UN ends humanitarian aid in Somalia

[Dr. Fish]

I don't know too much about the situation in Somalia and I'm hoping that people that respond to this thread will enlighten me.
In the article I find myself agreeing with Rage, spokesman from al-Shabab. If the WFP bought from Somalian farmers it would raise Somalia's economy and encourage more farming. I'm know that al-Shabab is not clean and that they've done a lot of terrible things. But the fact that the WFP doesn't buy from the Somalian farmers surprises me.
What is anybody else's take on this?
Does anybody know about the other Somalian militias and armed groups?

[Prairie Fire]

The short answer to why the WFP is not buying from Somalian farmers is that their true mandate is not necesarilly to create prosperity in regions of the third world. Creating a thriving agricultural sector in Somalia (or anywhere else) would reduce the need for Somalians to import food from multinationals, and may even make Somalia into a food exporter to be contended with in years to come.

The reason that they are not buying from Somalian farmers probably also has a large amount to do with the way that US agribuisness takes advantage of crisises in the un-developed world (In Somalia's case, an economic crisis and a military occupation) to destroy food self-sufficiency in a region.

Michel chossudovsky talks a bit about how this went with the previous famine in neighbouring Ethiopia:


...
The famine-itself in large part a producte of the economic reforms imposed to the advantage of large corporations by the IMF,World Bank and the US government-served to undermine Ethiopia's genetic diversity to the benefit of biotech companies. With the weakening of the system of traditional exchange, village level seed banks were being replenished with commercial hi-bred and genetically modified seeds. In turn, the distribution of seeds to impoverished farmers had been integrated with the "food aid" programmes.WPF and USAID relief packages often include "donations" of seed and fertilizer, thereby favouring the inroad of agribuisness-biotech companies into Ethiopia's agricultural heartland. The Emergency programmes are not the "solution", but the "cause" of famine. By deliberately creating a dependency on GM seeds, they had set the stage for the outbreak of future famines.


Michel Chossudovsky, "The Globalization of Poverty", 2003

By showing favour to the Somalian agricultural producers, programmes like the WFP and USAID would be allowing a system to thrive that requires no US imports. Somalian producers gather their own seeds, so they have no need for Monsanto and others who produce Terminator seeds.

To favour a self-contained system that would squeeze out US agri-buisness exporters is very much contrary to the will of those who's interests are repesented in these food relief programmmes.