ISTANBUL // The leading international organisation of Muslim countries yesterday appealed for more aid for Somalia and called on warring factions there to allow relief operations to reach those in need.
"We need to join hands together and to act collectively so as to counter the spread of the calamity and to save as many lives as we possibly can," Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) told a meeting of Muslim aid organisations in Istanbul. He said three million people, almost one million children among them, were threatened by starvation.
Islamic militants in Somalia have contributed to the crisis, according to a UN report, which says rebels burnt food and medicine and killed charity workers as part of a long-running campaign of extortion against aid groups.
The evidence in the UN Monitoring group report on Somalia and Eritrea exposes a policy of intimidation against aid groups going back as far as 2008. Both the UN and the United States have blamed the Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabab group for worsening the crisis in regions largely controlled by the militants.
"The single greatest obstacle to humanitarian assistance in Somalia during the course of the mandate has consistently been the denial of access by armed opposition groups, principally by elements of Al Shabab," the report said.
It said some UN agencies working in Somalia suspected local organisations they funded and funnelled supplies through were paying money to Al Shabab, which the group called "taxes".
The report details incidents of Al Shabab officers demanding bribes from UN and aid agency officials to allow them to work in rebel areas and, in some cases, burning food stocks and medicine when cash was not paid.
Al Shabab surprised aid groups in the region this month when they pledged to reverse a ban on food aid that they imposed in 2010, but they later said embargoes against the UN food agency, World Food Programme (WFP), and some major aid agencies would remain.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting erupted yesterday in Somalia's capital as African Union (AU) peacekeepers launched an offensive aimed at protecting relief efforts from attacks by militants, officials said.
At least six people died and 39 people were wounded, including 19 AU peacekeepers.
A medical official at Mogadishu airport said the peacekeepers were to be evacuated to Kenya.
The Al Shabab militants already have killed men who tried to escape the famine with their families, saying it is better to starve than accept help from the West. The WFP says it cannot reach 2.2 million people in need of aid in the militant-controlled areas in southern Somalia because of insecurity.
Lt Col Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the AU, said that its forces had conducted a "short tactical offensive operation" yesterday in Mogadishu.
The offensive will "ensure that aid agencies can continue to operate to get vital supplies to internally displaced", Col Ankunda said in a statement.
Col Ankunda said Al Shabab's decision last week to rescind permission allowing aid groups to operate in the areas the militants control already had denied hundreds of thousands of Somalis access to aid.
He said the African Union Mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, would keep humanitarian organisations informed of their operations to limit the impact on the relief efforts.
The famine in the Horn of Africa threatens Al Shabab's hold on areas under its control, with the militants fearing that the disaster will drive away the people they tax and conscript into military service.
In the past, the militants have blocked aid workers from helping those in need in Somalia, fearing that foreign assistance would undermine their control.
A WFP plane with 10 tonnes of peanut-butter paste landed on Wednesday in Mogadishu, the first of several planned airlifts in coming weeks.
That will help, but Lt Col Kuamurari Katwekyeire, the civil-military coordination chief for AMISOM, said the UN and other aid groups needed to do more.
In a statement yesterday, the WFP said that it had a funding shortfall of US$252 million (Dh925m) for the famine relief efforts. The agency said it was encouraged by the response of some donor countries that have pledged $250 million to help.
The drought has created a triangle of hunger where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet. The UN believes tens of thousands already have died in Somalia.
In Istanbul, the OIC cited the litany of war and hunger that plagues the region in its call for Ramadan-season donations.
"We call for the establishment of a large coalition under the banner of the OIC to address the emergency situation in Somalia and the Horn of Africa in general," said Mr Ihsanoglu of Turkey. A total of 15 aid groups from several Muslim countries were represented at the meeting yesterday, but the coalition that Mr Ihsanoglu mentioned was "open to all Muslim countries and NGOs", Fatih Oke, a spokesman for Mr Ihsanoglu said.
Mr Ihsanoglu appealed to the OIC's 57 member states, financial institutions, civil society groups and philanthropists of the Muslim world "to generously contribute to this humanitarian campaign that the OIC is leading, especially in the upcoming month of Ramadan, a month of generosity and giving". It remained unclear whether the OIC or the other participants of the Istanbul meeting would pledge a specific sum. This year's Ramadan will start early next week.
OIC officials have held talks in Mogadishu, where the organisation has an office, to prepare the distribution of aid, according to a statement on the OIC website. Aid distribution to refugees in camps around the capital had started, it said.
Yesterday's meeting was attended by representatives of the Turkish Red Crescent as well as by delegates from aid groups in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and other Muslim countries, Mr Oke said.
* With additional reports from Associated Press and Reuters