The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has distributed more food in the last two years in Somalia than the United Nations, says it does not plan to use United States military armed escorts for any of its food distribution. While other relief organizations have continued to try to deliver food without military protection when it is not available, the Red Cross is the only one that has chosen to do without it altogether.
Red Cross officials said that while they hoped to benefit from the improvements in security in Somalia, their operation was so huge that military protection of individual Red Cross activities was not feasible, nor would it ultimately solve the problem of looting and attacks.
The officials said the present instability underscored the need to deal and bargain directly with the clan-based Somali factions. It is not the army that will erase the problems of the clans. There are so many distribution centers that there could always be a looting point.
We have to be realists. You cannot put the Somalis aside. The Red Cross policy of doing without military escorts has been relatively successful. But it is clear that the international military presence has made a difference. On Thursday, the Red Cross managed to unload 1, tons of wheat, oil and beans from ships in Mogadishu harbor, twice as much as they have previously sent to warehouses in any single day in the last year.
But thievery has remained a constant threat, despite the foreign firepower, and relief officials stress that warehouses become the target of thieves after the military escorts leave, as do outlying villages where the foreign forces have never ventured.
