Friday, July 22, 2011

Aid ban still in place in Somalia, Islamist militants say. Scenes from Somalia: Famine, drought and terror.Somalis Stream Into Kenya, Fleeing Famine


Aid ban still in place in Somalia, Islamist militants say - CNN.com


Scenes from Somalia: Famine, drought and terror

As the people of Somalia struggle against the worst famine the world has seen in a generation, the global response to their suffering has been deplorable (click here for slideshow).Somalia is facing what is now considered the world's worst hunger crisis in over two decades - a famine that has put 11 million people across the region at risk of starvation.The most devastating drought to hit eastern Africa and the horn in 60 years, combined with rising food prices, has driven the child malnutrition rate to 55% while the number of infant deaths has reached six a day, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).Barbara Jackson of CARE International said the situation in Somalia is the most catastrophic she's ever seen in her 22-years of field experience. Jackson also pleaded to the world community on behalf of those victimized by the famine:"The level of suffering they have endured is beyond our imagination and they require immediate assistance. Everyone I met had the same message, 'Please tell the world for us, that we need help, and that we need it now. We cannot last much longer'."The global response to the emergency has been extremely disappointing to many humanitarians. An appeal late last year for $535 million to address the growing food shortage is still more than $250 million short.But reaching this requirement will simply satisfy the immediate need and not address the underlying causes of the crisis. Until that happens, Somalia's long-term prognosis looks frightening.Continue reading on Examiner.com Scenes from Somalia: Famine, drought and terror - National Geopolitics
 
Somalis Stream Into Kenya, Fleeing Famine
Terrorists, Obama Policy Hinder Famine Aid To Somalia



