Our guest blogger is Laura Heaton, the writer-editor for the blog, Enough Said.

The New York Times reports on Somlia:

In the damp, gray dawn in this remote Somali bush town, 25,000 men, women and children, their rib cages protruding, their eyes listless, shuffled with their last bit of strength today toward outdoor kitchens for a scoop of food. Hundreds, too feeble to eat, died while they waited. […]

“Here is hell,” said Mr. [Geoff] Loane [of the Red Cross], who worked in Ethiopia during the 1984-85 famine. “I thought I would never see Ethiopia again, and I didn’t think we would allow it to happen again.”

But Mr. Loane made that exasperated remark to the Times in 1992. And it has happened again.

A Google search for “Somalia famine” turns up a host of articles from the past 20 years about recurring periods of drought and devastation unfolding in the Horn of Africa. They have taken place with such frequency and little variation in details that it is a wonder how often disaster relief is discussed with little or no reference to root causes.

But the epic proportions of the 2011 Somalia famine should force a conversation, argues longtime Somalia specialist Ken Menkhaus, beginning with a focus on how the political actors largely responsible for the country’s dysfunction are now blocking aid delivery as well.

“The international response to date has been shockingly inadequate not just because funds for humanitarian aid have fallen short, but because of the absence of political will to take bold diplomatic action to remove impediments to the delivery of aid,” Menkhaus wrote in a paper published by the Enough Project yesterday.

The 2011 Somalia famine — the worst in 60 years — currently threatens three-quarters of a million people. Nearly half of the country’s population needs emergency assistance. The region is inherently more prone to drought than almost anywhere else in the world, but war and the absence of a functioning government has shredded Somalis’ ability to cope and survive, Menkhaus told Enough in an interview last month.

Despite the long lead-time the international community had to prepare for famine this time around, and years of experience providing relief in this part of the world, assistance fails to reach those who need it most because of blockages and diversions by both the militant al-Shabab group and its sworn enemy, Somalia’s U.N.-backed Transitional Federal Government, or TFG. As a result, the bulk of the assistance can only get as close as the Kenyan border region, a walk of several days. Writes Menkhaus:

This is not a famine relief strategy – it is a macabre game of “Survivor,” rewarding those lucky and strong enough to straggle across the border with a prize of shelter, food rations, and the prospect of being warehoused in a refugee camp for the next 20 years.

So what Menkhaus proposes is a “diplomatic surge” leveled simultaneously at the Shabab and the TFG to open routes for aid delivery. It must be clear to both sides that anyone found diverting or withholding aid from civilians will be held accountable. Condemnation of Shabab’s tactics is a given, but Menkhaus advocates taking a similarly hard line with the TFG.

The time frame for organizing a diplomatic surge is short, and the strongest public pressure must come from a range of Islamic actors, including some newly liberated societies in the Middle East who may still be too preoccupied internally to engage beyond their borders. But the United States has a key coordinating role to play. President Obama must personally get involved, Menkhaus argues, to jump start the initiative.

The alternatives — doing nothing beyond the typical, unsatisfactory relief effort or enabling a regional military operation to develop — are deeply unappealing, especially when diplomatic options still exist.

The 2011 Somalia famine risks spurring the post-mortem regret of other humanitarian catastrophes — Rwanda, Darfur — where hundreds of thousands of victims fell prey to the motives of ideologically driven, self-interested, and powerful in their countries. Menkhaus asks: “Will the same be true for the Obama administration and other world leaders when they look back on the 2011 Somalia famine and ask: Was that the best we could do?”

Our guest blogger is John Norris, Executive Director of the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative at the Center for American Progress.

How much has the world spent on Somalia since 1991? A new report released today by the Center for American Progress — Twenty Years of Collapse: The Cost of Failure in Somalia — tried to figure out just that. Using both official statistics and some educated guess work, we estimate that the world spent more than $55 billion on Somalia since 1991. Yet, for all that spending, consider some of the truly appalling statistics that we also compiled:

– Odds that a child in Somalia will die before his or her fifth birthday: 1 in 7.4

– Difference in life expectancy between a citizen of Japan and Somalia: 32.2 years

– Number of refugees fleeing Somalia daily in July 2011: 3,500

– Number of Somalis who needed humanitarian assistance in 2010: 3.2 million

There is also a 25 percent chance that a Somali will either be a refugee or an internally placed person. See the report’s chart on Somali refugees in the region:

Indeed, Somalia is currently suffering the worst famine the world has seen in more than two decades and its civil war rages on unabated. So why has so much spending yielded so little? In large part because many of the international interventions in Somalia were so badly planned and implemented that they actually made the overall situation worse in the long run.

