110 - Desperate Days in the Horn of Africa

            A massive famine, triggered by the region’s worst drought in eleven or possibly as many as forty years and exacerbated in its severity by grain shortages resulting from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, is now engulfing the Horn of Africa  -- Ethiopia, Somalia, southern Sudan and South Sudan, and northern Kenya.   As many as 11 million (mostly poor) inhabitants are at risk of starving unless donors manage to provide cash to purchase food for the millions who are in need or can deliver relief supplies.  So far, this humanitarian tragedy has drawn  limited global attention.  The caring nations of the West must rapidly ramp up their assistance to those near to death’s door.

            The rains, often intermittent in the desiccated lands that border the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, have almost everywhere in the Horn become strikingly less reliable in recent years, doubtless thanks to global warming.  It has not rained abundantly for at least four years. The monsoon, which for decades, if not millennia, regularly brought ample downpours from across the Indian Ocean, has lately been at best sporadic.  Peasant farmers and their plantings in India and northeastern Africa have lost their only source of vital moisture.  Irrigation has long been scarce, so whole nations have been dependent on their own harvests – now impossible -- of maize, manioc, millet, and grains like Ethiopia’s teff.

            Paradoxically – again thanks to global warming – some northern reaches of the Horn of Africa are also being flooded.  Eight of South Sudan’s ten provinces are under water, with farming and cattle grazing almost impossible.  Nearly 2 million people are affected, their livelihoods in peril. That means that 65 percent of South Sudan’s disparate and often antagonistic peoples have become food insecure.  Fighting in three nearby provinces in southern Sudan has also made more indigenous agricultural communities food endangered.

            The UN’s World Food Program is providing emergency assistance, but in reduced quantities.  So are a host of international NGOs like Oxfam, Mercy Corps, and Save the Children. In Somalia and Ethiopia alone, 1.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes and are at risk of becoming destitute.

This dire predicament has been made dramatically worse by the slowing and now halting of grain exports from Ukraine and Russia and, overwhelmingly, by the several civil wars that are now convulsing the Horn: the al-Shabaab jihadist insurgency in Somalia, the southern Sudanese intra-provincial battles over land and water, the South Sudanese internal ethnic-based battle to control resources and jobs,  and -- most of all – Ethiopia’s decision to invade and  subjugate Tigray,  its own northernmost province of 6 million people.

As I wrote in #105, (“Ethiopia’s Abiy Forfeits His Nobel Prize  Laurels,”  Oct. 12) not only has the Ethiopian army this week captured Adwa and Shire, two key towns in Tigray, but -- in collaboration with invading Eritrean military detachments --  seems poised to assault Mekele,  Tigray’s provincial capital. Weakened by hunger and short of arms and ammunition, Tigrayan defenders have been unable this time (unlike in 2021) to repulse the Ethiopian army and throttle Eritreans attacking from the north.  Indeed, after battering Tigray in 2020 and being forced to retreat in 2021, the Ethiopians have this time been much better armed and provisioned. But a major difference in the renewed combat (after a ceasefire ended in August) is the involvement of Eritrea, an authoritarian-ruled country with few friends and a large army of conscripts.

Since hostilities between Ethiopia and Tigray broke out in late 2020, approximately 600,000 civilians and combatants have lost their lives. Many more casualties, and deaths from starvation and food insecurity, are likely if the African Union  (assisted by the United States) fails to broker a sustainable truce.

Ethiopians and Tigrayans are meeting this week in South Africa with African Union mediators from Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.  Former Presidents Olesegun Obasanjo and Uhuru Kenyatta are attempting to forge a durable cease fire. But Ethiopia is still intent on reintegrating Tigray into Ethiopia on Addis Ababa’s centralizing terms. Indeed, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who initiated the war in Tigray to show who was boss, and to punish the Tigrayans for their long prior political dominance of the daily life of the nation, wants sharply to eliminate Tigrayan separatism.  The Tigrayans seek to be left alone and freed from Abiy’s blockade. It prevents food and fuel from reaching Tigray. The blockade has also crippled medical services in Tigray, where so many children and their parents remain severely at risk

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There are no negotiations pending to resolve the Islamist, al-Qaeda linked insurgency in Somalia. That intrastate war has immiserated the Somali peoples since about 2008.  The Somali Federal Government’s army is supported by a large African Union force and by a few hundred U. S. Special Forces troops. The U.S. also attacks al-Shabaab with drones. But the guerrillas of al-Shabaab are still able to out-maneuver their opponents. In recent weeks al-Shabaab legions attacked hotels in Mogadishu and Kismayu, the two largest towns, killing two dozen.  It also runs much of central Somalia, taxing trade there and operating courts that solve local disputes. About 1.5 million Somali are food insecure in areas controlled by al-Shabaab. Part of al-Shabaab’s war expenses come from its trafficking of heroin north toward Europe and south toward South Africa.

Given this regional-wide combination of calamities, both human made and climate-induced, massive outside humanitarian assistance is imperative at a time when attention is rightfully on Ukraine and many international relief agencies are running short of funding and supplies.  UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been relentless in calling attention to problems in the Horn of Africa and in seeking stepped up help.  But too few donors are responding.

On top of providing food aid, if this week’s talks in South Africa can persuade Abiy to call off the war in Tigray, send Eritreans back home, and stop barring food and medical convoys reaching the rebellious province, then innumerable lives could be spared.  Washington’s representatives are very active, but more private and public pressure might work wonders in helping Abiy to recognize what his short- and medium-term priorities should be – in terms of global order and his country’s stability and development. As a recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he needs to be persuaded to strive for peace, not conquest.