Why Somali's Famine Showed Failures in the World Food Programme

Some of the World Food Program supplies went to the black market, some to feed livestock. One warehouse full of rations was looted in its entirety by a Somali government official. And across the city, feeding sites handed out far less food than records indicate they should have.

The British government estimates between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in Somalia’s famine, and the U.N. has requested $1.5 billion for Somalia this year, partly to prevent a return of famine.

The World Food Program provides much of Somalia’s food aid, and the U.N. says donations of food and cash saved half a million lives in the second half of last year. In the chaos of a civil war, with the aid effort’s own personnel at mortal risk merely for being associated with the West, orderly, corruption-free food distribution could never be guaranteed.

But AP’s three-month investigation into sites providing hot meals to families in government-controlled Mogadishu reveals various shortcomings, some of which WFP says it is already addressing by changing procedures.

A critical problem was keeping track of supplies: WFP knew how much food was being shipped to the capital, but not how much was being cooked or how many people were showing up to eat it. Barey Muse, a mother of three, illustrated the frustrations. “My children are hungry but when I go here for food I must return empty-handed,” she said last month, holding two large bowls outside a feeding site called Hodan
.
The WFP had to design a flexible program so that families could use the nearest hot-meal center as they moved between neighborhoods to avoid fighting. The price of flexibility was less control over theft, officials acknowledge.

The AP, along with a network of seven Somali observers who for their safety cannot identified, conducted more than 60 visits to 13 of the 21 sites where hot meals are prepared. From those visits, interviews with aid recipients and internal reports, it emerges that:

— Somali aid groups would cook and distribute at least 30 percent more food when expecting visits by journalists or WFP officials.

— Some food was trucked directly from an aid agency warehouse to the market to be sold for profit.

— WFP’s independent monitors repeatedly sounded the alarm, saying relatives of Somali aid workers would receive large handouts while others went without. One of their reports spoke of supplies being fed to livestock.


— A Somali government official stole 74 metric tons of food, according to an internal WFP report obtained by AP.

Stefano Porretti, head of WFP’s Somalia program, said feeding programs in Mogadishu were expanded rapidly in emergency conditions, and from October to January, WFP did not have independent monitoring was suspended.
“Changes to it (WFP procedures) are now being made,” he said. He said AP’s research was done in that time frame, and that after AP’s findings were shown to WFP, the U.N. body’s new third-party monitor watched the sites closely for a week. “The amount of food delivered is what is expected, and it is being cooked,” Porretti said. “There is no diversion at the sites.”

Somalia is perhaps the most dangerous country in the world for aid workers, who face kidnappings, suicide bombings and assassination. The hot meals program amounts to 8 percent of WFP operations in Somalia, and 17 of its staffers and partners, all Somalis, have been killed since 2008. Two were shot dead in December when they stumbled upon a “ghost camp” which was said to have been set up to fool aid agencies into delivering food there.

Islamist insurgents from the group al-Shabab still held part of Mogadishu last July, when the U.N. announced that parts of Somalia were suffering from famine. The hunger crisis was blamed on a combination of drought, warfare and a refusal by the insurgents to grant some aid groups access to areas it controls.

By September, the U.N. said more than 100 children were dying every day. WFP was already working to protect its aid from thieves, partly by delivering hot meals that were difficult to resell. But while WFP knew how much food was being given to the hot meals program, it did not track how many people were receiving it.

• When foreigners visit a WFP hot-meals site, the pots are always full and the centers teem with people. Once the visitors leave, things change, as the experience at a feeding center called Hodan illustrates.
• During an official visit, Sorrdo, the local aid group acting for WFP, made 20 large pots of porridge for lunch. But a Somali woman with whom the AP kept in touch said that on ordinary days only nine to 13 pot loads were made. 

• WFP said the Hodan site was feeding 7,000 people a day. But when the AP made an unannounced visit last month, a flustered supervisor said only 3,000 were being fed.
• Another Somali woman, Halimo Mukhtar, said she sometimes saw supervisors at Hodan selling cart loads of supplies to traders to feed to livestock.

