Somalia worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, UN says

Somalia worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, UN says
11/20/2007
by Jeffrey Gettleman

AFGOOYE, Somalia: The worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, several United Nations officials said, may not be unfolding in Darfur, but here, along a 20-mile strip of busted-up asphalt.

A year ago, the road between the market town of Afgooye and the capital of Mogadishu was just another typical Somali byway, lined with overgrown cactuses and the occasional bullet-riddled building. Now it is a corridor teeming with misery, with 200,000 recently displaced people crammed into swelling camps that are rapidly running out of food.

Natheefa Ali, who trudged up this road a week ago to escape the blood bath that Mogadishu has turned into, said Monday that her 10-month-old baby was so malnourished she can't swallow.

"Look," Natheefa said, pointing to her daughter's splotchy legs, "her skin is falling off, too."

United Nations officials said that Somalia has higher malnutrition rates, more current bloodshed and many fewer aid workers than Darfur, which is often publicized as the world's most pressing humanitarian crisis and has taken clear priority in terms of getting United Nations-backed peacekeepers.

The relentless urban combat in Mogadishu, between an unpopular transitional government , installed partially with American help , and a determined Islamist insurgency, has driven waves of desperate people up the Afgooye road, where more than 70 camps of twigs and plastic have popped up seemingly overnight.

The people here are hungry, exposed, sick and dying. And the few aid organizations willing to brave a lawless, notoriously dangerous environment cannot keep up with their needs, like providing milk to the thousands of babies with fading heartbeats and bulging eyes.

United Nations officials working on Somalia are trying to draw more attention to the country's plight, which they feel has fallen into Darfur's shadow. They have recently organized several trips, including one on Monday, for journalists to see for themselves.

"The situation in Somalia is the worst on the continent," said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the top United Nations official for Somalia.

"Many of these kids are going to die," said Eric Laroche, the head of United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia. "We don't have the capacity to reach them."

He added: "If this were happening in Darfur, there would be a big fuss. But Somalia has been a forgotten emergency for years."

That emergency has included floods, droughts and locusts, as well as suicide and roadside bombs, and near-daily assassinations.

United Nations officials say the recent round of plagues, natural and man-made, coupled with the residual chaos that has consumed Somalia for more than a decade, have put the country on the brink of a famine. In the worst hit areas, like Afgooye, recent surveys indicate the malnutrition rate is 19 percent, compared with about 13 percent in Darfur, with 15 percent being the emergency threshold.

But unlike Darfur, where the suffering is eased by a billion-dollar aid operation and more than 10,000 aid workers, Somalia is still considered mostly a no-go zone. Just last week, two people were shot to death at an aid distribution center in Afgooye. United Nations officials estimate that total emergency aid is less than $200 million, partly because it is so difficult just getting food into the country.

Pirates lurking off the coast of Somalia have attacked more than 20 ships this year, including two carrying United Nations food. The militias that rule the streets , typically teenage gunmen in wraparound shades and flip-flops , have jacked up roadblock taxes to $400 per truck. To make matters worse, the transitional government last month jailed a senior official of the United Nations food program in Somalia, accusing him of being a terrorist, though he was eventually released.

United Nations officials now concede that the country was in better shape during the brief reign of Somalia's Islamist movement last year. "It was more peaceful," Laroche said. "And much easier for us to work. The Islamists didn't cause us any problems.

Ould-Abdallah called those six months, which were essentially the only epoch of peace most Somalis have tasted for years, Somalia's "golden era."

Somalia's ills have always come in waves, starting in 1991 when clan-based militias overthrew the central government and the country plunged into anarchy. That fighting, like the fighting today, disrupted markets, kept out aid shipments and led to rapid inflation of food prices. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people starved.

The United States tried to come to the rescue in 1992 and sent thousands of soldiers to Somalia to assist with humanitarian operations

Examples abound...

The BBC has released several reports on the continuing riots in the northern suburb of Paris, France. As of this morning, at least 80 police officers have been injured in the second night of rioting. "Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to keep at bay gangs of youths who were attacking them with stones, fireworks and petrol bombs." "More than 70 vehicles and buildings, including the municipal library, two schools and several shops, were set on fire."
Are the youth rioting over a violation of their fundamental human rights? Denial of food, water, religious beliefs? The instillation of a police state? Perhaps they are being harassed, or oppressed? No, youths told reporters they were avenging the deaths of two teenagers, Moushin, 15, and Larami, 16, whose motorcycle collided with a police car on Sunday killing both boys.

The initial police report stated that the two young men were driving a stolen motorcycle and neither were wearing a helmet. According to the BBC, "The driver did not see the motorcycle arrive and was surprised by the violence of the collision," Witnesses accuse the police of leaving the scene prematurely and not allowing the neighbors to help the two young men.

What I find particularly fascinating is that some officials believe that the riots were not spontaneous, rather that they were organized, and that "the scale of the fury involved suggested the riots may have attracted people from outside the area." The riots were continued, "despite appeals for calm from the families of the two teenagers of Algerian origin whose deaths sparked the violence on Sunday evening."

It leads me to believe that the violence is rooted deeper than avenging the life of a friend. The hurt and despair goes deeper than living in ghetto's and feeling marginalized. It is as if, with each death (the 2 men in 2005 who were killed accidentally after a police chase, and this incident on Sunday) the feelings of resentment, marginalization, indifference, and loathing boil to the surface and explode in the civil space.

This culture that prizes itself on 'equality' and 'tolerance' seems to be struggling to be either, equal or tolerant. A significant portion of the population has been marginalized to the point of violence and revolt.

France is a prime example of a society which has tried to organize itself without God, and has only succeeded to organize itself against man.


BBC: Dozens injured in Paris Rampage
Economist: On the streets, again

The Cube and the Cathedral

The book is not long in pages, but the content was immensely thought provoking. The premise is established on one question, "which culture would better protect human rights?" One that is "stunning, rational, angular, geometric" and entirely secular, or one that is built with flying buttresses, nooks and crannies, holy 'unsameness' and founded on religious beliefs.

The question examines the future of Europe and eventually all of society. He argues that Europe is in a cultural and demographic decline. Families aren't reproducing, and church attendance is in decline. He quotes David Hart who wrote that it is "fairly obvious that there is some direct, indissoluble bond between faith and the will to a future or between the desire for a future and the imagination of eternity." Europe is not only declining culturally, but the ideological trends lead only one direction, hopelessness--no will to a future.

Europe embarked on its creation of the E.U. constitution by eliminating its historically religious (Christian) roots. "European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular." So shaking free of all religious hamstrings, and hang-ups European man is now free! Or so he thinks. But without the moral foundation, what is there left to hold man to the principles of democracy, and human rights without the moral foundation? Without things like justice and mercy, morality how far will we stray? Pierre Manet wrote "self-sacrifice gave way to self-mutilation and the frenzied love of death."

The Europeans have created the ultimate man made society. However, as Sir Edward Grey noted, "It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God he can only organize it against man."


Some quotes:

• "inhuman humanism can neither sustain, nor nurture, nor defend the democratic project. It can only undermine it, or attack it."

• "For Europe to be built on solid foundations, there is a need to call upon authentic values grounded in the universal moral law written on the heart of ever man and woman."

• "One of the roots of the hopelessness that assails man people today is...their inability to see themselves to be forgiven, an inability often resulting from the isolation of those who, by living as if God did not exist, have no one from whom they can seek forgiveness."

• "Tolerance...is a civic discipline not just a personal attitude or a cast of mind."

• "Absent convictions, there is no tolerance; there is only indifference."