Drought crisis

Eyewitness reports from refugee camps are never cheery, but tales from the massive tent city of Dadaab, told by Somalis who have fled famine, drought and war, are particularly dire.

"The situation in Somlia is getting increasingly worse," one woman recounted. "We lost all our livestock, and that's why I came here. The journey took four days, and along the way, bandits stole everything I owned."

The government warns that the camps in Dadaab can't accommodate any more people in need, and the UN is calling for them to be expanded.

"These three camps in Dadaab were initially designed for only 90,000 refugees," UN Emergency Response Coordinator Enoch Ochola said. "As a result of the ongoing war in Somalia thousands of refugees have been pouring into Kenya for years and the camps have run out of space."

The UN says the number of people currently being quartered at Dadaab exceeds 400,000.

At the beginning of this week, one refugee complained of rape and theft being common at the camps, saying she feels she would have been better off staying in Somalia. A Kenyan civil servant, Mabel Ominde, responded that her government was doing its best but was overwhelmed by the sheer number of refugees.

Civil war has raged in Somalia for 20 years, and in that time no central government has ever had control over the entire country, with its diverse ethnic and religious mix. This summer's drought has worsened the already grim lot of many Somalis.

Last month, the head of the UN High Commission on Refugees, Antonio Guterres, termed the situation in the country the world's "worst humanitarian disaster." The UN estimates that more than 12.4 million people are in danger of starvation.

With neighboring Kenya's capacity for helping being stretched to, and perhaps beyond, the limit, the international aid community's efforts are switching focus to Somalia itself. But as people are finding out yet again, improving conditions in one of the world's poorest and most violent countries is an enormously difficult task.

Militants and thieves

Western observers often blame the lion's share of Somalia's problems on al Shabaab, the Islamist militant group that has been waging a long-term war against the central government.

Al Shabaab presently controls most of southern Somalia, and Western governments have been reluctant to send food aid directly to that region, fearing it will end up in the hands of the militants and never reach the people it was intended to help.

But on Monday, it emerged that the UN suspects the same might be happening in areas of northern Somalia controlled by the transitional federal government.

"In response to reports of food aid being stolen, the World Food Program says that through its monitoring systems, possible theft of food has been uncovered and is being investigated," UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters.

The Somali government responded by saying it had a "zero tolerance policy" toward corruption and the theft of aid. But the government statement also insisted that reports of theft "should not be used as an excuse to slow down aid delivery as that would condemn even more people to death from starvation."

Meanwhile, aid organizations complain that it is getting ever more dangerous for their members to do their work. In a statement released on Tuesday, the German-based relief group Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe said that the risks of attack had increased sharply in recent years and that four of its workers had been killed in Somalia alone since 2008.

Worse, then better?

Amidst all the bad news, there is some hope that the catastrophic consequences of the drought will ultimately yield some progress.

With the exception of efforts to combat piracy on the Horn of Africa, Somalia has not attracted much international attention since the mid-1990s, when Western nations removed peacekeeping forces after deadly clashes with the various warring factions. But the drought has redirected international attention to the country.

Germany has decided to contribute 118 million euros ($170 million), up from 33 million, to help the region. And Berlin is pressing for more lasting measures, too.

"The money is part of a structured approach that will, in the short term, create the possibility for starving people to be cared for," German Development Minister Dirk Niebel told reporters while on a trip to Kenya to assess the situation. "But it is also targeted at changing structures in the medium- and long-term so that the next drought, which we have to expect, won't hit people as hard as this time around."

Improvements could be made, Niebel continued, in Somalis' abilities to capture rain water and store foodstuffs.

The UN and individual Western nations are also strongly backing a meeting between Somali political groups next month that will try to agree on so-called transitional federal institutions (TFIs) to end the political chaos.

But any cause for optimism should not be overestimated. Al Shabaab is not participating in next month's meeting, and without lasting political stability, there's little reason to think Somalia will soon be able to avoid catastrophes like the current one.

As if to illustrate the difficulties, Niebel - who visited the Dadaab camps on Tuesday - tried to organize a visit to the Somali capital Mogadishu. But he was hindered by the security situation there.

The trip was simply deemed too dangerous.

Authors: Jefferson Chase, Antje Diekhans
Editor: Rob Mudge