BY NADIFA MOHAMED
Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP
Somalia refugees receive food at an internally displaced camp in
Mogadishu, Somalia, after fleeing from southern Somalia.
Crowd flocks to wedding route for front-row seat
There is famine in Somalia for the second time in 20 years, and I blame myself: For decades, there has been so much bad news that I have had to largely ignore the place, like so many others around the world. Now some 3 million people are starving in southern Somalia. Will we look away again?
I feel guilty because my family has known hunger and refugee camps; my very presence in London today can be traced to my grandfather Guure's decision to flee Somalia: After a drought in the 1930s, he decided that, with no livestock to his name, he may as well follow the horizon. He never returned to his family and died in Sudan a decade later, leaving my father no more than his wandering feet as an inheritance. My father, in turn, sought sanctuary from the poverty of colonial East Africa by jumping on a prison ship carrying Jewish refugees from Palestine to Europe. On that ship, he determined to escape the legacy of hunger and violence that for so long plagued his homeland.
But 63 years later, it does seem that Somalis are particularly cursed. They have experienced dictatorship, civil war, famine, droughts, floods, a tsunami, toxic waste dumped along their coast, a brutal Ethiopian invasion, drone attacks, secret prisons and, as a kind of cherry on the despair cake, domination by a militia, Al-Shaabab, that forbids soccer and bans bras - and is now preventing aid from getting to the hungry.
I was not shocked when famine was declared in two regions of southern Somalia a few weeks ago. The nomads there have been living on air and faith for years now, with the occasional remittance from taxi-driving brethren in London, Cape Town, Minneapolis, Toronto, Helsinki and other far-flung reaches of the Somali diaspora.
Last summer, I visited Hargeisa, the city of my birth and the capital of the breakaway republic of Somaliland. I saw the refugees begging at the bus station with children on their backs or crowding around their legs. I remember one woman especially because the infant in her arms was so plump and healthy-looking while she sat dull-eyed by the roadside, clearly starving so that her child might eat. That woman and her child were signposts of the present famine. There are now 12 million just like them across the entire Horn of Africa.
Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, is a day's drive away from Hargeisa but can seem a universe from the stable, democratic Somaliland of marathons and literary festivals. That's partly because Somaliland was allowed by the international community to create a political solution to its civil war that was dependent on popular support.
Southern Somalia, in contrast, has had one intervention after another; the UN-led "Operation Restore Hope" that was withdrawn after some 1,000 Somalis and 18 U.S. soldiers died in the "Black Hawk Down" firefight, the war on terror-financed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops in 2006 and foreign-sponsored "transitional" Somali governments - the only transitions so far having been from inaction to chaos to shriller demands for outside support.
Despite the fact that southern Somalia contains the nation's richest agricultural regions, the droughts caused by the La Nina effect in East Africa have created famine in Somalia - but not in Somaliland. That's because popular needs are irrelevant to the endless power struggles in Mogadishu.
This famine, then, resulted from the absolute inability to create a political environment in which droughts and floods are dealt with effectively, an environment in which people aren't bankrupted every couple of years as they flee from internecine violence they have no control over, an environment in which young men cannot be lured with as little as $50 to kill innocents - as they were when two teenage girls were executed for spying last October.
But maybe, finally, this drought will provide the impetus for a real solution to the political, economic and social stagnation that has beset Somalia since the lengthy Siyad Barre dictatorship ended in 1991. The answers lie with people like Hawo Abdi, who has fed and given medical assistance to tens of thousands from her stretch of land outside Mogadishu, and with those who have created universities, hospitals and feeding stations at incredible risk to themselves.
Ultimately, I believe that the onus is on Somalis inside the country and in the diaspora to recreate a state worthy of that title - international intervention cannot be an end in itself. Nation building is a problem Somalis have to solve on their own.
That's hard to do, though, when you're starving. The Somalis now trekking to refugee camps seek shelter while also trying to avoid the fighters who squabble over the remains of Somalia. Right now, they need food, water, shelter and medical assistance. After that, they will rise again and reclaim their country.
