World Food Program in Somalia

Angel of Mercy or Angel of Death?

By THOMAS MOUNTAIN

The World Food Program (WFP), one of the U.N.’s biggest aid agencies, has a very nasty history in Somalia.

Back in 2006 just as Somali farmers brought their grain harvest to market, the WFP began the distribution of its entire years grain aid for Somalia. With thousands of tons of free grain available Somali farmers found it almost impossible to sell their harvest and faced disaster.

Thousands of angry Somali farmers gathered at WFP distribution centers across Somalia to protest, sometimes violently. In an attempt to calm matters the WFP promised an investigation which in due course announced that yes the WFP had done the Somali farmers wrong and promised they wouldn't do it again.

Then in 2007 just as the Somali grain harvest began to arrive in local markets the WFP once again distributed its entire years grain aid, only this time with the Ethiopian army there to protect it. With a four year long on and off again drought since afflicting most of Somalia you could say the WFP helped put the nail in the coffin of Somali agriculture.

Small wonder then why the Somali resistance, “The Youth”, Al Shabab, has since kicked the WFP out of most of southern Somalia that they control. It was only a couple of months ago that the WFP had cut by 70 per cent the minimum survival food rations for the one million or more Somali refugees it had been feeding due to a “funding shortfall,” yet today they would have us believe that they are desperately concerned for the survival of the Somali people suffering from the drought.

The WFP is one of the very few aid agencies allowed to operate in the Ogaden next door to Somalia in Ethiopia. They run a few “show case” distribution centers and have provided little or no aid for four years to over 90 per cent of the Ogaden suffering from the “The Great Horn of Africa Drought”, the worst in 60 years. This is also the area where the Ethiopian government is fighting a decade long counterinsurgency against the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). The WFP’s cooperation in withholding food aid from the areas where the guerilla fighters operate is part of a classic counterinsurgency strategy, “if you can’t catch the fish, drain the lake”.

A couple of months ago a WFP team in the Ogaden was returning to their base and made the mistake of taking a short cut off of the Ethiopian-approved travel routes and came across an Ethiopian paramilitary unit carrying out their everyday practice of burning, looting, murder and mayhem in a village accused of being supporters of the ONLF. Apparently they tried to turn around but it was too late and the Ethiopian death squad opened fire, killing some of the WFP team and wounding the others. The wounded were trucked off to the local Ethiopian garrison town and thrown into the prison there.

Almost at once the Ethiopians announced that ONLF “terrorists” had “ambushed” the WFP team, “murdered” some, taken the rest “hostages” and that the Ethiopian military was in hot pursuit.

Two days later the ONLF launched an attack on the military base and prison holding the WFP captives and freed them and the other political prisoners detained there.

The Ethiopian military immediately brought in helicopter gun ships to pursue the ONLF and the freed prisoners but were unsuccessful and the WFP staff managed to make it to safety.

The ONLF subsequently delivered the freed hostages to the WFP expecting the truth of the incident to be told and the real criminals to be exposed.

To this day the WFP has remained silent about the details of the incident and has not condemned the murder of their staff by the Ethiopian paramilitary death squads. The freed staff’s families live in areas controlled by the Ethiopians. The message to many burnt villages, to many slaughtered families, keep ones mouth shut or your loved ones will meet the same fate. How would the world even know if you spoke out and your family was murdered, the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and just about all the other aid agencies besides the WFP having been kicked out of the Ogaden. End of story.

While some 10 million Somalis living in the Ogaden in Ethiopia are the victims of a drought and food aid blockade the WFP remains silent, complicit in genocide.

World Food Program, angle of mercy or angel of death? You be the judge.

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. Email: thomascmountain@yahoo.com

After Months of Partisan Wrangling, Wall Street & Pentagon Emerge Victorious on Debt Deal

After Months of Partisan Wrangling, Wall Street & Pentagon Emerge Victorious on Debt Deal

Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi Sentenced To 5 Years - May Allah Hasten His Release

Some words from the shaykh... press the "CC" option for English, insha'Allah

Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al Maqdisi Sentenced To 5 Years AMMAN, Jordan (AP) - The mentor of slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was convicted Thursday of aiding the Afghan Taliban and sentenced to five years in prison in Jordan. The Palestinian-born Isam Mohammed Taher al-Barqawi, better known as Sheik Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi, was found guilty of "plotting terrorism" and recruiting militants in Jordan to join the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was tried in a military court with three other Jordanian Palestinians. Al-Maqdisi, whom al-Zarqawi often praised in Internet writings, shouted at the judges as the ruling was handed down.

"You are convicting us of wrongdoing for something that our religion condones, which is standing by fellow Muslims against the American occupiers of Muslim land in Afghanistan," he said, raising his right arm and pointing his finger at the three-man tribunal.

The slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader had described al-Maqdisi as his mentor. The two men shared a cell block between 1995 and 1999, after which al-Zarqawi was released under a special amnesty by Jordan's king and went on to lead al-Qaida in Iraq until he was killed by a U.S. airstrike in 2006. Al-Maqdisi was imprisoned a second time and released in 2008 after three years in jail for encouraging attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. He was arrested again, along with the other two defendants in a police sweep late last year.

On Thursday, al-Maqdisi stood behind bars along with the two other defendants in a small and stuffy courtroom in Amman's eastern suburbs, guarded by armed police. Wearing a long beard and a dark blue prison uniform, he shouted at the judges.

"Putting us in jail will not dissuade us from supporting the mujahedeen," he said, referring to the insurgents in Afghanistan. "We will continue to support them, even if you sentence us to death. We will continue to be fighters until the day we die."

The other three defendants, including one tried in absentia, were found guilty of the same offenses and sentenced prison sentences of between 2 1/2 and five years. The three men present for the trial had pleaded not guilty in January. Lawyer Majed Liftawi and two other attorneys said they will appeal the ruling. The indictment said al-Maqdisi and his cell sought to help the Taliban in their "terror attacks" against U.S. and other troops in Afghanistan. It said the four raised funds from unspecified donors in Jordan and tried to go to Afghanistan to join the Taliban but their plan failed and because al-Maqdisi was arrested.

Ibn Qayyim Al Jawziyyah once said,

"Satan rejoiced when Adam (peace be upon him) came out of Paradise, but he did not know that when a diver sinks into the sea, he collects pearls and then rises again."