U.S. Starves Children in Somali War | Black Agenda Report

U.S. Starves Children in Somali War

Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

11 Nov 2009

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Click the flash player to listen to or the mic to download an audio in MP3 format.

Three years after creating the “worst humanitarian crisis” in Africa by encouraging Ethiopia to invade Somalia, the U.S. now unleashes the food weapon on starving people. “Forty million pounds of American-donated food is sitting in warehouses in Mombasa, Kenya, but U.S. officials won’t allow aid workers to deliver the food to the Somalis that need it.”

U.S. Starves Children in Somali War

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The Americans are blatantly using food as a political weapon.”

The United States is waging a war of starvation against the people of Somalia. According to United Nations officials, Washington has interrupted the flow of desperately needed food to Somalia, on the grounds that some of it might find its way into the hands of the Shabab, the Islamists the U.S. calls “terrorists,” but who are winning the war for control of southern and central Somalia.

Forty million pounds of American-donated food is sitting in warehouses in Mombasa, Kenya, but U.S. officials won’t allow aid workers to deliver the food to the Somalis that need it. The Americans are blatantly using food as a political weapon, holding starving people hostage to U.S. political objectives – much like ancient armies did when they laid siege to cities to starve the inhabitants into surrender.

It’s now going on three years since the Americans imposed a living hell on Somalia. In December 2006, the U.S. encouraged Ethiopia to invade Somalia to crush an Islamist government that had brought a modicum of peace to the country. The invasion created what the United Nations called the “worst humanitarian crisis in Africa” – worse than Darfur. This U.S.-made crisis was worsened by a devastating drought, leaving half the population totally dependent on outside food aid, the largest part of it from the United States. By locking the food up in Kenyan warehouses, “the U.S. government is holding the Somalia relief enterprise…hostage to its counterterrorism policy,” according to a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

“The Americans cannot win in any conventional military sense, so they resort to a war of starvation.”

The American puppet government in Somalia controls no more than a few neighborhoods of the capital city, Mogadishu, and its airport. Were it not for massive U.S. arms aid and the protection of Rwandan and Burundian soldiers, the U.S.-backed government would disintegrate. The Americans cannot win in any conventional military sense, so they resort to a war of starvation.

According to a New York Times article, Somali elders report that many children who had been kept alive by food relief are now dying because of the American aid cutoff. The situation is so dire, that only the U.S. food stores in Kenya can reach Somalia in time to stave off a disastrous famine. There are simply no other resources available.

The drought in East Africa has affected U.S. allies and enemies, alike. Ethiopia has made a plea on behalf of 23 million people threatened by drought in the region. And “the worst drought in ten years” has been exacerbated by a huge, artificial rise in food prices caused by speculators, most of them based in the United States and other rich countries.

Thus, Somalia's hungry are battered from three sides: by artificially high food prices, by drought, and by a deliberate U.S. war of starvation. The Obama Administration is determined to make the Somali people scream as punishment for resisting American domination. But starving babies cannot scream. They can't even cry.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories

Rezo Nodwes
Haiti| UN: twenty organizations say "No to the renewal of BINUH!"
22 Jun 2022
The Security Council must say no to continuing interference in Haiti's affairs through the United Nations Integrated office in Haiti (BINUH). BINUH is just the latest iteration of colonial control…
John Perry
Nicaragua a ‘Dictatorship’ When It Follows US Lead on NGOs
22 Jun 2022
The U.S. corporate media loyally follow the state's narrative about other countries. Nicaragua has instituted rules similar to those in the U.S. regarding governance of NGOs. But destabilizing that…
Jonathan Cook
Britain Looks to Israel for Ideas on How to Curb the “Problem” of Asylum Seekers
22 Jun 2022
Rwanda's agreement to take asylum seekers from the United Kingdom has its roots in a similar arrangement made with Israel. There would be fewer asylum seekers if the UK and its allies did not hatch…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio June 17, 2022
17 Jun 2022
A Washington DC Black Lives Matter organizer's efforts to prove police surveillance, of her activities, an anti-imperialist summit countered the U.S. narrative at Summit of the Americas, a defense…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Lives Matter Organizer Under Police Surveillance
17 Jun 2022
April Goggans is an organizer with Black Lives Matter DC. She filed a Freedom of Information act request with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington in order to determine the extent of…