MILITANTS IN Somalia are preventing food from reaching 625,000 people, a UN World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman said yesterday, a day after the food agency was banned by the Islamist group from working in the impoverished country.
Trucks carrying food aid have not been allowed to pass through the Afgooye corridor near the capital, Mogadishu, for two weeks, WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon said, preventing the agency from reaching the most needy people.
“We aim to feed 2.5 million people in Somalia in 2010,” said Mr Smerdon. “But we are prevented from reaching 625,000 because they are in al-Shabab-controlled areas.”
Al-Shabab released a statement on Sunday accusing the WFP of undermining local farmers by distributing imported food for free.
“Somali farmers are having a hard time selling their produce because WFP distributes food aid across the regions and that is demoralising,” the al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group said.
“The organisation has been completely banned.”
Al-Shabab also accused the agency of having a political agenda and supporting “apostates”, or those who have renounced Islam.
Responding to al-Shabab’s allegations, Mr Smerdon said the WFP was “determined to help the people of Somalia who are in need of assistance regardless of where they live as long as it is safe for our staff to do so”.
In this, he was backed by the country’s western-supported transitional government, who said it was determined that the WFP continue in its work. “The food aid provided by the WFP is very important for Somali people who face several problems, including violence and drought,” Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad Indha’ade, Somalia’s state minister of defence, told reporters in Mogadishu.
“Therefore, I call for the WFP to continue its operations in Somalia, especially under the areas of government control.”
The UN agency is feeding people in the north and central part of the country around Mogadishu, where the transitional government, backed by an African Union peacekeeping force, still controls some areas of the capital.
The WFP suspended work in southern Somalia in January, saying unacceptable demands by armed groups and rising attacks were making it impossible to work in the region.
The demands involved the imposition of 11 conditions on UN agencies operating in the country, including one that they pay a tax of at least $20,000 (€14,800) every six months.
The Horn of Africa nation has been embroiled in chaos since the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.
The WFP’s website says famine last August left Somalia “facing its worst humanitarian crisis since the famine of 1991/1992, with half the population – 3.64 million people – now in need of outside assistance”.
The UN estimates it will need $689 million to provide aid in 2010 to the Somali population, half of whom are in need of “urgent” humanitarian assistance. Some 1.5 million people are also displaced in the country.