Download Current Issue - SAIS

of biofuels led to a jump in world prices
for agricultural commodities, thereby
deepening food insecurity in many
of the poorest, most conflict-affected
countries of the world.
Third, getting food in a timely fashion
to people who need it depends on
transportation (including refrigerated
transportation) and the ability to preserve
perishable food through canning
and other means; much of the world’s
food supply rots before it reaches the
consumer, accounting in large part for
the gap between production and consumption.
Inadequate infrastructure in
many of the world’s poorest countries is
a major contributing factor to malnutrition
and famine. Because these problems
are often most severe in rural and
marginalized regions, this may exacerbate
perceptions of deprivation relative
to richer citizens residing in metropolitan
centers and reinforce tensions that
can contribute to violence. Reciprocally,
violent conflict itself may compound
these problems: When rebel armies steal
food before it reaches hungry people or
disrupt food shipments to punish their
enemies, that violence in turn enhances
food insecurity. Stealing livestock,
destroying crops and farm equipment,
and burning homes are often tactics
of both governments and rebel forces
engaged in civil war, increasing hunger
among affected populations irrespective
of their political affiliations.
Fourth, global climate change
affects agricultural productivity, often
in ways that create or worsen violent
conflict. For example, desertification
in the Sahel, the zone that traverses
Africa between the Sahara and the rest
of the continent, has made life difficult
for those tribes that survived on sedentary
agriculture while opening new
lands to nomadic herders. Because the
former were primarily black Africans
and the latter tended to be Arabs,
this has contributed to some of the
worst inter-ethnic conflicts in recent
years across Africa, including Sudan,
northern Kenya and Sierra Leone. As
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
observed, “Changes in our environment
and the resulting upheavals—
from droughts to inundated coastal
areas to loss of arable lands—are likely
to become a major driver of war and
conflict.”
Fifth, decline in agricultural production
has frequently led to large-scale
migration of rural populations to urban
centers or refugee camps. Thus, people
who previously survived on subsistence
farming lose easy access to food supplies
and may readily become victims of
malnutrition and even starvation. These
migrations often produce high levels
of unemployment that, combined with
crowded living conditions, tend to create
outbreaks of violence. Often, unemployed
youth become ready recruits
into armies, whether of the government,
rebel groups or local warlords, increasing
the likelihood that conflicts of interest
or identity will take a violent turn.
There are many reasons food insecurity
is related to violent conflict. It is
often impossible to draw direct causal
lines, as causality operates in both
directions, and food insecurity is frequently
embedded in a broader nexus
of poverty and structural inequality.
But the evidence is clear about the
close interconnection between food
insecurity and PSCs.
Two Cases: Somalia and Mozambique
These connections may be illustrated by
two cases, one showing the severity of
the vicious cycle and the other providing
some hopeful indications of ways to
break out of the cycle.
A severe drought struck Somalia
and nearby regions of northern Kenya
and Ethiopia in 2011, and in July the
United Nations estimated that 29,000
children had died and another 640,000
were malnourished as a result. Another
860,000 Somalis fled the country, more
than half to overcrowded camps in
Kenya. Although drought was the proximate
precipitant, Somalia has effectively
been without a central government for
two decades. In the prevailing anarchy,
massive deforestation has destroyed
the entire ecosystem, including grazing
lands and water sources, and much of
the arable land has simply disappeared.
A great deal of the productive farmland
has been leased to China, India and
Saudi Arabia, so that food is exported
rather than being available for the
famine-stricken people at home.
Further compounding the problem,
Al Shabab, a militant Islamist group
allegedly tied to al Qaeda, controls
much of the southern regions and
denies access to UNICEF and the WFP,
allowing only the Red Cross and the
Red Crescent to operate. The United
States has refused to provide food assistance
to the region out of fear that Al
Shabab will divert foreign assistance
to support its rebellion. As a consequence,
Somalian Foreign Minister
Mohamed Ibrahim argues that up to
3.5 million residents of the areas held
by insurgents could die of starvation,
according to former SAIS Professorial
Lecturer Stewart M. Patrick of the
Council on Foreign Relations.
A peacekeeping force of some 9,200
soldiers sent by the African Union
remains restricted to the capital city,
Mogadishu, and the United States and
other Western countries are reluctant
to supply forces, in large part due to the
political reaction following the death of
18 U.S. soldiers in a humanitarian relief
operation in 1993. For the better part
of 20 years, Somalia has been a locus
of both violent conflict and famine that
continually reinforce one another.
Mozambique, by contrast, is a relative
success story of a country emerging
from a lengthy and bitter civil war to
begin a long-term development program
that has made significant strides
to alleviate poverty and improve food
security. Between its independence in
1975 and the signing of peace accords
in 1992, some 1 million people died
and another 5 million became internally
displaced in Mozambique in a war
that pitted the Mozambique Liberation
Front (Frelimo) government against
the Mozambique National Resistance
(Renamo) guerrillas, each supported
in large part by opposing sides during
the Cold War. After a long and complex
period of negotiation facilitated by the
lay Catholic Community of Sant’Egidio
in Rome, the conflict was brought to
an end in 1992 with a comprehensive
peace accord.
Since then, the rate of growth in
Mozambique has averaged 8 percent
per year, while agricultural output has
grown by an average of 5.6 percent
annually, far above global averages. The
2011–2012 35