The world has been willing to spend billions on arms transfers, counter-terrorism efforts and military approaches, but sensible diplomacy and working at the local level to build durable peace agreements have usually been an afterthought. The United States and the international community needs to be much more principled and effective in delivering aid in order to help shape a functioning central government in Somalia that enjoys the faith and support of its own people.

The Republican-controlled House Foreign Aid Subcommittee slashed the budget for foreign aid and contributions to international organizations including the United Nations yesterday, failing to meet the Obama administration’s requests on most line items.

The exact effects of the cuts are impossible to know, but the U.S.’ role in the world and international organizations will certainly be curtailed. It’s not even clear how the lead foreign aid vehicle — the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — will be able to stay afloat with the budget for its operating expenses (paying salaries and keeping the lights on) amounting to less than two thirds of what the administration asked for. At $982 million, that’s a 27 percent decrease from USAID operations spending last year.

Here is a chart looking at other important programs that also took a hit (using statistics from InterAction, a coalition of U.S. non-profits):

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton already fired back at the subcommittee, telling media that the cuts were “debilitating to my efforts to carry out a considered foreign policy and diplomacy.”

Indeed, cuts to foreign assistance and international organizations (which includes the U.N.) will likely lessen U.S. influence. For example, the Economic Support Fund (ESF) allows the U.S. to give development aid to countries like Iraq, where the U.S. seeks to retain some influence as its military presence winds down. But ESF funds were cut by more than $500 million and will amount to more than 40 percent less than what the U.S. spent two years ago.

The massive cuts also run counter to the advice given to Congress in April by 70 retired top military leaders. General Michael W. Hagee, USMC (Ret.), who co-chaired the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s (USGLC) group, said at the time:

We face tremendous challenges around the world, today, and we must have our military working hand-in-hand with diplomats and development experts to meet these challenges. Without the proper resources for our civilian agencies, our national security is at risk.

Indeed, deep cuts to programs like food assistance and disaster relief aid are particularly striking as the worst drought in 60 years caused a U.N-declared famine in Somalia.

Our guest blogger is Sarah Margon, associate director for Sustainable Security at the Center for American Progress.

The Washington Post ran a story today titled, “Somalis Flee Famine along ‘road of death,’” which illustrates the perilous journey thousands of Somalis are making to escape the worst famine in a generation. While running this front page story in a major American media outlet is a significant step in the right direction, U.S. reporting on the crisis lags far behind the rest of the world, particularly that in the European Union. In particular, the Post’s story today omitted a crucial detail: U.S. law is preventing much needed aid to getting to famine-stricken areas in the Horn of Africa.

The crisis on the Horn — and in particular the parts of Somalia that are officially in famine –– is the result of the worst drought in at least a generation. But it has also been caused by the protracted conflict related to the 1991 collapse of Somalia’s ruthless Siad Barre regime. The ongoing violence is now perpetrated in large part by a brutal armed group, al-Shebaab, which was designated in 2008 as a terrorist group and has ties to al Qaeda. Al-Shebaab has wreaked havoc throughout Somalia and created one of the most challenging environments for aid groups to operate. They have regularly harassed and targeted relief groups and killed more than 40 western aid workers. In 2009, al-Shebaab also banned international aid agencies from operating. The group recently lifted this ban only to reverse course shortly thereafter while also claiming that the U.N. had exaggerated the severity of the crisis.

Al-Shebaab’s brutality shows little signs of abating. In order to save the millions of lives that hang in the balance, al-Shebaab needs to acknowledge the severity of the crisis, stop denying aid to dying people and allow aid groups to have unfettered access to those who need assistance.

But here’s where the other part of the story comes into play.