“Why do they say they give us food every day?” asked the mother of six, whose youngest child was strapped to her back. She had received nothing, she said, and her children would be hungry that night unless she went begging.

“The food we share between six people is not even enough for two,” she said. “They sell our food to people to feed animals.”

• Another site, Wadajir, sits less than 200 yards (meters) from the airport base where WFP’s international staff stay, and bustles with hundreds of people during official WFP visits. 
• But when the AP visited the site run by Jumbo Peace and Development Organization last month, it was nearly deserted. Somali aid workers there appeared caught off guard. Two workers contradicted each other about how many people were being fed there, claimed a metal pot that could only hold about one bag of food held three bags, and that people usually came at 5 p.m. to be fed.The site had closed at 1:30 p.m. on the previous day.

An AP translator overheard a worker named Sharif on a frantic phone call to his superior.
“Have they taken pictures?” the manager asked.“No, no, we stopped them,” said the worker, glancing over nervously as a journalist snapped photos of the almost empty site.

Keep the journalists outside and stop them from taking photos, the manager yelled; he was coming right over.
At another site an observer who tried to take pictures for the AP was immediately ejected, and staff insisted he delete the images. At some sites, an observer reported, cooked food was sold to livestock traders, sometimes directly by staff, and other times by recipients.
Many of the AP witness observations are corroborated in reports by Pbi2, the company that previously carried out independent monitoring for WFP.
A July report obtained by the AP said that at several sites run by Saacid, a Somali aid agency, “you will see good-looking beneficiaries … who give the food to their animals and they are the ones who get served first and they are relatives of management.”
“They load donkey carts of cooked food each day because they receive extra ratios and even sometimes they come back several times while they know that others don’t get their ratio,” the report said.
Tony Burns, Saacid director of operations, said it was “impossible” for cart loads of food to be carried off, though he acknowledged a small amount may have been used as animal feed. He said that once food was given away no one could control what became of it and that the problem has “never risen to serious levels.”
Saacid is the biggest Somali aid agency in the capital. Until this month, it ran 16 out of 21 of WFP’s hot meal centers for families in partnership with the Danish Refugee Council. Saacid says it left the program because it was “inefficient.”
One Pbi2 report alleges that Saacid brought extra people from another center to bump up the numbers when a WFP delegation visited the Howl-Wadaag center in July. Burns denied such an event ever happened. In Bondere, also run by Saacid, some people got 10 times their ration and others got nothing, the report said. Burns said some favoritism takes place in the lines and the group cannot curb it.
Saacid says that due to complex clan politics, visitors cannot visit sites unannounced. The AP, each time it tried a surprise visit, was quickly told to leave, and staff declined to give any information.
Pbi2′s contract was not renewed in early October for reasons that neither it nor WFP would disclose. The company declined an interview.
Following an August AP report about aid theft, when a journalist photographed convoys of trucks unloading food aid at the market, WFP assigned two investigators to look at the issue of food diversion. They have not yet issued a report.
The Somali government fired and jailed two district commissioners, one of whom was accused of looting the 74 tons of food from the warehouse. Both were later pardoned and freed.
Some critics of the overall aid effort go so far as to claim that it does more harm than good, because the influx of food and the associated looting feed Somalia’s black-market war economy. The powerful in Somali society have little incentive to stop the suffering that brings in the aid — or to stop the violence that prevents it being monitored, said Linda Polman, author of “War Games,” one of a growing number of books critical of aid dispensation in combat zones.
“The solutions are not easy,” said Polman. “Aid organizations have a problem. It is difficult for them to be honest (about theft) because they will be punished. Donations will go down and donor governments will be angry. So it stays a well-kept secret,” she said. “To change this you would have to change the whole aid system.”
Poretti said that WFP did its best to keep donors updated about the risks of working in Somalia.
“Donor governments are updated regularly on the challenges we face working in complex and insecure places like Somalia,” he said “They are aware that WFP has to weigh these risks carefully against the danger that lives may be lost if we stop providing life-saving food assistance to vulnerable women and children in places like Mogadishu.”

