The Food Crisis Stirs Violence in Somalia

The food crisis first led to violent outbreaks across the world in early April. Over a week later, the World Bank committed to taking action, but has not provided any significant results.

Beginning Monday, Somalia's capital Mogadishu erupted in violence as rioters took to the streets in protest of the detrimental combination of rising food prices covered with soaring inflation.

The riots come less than two weeks after another violent face in Somalia's capital between the Ethiopian-backed interim government and the Islamist-led insurgency and only a few days after US air raids on Dusamareb, roughly 300 km north of Mogadishu.

Due to the rampant printing of counterfeit money in Somalia, the Somalian shilling has dropped significantly in value. Monday's protests were focused on both the devalued currency and rising food prices. Al Jazeera News has more:

On Monday thousands of demonstrators poured onto the streets to vent their anger at printers of fake money and unscrupulous traders whose preference for US dollars over the Somali shilling is helping to push inflation to record levels.

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Although there are no official inflation figures, UN monitors say cereal prices have increased by between 110 and 375 per cent in the past year as central Somalia has endured its worst drought in recent memory.

The dollar is now equivalent to 25,000 Somali shillings, up from an average of 4,000 shillings in 1991, when the country descended into lawlessness after the sacking of Mohammed Siad Barre, the president.

Since then, Somalia has had no central bank to regulate inflation.

The profiteering from fake Somali currency has created more destitution in the war-torn country, affecting the poorest of Somalia's poor, especially those whose wages are paid in the practically useless currency, Al Jazeera's correspondent Mohammed Adow said.

"Many feel that these riots have been long overdue. Faced with numerous other challenges the Somalia people seemed to have forgotten their currency woes."

The simultaneous crises occuring in Somalia make the issue exceptionally difficult for international aid organizations to address.

Cindy Holleman, chief technical adviser for the UN's food security analysis unit for Somalia, said the country has been hit by a number of disasters at the same time.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, she said: "We have a very serious, deteriorating situation. Rising food prices ... are affecting a lot of the urban poor who cannot afford to buy food any more.

"On top of that, you have the drought in central and southern parts of Somalia ... [rains] should've started mid-April and they have not come."

She said a humanitarian response is needed in the country and with increasing food prices, "you're going to see more and more people desperate" to be able to access enough food.

BBC News takes a look at civilian life in a country over run with armed, aggressive, and competing militias:

It says the situation is "dire" in the centre and the south with government troops, their Ethiopian allies and Islamist insurgents "out of control".

They carry out killings, torture, rape, beatings, arbitrary detention and forced disappearances, a report says.

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People who have visited the capital, Mogadishu, recently say parts of it are a ghost town, but Amnesty says residents fleeing the city are prey for armed bandits on the road who rape women and girls and steal whatever they have taken with them.

Even in refugee camps, Somalis face attack, Amnesty says. It says no-one is offering them any protection.

The group says more than 6,000 civilians have been killed in Somalia in the past year.

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"Nothing justifies gang rape, slitting the throats of civilians or disproportionate attacks," Amnesty's Michelle Kagari told the BBC.

In one case, "a young child's throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child's mother," the report says.

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In another incident, the report quotes Haboon, 56, saying Ethiopian troops raped a neighbour's 17-year-old daughter in 2007.

When the girl's two brothers tried to help her, Ethiopian soldiers gouged out their eyes with a bayonet, she said.

Graphic and disturbing, yes, but a reality we must face and address. Somalia has been without a central government for 17 years and offers little prospect of progress in the years to come.