WFP provide much needed food aid to Somalis, aid is used by military to control wider public

Islamist al-Shabaab insurgent group denied demanding security payments from the World Food Programme, which has curbed aid to the war-torn country citing “unreasonable” conditions set by the rebels.

The United Nations agency said yesterday that al-Shabaab had demanded $20,000 every six months for security and ordered that food not be distributed to areas controlled by the rebels. Al-Shabaab controls much of southern and central parts of Somalia following an insurgency against the country’s Western- backed government that began in 2007.

“WFP claimed that it was asked for money, but I declare that it was not,” Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Rage, al-Shabaab’s spokesman, told reporters late yesterday in the capital, Mogadishu.

The WFP estimates that as many as a million people in southern Somalia are in need of food aid. The agency’s operations have been under “escalating attacks” from armed groups, which have led to a partial suspension of food distribution in much of the region, the agency said in an e- mailed statement yesterday.

Al-Shabaab objects to the WFP importing food from outside Somalia and wants the agency to purchase supplies from domestic farmers to encourage production, Rage said.

“The Islamic religion states that the program of feeding the globe is only the duty of Allah and he is the one who feeds every creature on the earth,” he said. Al-Shabaab has asked the WFP “not to bring food aid from overseas, but to instead buy our farmers’ production and then distribute to any place it needs.”

Somalia hasn’t had a functioning central administration since 1991, when a civil war began following the ouster of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Source: bloomberg

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