20120423
Press TV
A piece of US legislation, designed to restrict transactions with international ‘terrorist’ groups has been a major bottleneck in the delivery of humanitarian aid to Somalia during the country’s deadly famine in 2011, an American political analyst says.

While the Western media blame the al-Shabab fighters for blocking humanitarian assistance from reaching the famine-hit southern Somalia, “The US counter-terrorism laws played an equally central role in obstructing assistance from reaching famine victims in desperate need of aid,” Antiwar.com cited Ken Menkhaus, a professor of political science at Davidson College in North Carolina, as saying in a seminar in Helsinki, Finland on Wednesday.

Humanitarian organizations avoided delivering food aid to drought-struck areas controlled by al-Shabab, over concerns about the likelihood of violating the USA Patriot Act, Menkhaus said.

The act, passed by the US congress in the post-9/11 era, subjects the entities who provide material benefits, even if unwittingly, to a terrorist group to the most severe penalties.

“Suspension of food aid into southern Somalia was the only thing that the US government and al-Shabab could agree on, to the detriment of (millions) of Somalis," the analyst pointed out.

Although the US administration claims that it has excluded relief agencies from counter-terrorism laws under a separate document, legal experts argue that the exemption incorporates no effective protection and leaves humanitarian agencies vulnerable to the provisions of the Patriot Act.

In mid-2011, Somalia struggled with a deadly drought that claimed the lives of thousands and displaced millions of others inside and outside the war-torn country.

Public healthcare has been deteriorating in Somalia as majority of hospitals were forced to shut down due to lack of financial and material support.

The majority of famine victims were women and children. Health officials in Mogadishu argue that illiteracy and insecurity are among the factors that contribute to the high infant mortality rate in south and central Somalia.

Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally-displaced people in the world and has been without a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former junta ruler Mohamed Siad Barre.