The Girl-Geek Anthropologist

BBC NEWS | Africa | Somalia food aid trucks stranded

In Somalia now, 140 food aid trucks are stranded at the Kenya border and can't get food to people.

Of course, this is the day after the Independent reported that the UN food aid is "causing chaos and violence" in Somalia: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2692506.ece

There's a pattern here that will hopefully not recreate the violence that created the "black hawk down" fiasco in the 1990s.

This quote is the best in the article:

It is not the first time that Marere's elders have criticised the WFP. After a chaotic food distribution last year, which also took place during the harvest season, the elders wrote to WFP asking the UN organisation not to deliver food again. But, in the past nine months, Marere's elders have changed twice - first the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) then the transitional government took control of the area.

It really is the same story of militias fighting, but of course, according to the Independent, they're militias belonging to different clans who are fighting.

And, lastly,

Some recipients of the food aid have also claimed that the quality is so bad they have had to feed it to their animals.

Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for WFP, said the organisation had received "no reports of this kind" from its local partners in Marere. But, he added: "Somalia is perhaps the WFP's worst operating environment in the world at this time."

Brilliant. Just brilliant.