Alexis Okeowo puts horrifying new reports from Somalia in historical context:
Three hundred thousand Somalis starved to death just nineteen years ago. In 1992, when the American government sent U.S. soldiers into Somalia to facilitate the delivery of food, the mission was infamously aborted when two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and eighteen soldiers killed, by Somali militants. The memories of those horrors still cloud the decision-making of foreign donors reluctant to engage in the country.
But because of the perils of the arduous journey to refugee camps, the best way to feed people would be through centers based in southern Somalia out of reach of the [Al Qaeda-linked] Shabaab, an effort the Kenyan government is advocating. (The United Nations has limited feeding operations in Somalia). Meanwhile, the famine is expected to extend through the end of the year, as the rains still refuse to pour.
More than 29,000 children under the age of five have perished over the past 90 days in southern Somalia alone.
(Photo: Aden, a three-year-old Somali refugee with his father Abdille, recovers at the stabilisation centre at Hagadere refugee area on August 02, 2011 after arriving a week earlier on the verge of death from severe malnutrition. Aden lost his mother to starvation during the journey from southern Somalia and is now recovering remarkably at the centre, run by the International Rescue Committee [IRC] supported by UNICEF, after his father, grandmother and two siblings managed to get at the Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya's north-easterly province. An estimated 3.7 million people in Somalia – around a third of the population – are on the brink of starvation and aid agencies are stretched in trying to cope with a daily influx of Somali's escaping not only drought but the al-Shabab extremists who have turned taken advantage of the famine to forcefully arrest and recruit men trying to escape the famine. By Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)
The Dish 