| A woman holds her two-day-old son at a camp for displaced people in southern Somalia, last month. Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times |
A catastrophe in Somalia
By Peter Goodman
In more than three decades of journalism, I have seen my share of tragedies, from the Indian Ocean tsunami to wars in Iraq and Cambodia. But what I saw and heard recently in Somalia shocked me.
I spoke to a couple who had fled their drought-ravaged home carrying their 3-year-old on their backs. They walked for nine days toward what they’d envisioned as a refuge — a cluster of international relief organizations near the Ethiopian border. When they got there, they learned that the aid groups had abandoned the area. When I met them, they were subsisting on one daily meal of porridge and weeds pulled from the riverbanks.
I talked to a woman holding her 2-day-old son as she recounted the story of his birth: She first went to a local health clinic that had been funded by UNICEF. It was locked. UNICEF has closed 205 of its 800 clinics in Somalia as it’s lost funding. The woman resorted to begging her neighbors for the fare for a motorized rickshaw to a hospital. She lay in the back, bumping over dirt roads for half an hour.
The gutting of the international humanitarian relief system began more than a year ago, when the Trump administration dismantled U.S.A.I.D. Britain and Germany have pulled back, too, under pressure from Washington to spend more on defense.
The situation in Somalia was already tenuous. Then came the war in Iran.
Somalia is heavily dependent on imports for food, fertilizer and fuel. With shipping effectively halted in the Strait of Hormuz, prices for those critical goods have roughly doubled. In scores of poor and unstable countries, hunger is increasing as the cost of food rises.
We’re seeing the first real test of how a global shock like the war will play out in what one relief official described as “the post-aid era.”
| A camp in Dollow, Somalia, for people displaced by violence and drought. Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times |
“The era of indifference”
Four years ago, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also caused disruption to the global supply of fertilizers and grains, and prompted fears of hunger from sub-Saharan Africa to South Asia. But the pain was limited by $43 billion in humanitarian assistance marshaled by governments and multilateral institutions. That campaign, which included emergency food aid, water and medical care, was led by the United States, which contributed $17 billion.
Last year, overall humanitarian funding dropped to $28 billion. The U.S. contributed $4 billion. Cuts are continuing.
“The system has been eviscerated,” Kate Phillips-Barrasso, who heads global advocacy at Mercy Corps, an American aid group, told me. The organization led journalists from The New York Times on a reporting trip in Somalia. “This is the era of indifference,” she said.
In Somalia, the impacts of the Iran war are exacerbating a situation that was already dire. The cost of trucking water to the worst drought-hit areas has soared along with the price of fuel. Aid organizations like UNICEF have cut back on trips.
As the price of fertilizer soars, farmers are passing on those extra costs to consumers, raising the price of food. Schools that serve the only meal of the day to students in camps for those displaced by drought and conflict are reducing their portions.
As marine shipping has been diverted from the Strait of Hormuz, traffic jams have emerged at a key port in Oman, a hub for cargo that is transferred onto smaller vessels bound for destinations across East Africa. That is delaying the arrival of what food aid remains.
This grim picture is worsening by the day.
I visited a World Food Program warehouse, where 13 A-frame tents normally hold emergency nutrient-rich pastes for children and pregnant and breastfeeding women. All but one was empty. After July, even those supplies will be exhausted.
| Somalia depends on imports for 70 percent of its food. Staple goods like rice and wheat flour have doubled in price. Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times |
The fallout still to come
In some American political narratives, overseas aid is depicted as charity. It’s worth remembering that the modern-day international relief system dates back to the Marshall Plan in Europe at the end of World War II. The U.S. and its allies invested in the pragmatic proposition that rebuilding the continent would be the best insurance against further hostilities. It would also revive an enormous marketplace for American goods.
Aid is certainly about helping people in need. But it has always been an instrument of trade and security policy, too.
No doctorate in history is required to deduce that people generally do not sit calmly and starve in the face of catastrophe. They move where they have a better chance to survive. Many experts anticipate that the drastic reduction of international aid, along with the rising prices for food and fuel, will be catalysts for a fresh wave of migration, potentially stoking new social and political tensions on multiple shores. Poverty and instability serve as recruiting agents for insurgents and terrorists. We’ve seen this play out before in Somalia, in particular.
The longer the conflict in the Middle East goes on, the greater the demand for aid. Yet absent a surprise infusion of money that finances an international mobilization, millions of people are going to find themselves beyond the reach of help.