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Somalia Battered by Drought, Food Shortages, Worsening Violence
September 5, 2008 By Will Rogers
“The humanitarian nightmare in Somalia is the result of a lethal cocktail of factors,” writes Ken Menkhaus in a recent ENOUGH strategy paper, Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare,” launched this week at the Wilson Center (video). Menkhaus was joined by Chris Albin-Lackey, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, and Harun M. Hassan, a Somali journalist and writer based in Washington, DC, for a discussion of the political and humanitarian situation in Somalia, which is ranked first on the 2008 Failed States Index.
The country has been plagued by “18 years of state collapse, failed peace talks, violent lawlessness and warlordism, internal displacement and refugee flows, chronic underdevelopment, intermittent famine, piracy, regional proxy wars, and Islamic extremism,” writes Menkhaus. Over the past 18 months, severe drought and increased attacks against relief agencies have left 3.2 million Somalis in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Two-thirds of Mogadishu’s population—700,000 people—has fled the city for Somalia’s harsh countryside, where they lack access to food, clean water, basic health care, livelihoods, and support networks.
Fighting between the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Ethiopian troops, and regional militias has exacerbated food shortages, as TFG and Ethiopian troops target local markets, including the Bakaara market in Mogadishu, in retaliation for militia attacks. With drought “killing off livestock and reducing harvests in farming areas” and the economy crippled by violence and an outbreak of counterfeiting, food prices have skyrocketed.
Although Menkhaus rightly mentions a few of the situation’s environmental aspects, such as the drought’s role in the food crisis, he neglects the role population growth has played. The 2008 Failed States Index ranked Somalia as the state with the most demographic pressure – a significant indicator of state instability – (tied with Bangladesh). According to the Population Reference Bureau, Somalia has a total fertility rate of 6.7 children per woman and an annual rate of natural increase of 2.7 percent. With 45 percent of the population under 15, Somalia’s youth bulge increases the likelihood of continued violence; in addition, if Somalia ever does find peace and stability, its government will be hard-pressed to meet the needs of all its citizens for jobs, health care, and education.
Humanitarian agencies in Somalia have attempted to provide relief, but they face rampant extortion, corruption, and intimidation. According to Menkhaus, “uncontrolled and predatory TFG security forces, along with opportunistic criminal gangs, have erected over 400 militia roadblocks (each of which demands as much as $500 per truck to pass).” In addition, since May 2008, jihadist cells in Mogadishu operating under al-Shabaab, “a hardline military faction of the Islamist movement,” have stepped up attacks against relief workers and are assassinating “any and all Somalis working for western aid agencies or collaborating with U.N. and Western NGOs.”
Somali piracy has made humanitarian shipments to sea ports a treacherous task. According to Albin-Lackey, Somalia’s second-largest port, Kismaayo, fell to al-Shabaab militants last week after weeks of fighting between the Islamic group and TFG security forces, cutting off a crucial delivery point for humanitarian shipments. According to Menkhaus, with human insecurity worsening, Somalis who would not otherwise support fundamentalism will become more vulnerable to recruitment from criminal gangs and terrorist cells, including al-Qaeda. And although the Djibouti Accord was signed last month between the TFG and a faction of the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, experts are pessimistic that it will do anything to end the violence.
Photo: Internally displaced people (IDPs) flee the escalating violence in Mogadishu for IDP camps on the outskirts of the city, where newcomers build their own makeshift shelters. Courtesy of Abdurrahman Warsameh and ISN Security Watch.
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“The humanitarian nightmare in Somalia is the result of a 
