during their time of severe drought and famine. At least that is what the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Iran’s state-owned news agency, reported last Tuesday.
It is, however, unlikely that Speaker Hassan Shaikh Aden ever said any such thing since aid has been coming daily for years from a host of countries and humanitarian relief agencies.
The Islamic Republic has been presenting itself in the Iranian media as the savior of Somalia from repressive colon-ialists who have robbed Somalia blind and produced the current severe famine. But many Somalis have been living off food aid for most of the last two decades. The current famine is a worsening of conditions, not something entirely new, even if it has just been discovered by the Islamic Republic in recent weeks.
Iran has announced that it has sent six planeloads this month of relief aid, each with 40 tons of food, medicine and other aid, and that it plans to send more in the coming weeks.
The World Food Program (WFP), a UN agency, says 2 million Somalis had inadequate food last September. The winter rains then failed and the number in need of relief now has risen to 3.7 million or a third of the population, the WFP says. Many countries donate to WFP because it has a feeding program on the ground and is trying to feed 1.5 million people daily.
The biggest problem isn’t getting aid to Somalia but distributing it on the ground to the needy. Much of the aid that arrives in Somalia is stolen and sold on markets. The Islamic Republic speaks regularly of its flights to Mogadishu, but does not say how it is making sure the food reaches the needy.
The WFP is unable to reach large areas of the country because the Shabab, an Islamist militia, has barred the UN agency from the parts of the country it controls by threatening to attack its staff.
Meanwhile, Iranian officials have made a cottage industry out of speeches accusing the West of causing the famine by stealing all of Somalia’s resources. Officials do not mention the collapse of the Somali state in 1991 and the resulting two decades of factional warfare.
In his sermon at Qom Friday prayers last week, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi singled out Britain and Italy as the most guilty parties. Britain was the colonial power in northern Somalia and Italy ruled in southern Somalia. The ayatollah said those countries stripped the country bare. But Somalia became independent in 1960, more than half a century ago.
Mohammad-Reza Naqdi, the commander of the Basij, found different culprits, however. “The present poverty, hunger and insecurity in Somalia are the result of the numerous plots of the US and the Zionist regime,” he said. He explained that Israel and the United States were to blame because they prevented the establishment of a stable and efficient government in Somalia.
Actually, the United States has tried constantly to get a government up and running in Somalia in order to end the chaos, which terrorist groups have exploited to make Somalia a sanctuary and staging ground, and which has produced the rash of piracy offshore of Somalia.
The famine impacts not only Somalia but neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia as well.