From: Dorothy Morse <dmorse@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Date: 30 Aug 92 14:43 PDT
Subject: Green Left issue 68, August 26
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1471700093:000:9198
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!dmorse    Aug 30 14:43:00 1992


From: Dorothy Morse <dmorse>
Subject: Green Left issue 68, August 26

/* Written  8:58 pm  Aug 25, 1992 by peg:greenleft in cdp:greenleft.news */
/* ---------- "Green Left issue 68, August 26" ---------- */
Behind Somalia's tragedy

By Norm Dixon

``The desperately thin baby hung in the weighing harness, kicking 
and screaming in protest. Loose folds of skin hung from her 
skeletal arms and legs ... Bishar weighs less now than when she 
was born a year ago. The Somalian director of the Save the 
Children Fund, Mr Paul Simon, said Bishar was only one of 30,000 
dangerously malnourished children in a city of 800,000 on the 
brink of mass starvation.''

That dispatch from Mogadishu appeared in the London Times - 
almost 15 months ago. It illustrates that Western countries, the 
United Nations and its agencies, and the international news media 
were aware of the impending disaster. Nothing was done to prevent 
it.

In what has now become a chilling reality, Save the Children's 
Paul Simon predicted at the time: ``Until the international 
organisations come in here with the vast quantities of food that 
are needed, these people will simply continue to deteriorate 
rapidly from bloody hungry to starving.''

At least 2 million people - almost a third of Somalia's 
population - are now at imminent risk of death in the drought-
stricken and destitute east African nation. Another 4.5 million 
are near starvation. The relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres 
estimates that 25% of all Somali children under five have died in 
the past year, most of them in the past three to four months. 
180,000 refugees have fled to Kenya and another 50,000 to Yemen.

This terrible famine is a result of the international community's 
refusal to come to the aid of the Somali people immediately after 
the mass uprising that ousted the dictatorship of Siad Barre in 
January 1991, and of the West's support for the corrupt and 
brutal Barre regime from 1978, when it broke with Moscow, until 
its fall.

The world's indifference compounded the crisis created by Barre's 
regime, which, over two decades, shattered Somalia's society, 
economy and infrastructure. It is these factors that have plunged 
Somalia into famine and social chaos, not simply drought or the 
factional blood-letting in Mogadishu.

Somalia gained independence in July 1960. It united two former 
colonies, British Somaliland in the north and the Italian 
Trusteeship Territory of Somalia in the east and south. Half the 
country's population of 6-7 million people live as nomadic 
herders. In 1988, almost 70% of its export income was derived 
from livestock, while bananas accounted for 23%. Per capita gross 
national product is just $170; the foreign debt is $2 billion, 
almost twice the GNP.

After independence, a series of civilian governments plagued by 
corruption, nepotism and favouritism made little progress in 
developing the country. In 1969, army and police officers, led by 
Major General Siad Barre, seized power and appointed Barre head 
of state.

At first, the new regime announced reforms that would benefit the 
rural population. A friendship treaty was signed with the Soviet 
Union in 1974. Moscow sent 6000 civilian and military advisers, 
and Barre allowed the use of the Red Sea port of Berbera to the 
Soviet Navy.

But an increasingly authoritarian Barre sought to whip up 
nationalism over Somalia's claim on Ethiopia's Somali-speaking 
Ogaden region. His decision to invade the Ogaden in 1978 led to a 
falling out with the Soviet Union, which then helped Ethiopia 
defeat the attack.

Barre embraced Washington. The US Navy took over the Berbera 
port, and US economic and military aid began to flow to Somalia.

Clan-based guerilla movements began to organise. Barre devastated 
the home areas of the various opposition fronts. The hardest hit 
was northern Somalia, where the Somali National Movement (SNM) 
was active.

In May 1988, the SNM captured and held for several weeks the 
major northern cities of Burao and Hargeisa.

Barre responded by launching virtual genocide against the Issaq 
people, the backbone of the SNM's armed fighters. Somali army 
tanks and airforce jets decimated every village and settlement 
they passed through in the north. Burao was all but obliterated. 
Only 5% of Hargeisa's buildings were left standing.