The Rest @ AP

Somalias Famine

http://youtu.be/I8KQ36m6tvU

Al Shabaab Continue Jihad in the Face of Famine - Somali Children dieing in their zone

One analyst posed the rhetorical question: "How, precisely, does allowing hundreds of thousands of captive fellow Muslims to starve advance any Islamic or Somali cause?"

It is about control. A weakened population of citizens who must devote all of their energy to securing their next rations is in no position to fight back. By controlling access to aid, al-Shabaab keeps the remaining population at its mercy, and the group can attempt to purge the country of its enemies, real and imagined, and Christians, to whom it has denied aid.

For its part, al-Shabaab has consistently denied the famine exists, calling it a conspiracy to drive Somalis toward "Christian" influences.

"Islamist Shebaab push starving Somalis back into famine zone," from Agence France-Presse, September 23:

Somalia’s Al Qaeda-linked rebels said yesterday they were moving over 12,000 starving families back into famine zones they had fled, where the UN has warned they will die without help.
Draconian aid restrictions imposed by the extremist Shebaab are blamed for turning harsh drought across the Horn of Africa into famine in the areas they control, with 750,000 people at risk of death in coming months, the UN has said.
“The mujahedeen fighters, in their bid to help people displaced by drought, started working on plans to send them back home where they will be assisted, God willing,” said Sheik Mahad Abu-Safiya, a senior Shebaab official.
The families, estimated to number at least 50,000 people, were “taken back to their homes with packages to feed them for three months,” he added. Witnesses said the packages included rice, maize and cooking oil.
However, the Shebaab have refused most international assistance, and blocked people fleeing drought and famine in the Bay and Bakool regions from travelling in search of aid to Mogadishu, where relief efforts are centred.
Crowded trucks began moving people late on Wednesday from camps in and around the Shebaab-held town of Baidoa back to their original villages, up to 50km southwest of the town, officials and witnesses said.
“The process has started and we have moved the first of the 12,000 displaced families to their original locations,” Mohamed Walid, another Shebaab official, told reporters.
“Most of the displaced people were moved from a big camp at Baidoa airport, they were taken on long trucks,” said witness Osmail Mohamed.
“I have seen people returning onboard trucks with food distributed to them by the Shebaab,” said Abdulahi Derow, who said the food they were given was “enough for a month.”
Local aid workers said the Shebaab had ordered them to help move people back to the villages they had fled from.
“The Shebaab group started sending people back to their homes, and gave them some food,” said one Somali aid worker said, asking not to be named. “But people are still in need of help.”
Shebaab fighters last month pulled out of positions in the war-torn capital Mogadishu where they were battling the weak Western-backed government, but they still control swathes of south and central Somalia.
The UN has declared six regions in south Somalia famine zones, the majority in Shebaab-controlled areas.
Drought, high food prices and fighting in Somalia have increased the number of those in need of humanitarian assistance across the Horn of Africa to 13.3mn, according to the UN.
Access to Shebaab areas is a major concern, with a group of 20 international and Somali aid agencies calling on Wednesday for talks with the Shebab to create “free passage of assistance.”
The agencies warned the situation was the worst they had ever seen in decades of work in Somalia, and was expected to deteriorate further with rains next month likely to worsen conditions for disease.
“Never before have we faced such acute suffering with so many lives at stake,” they warned in a joint letter. “Somalia is at a turning point.”
Ken Menkhaus, professor at Davidson College in the US state of North Carolina, called for a “diplomatic surge” from the “West and the Islamic world” to ensure both the Shebaab and the Western-backed government allow access to affected people.
Writing in a paper yesterday for the Washington-based Enough pressure group, Menkhaus called the Shebaab an “Islamic Khmer Rouge, in which an armed group with a deeply twisted interpretation of the faith presides over the mass deaths of its own people.”
The Shebaab “must be made to justify its policy to Islamic leaders and scholars,” Menkhaus added.
One would think there would be a wave of outrage and outpouring of assistance from nearby Islamic countries. Perhaps what Mogadishu needs to do is find a way to blame Israel.

