Somalia is the world's worst humanitarian crisis. It is not the drought that is killing thousands of people in Somalia, but the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab. Eliminate militant Islam, and a lot of the rest of the world's problems will go away.
Somalia is in the midst of a famine, suffering from the worst drought in 60 years. 29,000 Somali children have died within the past three months, and 100,000 Somalis are expected to die in the next few weeks. The al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab has destroyed the country, taking over much of the southern part of the country where it has imposed a strict version of Sharia law. The Taliban-like organization refuses to allow humanitarian organizations associated with the West to provide aid to the starving people. Al-Shabab expelled the U.N.'s World Food Programme, which had provided the bulk of the aid, from much of the country in January 2010, accusing it of being a U.S. proxy. Incredulously, some are blaming the U.S. for the famine, not al-Shabab.
For several years now the U.N. has described Somalia as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. 11.8 million people across Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Djibouti – generally Africa's eastern peninsula known as the "Horn of Africa" – have been affected. According to the U.N., one quarter of Somali's 9.9 million people have been displaced. More than 3.7 million people are in need of food and water, including 1.25 million children. 63 percent of southern Somalia is starving or at risk of it, and the U.N. reports that only 20 percent are being reached by relief workers. Every day 1,500 Somalis escape across the border to refugee camps in Kenya.
The country is undergoing an all-out war between al-Shabab and the Federal Transitional Government (FTG), which is supported by the West and African Union troops. Al-Shabab, which translates loosely as "the youth," operates like the Taliban, ruthlessly murdering anyone who gets in its way of taking over the country and enforcing Sharia law.
The dilemma facing the international community is whether to provide more humanitarian aid, because it may be perpetuating the fighting. Al-Shabab has been stealing the aid to feed its militants and is also selling it, enabling it to continue fighting.
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If Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen is correct, absolutely no famine is purely and simply the result of a lack of food. Sen’s research, which has attracted widespread support from development economists, shows that political institutions and conflicts play a major role. The situation in Somalia is sad confirmation of Sen’s views. Unfortunately, the simple answer to such problems is the hardest–become politically stable. And Islamists around the world work to prevent such stability from developing wherever they can. Somalia is one of their success stories. The result is that Somalia is the classic example of a “failed state,” and others are developing. [Americans should be especially concerned because Mexico shows many signs of trending toward this condition.] One of the rediscoveries–it should come as no surprise to conservatives–of many present-day political scientists and even a few economists is that plain old law and order, plain old stable government, is necessary to promote economic development and to feed a growing population. I note that Somalia’s neighbors, whose societies are affected by the presence close by of a collapsing nation, seem too blind to notice that radical Islamism will destabilize them as well unless they act. Will they? I doubt it.
What do you say to folks who say whatever problems there might be in Africa or elsewhere i.e. Islamic terror, famine,and in this case genocide, it is ultimately the consequence of first, European colonization, and second, America?
http://www.thenation.com/article/163210/blowback-somalia?rel=emailNation
What I say is that they apparently know little or nothing about the history of the place they're talking about. Long before European colonization, Africans (or Asians or anybody else on the planet) were killing and enslaving each other quite cheerfully–and some of their rulers had figured out that allowing a famine to develop was a pretty good way to eliminate political opponents. While Europeans (or Americans) perpetrated various evils, so did the locals on each other. People just do this and always have. As the Roman saying has it, "Man is a wolf to man."