The entire populations of the towns were dispersed. Power and 
water facilities, bridges, communication links and hospitals were 
destroyed. In the countryside, the wells were poisoned and 
livestock killed. Landmines were strewn throughout the pastures.

The majority clan in the Mogadishu area and central Somalia, the 
Hawiye, formed the opposition United Somali Congress, which began 
to infiltrate the capital. Now it was the turn of these areas to 
face Barre's wrath. In late December 1990, the USC launched its 
offensive for the capital. In a final act of desperation, Barre 
ordered his troops to pound rebel-held districts of Mogadishu day 
and night for weeks.

Barre scuttled out of Mogadishu towards his homeland near the 
Kenyan border in a tank convoy on January 26, 1991. On January 
31, in the north, Hargeisa fell to the SNM. (On May 18, the SNM 
declared north Somalia's independence as the Republic of 
Somaliland.)

The country's economy was smashed, its infrastructure destroyed. 
Millions of Somalis were displaced and unable to plant crops or 
tend their livestock. The whole region was now in the grip of a 
terrible drought that even in ``normal'' circumstances would have 
been a terrible burden.

``We're starting from scratch'', interim Prime Minister Omar 
Arteh Ghalib told Africa Report magazine. ``The country has been 
robbed of all its resources. We have nothing.''

In the final period of the Barre regime, virtually all foreign 
aid was halted, and UN agencies and most Western charities 
withdrew. Yet, after the fall of Barre, they did not return when 
they were needed most.

Three months after the fall of Barre, Mogadishu was already in 
the grip of famine. Save the Children, warned that 500,000 of the 
city's 1.3 million people needed emergency aid. Seventy-five 
children a day were dying.

Later claims that lack of security prevented a resumption of aid 
are contradicted by the Manchester Guardian's Mogadishu 
correspondent, Peter Biles, who reported on May 5, 1991, that 
``many international relief agencies have not yet returned 
despite a marked improvement in security''.

Somalia's interim president, Ali Mahdi, told Biles: ``This 
country is on the brink of famine and we had expected friendly 
countries to support us with humanitarian aid ...''

Ali Mahdi's appeals fell on deaf ears. The failure to provide 
immediate and massive aid added to the already herculean task 
that faced the disparate and ill-prepared forces that overthrew 
the dictator. It made a rapid return to stability impossible.

The UN, its agencies and the West ignored the chorus of warnings 
by aid agencies that only massive aid could relieve the mounting 
hunger and defuse the armed squabbling over scarce food supplies.

Tensions between rival factions and their armed and desperately 
hungry followers were soon aggravated to such an extent that 
political unity between them became a dream. The tensions finally 
exploded into serious armed clashes, banditry and looting last 
November.

Somalia's terrible situation is now being cynically manipulated 
to justify armed UN intervention, and the setting aside of 
national sovereignty, on ``humanitarian'' grounds.

Following months of dire warnings by the UN's own agencies, and a 
full 18 months after the fall of the Barre regime, the Security 
Council on July 27 belatedly authorised a massive emergency 
airlift of relief supplies to Somalia. But the aid was tied to a 
demand that Mogadishu's factions agree to the presence of 500 
armed UN guards. As if on cue, the world's press and electronic 
media suddenly were full of coverage of the famine.

Most of the factions reluctantly agreed to the plan. Another UN 
proposal to divide Somalia into four UN-administered zones, with 
or without the agreement of the Somalis, has also been floated.

Despite general support among relief agencies for sending armed 
guards to Somalia, a few sceptical voices continue to be raised. 
Rony Brauman of Medecins Sans Frontieres said that massive food 
aid was more important than UN blue helmets in reducing the 
violence. ``It is imperative to flood the country with food'', he 
argued, ``so that it ceases to be a high-stakes item, stolen by 
those with weapons. Only by making food readily available will it 
be possible to ease the tensions caused by shortages, the 
principle obstacle to relief operations.''

The executive director of Africa Watch, Rakiya Omaar, echoed 
those remarks: ``The famine is the result of the fact that the 
people - the farmers and herders who were growing the food and 
selling the livestock - are for the most part displaced ...

``The country has to be flooded with food so they have the 
confidence to return to their communities and live the lives they 
previously did.Then the country can stand on its feet 
agriculturally.''