“How, precisely, does allowing hundreds of thousands of captive fellow Muslims to starve advance any Islamic or Somali cause?”

The Rest @ Jihad Watch

Black Market Disaster Relief Food Widely for Sale in Somalia

As humanitarian aid flows into Somalia in increasing quantities to feed over three million people suffering the effects of a famine that the UN says has killed tens of thousands, allegations of widespread aid diversion have been rife.

• Local militias and government soldiers have raided camps, killing Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) as they make off with food aid
• World Food Programme contractors have faced accusations of skimming maize off the top for sale on the local market, most notably in an article published last month by the Associated Press.

Somalia Report deployed a team of journalists to spend several weeks looking into the issue, which is particularly pertinent given that the UN and US sent a peacekeeping force into Somalia during the 1992 famine to secure aid being looted by warlords (a repeat of such actions is extremely unlikely).

Looting from camps

The direct theft of aid from camps is well-documented and impossible for the Transitional Federal Government to dispute.

• There have been over half-a-dozen cases of armed men, often in government uniform, shooting IDPs and stealing. 
• The government claims that, for the most part, these looters are freelance militia or members of militant Islamist group al-Shabaab in uniform, although it has admitted to several cases where its own men were guilty.

“The government has a zero tolerance policy towards corruption or crimes against food aid. Several people have already been convicted and sentenced for looting in Bakara Market,” the government said in a statement after the AP story, also denying there was any evidence aid diversion was taking place on the scale AP journalist Katharine Houreld reported.

Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali announced the creation of a special force to protect aid deliveries and distribution in camps. According to IDPs, though, they are still not receiving any protection.

“We do not receive enough aid to feed our children even though it is widely seen and sold in the open market,” Abdiyow Aden, an IDP from Bakol region, living in Mogadishu’s Tawakal camp, told Somalia Report.

Early this week, IDPs in Waberi protested against militias stealing aid after a government soldier opened fire in the camp, killing more than ten people.

“The theft of aid is continuing more than before,” Mahad Mohamoud, an elderly man in the Waberi camp, told Somalia Report.

• A foreman at a camp, who wished to remain anonymous, said that militia had been hired to protect camps, but they were the very people who had previously been stealing aid.
• “The militias do not belong to a certain warlord - most are affiliated to clans dominating the area where the camp is located,” he told Somalia Report on condition of anonymity. 
• “If you do not hire them, IDPs and aid are in danger.”

Camp administrators are also accused of getting in on the act. Another source in a camp said that up to half of ration cards intended for IDPs are withheld, and the aid sold on.

“I came here last week and got nothing,” Batulo Nasir, who said she left her two children dead by the road as she trekked to a camp in Hamar Jajab, told Somalia Report. “Some people who run the area told me they will help me but so far there is no action.”

Independent analyst Omar Abdulle says that the sheer scale of the hunger means that soldiers and camp leaders are being driven to steal aid, for personal use or sale.“The troops’ families are also in need of food,” he told Somalia Report. “Even on the frontline, Somali military forces may loot food aid because of the scale of the humanitarian crises in the country.”

Alleged contractor theft

• WFP contractors are also accused of diverting aid even before it reaches camps, with dozens of activists, IDPs and local traders lining up to deliver accusations, most of which cannot be verified. 
• One of the most popular accusations is that a group of government and business individuals from the Warsangali sub-clan are operating under an umbrella called Warsan Star. 
• Somalia Report was given a list of names of these people, and others, but is withholding it due to a lack of any real evidence of involvement.

