Monday, December 9, 2013

Humanitarian aid agencies continue to give money and food to al-Shabab terror groups in Somalia-BBC. US taxpayer dollars flow to terror group al Shabab via State Dept., USAID, their partners, contractors

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"You have international agencies handed to billions of dollars for good governance, security, education, healthcare, road construction, child nutrition and they are not accountable! The work of the international agencies and the result for the last 20 years has been and continues to be alarmingly ineffective. What is more troubling is, donor nations and large foundations keep on pilling more money on these third-party agencies which happen to weaken the government and exasperate the weakness.

It is time to give the label of corruption index of Somalia to its rightful owner The United Nations agencies for Somalia and hundreds of NGO’s working on behalf of Somalia.  We also encourage the international community to reconsider their aid for Somalia and directly provide the funds to the TFG." 3/4/12, "UN Corruption Index"
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12/8/13, "Aid agencies 'paid Somalia's al-Shabab' during famine," BBC

"Humanitarian agencies paid Somalia's al-Shabab militants for access to areas under their control in the 2011 famine, according to a joint report by two think tanks.

In many cases al-Shabab insisted on distributing the aid and kept much of it for itself, the report says.

Some of the groups are still paying al-Shabab to operate in the large parts of Somalia it still holds, it adds.

More than 250,000 people died during the 2011 famine.

The report - by the Overseas Development Institute and the Mogadishu-based Heritage Institute for Policy Studies - details how al-Shabab demanded from the agencies what it described as "registration fees" of up to $10,000 (£6,100).

It gives one example of al-Shabab diverting food aid in the town of Baidoa, where it is reported to have kept between half and two-thirds of food aid for its fighters. 

Al-Shabab developed a highly sophisticated system of monitoring and co-opting the aid agencies, even setting up a "Humanitarian Coordination Office".

Aid groups had to deal with this office, even though they risked legal problems by doing so because of counter-terrorism laws in other states which forbid engagement with groups like al-Shabab. 

The report says agencies who worked in al-Shabab-held areas had to complete special forms and sign a pledge saying they would refrain from certain social and religious activities.

It also describes how al-Shabab gave people extra food if they spied on the aid groups. 

Some agencies were banned outright by al-Shabab, while others withdrew because of the demands."

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p. 20, "In February 2012, Al-Shabaab announced a formal
alliance with Al-Qaeda. Al-Shabaab’s links with Al-
Qaeda are longstanding,"...

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US taxpayer dollars flow to Al Qaeda linked
terror group Al-Shabaab:

Dec. 2013, "Heritage Institute for Policy Studies," Mogadishu, Somalia

end, p. 7, "By September 2011, the famine had spread 
to six regions of southern Somalia 
and the UN warned that up to 750,000
people could die as a result; accounts from inside
affected areas were harrowing, with some reports
of as few as one or two family members surviving
(Gettleman, 2011a). Ultimately, 258,000 people are
believed to have died as a result of the famine, half of
them children (Checchi and Robinson, 2013).


p. 8, "The severity of the crisis forced a major shift with
regard to counter-terror restrictions, A humanitarian
‘carve out’, or exemption, existed under UN
Security Council Resolution 1916 (2010), and
some governments issued similar humanitarian
exemptions as the extent of the famine became
clear. US Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC)
a broad licence was
granted to the State Department, USAID
and their partners and contractors to operate in
Somalia in terms similar to the 1916 exemption
(Pantuliano et al., 2011; Mackintosh and Duplat,
2013). The State Department also stated that ‘good faith
efforts to deliver food to people in need will not
risk prosecution’."...



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