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 Médecins Sans Frontières 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, s, 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 eport 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 tières 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."