US is right to give aid to Somalia, despite risk of helping Al Shabab

Yesterday, the United Nations declared a famine in the Bakool and Lower Shabelle regions of southern Somalia. While outside observers are in some ways “getting used to famine,” the technical designation of famine carries a dire meaning that goes beyond the typical meaning of “famine.” The UN notes (see first link) that –

It is the first time since 1991-92 that the UN has declared famine in a part of Somalia.

Famine is declared when acute malnutrition rates among children exceed 30 per cent, more than two people per every 10,000 die per day, and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Mr. Bowden warned that malnutrition rates in Somalia are currently the highest in the world, with peaks of 50 per cent in certain areas of the country’s south.

In the two regions of southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle, acute malnutrition rates are above 30 per cent, with deaths among children under the age of five exceeding six per 10,000 per day in some areas. In the last few months, tens of thousands of Somalis have died as a result of causes related to malnutrition, the majority of them children.

Consecutive droughts have affected the country in the last few years while the ongoing conflict has made it extremely difficult for agencies to operate and access communities in the south. Nearly half of the Somali population – 3.7 million people – are now estimated to be in crisis, with an estimated 2.8 million of them in the south.

The answer to the crisis would seem to be aid from the outside, but control of southern Somalia by al Shabab, an Islamic militia designated as a terrorist group by the US State Department, poses a legal and political wrinkle. As Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Tara Vassefi explain, “two competing desires — to help the Somali people, and to prevent money from reaching militant groups — sets up a real dilemma for American policymakers.”

Washington’s working solution to this dilemma is a conditional delivery of aid.

The deputy administrator of the US Agency for International Development, Donald Steinberg, said the aid must not benefit al-Shabab.

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