US Starves Children in Somali War
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/us-starves-children-somali-war
"Three years after creating the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa by encouraging Ethiopia to invade Somalia, the US now unleashes the food weapon on starving people. Forty million pounds of American donated-food is sitting in warehouses in Mombasa, Kenya, but US officials won't allow aid workers to deliver the food to the Somalis that need it..."
Humanitarian crisis as world's largest refugee camp declared full
Tens of thousands in Dadaab camp in Kenya face starvation after fleeing violence in Somalia, medical charity warns
David Smith in Johannesburg
guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 June 2011 18.14 BST
The biggest refugee camp in the world is full, creating a humanitarian emergency that threatens thousands of malnourished children, a medical charity has warned.
Dadaab, a sprawling desert "city" in Kenya with a population expected to reach 450,000 by the end of the year, has run out of space, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) said.
Children who have fled war in neighbouring Somalia are left without food or shelter in dry heat of 50C (122F) and are said to be vulnerable to attack by animals.
"We've got nothing to build a shelter with," Fatima, a 34-year-old refugee from Mogadishu, told MSF. "It's very unsafe here – at night, we're scared that wild animals will eat the children, and we've had threats of violence from local people who say the land is theirs. Children are even being killed by hyenas because they have no protection."
Stranded in the barren desert of Kenya's north-eastern province, surrounded by sand and scrubby bushes, the refugees – most of whom are women and children – arrive with no money, no food, no water and no shelter....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/10/humanitarian-crisis-refugee-...
[url=http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/us-made-catastrophe-most-blame-... of the Blame for the Crisis in Somalia Goes to the U.S.[/url]
The Western mainstream media blame the Somali crisis on Al-Shabab, an Islamist insurgent group that controls much of southern Somalia and initially refused to let in Western aid, a decision it has since reversed. [b]The main culprit behind the crisis, however, is the United States government, which has kept Somalia destabilized and in a perpetual state of civil war since 1991, resulting in a million deaths.[/b] The recent famine is merely the latest episode in a 20-year process of destruction to which Somalia has been subjected by the U.S.
It began in 1990 with the U.S.-sponsored overthrow of the Siad Barre regime, Somalia's last national government. Barre was a dictator and U.S. puppet, but he still refused to give the Americans Somalia's large oil deposits at the cheap price they demanded, so they had him removed.
...With no central government, Somalia lapsed into anarchy and civil war. The U.S. backed one warlord after another for the next 20 years to foment war and division and prevent the emergence of a strong central authority. The conflict has killed a million Somalis out of a population of eight million, and has made famine more likely by making it difficult to cope with severe drought conditions and other natural calamities.
During 2007, when a group of moderate Islamists known as the Islamic Courts Union appeared close to forming a central government and ending the civil war, the U.S. unleashed the Ethiopian invasion on Somalia, encouraging that country (whose murderous ruler Meles Zanawi is Washington's vassal) to further destabilize Somali society and kill 16,000 more of its embattled citizens. The invasion not only failed to defeat the Somali Islamists, but also radicalized them so that they re-emerged as the far more anti-Western Al-Shabab, controlling much of southern Somalia.
...So far, this U.S. imperial plan for Somalia has been an abject failure, with Washington unable to control the country's oil, no matter how many incursions and invasions it has unleashed on the territory. Ethiopian troops withdrew in disgrace in 2009, leaving a weak and corrupt U.S. puppet regime which controls little in Somalia, protected by a small African Union force. Al-Shabab appears to be the strongest military force in Somalia, now controlling much of the south. Faced with this obstacle, the U.S. has once again deployed another proxy, this time the Kenyan army, to invade Somalia. This occurred on October 16 when 2,000 Kenyan troops entered Somalia with the aim of defeating Al-Shabab. Kenya is unlikely to achieve this objective, given that Al-Shabab's men are highly experienced combatants, fighting on and for their own country, and have already defeated Ethiopia.
...What the U.S. has accomplished in Somalia is to make it an ungovernable killing ground where Somalis cannot use their own oil to develop their country or deal with famine and droughts or other environmental crises on a national level. The civil war has already killed more than a million people, and now the famine threatens to starve another 750,000 Somalis to death, most of them children.
The U.S. response to this catastrophe it has created in Somalia is to cut its economic aid to that country by 88%, increase drone attacks, and encourage its vassal Kenya to launch another invasion. Although Al-Shabab is now allowing Western aid into the areas it controls, the U.S. has forbidden this aid to be distributed in Al-Shabab's territory, creating serious problems for agencies trying to feed starving people in Somalia.
....Not content with killing a million Somalis, starving 750,000 of them, and invading their country three times, the U.S. is now killing Somalis with drone missiles. On October 14, an attack by a U.S. drone killed 78 people and injured 64 others near Qooqani, a town in southern Somalia, after another such attack had killed 11 civilians in Hoosingow district. The U.S. launched five drone attacks on Somalia during September and October, indicating that this has now become a regular U.S. policy. The U.S., of course, says it is targeting militants, but the strikes are mostly killing civilians, fuelling public hatred for Washington and a widespread anti-U.S. militancy.
