The UN has announced that in 2010-2012, including the Great Horn of
Africa Drought period, at least 250,000 Somalis starved to death.
Most of those who died from starvation were internally displaced
persons, displaced in the main by the military invasion and occupation
of southern Somalia by the UN backed Ethiopian Army and then the AU
"peacekeepers", today some 25,000 strong.
When I last wrote about starvation in Somalia I spoke of the UN
budgeting 10 cents a day for food aid to feed each Somali refugee. Its
called a "budget shortfall" as in "we want to help but we just don't
have the money".
Yet during this period of mass starvation of the Somali people the UN
and its western overlords spent over $1 billion funding its military
"peacekeeping mission" in what's left of the country.
$1 billion for war and 250,000 Somalis left to starve to death?
Maybe knowing that the head of the largest UN food aid "ngo" in
Somalia, UNICEF, is Anthony "Tony" Lake, formerly National Security
Advisor of the USA and once nominated to be Director of the CIA can
help one understand why this happened.
Tony Lake is the one who so infamously stated he "regretted" not doing
anything while knowing full well mass murder was going on in Rwanda on
his watch as Bill Clinton's right hand man in 1994. CIA to UNICEF?
Should one be suprised to find mass starvation under his watch in
Somalia?
Today, while the propaganda machines in the western media speak of
"peace and democracy coming to Somalia for the first time in a
generation" they some how forget how Somalis themselves brought peace
to Mogadishu in 2006 only to see the UN backed Ethiopian invasion send
it all up in smoke.
The television news channels may trot out a few tame Somalis to spout
rhetoric about "Somalis running the show" behind the cameras stand
"peacekeepers" armed to the teeth by the UN backed by the
banktatorships in the west.
The fact is no power no matter how strong can bring peace to Somalia
from without, only the Somali people, left alone to sort out their own
problems can do so. In 2006 the Union of Islamic Courts succeeded for
the first time in 15 years to no avail due to armed intervention
ordered by the USA and its minions in the UN. This externally funded
and directed armed conflict continues to drive hundreds of thousands
of Somalis from their land and homes leaving them to starve on the
UN's bounty of 10 cents a day.
And all the while more arms pour into Somalia from the west with Pax
Americana demanding that any and all paper restrictions on such be
lifted, all in the name of the "war on terror", really a "war of
terror", a war on the Somali people whose main misfortune turns out to
be that they live smack in the middle of the Horn of Africa astride
the "Gate of Tears", Baab Al Mandeb, where the Indian Ocean meets the
Red Sea through which the largest economies in the world depend on to
ship their goods.
Writing about the enormous, inhuman crimes committed by the UN in the
Horn of Africa has become almost to painful to continue to do. But
when the UN sends its talking heads to tell the world that a quarter
million more Somalis died these past two years, died by mass
starvation what choice does one have but to once again raise a voice
in protest for turning your head away from the television and
pretending not to hear is simply not a decision I for one can live
with.
Thomas C. Mountain is the most widely distributed independent
journalist in Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He
can be reached at thomascmountain_at_yahoo_dot_com.
