According to the World Metrological Organization, the situation is expected to persist after the rainy season, which usually starts in late March or early April. Hundreds more are in great danger of losing their lives; 80% of the livestock have already perished; and lawlessness in the country is making aid delivery nearly impossible. Aid workers who are delivering food and water for drought victims risk being killed if they do not pay the multiple roadblock taxes run by the various militia and warlords. And in recent times, adding to the agony of Somalia’s starving population is the mushrooming sea pirates, who are also attacking vessels carrying food and other consumer goods.

In most of the famine-affected regions, the process of internal displacements is already in motion, often resulting in inter-clan conflicts. The devastation is so graphic its as if once again we are revisiting the 1974 famine. Thousands of lives have been devastated, such as that of six-year old Hussein, who has traveled 180 km from a small village in Bakool region to a clinic in Wajid town. Feverish and malnourished, by the time he reached the clinic, the health care workers found an enlarged liver, anemia and many other malnourished ailments such as starvation due to the drought, which could end his young life. Hussein is but only one name of the millions like him who will vanish if a well planned intervention of food distribution, medical supplies and other critically needed assistance does not reach the drought stricken areas.

Dominic Nutt, an emergency specialist for Christian Aid who recently paid a visit to Somalia, said he saw people begging for water at the side of the roads. Mr. Nutt is concerned that the famine stricken in Somalia will be forgotten and thousands will die if the international donors do not respond rapidly. He said. "The problem is that the money tends to follow TV. At the moment it is very dangerous for agencies to operate there, let alone journalists, so the pictures that make it on to the bulletins are largely from Kenya."

Many years of instability and statelessness has contributed to the current devastating famine. The inability of the zonal warlords to come together and re-establish a central government has exacerbated the situation. The Transitional Federal Government has failed the Somali people by not putting together a comprehensive plan of action to govern the nation. Although the TFG and its parliament exist only in name, it did not even take the baby step to appeal to the world for help and intervention.  

Moreover, the TFG wasted valuable time on unnecessary in-fights where it took its leaders the good part of a year and half to come to their first meeting in Baydhabo, after much child like tantrums displayed by these full-grown men who would not agree on a workable plan of compromise. They also wasted precious time on not so important conferences and meetings held in various countries with no tangible plans on how to solve the daunting task that the country faces. This is a clear indication of the fatigue, confusion and lack of leadership that has taken root within the TFG and transitional parliament.

No one expects miracles from their leaders when natural disasters hit (and Bush has taught us some lessons at the wake of Katrina in New Orleans), but incompetence and lack of leadership on the part of TFG and the Speaker of the house rings loud.

The division within the TFG and the parliament has contributed brutally to the severity of the drought aggravating an already volatile situation. How long will Somalis endure their nation referred to as ‘the lawless, govermentless nation’ where desperate people drink their own urine? Have we sunken so low that such descriptions have become the norm? As Martin Luther King Jr., the Black civil rights leader, said to express the pain of his people before deliverance, “How long is too long?” we say how long would Somalis remain identified as the people who sought relieve from drinking their urine?

Somalia’s famine is unique since the severe droughts is magnified by a) the never ending warlord-profiting civil war, b) merciless sea pirates and ground militia, and 3) Defunct leaders who constantly failed to form a modicum of central government. 

The agonizing death of Somalia’s famine stricken multitude is only a far-fetched story to the international bureaucrats in New York who has done nothing so far. Or, the US government, who by openly dealing with the country’s merciless warlords in its pursuit of its security interest, has yet to acknowledge the magnitude of this famine.  In fact the US government is now a culprit in this famine simply because the warlords who are profiting from its perpetuation are in the womb of the Pentagon generals whose hands are all over in Somalia.  But a third culprit is the burgeoning Somali Diaspora community who has yet to sponsor a vigil to call the attention of those in the richer northern hemisphere where they reside.

WardheerNews editorial board calls for the Somali Diaspora communities, who had not been good in anything so far apart from few, to organize vigils in their respective communities and pressure their representatives on this matter. We also call the US government, who has been involved in Somalia’s affairs during the cold war era and is now dealing with the country’s notorious Mogadishu-based warlords, assume responsibility on what it had done so far and help out in the mitigation of the current famine. 

As to those who profit from famine, their crimes are nothing less than crimes against humanity and should face justice soon or later. Putting a human being in a position where drinking urine brings a measure of relieve from thirst and hunger must be treated as a serious crime.  

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