From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Thu Jul 01 2010 - 01:33:29 EDT
The Nation (Nairobi)
Somalia: Did the Aid Industry Fuel the Mayhem?
Rasna Warah
27 June 2010
analysis
Nairobi — Somalia celebrates 50 years of independence this week, but many
people are wondering whether there is anything worth celebrating.
For more than two decades, the country has had no functioning government,
and even today, the recently-elected Somali Transitional Government is
barely able to carry out its functions effectively, thanks to militia who
control many parts of the country.
Relief agencies estimate that nearly 1.4 million Somalis have been
displaced since the 1990s, and that nearly half the country's population --
more than 3 million people -- is still in need of relief aid and
assistance.
But this is the story of the Somalia that we all know. The less known story
is that of a country that was systematically destroyed by international
NGOs, UN agencies and donors who undermined the local economy by flooding
Somalia with aid, especially since the fall of Siad Barre in 1991.
No one tells this story better than Michael Maren, a former Peace Corps
volunteer, who in his 1997 book, The Road to Hell, explains how the aid
industry in Somalia became "a self-serving system "that thrived on the
chaos in the country".
His main argument is that the aid industry undermined development in
Somalia by stifling the local economy through relief supplies that killed
industries, and which were routinely stolen by warlords, merchants and
government officials.
Maren states in his book that about two-thirds of the food aid was stolen
from ships at the docks or after it had been transported to the refugee
camps. He witnessed military vehicles leaving camps loaded with bags of
food.
He saw merchants' warehouses filled with bags bearing the slogan "Donated
by the People of the United States". Camp commanders -- usually soldiers or
guerrillas -- would often sell the food to buy arms. Stolen food aid
fuelled the arms race in the country, with warring factions using it to
purchase guns and ammunition, often from the very countries supplying the
aid.
Apparently this practice continues to this day. A leaked UN report states
that roughly half of the $485 million of aid provided to Somalia by the
World Food Programme in 2009 has gone to corrupt contractors, rebels and
even UN staff members. This is not so unusual. A recent BBC report claims
that more than 90 per cent of the money raised by Bob Geldof's famous 1985
Live Aid concert for famine victims in Ethiopia was siphoned off by rebel
fighters.
Maren claims that all the aid agencies in Somalia knew that relief food was
being stolen, but neglected to mention this fact in their reports or during
fund-raising campaigns because millions of dollars and thousands of jobs
were at stake. He says that neither the US Government nor USAid officials
were interested in his revelations, perhaps because, as this month's New
African magazine suggests, all of the United States' food aid programmes
"are designed to develop and expand commercial outlets for US commodities
in world markets".
Journalists, on the other hand, he writes, seemed more concerned about
writing of starving children than about how aid was being used to arm
militia. Maren asserts that all interventions in Somalia -- whether by
NGOs, UN agencies or governments -- had the unintended impact of financing
the destruction of the country.
Maren, who worked as a food monitor for a USAid project in Somalia in the
early 1980s, says that many farmers abandoned their land to live in camps,
where the food was free and where the opportunities to sell food were
greater. This severely impacted on local agricultural production.
Food aid is intimately linked to domestic agricultural production in the
US. When there is a surplus, it is shipped off as aid to places like
Somalia. A 1988 World Bank discussion paper found that food aid, in turn,
often acts to dampen domestic prices, thereby reducing incentives to
domestic producers of food crops and exacerbating the food deficit.
Food aid thus eroded Somalia's economy and made people poorer, thereby
creating a cycle of famine, relief, followed by more famine. It is not just
food that is being dumped in Somalia. The chaos there has allowed criminals
and opportunists to dump all kinds of toxic materials into Somali waters.
According to the UN Environment Programme (Unep), European and Asian
vessels and trawlers have been dumping hazardous waste, including
radioactive uranium waste, in Somali waters since the 1990s.
The good news (if it can be called that) is that the threat of hijacking by
Somali pirates may have temporarily halted this illegal and highly
dangerous activity. Ironically, piracy has also revived the country's
fishing industry, which had almost collapsed due to illegal fishing by
foreign trawlers.
lAfr
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