The Need for a Socialist Mobilisation

Following on from this

The Horn (which includes Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda) is the poorest region on the continent, with more than 40 per cent of its population of over 160 million living in areas prone to extreme food shortages. And while the population of the region has doubled since the 1970s, food production has not kept up with that growth, says Abbas Gnamo, an Ethiopian-born academic who teaches African politics and conflict studies at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University. "One of the problems for the Horn of Africa is the food crisis is becoming more or less chronic," Gnamo said. Although the majority of the region's population depends on agriculture for their livelihood, farmers lack access to machinery and fertilizers, and agricultural productivity remains low. This means that even in the years when farmers get enough rain, the amount of crops they produce is very small, and they don't have any food to put in reserve for the times when there is a drought or other unforeseen shock.

Although the immediate problem facing the 11 million people aid agencies say need help is a shortage of food, the causes of the crisis take in a broader spectrum of problems affecting the region, including climate change, agricultural policy, military conflicts and the effects of global markets on local economies.

In many cases, farmers have been disincentivized from growing food by cheaper imports and the dumping of surplus food aid onto local markets. Such a situation arose in Ethiopia in 2005-06, for example, Gnamo said, when the government didn't have the capacity to store surplus aid once the relief operation was over and ended up selling the food on the local markets or giving it away. "The peasants who invested and worked hard then had to sell their food at a lower price," Gnamo said. "Then, they lost incentive, and then they reduced production, because they felt if you cannot compete with imported food which is sold on market, then why should you produce more?"

In the current crisis, the drought and resulting failure of the harvest at the end of 2010 meant that pastoralists, the nomadic livestock farmers who number about 20 million in the Horn and account for as much as 70 per cent of the population in Somalia, began losing their livestock because they couldn't find water or pasture for them. That meant they didn't have any animals to sell and hence no cash or assets with which to buy food at market. "That happened first, and the farmers suffered next, because whatever crops they had left they were having to eat," said Austin Kennan, the Horn of Africa regional director for the Irish aid organization Concern. "It's this progressive loss of livestock, loss of crops, loss of food … people literally ended up with nothing, and then the deaths started. It has been a slow-onset crisis. It's not like Haiti or Pakistan with the earthquake and the flooding; it's not that sudden." Major contributing factors to the current crisis have been the increases in the prices of fuel and food that have affected the whole region. "Some areas of Somalia have seen price increases over the last year of 300 per cent," said Kennan, who returned from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, late last week. "The poorest people, they just can't afford that." Markets in Mogadishu are functioning and have enough imported food to provide the essentials. But Kennan explained "In the rural areas, the markets have been severely damaged. People don't have money, and they've lost their livestock, they've lost their crops, which is what's led to this disaster."

60 per cent of the Horn is classified as arid and almost 17 per cent as semi-arid. There is no irrigation, so when rain delays or simply comes too late or leaves too early, then they are, obviously, exposed to food shortage. Ethiopia has lost almost 19 per cent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010, according to the Food and Agricultre Organization. "Deforestation means that many countries in the region are now becoming more or less arid," says Gnamo. "That means they don't receive rain, you don't have trees, you don't have grazing land, you don't have water. … The Horn is now more or less dry." That has made life difficult for the nomad pastoralists who need to feed their livestock and move freely through the region without regard for political borders. "You have, unfortunately, many conflicts between nomads who are fighting for grazing land and water," Gnamo said. "This is really one of the most important security issues in the border areas."

Another problem complicating life for farmers in the region is the selling off of farmland to foreign interests that use it to grow food for their own countries. Both Ethiopia and Kenya have sold or leased agricultural land to agri-businesses from China, Saudi Arabia, India and other countries with cash reserves. "One of the unfortunate sides of this is they are likely to produce not for the local market but for foreign markets. That is the trend," Gnamo said. In most cases, the local peasants are evicted from the land and although some are compensated, most have little choice but to become day labourers on the land they once farmed for themselves. In countries such as Ethiopia matters are complicated by the fact that all land is government owned and peasants only lease it from the state.

It's no accident that Somalia has suffered the brunt of the current food crisis in the Horn of Africa. The country of 9.3 million has been without a functioning government and riven by conflict since the overthrow of military dictator Siad Barre in 1991. There have been dozens of failed peace treaties signed among rival warlords. The current Transitional Federal Government is composed of unelected clan representatives and backed by Western powers, was first set up in 2004 through a peace process negotiated in Kenya. Its hold on power was tenuous from the start. The country remains fractured along clan and religious lines, with some parts, such as Somaliland, run by autonomous local administrations that oversee functioning economies and even elections, and others caught up in battles between warring clans and militia groups such as al-Shabaab. "The only thing that's going to stabilize Somalia is when the people in the south come to doing what the people in the north have already done," says Sally Healy of the British think tank Chatham House "which is to reconcile amongst themselves and agree … starting from a community base of pacts between each other, that they're going to stop the conflict and start to create administrations. It has worked in the north, and it's spreading in the north."

Extracted from here

In the view of the World Socialist Movement , the reason wars take place, the reason millions die of hunger, the reason the world's resources are plundered, is that we are living under an economic system that is geared to making profits rather than to satisfying people's needs. These problems are caused by the existence and the operation of the profit system. They are an inevitable consequence of that system and cannot be eradicated as long as it remains in being.
Wars arise out of a conflict of economic interest between the two sides resulting from their pursuit of profits. All modern wars have been fought over control of one or more of the following: sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets, and investment outlets – or control of strategic areas to protect or control any of these. If you've got no money, or not enough money, you're not part of the market, and production ignores you. That's why people starve today. We live in a world which has the potential to adequately feed, house and provide clean water and decent medical care for every single man, woman and child on Earth. The resources exist to banish material want as a problem for members of the human race. Yet millions throughout the world are malnourished, live in squalor or are actually dying of starvation or starvation-related diseases.

There is of course a case for the populations of the advanced regions giving aid and assistance to the people in areas where infrastructures, services, means of production and distribution are poorly developed. This is the compelling case that those with advantages should put themselves out to help those in need. Most people will accept this but it cannot happen under world capitalism which keeps even our ability to help others in economic shackles — or reduces it to the pathetic levels of charity. The things that are desperately needed — food, clean water, housing, sanitation, transport, medical services and so on — can only be provided by useful labour, of which there is an abundance throughout the world. Useful production must be freed from the constraints of profit and class interests. Only useful labour applied through world cooperation in a system of common ownership can solve the problems of world poverty and the Horn of Africa. The tragedy is made worse because it is all so needless. Within a short time, with co-operation and united action they would be able to provide every person with sufficient good quality food. It would do this by producing goods and services directly for need. World socialism will operate with one simple and ordinary human ability which is universal — the ability of every individual to cooperate with others in a world-wide community of interests.

In an age when the US can mobilise in a few months a mighty invasion force (and fully equip and supply it) thousands of miles away across the world, if the will was there, those unfortunate people suffering from drought and natural disaster could be rapidly rescued, fed and housed.