Somali Islamists ban UN’s World Food Program from distributing food in rebel-held areas

Somali Islamists ban UN food from rebel-held areas

NAIROBI, Kenya — Militants in Somalia are preventing food from reaching more than 366,000 people who need it, a World Food Program spokesman said Monday, following a statement by Islamists that aid agencies were helping “apostates” in the war-ravaged Horn of Africa nation.

Trucks carrying food aid have not been allowed to pass through a checkpoint in the Afgooye corridor near the capital of Mogadishu for the past two weeks, WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon said.

Afgooye has the largest concentration of displaced people in the country. It is nominally controlled by the insurgent group Hizbul Islam but allied Islamist group al-Shabab also operates roadblocks there. On Sunday, al-Shabab prohibited WFP from distributing food in areas under its control because it says the food undercuts farmers selling recently harvested crops.

“Somali farmers are having a hard time selling their produce because WFP distributes food aid across the regions and that is demoralizing,” an al-Shabab statement said. “The organization has been completely banned.”

It also accused the agency of handing out food unfit for human consumption and of secretly supporting “apostates,” or those who have renounced Islam.

WFP had already pulled out of al-Shabab controlled areas in southern and central Somalia in January following al-Shabab demands that included the firing of female aid workers, payments for protection and buying food to be distributed from local merchants. WFP says it did not expect the suspension to have a devastating impact immediately because harvests are imminent, but hunger is expected to increase after March unless operations are resumed.

“WFP is determined to help the people of Somalia in need of assistance regardless of who controls the area in which they live as long as it is safe for our staff to do so,” Smerdon said.

Even in the best years, arid Somalia is only able to produce enough food for 40 percent of its people. In the last five years, that figure has dropped to about 30 percent, Smerdon said. If WFP bowed to al-Shabab’s demands and bought food locally instead of importing it, the action would drive up prices locally and make more families dependent on aid, he said.

The Horn of Africa nation has been plagued by fighting and humanitarian suffering for nearly two decades since the collapse of the central government in 1991. Some 3.7 million people — nearly half of the population — need aid.

Associated Press reporter Mohamed Sheikh Nor in Mogadishu, Somalia, contributed to this report.