Minnesota-based Sunrise Community Banks, the largest U.S. bank that allows Somalis in the U.S. to send money back home, recently decided to halt money transfers back to the famine-stricken nation in an effort to comply with ambiguous U.S. laws on terrorist group financing. However, as CAP’s Sarah Margon noted on this blog last week, the decision means that a “vital lifeline” to Somalia “has vanished.”

In response, Somali-Americans held a rally at the St. Paul, Minnesota capitol building last Friday afternoon “calling on banks and the federal government to find a solution to a continuing crisis affecting their families.” “The money that we are transferring is for starving people,” one rally-goer said. “This is a lifeline,” another demonstrator said, adding, “If they don’t get the money, they are going to starve, which is already they are dying day by day.” Another local Somali said, “It brings tears to us. We can’t even sleep thinking about this.” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) also spoke at the demonstration:

ELLISON: It’s important for all of us to know that as we stand here calling for simple justice that we don’t stand here alone. Our friends in the Christian community, other communities all over the state of Minnesota care about making sure that the lifeline stays in place for the people of Somalia.

Watch clips from the rally here:

In a letter to Secretary of State Clinton last month, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) highlighted three major concerns he had in cutting off the remittances:

First, it would deprive many Somalis of a major source of sustenance. [...] Second, the lack of legitimate means for the transmission of funds to Somalia may end up driving people into more difficult-to-track channels for sending money, which heightens the risk of funds ending up in the hands of bad actors. Third, an end to the flow of remittances from the U.S. to Somalia would be a potential victory for al-Shabbab, which could then claim that America was preventing needed funds from getting to suffering Somalis.

Sunrise Community Banks said last week that it “has been and remains open to facilitating money transfers to Somalia.” In a statement on its website, they said they “reached out to multiple government agencies and officials, have made a specific proposal, and have told the agencies that we are seeking a constructive exchange with them in an effort to reach an accommodation that would satisfy the concerns of those sending funds, the government and the bank.”

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

With millions of Somalis still reeling from the 2011 famine, the recent decision by the Minnesota-based Sunrise Community Banks to shut down its Somali remittance service is particularly difficult to bear. Sunrise’s wire services have enabled Somali-Americans to send more than $100 million back home on an annual basis. Globally, the Somali diaspora sends about $530 million home each year, which, according to a joint CAP-One Earth Foundation report, tallies that up to be about $17.3 billion since the country collapsed in 1991. Somalia is one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world.

Sunrise’s decision came about because of fears of violating existent terrorist financing regulations. Even while upholding all compliance requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act — which requires financial institutions to assist with the detection and prevention of money laundering, without additional protection — the bank deemed the risks as too high.

Sunrise’s closure tracks closely with the findings of a recent CAP report, Unintended Roadblocks, which illustrates how the numerous convoluted executive orders and vaguely defined laws related to counterterrorism present a host of expensive and ambiguous compliance challenges for organizations and companies doing business in places like Somalia. A climate of instability and unpredictability develops due to the absence of legal clarity. In a country like Somalia, which hasn’t had a central government in two decades and has been devastated by ongoing violence and political upheaval ever since, the inability — or perhaps unwillingness — of the Obama administration to clearly state what would constitute a violation of the law puts innocent lives at stake.

The Treasury Department has blogged about the Somali remittance issue recently which is an indicator of its attention to this issue, but it is no substitution for actual guidance — or even a policy memo. Similarly, simply noting that Sunrise bank has a “good compliance program, and [that] it would be rare for [the Justice Department] to prosecute a bank” does little to shift the onerous burden that results from ambiguous legal language. Humanitarian organizations like Oxfam America and American Refugee Committee released a statement in an attempt to call attention to the issue and delay the decision — but to no end.

The Obama administration should be applauded for the $870 million spent to meet ongoing and urgent humanitarian needs in the Horn of Africa, including nearly $205 million for Somalia. Over the holidays, President Obama announced another $113 million to help those in need. In addition, USAID has launched an unprecedented relief campaign, which even includes TV ads, as it attempts to raise awareness about the crisis.

This relief assistance is of tremendous importance but it has not been able to genuinely reach those in need, in part because of the brutal nature of violence in Somalia but also because ambiguous counterterrorism restrictions have rendered humanitarian groups extremely risk-adverse. Without additional protection, Sunrise felt it had no option but to shut down its wire service. With more than 250,000 people at risk of starvation, this means a vital lifeline has vanished. Ultimately, cutting off remittances won’t make us any safer, but it may contribute to greater instability in Somalia and require even more spending on humanitarian assistance.

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

Earlier this month the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) released survey results indicating that yet another region in Somalia succumbed to official famine. Conditions throughout Somalia are expected to deteriorate even further in the coming months, particularly as the October rains approach. An increased prevalence of diseases like cholera and severe diarrhea means an already weakened population will be further debilitated.

According to the U.N.’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, an estimated 585,000 urban Somalis are projected to be in crisis by December if relief interventions are not scaled up. Worse still, the U.N.’s Food Security Analysis and Nutrition Unit for Somalia has officially announced that 750,000 people are at risk of imminent starvation and death in the coming four months.

These numbers are basically equivalent to every single person in Washington, DC — or almost everyone in San Francisco — facing starvation unless they begin receiving food, water, and medical attention from an outside source now.

In response to the lackluster international effort and the growing urgency, 20 aid organizations recently released a statement calling for an all-inclusive dialogue “to put people’s lives before politics in order to save thousands of lives.” This call for a diplomatic push is vital; the Somali population is on death’s doorstep.

A prime opportunity could present itself later this week as the international contact group for Somalia gathers in Denmark. Ironically, the cornerstone of this meeting is the recently agreed political reform Road Map, not the metastasizing crisis of epic proportions. As international donors, key regional actors, and Somali officials meet in Copenhagen, they will focus on priority tasks for reforming Somalia’s feeble Transitional Federal Government. They are likely to touch tangentially on the urgent humanitarian needs but there seems to be no plan for a robust diplomatic response. Certainly, immediate relief responses need to be linked to a more comprehensive approach if they are to be sustainable. But, crafting (yet another) governance plan for a functional Somali government just doesn’t make a ton of sense when the survival prognosis for much of the population is bleak.

The options to stop the worsening crisis are few and the likelihood of success is slipping away. The restrictions placed on aid groups — by all parties to the conflict — as well as the international donor community are significant impediments to accessing those in need. And while the United States is leading international community contributions with more than $600 million in assistance to the Horn of Africa, the U.N. appeal remains only 63 percent funded. Worse yet, with so many Somalis holding on by a thread, the increased drone attacks in Somalia create a perception problem about U.S. government priorities. Instead of rearranging the patio furniture tomorrow in Copenhagen, the first order of business at tomorrow’s meeting should be the creation of a diplomatic plan focused on enabling the unimpeded delivery of desperately needed aid.

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.