The Obama administration is moving toward easing anti-terrorism restrictions in Somalia that have hampered delivery of urgently needed aid to famine-stricken parts of the country, officials said Monday.
The shift reflects the administration’s alarm about the drought in East Africa, the region’s worst in two decades. About 2.2 million of the 3.7 million people affected by famine live in parts of southern Somalia ruled by al-Shabab, an Islamist extremist group linked to al-Qaeda.
Under current restrictions, U.S.-funded groups could face prosecution if they pay “taxes” or tolls demanded by al-Shabab on food shipments. Humanitarian groups say that has only added to the severe difficulties of working in southern Somalia, where al-Shabab has killed and threatened Western aid workers.
“What needs to happen is all actors on the ground — insurgents, the U.S. government and donors — need to lift any restrictions” on providing aid, said Shannon Scribner, humanitarian policy manager at the relief agency Oxfam.
The situation has posed a dilemma for the Obama administration. According to experts on Somalia, if the regulations are relaxed, it is inevitable that some aid will be siphoned off by al-Shabab.
But with thousands of villagers, many of them children, having died of hunger — and with scores streaming across the border to crowded refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia — the need to lift restrictions may be more pressing.
“The question is, can we live with some diversion of aid to stop the famine?” said Ken Menkhaus, a Davidson College professor and expert on Somalia.
“The fear on the part of the Obama administration is of being put in a position, by opponents, of channeling food aid to terrorists,” Menkhaus said. But he said al-Shabab gets most of its revenue from other sources — such as charcoal smuggling.
A senior administration official, who was not authorized to comment on the record, said the U.S. concerns are legitimate.
Aid workers “need to be able to operate in a way the benefits go to the vulnerable citizens in the country and not to al-Shabab,” he said.
Several officials said that there has been no major disagreement within the administration about providing expanded licenses to aid groups to work in areas controlled by al-Shabab but that it has taken time to hammer out the details. U.S. officials say they want to ensure that as little aid as possible is diverted.
Among those supporting the change is John O. Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism chief, the officials said.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been working intensively on the issue, according to aides. She “has tried to do everything possible to ensure that no one . . . will be penalized for food shipments inadvertently falling into the hands of al-Shabab,” said a State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Al-Shabab is the greatest barrier to aid reaching famine-plagued villages, according to officials and Somalia experts.
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