The WFP says it has distributed over 13,000 metric tons of food to Somalia since July, with around 40,000 metric tons expected to be delivered in the coming months, to feed 1.9 million people. The AP believes a significant amount of this aid is being diverted before it reaches the intended recipients, a claim many local activists believe to be true, with some even saying over 50% of aid goes missing after it arrives in Mogadishu’s port on vessels that are escorted by the European Union’s anti-piracy naval force.
“Aid is stolen after its shipment from the port to the IDP camp,” Abdulahi Mohamed Osman, an activist and local aid coordinator, told Somalia Report.

• Bille Abdi Hussein, a shopkeeper in the KM4 area, said traders were encouraged to profit from stolen aid.“A few months ago a friend of mind, whom I do not want to name, came to me and informed me that if I had $15,000 I could make a booming business here in Mogadishu,” he told Somalia Report. 
• “You have to go to WFP sub-contractors and their stock-keepers whenever they are in the capital. For example if you tell them you need to get 40 sacks of maize, then stock keepers may take the money from the dealer.”
• Aden Qoley, aid coordinator at the interior ministry, told reporters in Mogadishu this week there is evidence food aid is not being managed properly.

What is clear is that aid is being sold in large quantities in stores around Mogadishu.
A Somalia Report correspondent observed aid being sold by local traders in Hamar Weyne and Hamar Jajab districts. Our correspondent witnessed three trucks carrying food aid marked with the WFP stamp arrive nearby the Afar-Irdod police station in Hamar Weyne. The food, consisting of 50-kilogram sacks of maize and five-liter containers of oil, was divided amongst four stores.
A businesswoman who requested to be called Sahra Yusuf told Somalia Report that the food was bought by Hamar Weyne traders from areas near the KM4 junction.
“Here, the buying and selling of food aid has never been secret,” she said. “It has been going on for years.”
Some key locations where aid is sold (non-exhaustive) follows:

A cluster of stores consisting of six wide rooms, next the Ex-UK Embassy building in Hamar Jajab district. It is close to the sea port, and locals say that shortly after vessels have delivered aid, five or six trucks turn up at the store laden with WFP aid. Businessmen in the area say one truck goes for $6-7,000.
Opposite Afar-Irdod police station in Hamar Weyne there are three stores. One is always open for the sale of WFP maize and oil. Abdi Karin, who rents the store space, says he can sell once sack of maize for $21.5. A container of cooking oil costs $30.5 in Hamar Weyne market.
On Haw-Tako road, also near the police station, there are two stores which store looted aid, next to Hotel Muno. More than 300 sacks of WFP food aid were seen on sale recently, according to a local businessman.

According to Hamar Weyne trader Ismail Hashi, it is easy to get your hands on stolen aid for a good price – particularly food looted from camps, which needs to be got rid of quickly. The aid normally changes hands under the cloak of darkness.
“It is for sale, it is open to everybody,” local businessman Muse told Somalia Report. “WFP sub-contractors, camp leaders and government administrators in Hamar Weyne are aware of this.”
The AP had this to say in its article:

The AP found eight sites where aid food was being sold in bulk and numerous smaller stores. Among the items being sold were corn, grain, and Plumpy'nut — a specially fortified peanut butter designed for starving children.

WFP spokeswoman Challiss McDonough said that the only recorded case it had of theft was looting at a food distribution point on August 5, but said the organization treats “all and any allegations with the utmost seriousness and will deploy all means available to recover the losses and will hold those responsible to account.”

• All contractors are thoroughly screened to ensure theft does not happen, she said.
• “Since July 2011, WFP has begun again to work with seven former WFP cooperating partners in Mogadishu,” she told Somalia Report. “All partners are subject to strict screening to prove they have a history of providing the services required and the ability to perform the job specifications.”

Separating the aid that has been stolen and that which has been sold by IDPs can be difficult. Monetization of aid is a phenomenon that has been recorded in every area worldwide where aid has been distributed, and is driven by the needs of IDPs to buy basic goods not provided in food deliveries. Aid agencies accept this, although none of them will reveal their estimates of what percentage of aid gets onto markets in this manner.