The United States has traditionally been one of the leading donors throughout the region, providing hundreds of millions of dollars of emergency aid on an annual basis to Somalia alone. Given the severity of the current crisis and likelihood of it worsening, the Obama administration also needs to take expedited steps to address the legal road blocks U.S.-funded relief groups are facing. If that doesn’t happen, they can’t get up and running again. As I noted on ThinkProgress last week, many U.S. funded humanitarian organizations are eager to return to Somalia and restart programs they’ve had to abandon. As for now, however, they are stuck in a catch-22. The restrictions against working in Somalia — whether the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) restrictions or Executive Order 13224 — remain firmly in place.

Members of Congress have started to express concern about these restrictions and have sent inquiries to the administration asking questions about how they can be swiftly addressed to help save lives. But the mainstream U.S. media also needs to look at the full scope of complexities associated with relief operations and do a better job of telling the whole story. Until these restrictions are either removed, or a waiver process is created, some of the most capable relief groups may be stuck waiting in the wings. And that means hundreds of thousands of people in need of assistance could be waiting for naught.

As CAP’s Sarah Margon notes, nearly 10.7 million people are in desperate need of food assistance in the Horn of Africa; almost one in 10 children is at risk of death by starvation in some parts of Somalia.

Yesterday, U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon issued an urgent appeal for aid from the world community. He requested $300 million in aid over the next two months, noting that Somalis are starving to death every day:

Meanwhile, as the U.N. is scrambling to get this aid money, the U.S. continues to spend nearly $300 million a month in the war in Afghanistan, as this Associated Press story from February notes:

The withdrawal of American troops from Iraq will allow for a reduced US defense budget in 2012 but the war in Afghanistan still costs the United States close to 300 million dollars a day. Under the Pentagon’s proposed budget, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will drop to $117.8 billion for fiscal year 2012, a reduction of 41.5 billion from the previous year.

While the U.S. is already a major aid donor to Somalia, the stark contrast between how much it is spending every day in Afghanistan as compared what Somalia needs to prevent mass starvation is alarming.

Our guest blogger is Sarah Margon, associate director for Sustainable Security at the Center for American Progress.

With more than 10.7 million people in desperate need of food assistance across the Horn of Africa, the U.N. is expected to officially declare a famine in parts of Somalia tomorrow. The last time a major famine was declared in the region was 1984-85, when severe drought killed more than 1 million people in Ethiopia.

Pervasive insecurity and cumbersome legal restrictions created to keep U.S. taxpayer dollars from falling into the hands of al-Shabaab, the armed al Qaeda-linked group that controls much of southern Somalia, has made humanitarian access difficult for many aid agencies. As a result, nearly 3 million people throughout southern Somalia are now in need of assistance. In addition, and due in part to the complexities of operating in a terrorist-controlled area, there is a $1 billion funding shortage.

Last week, in a shift that indicates the severity of the humanitarian crisis, al-Shabaab publicly reversed its 2009 ban on international assistance. At a press conference in the embattled Somali capital, a spokesman noted:

“Whether they are Muslims or non-Muslims, [if] their intention is only to assist those suffering, [international aid groups] can contact the committee which will give them access to the drought-hit areas. We are standing by to provide any assistance they need if their exact desire is helping the drought affected people. Anyone with no hidden agenda will be assisted…and those who intend to harm our people will be prevented to do so.”

Immediately after the announcement, the U.N. began delivering food and medicine to civilians in al-Shabaab territory. To her credit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent an important signal by pledging to “test the willingness” of al-Shabaab and re-start programs. The crisis, however, is urgent and many obstacles remain.

For their part, many U.S. governement funded humanitarian groups are eager to return to Somalia and restart programs they’ve had to abandon. As for now, however, these groups are stuck in a bit of a catch-22. The restrictions against working in Somalia — whether the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) restrictions or Executive Order 13224 — are still firmly in place.

Given the urgency of the crisis, restarting aid programs will require some quick work by the interagency. The legal obstacles for aid dispersal that are currently in place can be addressed by either removing OFAC restrictions or creating a waiver process that enables relief agencies to apply for exemptions. Both steps will likely encounter bureaucratic hurdles that challenge the Secretary’s stated commitment. So the sooner a path forward can be agreed, the sooner the aid groups can get their programs legally up and running.