International aid analysts are blaming the slow delivery of U.S. aid and attacks by Al-Shabaab terrorists for the 2010-2012 Somalia food crisis, a two-year famine that resulted in the deaths of 258,000 and thousands of others in East Africa.
The study released Thursday was produced by the U.S.-based Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization found that 10 percent of children and 4.6 percent of the overall population in southern Somalia perished. Overall half of all deaths were children under the age of five, the report finds.
“With the expertise of two renowned institutions, we now have a picture of the true enormity of this human tragedy,’’ said Mark Smulders, Senior Economist for the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN. “Lessons drawn from this experience will help the international community, together with the people of the region, build a stronger and more resilient future.”
FEWS NET began issuing dire warnings of impending famine in the Horn of Africa as early as August 2010. An acute drought, the worst in 60 years, triggered widespread livestock deaths and the smallest cereal harvest since the 1991-94 civil war.
Despite issuing several warnings, most aid agencies did not respond until famine was declared in parts of Somalia in July 2011.
The delivery of aid was further delayed by Al-Shabaab and affiliated terrorist organizations seeking to overthrow the central government and impose a conservative form of Sharia law. These groups, which controlled large swaths of territory, prevented critical aid from passing to southern Somalia, one of the areas hardest-hit by the famine in East Africa.
Al-Shabaab, an organization designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Canada among others, made large territorial gains during the Somali Civil War of 2006-2009. A union with Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups help the group make significant gains
“Everyone wanted to get aid in,” said Somalia expert Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College in North Carolina. “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 his agency. believed that the international community put too much emphasis on security issues in the developing world and not enough on humanitarian crises
“Oxfam believes that when there’s a conflict, it doesn’t matter what side of the control line people are on,” Teofilo said 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.”