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By
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
DOCOL, Somalia, October 3, 2009 — One in five Somali children is wasting
away from malnutrition. Tens of thousands need urgent medical care to
survive. The whole middle belt of the country is teetering on the brink
of famine. United Nations officials say Somalia has not been in such
perilous shape since the central government collapsed in 1991 and is in
desperate need of help.
But right now that help is being delayed, they say, at least partly
because the American government is worried that its aid is going to feed
terrorists.
American officials are concerned that United Nations contractors may be
funneling American donations to the Shabab, a Somali terrorist group
with growing ties to Al Qaeda. United Nations officials say the American
government has been withholding millions of dollars in aid shipments
while a new set of rules is worked out to better police the distribution
of aid.
Few aid officials believe that the American government will actually
shut off the spigot of life-saving assistance to Somalia when a
punishing drought is sweeping across the region. But at least $50
million in American aid has been delayed as talks continue, United
Nations officials said. Meanwhile, there is only enough emergency food
to last Somalia four more weeks, they said.
“The potential damage is huge,” said Kiki Gbeho, the head coordinator of
United Nations humanitarian operations in Somalia, during a visit to a
drought-stricken area on Thursday.
Overall aid funds were drastically down this year, even before the
American government postponed its usually hefty contributions, Ms. Gbeho
said. As a result, disease-prevention programs had to be cut, and “if
you don’t give funding to Al Shabaab areas, that’s 60 percent of the
people,” she added.
American officials defended their actions on Thursday. One State
Department official said the amount of withheld aid was less than $50
million, though the official would not say exactly how much.
“We were compelled to hold up that amount once there were legitimate
concerns that the aid might be being diverted,” said the official, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he was not authorized to be
named. “We have to follow the law.”
The official emphasized that the delays had not caused any interruptions
in food aid delivery, something United Nation officials confirmed,
though they said the uninterrupted flow of emergency food into Somalia
was possible only because of leftovers from last year’s budget and
agencies’ borrowing from themselves until new money comes in. The State
Department also says that it plans to resume full shipments and that the
delayed aid will be distributed soon.
Elders here in Docol, in central Somalia, say they are running out of
time and nearly finished with their emergency rations, which they often
share with their animals because the drought has killed all the pasture
land.
What will happen if the rations are delayed any longer?
“Simple,” Sheik Ali Gab said. “We will all starve.”
Docol is just one of the countless spots of concentrated misery across
Somalia, where people come after they have lost everything — their
animals, their homes, sometimes even their children, in the hopes of
getting a sack of donated grain, which often has a big “USA” stamped on
it.
The American government is the largest donor to Somalia, providing about
40 percent of the $850 million annual aid budget, intended to feed more
than three million people.
Recent correspondence among American agencies shows that the State
Department was so concerned about the potential legal consequences of
aid diversions that it sent a letter last month asking for a guarantee
from the Treasury Department that American aid officials would not be
prosecuted for any American aid that slipped into Shabaab hands.
Last year, the American government listed the Shabaab as a foreign
terrorist organization, a designation that means that aiding or abetting
the Shabaab is a serious crime. The sanctions against black-listed
groups are enforced by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign
Assets Control, or OFAC.
American aid programs “will be carried out in areas where the Specially
Designated Global Terrorist group Al Shabaab enjoys increasing control
and influence,” the State Department letter explained.
The State Department wanted “confirmation that OFAC will not seek
enforcement action against United States government employees, grantees
and contractors” if “accidental, unintentional or incidental benefits”
flowed to the Shabaab.
The Treasury Department office responded that any transactions with the
Shabaab were prohibited, but that it would not prosecute American aid
officials if they acted in “good faith.”
American officials are increasingly concerned that the Shabaab and their
allies are working with Al Qaeda to turn Somalia into a factory for
global jihad.
Some Somali-Americans have already joined the Shabaab as suicide
bombers, raising the prospects that one day men like these could exploit
their American citizenship and return to the United States to wreak
havoc.
The Shabaab have been waging a vicious guerrilla war against Somalia’s
transitional government, which has grass-roots support and foreign
backing, but is hobbled by a weak and untrustworthy military.
While the transitional government struggles to establish itself, United
Nations officials say they have no choice but to work with local Shabaab
commanders to distribute critically needed aid, like 110-pound bags of
sorghum, tins of vegetable oil, plastic sheeting and medical supplies,
in Shabaab-controlled areas.
But are United Nations contractors actually helping the Shabaab fight
their war? Preliminary information from a continuing United Nations
investigation indicates that some of the biggest Somali contractors
hired by the United Nations World Food Program may be sharing their
proceeds with the Shabaab or their allies, or, at a minimum, turning a
blind eye when militants steal sacks of American-donated grain and sell
them on the open market to get money for guns.
“We know W.F.P. contractors have been diverting food to the Shabaab,”
said one official close to the investigation, who was not allowed to
speak publicly. “And we’re talking about millions of dollars of food.”
World Food Program officials have been tight-lipped about the
allegations. Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the agency in Kenya, said
the World Food Program was conducting its own separate investigation and
“taking immediate actions to increase security at W.F.P. warehouses and
other distribution points.”
Because Somalia is so dangerous, especially for foreigners, it is
extremely difficult for international aid agencies to closely monitor
operations inside the country, especially since most of the agencies are
based hundreds of miles away in Kenya.
Somali businessmen, with thin résumés and fat contracts, are given
enormous leeway in how they carry out their multimillion-dollar aid
duties. On top of that, there is no national banking system, so the
United Nations is left with an informal money transfer network to move
hundreds of millions of dollars of cash.
Some Somalis say the allegations against the United Nations contractors
are simply barbs of envy originating from rival clans.
“Somalia offers perhaps the world’s most complex operational environment
for the U.N.,” a recent United Nations assessment said, citing the
“fluid, insecure and highly politicized conflict.”
Source: NY Times, Oct 01, 2009
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