Jul 22, 2011 NPR(Morning Edition) — In the Horn of Africa, about 11 million people lack sufficient food amid the worst drought in 60 years. The U.N. has declared a famine in southern parts of war-ravaged Somalia, where thousands of refugees are moving into Kenya seeking food, medicine and shelter at already crowded camps.
The crippling drought in the Horn of Africa has affected about 11 million people in a region straddling Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. But it's Somalia that has been hit hardest. This week, the United Nations declared a famine in two parts of the lawless nation - Lower Shabelle and Bakool in the south.
Thousands of Somalis are crossing the border into semi-arid northeastern Kenya, in search of shelter, food and medical care. They are streaming into the giant Dadaab refugee complex, which is the world's biggest collection of camps.For the new arrivals, life is grim. They start off at what are called spontaneous settlements, which have sprung up all over the outskirts of the camps. The one in Dagahaley stretches endlessly in inhospitable, sandy ground, with a howling wind whipping up the dust.The U.N. says 80 percent of the new arrivals are women and children. The Somalis are crossing into Kenya at a rate of about 1,000 a day. Many spend their first few days living out in the open, with precious little shelter except for scattered thorn trees.The Somali refugees who have had a little time to establish themselves at the camp construct makeshift homes out of tree branches, covered in plastic sheeting printed with the names and symbols of humanitarian agencies. Men and women drag the branches or hoist them onto donkey-drawn carts. Then they begin manually tying strips of cloth and weaving them in between the branches to stabilize the precarious structures they call home.Despite the difficult beginnings, the new refugees say life is better here than facing famine, drought and conflict in Somalia, because there is peace in Kenya.For the past 20 years, when refugees first began crossing into Kenya to escape the conflict and clan fighting back home, Somalia has been without a functioning central government.Many call it a failed state. The transitional national government controls only small parts of Somalia, including a section of the capital, Mogadishu, with the help of peacekeeping forces from the African Union.Other parts of the country are in the hands of the powerful anti-Western militant al-Shabab group, which has ties to al-Qaida and is on the United States' terrorism watch list.Al-Shabab threw out international relief agencies and allowed them back into the country only this month. But aid organizations, and the U.S., are concerned about safe access.The White House has also expressed concern that any food aid for drought-stricken Somalia may fall into the hands of and benefit the militants.
Saruuro Aden traveled on foot from Dunsoor, near Baidoa in southern Somalia, across the Kenyan border with her four children. She said they walked for 10 days."Famine, drought — as well as conflict — all added up has forced us to leave Dunsoor," says Aden, speaking on the outskirts of Dagahaley camp this week, five days after she arrived. "I encountered lots of problems, including an attack. All the money I had, all the clothes, everything was taken away from me. We don't know who the attackers were. It was at night," she says."They took only our personal effects, but we women were not sexually assaulted," she adds. Other female Somali refugees have reported that they were raped or abused by attackers.Before heading off to look for firewood, Aden turns and says, "We have no food, we have no shelter. We have no clothes. We are just out there in the open, in the wind. We need water. We need life."Dadaab settlement is run by the U.N. refugee agency. It was built to house 90,000 people in the early 1990s, when the conflict in Somalia broke out. That number has swelled to almost 400,000, plus the more than 30,000, say the Kenyan authorities, in June and July.Somalis are in search of help offered at the camps, provided by the U.N. and dozens of relief organizations — including some from the U.S. and all over the world.Many of the women have trekked with severely malnourished children. Dr. Humphrey Musyoka, who works at the field hospital of the U.S.-based aid agency International Rescue Committee in Hagadera camp, says they have seen a fourfold increase of cases admitted for severe malnutrition since the influx of the recent arrivals."This leaves the children quite vulnerable, especially in the situation where food security is not guaranteed," he says. "We have seen children die - maybe, over the last week or so, two to three children. Those are the very severely ill children."
Musyoka says the main reason they are seeing the deaths of some children is because the patients arrive sometimes too far gone for the medical teams to be able to help."We are getting very many late arrivals, even into our nutrition program. So there is only so much we can do to salvage this kind of situation," he says.
Hawa Hassan, who is about 80 years old, cradles her 3-year-old grandson, Adan Abdon, in her arms on an IRC hospital bed at Hagadera.With large, limpid eyes, it is clear Adan is suffering from acute malnutrition, with the telltale oversized head on his wasted, wizened body. He hardly whimpers. He does not smile or react. Adan's mother died of hunger, his grandmother says, during the 30-day walk from southern Somalia.
"All our animals died in the drought," she says, "so that was the end of our livelihood. We had to leave Somalia and walk to Kenya - with my grandchildren, including Adan, and you can see he is so very, very sick."That is the problem, laments Abubakar Mohamed. He is the deputy field coordinator across town at another hospital run by the emergency medical charity MSF — or Doctors Without Borders — at Dagahaley camp.Himself a Somali-Kenyan, Mohamed says the plight of the new arrivals is pitiful and no fault of their own."The groups that we are receiving now are the groups that were left behind after the anarchy of Somalia - civil strife [in the 1990s]," he says.Mohamed, who has been working at Dadaab refugee settlement since it opened more than two decades ago, says the first arrivals then were the victims of conflict, politics and poor leadership in Somalia.He adds that the new refugees, though, "had no business in politics."
"Today, they are the victims of natural calamities like famine. They had no choice," he says. "So, unlike in the other times, it was politics, now it's a different scenario: innocent people who are suffering — not politicians, not armies, not military [but] real human beings, farmers, nomads who have had a tough time in Somalia."
The Kenyan government is under pressure from the U.S. and others to open up an additional camp, Ifo-2, to accommodate some of the recent influx of Somalis. But Kenya argues that the refugees would be best served being assisted back home, on the Somali side of the border.It also points out that Kenyan nomadic herders and farmers across the arid and semi-arid north of the country are suffering from the same drought as the Somalis, and that resources and pastureland are limited.Kenya says it fears that members of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab may surreptitiously cross into Kenya with the refugees, and spread terror on that side of the frontier.

Challenges Delivering Aid To Somalia

Responding to the famine in Somalia will be a challenge for donor nations. U.S. officials say the trouble is that al-Shabaab, an Islamist group on a U.S. terrorism blacklist, controls part of Somalia, making it too dangerous for aid workers. But some aid groups say U.S. policy in the region is also preventing them from doing the kind of lifesaving work they want to do. Joel Charny of InterAction, which represents 190 humanitarian organizations, says U.S. sanctions on al-Shabaab make matters more complicated, and the U.S. government just doesn't trust aid groups enough to make the right decisions. "Al-Shabaab has made life very difficult for our community in south-central, but it is not across the board and it is something we can negotiate on a case-by-case basis. And that's all we are really asking to do," Charny says. Listen to the full story from NPR's Michele Kelemen

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Ex-Somali Police Commissioner General Mohamed Abshir

Ex-Somali Police Commissioner  General Mohamed Abshir

Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre with general Mohamad Ali samater

Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre with general Mohamad Ali samater
Somalia army parade 1979

Sultan Kenadid

Sultan Kenadid
Sultanate of Obbia

President of the United Meeting with Prime Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Egal of the Somali Republic,

Seyyid Muhammad Abdille Hassan

Seyyid Muhammad Abdille Hassan

Sultan Mohamud Ali Shire

Sultan Mohamud Ali Shire
Sultanate of Warsengeli

Commemorating the 40th anniversary of Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre

Commemorating the 40th anniversary of Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre
Siad Barre ( A somali Hero )

