[Domovoy]

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=25724

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The drought that threatens more than ten million lives in the Horn of Africa has been made vastly more deadly by U.S. and Ethiopian use of food as a weapon of war. The Americans last year forced the collapse of cooperation between aid agencies and Shabab resistance fighters in Somalia. And Ethiopia, a center of the drought, has virtually sealed off its rebellious Ogaden region from outside observers and aid providers, including the International Red Cross, in order to conceal its brutal, collective punishment of ethnic Somalis.

"The Ethiopian government has blocked the International Red Cross and other aid agencies from carrying out relief work in the region."
At least 10 million people are in danger of starvation in Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia, under the worst drought conditions in 60 years. This should be taken as fact. But when it comes to which humans are to blame for relief supplies being unavailable to the victims, don't believe a word that the United States government says. Washington is not only the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, it is also the biggest liar on the planet, none of whose words can be taken at face value.

The Americans claim the Shabab Islamist fighters made the drought crisis worse by preventing international aid agencies from distributing food relief. But only last year, in February 2010, the New York Times was running a headline, "UN Officials Assail U.S. for Withholding Somali Aid [8]." We explored that story [9] in Black Agenda Report. Back then, United Nations officials charged the U.S. with imposing conditions that made it "impossible" to deliver tens of millions in food aid to hungry Somalis. The Americans refused to allow food to be transferred from warehouses in Kenya, claiming it might enrich the coffers of the Shabab, who controlled about half of Somalia. The U.S. finally let some food pass through, but only on the condition that aid workers not pay any fees at Shabab checkpoints around the country. Aid workers on the ground said that following U.S. orders would make them "look like spies." Apparently, they were right.

It was a clear case of the United States using food as a weapon of war, starving the people of Somalia in order to destroy the social base for the resistance to U.S. proxy rule over the country. We do know that the relationship between the Shabab and international aid agencies fell apart, at that point, so one could conclude that Washington succeeded in its mission. Starving people are now paying the price.

[Domovoy]

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=25725
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For the last twenty years, Somalia has been entangled in a "civil war" amidst the destruction of both its rural and urban economies.
The country is now facing widespread famine. According to reports, tens of thousands of people have died from malnutrition in the last few months. The lives of several million people are threatened.
The mainstream media casually attributes the famine to a severe drought without examining the broader causes.
An atmosphere of "lawlessness, gang warfare and anarchy" is also upheld as one of the major causes behind the famine.
But who is behind the lawlessness and armed gangs?
Somalia is categorized as a "failed state", a country without a government.

But how did it become a "failed state"? There is ample evidence of foreign intervention as well as covert support of armed militia groups. Triggering "failed states" is an integral part of US foreign policy. It is part of a military-intelligence agenda.

According to the UN, a situation of famine prevails in southern Bakool and Lower Shabelle, areas in part controlled by Al Shahab, a jihadist militia group affiliated to Al Qaeda.
Both the UN and the Obama administration had accused Al Shahab of imposing "a ban on foreign aid agencies in its territories in 2009". What the reports do not mention, however, is that Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (HSM) ("Movement of Striving Youth") is funded by Saudi Arabia and supported covertly by Western intelligence agencies.
The backing of Islamic militia by Western intelligence agencies is part of a broader historical pattern of covert support to Al Qaeda affiliated and jihadist organizations in a number of countries, including, more recently, Libya and Syria.
The broader question is: What outside forces triggered the destruction of the Somali State in the early 1990s?
Somalia remained self-sufficient in food until the late 1970s despite recurrent droughts. As of the early 1980s, its national economy was destabilized and food agriculture was destroyed.
The process of economic dislocation preceded the onset of the civil war in 1991. Economic and social chaos resulting from IMF "economic medicine" had set the stage for the launching of a US sponsored "civil war".
An entire country with a rich history of commerce and economic development, was transformed into a territory.
In a bitter irony, this open territory encompasses significant oil wealth. Four US oil giants had already positioned themselves prior to the onset of the Somali civil war in 1991:

Somalia had been a colony of Italy and Britain. In 1969, a post-colonial government was formed under president Mohamed Siad Barre; major social programs in health and education were implemented, rural and urban infrastructure was developed in the course of the 1970s, significant social progress including a mass literacy program was achieved.
The early 1980s marks a major turning point.

The IMF-World Bank structural adjustment program (SAP) was imposed on sub-Saharan Africa. The recurrent famines of the 1980s and 1990s are in large part the consequence of IMF-World Bank "economic medicine".

In Somalia, ten years of IMF economic medicine laid the foundations for the country's transition towards economic dislocation and social chaos.

By the late 1980s, following recurrent "austerity measures" imposed by the Washington consensus, wages in the public sector had collapsed to three dollars a month.
The following article first published in 1994 in Le Monde diplomatique and Third World Resurgence centers on the historical causes of famine in Somalia.
This article was subsequently included as a Chapter in my book The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, first edition 1997, second edition, Global Research. Montreal, 2003.