Somali Fighters Allow Some Food Aid; Other Problems Emerge

The militant group Shabab, closely linked to Al Qaeda, controls large parts of southern Somalia, including famine-stricken areas and sections of the capital city, Mogadishu. In what is being described as a glimmer of hope in the growing humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, Shabab has now pulled out of Mogadishu, where an estimated 100,000 malnourished people have arrived to seek help. According to The New York Times, relief workers are hopeful that food supplies and other assistance will now be able to reach starving people in the city.

As a “failed state” that has lacked an effective central government since the early 1990s, Somalia has been largely unable to provide its people with basic public services. The transitional government is now in control of the capital for the first time in years. Yet its own troops are reported to have killed people and looted sacks of grain during a recent riot over emergency food supplies, adding to the concern of relief organizations.

Elsewhere in the region, people who have fled to southeast Ethiopia’s refugee camps are facing an outbreak of measles on top of severe malnutrition. According to health workers, more than a dozen people in the Kobe camp have already died of the disease, which rarely kills healthy people but is often fatal to those who are weak from malnutrition. The conditions in refugee camps are ripe for diseases such as measles and illnesses related to sanitation, such as dysentery. Bread for the World Institute’s own Faustine Wabwire said in an interview on August 5 that her greatest fear was “increased mortality from potential disease outbreaks.” On August 8, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees added that he “fears the outbreak could lead to high mortality and serious illness in an already vulnerable refugee population whose overall health was already fragile.”

Vaccination teams need to reach as many refugee children as possible. Experts are on their way to the camp to help with the vaccination effort, scheduled to begin August 9. The Dollo Ado camp in southeast Ethiopia is host to 118,400 refugees, 78,000 of whom arrived this year because of the drought and ensuing hunger emergency.