The Horn of Africa suffers again

I do not expect many Indians, and perhaps many more around the world to be aware of the fact that there is a famine raging in Somalia and spreading quickly to other parts of North-Eastern Africa. While I do want to write about the famine and how the world community is reacting to it, I cannot but feel angry at the same world community, especially the UN, for letting the situation reach the stage when thousands of Somalians and other Africans are dying of hunger. Its easy to blame it on Somalia's internal strife and warn-torn status, but I believe that allowing such crisis, even in this new millennium where we seem to move on from one technical achievement to another, allowing a famine to occur anywhere on the planet is a matter of shame, and excuses such as allowing each country to govern itself, or in this case, bring itself out of the misery, are just that, excuses.

The big word associated with Somalia in recent times has been piracy, and I have read and heard on more than one occasion that perhaps the biggest reason for piracy to exist is because its the only bread earner for many Somalians on the coast. Absolutely there is no doubt that bad elements, and genuine criminal elements do get involved and run the show at a number of places, but gone are the days when pirates would go looking for gold and hoarding it. It is my opinion that the world's inability to bring Somalia out of this internal strife is a matter of shame, because clearly in my mind the country is unable to bring itself out of it. If the great powers of the world can impose their will upon nations to bring them "freedom", surely the aware and advanced developed, and developing, world of today can get together to pull the poorer nations of this world out of their misery and despondence.

Clearly, Somalia, and a lot of countries around the world, need the positive intervention from the rest of the world, even if for the most idealistic reason of "humanity". The Islamist rebel group in Somalia called Shebab had banned foreign "aid" groups in the country, or whichever part of the country they control, and according to the BBC, are denying there is a famine in the land! For good effect, the BBC throws in the factoid that the group has ties to Al-Qaeda, perhaps so the news registers better in the mind of the western reader. So once we know that Islamist rebels rule most of Somalia, is it quite easy to pin the blame on them for now allowing the rest of the world to come together and help the starving people of Somalia.

The United Nations World Food Programme was one of the organizations that had left the country in 2009, and here is my peeve - what stops the rest of the world from coming together and pulling Somalia out of this misery? When we can have some stupendous forces such as "Coalition of the Willing", or the "Global War on Terror", or "Operation Iraqi "Freedom"", I do not think it will take much to come up with a "Maybe Somalia needs intervention too". I mean, what stops the world from getting together and getting rid Al- Shebab and all the warlords there?

Initially, there was a news of draught in the region, but only recently did the United Nations raise the crisis to famine. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer article -

It is a famine. The U.N. made that official this week when it noted that a "food crisis" had reached level five on the U.N.'s Integrated Phase Classification system. By that standard, famine is said to occur when malnutrition rates among children exceed 30 percent and when the death toll rises to more than two adults or four children per 10,000.

This is the first official famine in East Africa in 19 years. But an alternating current of drought, famine and war has plagued this land and its mostly innocent people for all of human history.

Drought is inevitable in the arid regions of East Africa. Famine follows, killing thousands who never recover enough from the last famine to fend off the ravages of the next.

When we hear of aid, or a UN official talking of aid, we tend to hear that the developed nations need to do more, the developed nations need to take the lead, more money is needed from the developed nations of the world, but in my opinion, it is absolutely wrong on the part of the rest of the world to sit idle. The global media reports on what the American government is doing, what the American Army is doing or what Europe is doing, but what about all these new big boys on the scene such as BRICS, and others? I can feel the hypocrisy in my own writing when sometimes I write about how the third world is going to rule the world and now I fall back to the old line that the developed world must do more. Even now, all the world media reporting is about the US - the US will allow this if this happens, or the US says this, or the US does this, or should the US help at all, but perhaps the rest of the world, including the new rising powers, are not ready to take on a bigger role in the world. Its very easy to showcase their new economic might, or argue confidently for their cause at international trade fora, but countries such as the BRICS must do more on the philanthropy and assistance front.

Its quite true that for most of the third world groups fighting for whatever cause in the world do not trust the WASP countries, and particularly the United States. But what stops China and India and others to take the lead and be more proactive politically and philanthropically?

I feel that most nations suffering from whichever strife afflicting them today are there because of their inability to raise themselves out of it. For the rest of the world, it becomes that nations' internal affair (for the most part that is), and thus it allows that nation to run itself to the ground. At the same time, I feel that even the global community itself, including the UN, can sometimes come across as pretty incompetent when it comes to dealing with the world's problems. According to this lady writing in the Gulf Daily News....

Two decades later, poverty has not yet been made history and repeated calls for aid have largely been ignored.

SOMETIMES defining a situation properly merits some sort of action. It took an estimated 10 million people in East Africa, including half the population of Somalia, to be severely malnourished before the United Nations declared famine in two southern regions of the country.

What possible effects such an announcement could have is anybody's guess.

Does it somehow legitimise to the international community that the Somalis are in real need of food and haven't been arbitrarily dying all along? The first famine of the 21st century wasn't a horrible surprise sprung on the world, it has been some years in the making. Poor rains since last year and the increasing desertification of the Horn of Africa have turned the region into a dustbowl.

Fourteen years ago, at a special convention of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in New York, it came to light that 73 per cent of dry lands in Africa used for agricultural purposes had been degraded. The current crisis is in part the result of the Sahara desert's continued encroachment into the East African countries, a process that has turned these regions arid.

The growth of lawlessness and extremism that followed Somalia's war with Ethiopia in 1991 has devastated the country.

Maybe, there's a problem with the definition of the word famine. The UN says famine can only be declared when two adults or four children for every 10,000 people die of hunger every day. Now that the world community has got its statistics right, I suppose we can expect some real action. Somalia has often been called as the world's first failed state, but on hindsight, it's we who failed them.

The lady raises a very valid point about "definitions". The sense of urgency that we seem to be seeing today from the United Nations and other agencies and nations has come about once it was officially declared that there was a famine in Somalia. So if children were dying in that country but could not muster the death rate needed per 10,000 for them to be declared living in a state of famine, perhaps this process would have continued till an indefinite time while we could continue to keep ourselves busy in everything else.

As far as I know after scanning the online news sources for a while, I think the Indian media is still oblivious to what is happening in Somalia, and it is not surprising at all. In the World headlines section, that shitty NDTV is reporting such important news (most of which are America-centric) such as that of a small airplane making an emergency landing on a highway, or how a hundred street signs have been stolen in some town. The Times of India, well, is the Times of India, no expectations there. Yup, checked out a couple of other sources and their international coverage begins and ends with the US, Europe, Pakistan, and tabloid stories from the rest of the world.

My prayers are with the region, and I will try to locate if there is anything going on in India at all in terms of aid or help towards Somalia and if lucky, get to contribute towards it. The rest of the world must come together and help, and ask questions about why was this allowed to happen.