Mohamed is the London-based, Somali-born author of "Black Mamba Boy," a novel.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/08/14/2011-08-14_somalia_is_starving_for_stability.html#ixzz1V26DKSSW
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/08/14/2011-08-14_somalia_is_starving_for_stability.html#ixzz1V260XpUd
Crowd flocks to wedding route for front-row seat
There is famine in Somalia for the second time in 20 years, and I blame myself: For decades, there has been so much bad news that I have had to largely ignore the place, like so many others around the world. Now some 3 million people are starving in southern Somalia. Will we look away again?
I feel guilty because my family has known hunger and refugee camps; my very presence in London today can be traced to my grandfather Guure's decision to flee Somalia: After a drought in the 1930s, he decided that, with no livestock to his name, he may as well follow the horizon. He never returned to his family and died in Sudan a decade later, leaving my father no more than his wandering feet as an inheritance. My father, in turn, sought sanctuary from the poverty of colonial East Africa by jumping on a prison ship carrying Jewish refugees from Palestine to Europe. On that ship, he determined to escape the legacy of hunger and violence that for so long plagued his homeland.
But 63 years later, it does seem that Somalis are particularly cursed. They have experienced dictatorship, civil war, famine, droughts, floods, a tsunami, toxic waste dumped along their coast, a brutal Ethiopian invasion, drone attacks, secret prisons and, as a kind of cherry on the despair cake, domination by a militia, Al-Shaabab, that forbids soccer and bans bras - and is now preventing aid from getting to the hungry.
I was not shocked when famine was declared in two regions of southern Somalia a few weeks ago. The nomads there have been living on air and faith for years now, with the occasional remittance from taxi-driving brethren in London, Cape Town, Minneapolis, Toronto, Helsinki and other far-flung reaches of the Somali diaspora.
Last summer, I visited Hargeisa, the city of my birth and the capital of the breakaway republic of Somaliland. I saw the refugees begging at the bus station with children on their backs or crowding around their legs. I remember one woman especially because the infant in her arms was so plump and healthy-looking while she sat dull-eyed by the roadside, clearly starving so that her child might eat. That woman and her child were signposts of the present famine. There are now 12 million just like them across the entire Horn of Africa.
Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, is a day's drive away from Hargeisa but can seem a universe from the stable, democratic Somaliland of marathons and literary festivals. That's partly because Somaliland was allowed by the international community to create a political solution to its civil war that was dependent on popular support.
Southern Somalia, in contrast, has had one intervention after another; the UN-led "Operation Restore Hope" that was withdrawn after some 1,000 Somalis and 18 U.S. soldiers died in the "Black Hawk Down" firefight, the war on terror-financed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops in 2006 and foreign-sponsored "transitional" Somali governments - the only transitions so far having been from inaction to chaos to shriller demands for outside support.
Despite the fact that southern Somalia contains the nation's richest agricultural regions, the droughts caused by the La Nina effect in East Africa have created famine in Somalia - but not in Somaliland. That's because popular needs are irrelevant to the endless power struggles in Mogadishu.
This famine, then, resulted from the absolute inability to create a political environment in which droughts and floods are dealt with effectively, an environment in which people aren't bankrupted every couple of years as they flee from internecine violence they have no control over, an environment in which young men cannot be lured with as little as $50 to kill innocents - as they were when two teenage girls were executed for spying last October.
But maybe, finally, this drought will provide the impetus for a real solution to the political, economic and social stagnation that has beset Somalia since the lengthy Siyad Barre dictatorship ended in 1991. The answers lie with people like Hawo Abdi, who has fed and given medical assistance to tens of thousands from her stretch of land outside Mogadishu, and with those who have created universities, hospitals and feeding stations at incredible risk to themselves.
Ultimately, I believe that the onus is on Somalis inside the country and in the diaspora to recreate a state worthy of that title - international intervention cannot be an end in itself. Nation building is a problem Somalis have to solve on their own.
That's hard to do, though, when you're starving. The Somalis now trekking to refugee camps seek shelter while also trying to avoid the fighters who squabble over the remains of Somalia. Right now, they need food, water, shelter and medical assistance. After that, they will rise again and reclaim their country.
Mohamed is the London-based, Somali-born author of "Black Mamba Boy," a novel.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/08/14/2011-08-14_somalia_is_starving_for_stability.html#ixzz1V26DKSSW
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/08/14/2011-08-14_somalia_is_starving_for_stability.html#ixzz1V260XpUd
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