“WFP has zero tolerance for any food misuse and takes all reports of our food for sale on markets very seriously but there are often legitimate and understandable reasons for some food being sold by beneficiaries,” said McDonough. “For example, a beneficiary may need to buy medicine or soap. WFP does not have a percentage for this but believes it to be very small indeed compared to the vast amount of food that reaches those in need of food assistance.”

For example,

• Somalia Report followed up on a tip that looted aid was delivered from a warehouse behind the Nasa Hablod hotel to markets in Seybiyano and Hamar Weyne, especially a shop called Geedi in Seybiyano. 
• However, our correspondent found 20 sacks of maize for sale (at $21 each), which traders around the store saw they saw being sold to the store by individual IDPs looking to cash in.

Tony Burns, operations director for local NGO SAACID, which delivers wet food to IDPs through feeding kitchens in Mogadishu, said he believed the majority of the aid on the market was sold directly by IDPs, and that the scale was exaggerated. He believes less than 1% of aid is being diverted.

“There has always been a strong barter trade in donated food - families need more than food, so they sell some or all for cash to buy other goods and services,” he told Somalia Report. “Concomitantly, the marginalised in Somali society cannot secure food for long periods, as it will be looted by militias – so they sell food for cash, which can much more easily be hidden.”

• “If people have to travel any distance to collect food, they will need to sell it, as they cannot risk it being stolen on the way home,” he added. “These reasons are much more likely for food to be in the markets than diversion.”
• Burns said the amount of aid reaching the market from IDPs would shoot up in the coming months.

“If you think you have seen food in the markets now, wait for a few weeks,” he said. “The recipients of the WFP distributions in the coming weeks will sell a lot of what they receive.”

Specific allegations

SAACID was one of the organizations named in the AP report as being involved in the theft of aid.

• The AP cited eight businessmen as saying they bought food from WFP contractor, Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur, known as Enow. 
• They also said that Enow’s wife, Khadija, was the head of SAACID, implying that he was using his contacts to get aid from the organization.
• However, Enow has been suspended by WFP since early last year – his only contract is drilling boreholes for the AU peacekeeping mission - while Khadija has not been country director of SAACID since 1997. 
• AP later issued a correction about Enow contracting for the WFP.

Khadija has not had any formal links with the organization - other than registering SACCID International in the US in 2008 and doing small-scale fundraising as a favor - since 1997, when she quit as country director, Burns said. Raha Janaqow has been country director since Khadija left.

Enow also issued a statement saying his company DEEQA Construction & Water Well Drilling Co. Ltd had not been involved with WFP since March 2010 and that the AP’s accusations the businessmen had paid money into his Dahabshiil account to secure stolen aid were untrue.

“The 'Mogadishu warehouse' operated by DEEQA (not mentioned in the AP story) is empty of food, and has been so for 16 months,” he said. “The allegation that I am selling WFP food from warehouses around the city is therefore baseless. Indeed, DEEQA's only warehouse in the Abdiaziz area of Mogadishu was destroyed during fighting in the city and looted - even its roof was taken. DEEQA does not have any other food warehouse in Mogadishu.”

Yet accusations against SAACID and Enow persist. The agency's name was mentioned by four traders Somalia Report spoke to, all of whom said there was a clan-based mafia linked with the aid agency running aid theft (which could suggest malicious rumors spread by rivals from other clans).

The site behind Nasa Hablod hotel was mentioned in the AP report as one of the hotspots for stolen aid to be sold, but Burns says this and the other claims are nonsense.

“The allegations have no substance at all,” he said. “Most of it is the recycled 2010 allegations that the UN has retracted. SAACID monitors our district partners, who implement the programme. DRC has monitors at all our sites and warehouses on a daily basis. WFP’s third-party monitors regularly visit our kitchen sites and warehouses.”

