UPI.com
Saturday, May 04, 2013
An extremist militia and U.S.
anti-terrorism policy share blame for the food crisis that caused tens
of thousands of deaths in Somalia, an analysis indicated.
Analysts said the deaths were caused by, among other factors,
al-Shabaab, which denied humanitarian access to the hardest-hit areas,
as well as U.S. anti-terrorism policy that prompted some agencies to
stop aid deliveries to al-Shabaab-controlled areas for fear they could
be charged with helping a designated terrorist group, the Los Angeles
Times reported Thursday.
Nearly 260,000 people died; half of the dead were children younger
than 5 years, a report released Thursday by the Famine Early Warning
System Network and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said.
The Famine Early Warning System Network, based in the United States,
warned of the disaster in 2010; the famine was declared in July 2011.
The findings released Thursday followed the first definitive
scientific study on the effects of Somalia's food crisis, the Times
said. The study found 10 percent of children and 4.6 percent of the
overall population in southern Somalia died.
"The short answer -- who was to blame -- was that there was a
syndrome of factors that together created very large problems of
access," Somalia expert Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College told the Times.
"It wasn't one single factor."
Menkhaus said the suspension of World Food Program aid and U.S.
anti-terrorism measures had a "chilling effect" on other humanitarian
organizations.
"Everyone wanted to get aid in," he said. "But local aid diversion
was endemic. One aid agency worker called southern Somalia 'an
accountability-free zone.' You could not count on getting aid to the
people who needed it most."
Geno Teofilo, spokesman for Oxfam, said the British humanitarian
agency believed the international community placed too much emphasis on
security in the developing world at the expense of the humanitarian
crises.
"Oxfam believes that when there's a conflict it doesn't matter what
side of the control line people are on," Teofilo told the Times in a
telephone interview. "When they need food and people are dying of
hunger, politics should not play a part. People should be able to
receive humanitarian aid, wherever they are."