia Casella for the UN agency. "WFP carefully analyzes markets to make sure our purchases don't destabilize local prices. In 2008, WFP purchased more than $1 billion worth of food in developing countries, for distribution in those countries or neighbouring countries."

Casella added: "Even in the best years, Somalia is able to meet only 40 percent of the food needs of its population through internal production. in the last five years, local production has averaged only about 30 percent of food needs in Somalia. WFP always monitors markets closely and does not provide food assistance to people in food producing areas such as Bay, Lower Shabelle and Juba, but targets its assistance only to drought affected people and the displaced."

Somalia's food economy is actually rather simple. But it has been badly blocked and barbed on many sides due to the failure of the state and the increase in environmental disasters. Traditionally, since the vast country only has a few annual rivers and farmland concentrated in a small area of the south, the majority of Somali communities survive on livestock herding, coastal fisheries, and the frankincense trade.

Nearly everything they consume in addition to meat and dairy -- the rice, sorghum, wheat, spaghetti, bananas, and potato which sustains life -- comes either from the tight riverine area of the south or from cross-border trade with other countries.

When the droughts hit harsher than normal, millions of livestock starve and die, and since there are few rivers and very little farmland, many of the herders who lose livestock have to migrate in search of work. The little food available from the south does not necessarily reach the dry areas, so in these cases when aid agencies supplement the supply they are not necessarily damaging regional markets because the regional markets are already nearly sold out.

Al Shabaab has seized the aspects of the "protect local markets" argument which fit its rhetoric. The group which rallies behind a hybrid Somali nationalist and global Islamic radical agenda has now done the unthinkable. Many Somalis who may join the group will realize only when it's too late that they have been manipulated into supporting yet another crime against humanity echoing the same crimes of the warlord era Al Shabaab claims to be against.

Photo: Daniel J Gerstle, change.org