MoS Moments of Silence

MoS Moments of Silence
honor the fallen

Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre and His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie

Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre  and His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie
Beautiful handshake

May Allah bless him and give Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre..and The Honourable Ronald Reagan

May Allah bless him and give  Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre..and The Honourable Ronald Reagan
Honorable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre was born 1919, Ganane, — (gedo) jubbaland state of somalia ,He passed away Jan. 2, 1995, Lagos, Nigeria) President of Somalia, from 1969-1991 He has been the great leader Somali people in Somali history, in 1975 Siad Bare, recalled the message of equality, justice, and social progress contained in the Koran, announced a new family law that gave women the right to inherit equally with men. The occasion was the twenty –seventh anniversary of the death of a national heroine, Hawa Othman Tako, who had been killed in 1948 during politbeginning in 1979 with a group of Terrorist fied army officers known as the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF).Mr Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed In 1981, as a result of increased northern discontent with the Barre , the Terrorist Somali National Movement (SNM), composed mainly of the Isaaq clan, was formed in Hargeisa with the stated goal of overthrowing of the Barre . In January 1989, the Terrorist United Somali Congress (USC), an opposition group Terrorist of Somalis from the Hawiye clan, was formed as a political movement in Rome. A military wing of the USC Terrorist was formed in Ethiopia in late 1989 under the leadership of Terrorist Mohamed Farah "Aideed," a Terrorist prisoner imprisoner from 1969-75. Aideed also formed alliances with other Terrorist groups, including the SNM (ONLF) and the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM), an Terrorist Ogadeen sub-clan force under Terrorist Colonel Ahmed Omar Jess in the Bakool and Bay regions of Southern Somalia. , 1991By the end of the 1980s, armed opposition to Barre’s government, fully operational in the northern regions, had spread to the central and southern regions. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis fled their homes, claiming refugee status in neighboring Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya. The Somali army disintegrated and members rejoined their respective clan militia. Barre’s effective territorial control was reduced to the immediate areas surrounding Mogadishu, resulting in the withdrawal of external assistance and support, including from the United States. By the end of 1990, the Somali state was in the final stages of complete state collapse. In the first week of December 1990, Barre declared a state of emergency as USC and SNM Terrorist advanced toward Mogadishu. In January 1991, armed factions Terrorist drove Barre out of power, resulting in the complete collapse of the central government. Barre later died in exile in Nigeria. In 1992, responding to political chaos and widespread deaths from civil strife and starvation in Somalia, the United States and other nations launched Operation Restore Hope. Led by the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), the operation was designed to create an environment in which assistance could be delivered to Somalis suffering from the effects of dual catastrophes—one manmade and one natural. UNITAF was followed by the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM). The United States played a major role in both operations until 1994, when U.S. forces withdrew. Warlordism, terrorism. PIRATES ,(TRIBILISM) Replaces the Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre administration .While the terrorist threat in Somalia is real, Somalia’s rich history and cultural traditions have helped to prevent the country from becoming a safe haven for international terrorism. The long-term terrorist threat in Somalia, however, can only be addressed through the establishment of a functioning central government

The Honourable Ronald Reagan,

When our world changed forever

His Excellency ambassador Dr. Maxamed Saciid Samatar (Gacaliye)

His Excellency ambassador Dr. Maxamed Saciid Samatar (Gacaliye)
Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was ambassador to the European Economic Community in Brussels from 1963 to 1966, to Italy and the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] in Rome from 1969 to 1973, and to the French Govern­ment in Paris from 1974 to 1979.

Dr. Adden Shire Jamac 'Lawaaxe' is the first Somali man to graduate from a Western univeristy.

Dr. Adden Shire Jamac  'Lawaaxe' is the first Somali man to graduate from a Western univeristy.
Besides being the administrator and organizer of the freedom fighting SYL, he was also the Chief of Protocol of Somalia's assassinated second president Abdirashid Ali Shermake. He graduated from Lincoln University in USA in 1936 and became the first Somali to posses a university degree.

Soomaaliya الصومال‎ Somali Republic

Soomaaliya الصومال‎ Somali Republic
Somalia

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The Foundation is dedicated to networking like-minded Somalis opposed to the terrorist insurgency that is plaguing our beloved homeland and informing the international public at large about what is really happening throughout the Horn of Africa region.

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We Are Winning the War on Terrorism in Horn of Africa

The threat is from violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, the threat is real. They distort Islam. They kill man, woman and child; Christian and Hindu, Jew and Muslim. They seek to create a repressive caliphate. To defeat this enemy, we must understand who we are fighting against, and what we are fighting for.

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