How the USAID and U.S. Counterterrorism Policies are Contributing to The Famine Crisis in the Horn of Africa

In the industrialized western countries, we instinctively believe that food aid is a very worthy cause and many do their utmost to genuinely help in this field but in reality while we genuinely try at least some of us offer support to victims of famine and conflicts, our countries’ policies and agendas take food, security and other resources away from these counties.

Many believe this myth in helping to end world hunger, the western countries’ primary responsibility is to increase and improve their foreign aid. But what many don’t know is that the west’s foreign assistance programs are vital to the achievement of their foreign policy goals; that means whether the aid benefits the hungry is determined by the motives and goals of that policy — by how a government defines the national interest.

For example a newsletter printed from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the government agency in charge of U.S. foreign assistance, put it this way: “The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance has always been the United States. . . .

Foreign assistance programs have helped the United States by creating major markets for agricultural goods, new markets for industrial exports and hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans.”The same report argued forcefully that the amount of money spent on aid be upped significantly in order to maintain U.S. “leadership in the global arena.

A research released by the Oakland Institute demonstrated that land grabs–largely unregulated land deals involving foreign corporations and speculators which are promoted as a “development” solution for African nations; US and EU development agencies including USAID and the World Bank Group are often the architects of these deals that promise benefits for Africans but fail to deliver have contributed to the famine and conflicts in Africa.

We know drought can be a natural phenomenon but famine in the modern era is political—and avoidable. As Somalia sank deeper into famine in late summer, with 63 percent of southern Somalia’s population at risk of starvation, U.S. media coverage focused and blamed Al-shabab for causing the famine in Somalia by forcing out many Western aid organizations.

A variety of factors play into the current Somalia famine, while Al-Shabaab certainly bears responsibility for any of its actions that prevented food from reaching people in need, other major pieces are missing from these stories of man-made disaster—including climate change, agricultural policy and the history of U.S. foreign policy in Somalia specially the U.S. counterterrorism policy and how this policy have made impossible for aid groups to deliver food to southern Somalia where the famine has hit the most. This policy is the same policy that criminalizes and makes it impossible for Somalis to send money to their loved once in Somalia.

Three banks Franklin Bank, Park Midway Bank, and University Bank headquartered in Minneapolis and Saint Paul decided to stop serving all the Somali owned Hawala Banks, by the way these were the only banks that were willing to support before.

The reason of why the Banks are refusing to serve any Hawal Bank is because Executive Order 13536 signed by President Obama On April 12, 2010 which criminalizes and makes it impossible for anyone to send money in southern Somalia where the famine has hit the most.

REMEMBER: every 6 minutes a child dies in southern Somali for a famine, according to the USAid.

Source: The Nomad Times