The site behind Nasa Hablod is a grinding and milling site, where SAACID has a temporary warehouse for the milled corn meal, before it goes on to the kitchen sites, and the land does not belong to Enow, but the government, Burns said (the AP reported that Enow was selling aid from the warehouse, not that he owned it).

“How many layers on monitoring do you need to have to accept that the program is delivering the agreed outputs? If we were not delivering, the best indicator for diversion would be the recipients themselves," he said. "They would be demonstrating and making it abundantly clear to everyone that we were stealing food. “
Janaqow also rejected the accusations, saying she has no links whatsoever with Enow.

“I’m very disappointed with the AP story in which it was stated that SAACID has been involved in stolen food aid,” she told Somalia Report. “Such a story was not exhaustive, and shameful.”

SAACID gave Somalia Report full access to its warehouses, administration offices and feeding sites in Mogadishu, including its main warehouse and the second grinding warehouse behind the Nasa Hablod hotel.

The storekeepers said they had over 21,000 sacks of maize and over 4,000 containers of cooking oil. The warehouse behind Nasa Hablod transports wet food to 16 sites across Mogadishu, and carries 2-3 days of stock.


Somalia Report, while admittedly on an accompanied and organized visit, saw no signs of irregularities. Equally, people living around the area were not able to provide any evidence, often confusing the movements of trucks carrying food aid along the road between the sea port and KM4 with trucks supposedly taking aid from the warehouse.

SAACID said companies with direct WFP deals were responsible for transporting both wet and dry maize, and that it had nothing to do with the movement of aid. SAACID signs a WFP Way Bill to confirm receipt of stock from companies, then hires independent truckers to take wet food to the feeding centers, it said. Our correspondent trailed several trucks, and once again was not able to find any hard evidence of aid theft.
Specific allegations were also made against Ahmed Makaran, Commissioner of Waberi district in Mogadishu, but he denied any wrongdoing.

“We are not involved in the corruption and stealing of food aid intended for the drought-stricken people; instead we support them and carry out nightly routine security patrols around the camps in our district,” he told Somalia Report.

We will not publish other names accused of wrongdoing due to a lack of evidence, and the refusal of those implicated to respond to the allegations.

The Rest @ Somalia Report

Why Al Shabaab Believes They Cannot Let Non-Muslim Aid Come to Somalia

al Shabaab has recently outlawed a popular triangle shaped bit of stuffed bread called a samosa. It appears the three sided snack appears "too Christian" This bizarre announcement comes on the tail of other religious rulings suggesting that al Shabaab's version of Sharia law continues to grow more conservative.

In the mind of a strict Salfayaa, they believe that God is distant, and can only be pleased by acts of sacrifice and rigorous religious behavior. They believe that their God is sovereign, in control of all events past, present and future.Al Shabaab's recent losses in all corners of their war suggest to them that their God is displeased and is punishing them. Therefore, they respond in the most appropriate way they can, in their mind, which is to seek out and "correct" irreligious behavior, no mater how small and insignificant. In essence, this is is al Shabaab's version of Sharia law.

Al Shabaab knows they are failing their God, and they will adopt more and more bizarre restrictions as they become more desperate to please him.

This is the reason they believe they cannot let non-Muslim foreign aid agencies into their territory. Their God is already punishing them, and he will punish them more in they let in any help from non-Muslim sources. They believe the famine is a test, a trial. If they give in, then the entire war they created, all their sacrifice, all their "cleansing work" will be for nothing.

Their leaders believe giving in, even for food for starving children, will be even more painful for them then letting them die.

This alone makes them world class war criminals, but they have already committed enough atrocities that they are destined for death or the Hague.

The only mediation that may help is for aid agencies to find a Salafi cleric that al Shabaab respects enough to hear, but who has not committed war crimes himself. Then, they can work through the Da'wa issues.

The only other option is to give the aid to al Shabaab for distribution, but this will fuel more war, a tax will come off the top, and Al Shabaab's Mujahdeen, who are a protected class under Sharia,will get fed before any Muslim child gets the food.