The Road to Hell (37 page)

The Somali famine was no exception. Like most of the African continent's famines, it had its roots not in poor harvests or drought but in colossal malevolence on the part of the country's civil authorities. Food and food aid became highly contested economic and political tools, just as they had in famines in Biafra, Mozambique, the Sudan, and Ethiopia. The images of nefarious warlords and drug-crazed looters only added a touch of evil and spice to this all-too-common story of African starvation. end, as in all of these cases, press coverage—or the lack thereof—figured heavily in the events that unfolded.

The Somali famine of 1992 differed from other famines primarily in terms of the magnitude of the international response it received. American press coverage of starvation often reaches the point where it helps attract thousands of dollars and hundreds of aid workers from around the world. In Somalia, however, the coverage helped attract millions of dollars and thousands of aid workers, and, in the end, thousands of foreign soldiers.

Coverage of Somalia followed a progression of five steps that have become a template for famine reporting. These steps can be taken gradually or quickly—sometimes even two at once. Somalia in 1992 and Ethiopia in 1984-85 completed the five-step cycle. For various reasons, other famines, such as the ongoing one in the Sudan, never move beyond the first step or two. What is important to understand is that as press coverage of a particular famine reaches Step Three and beyond, it typically has gathered such momentum as to be impervious to facts that do not fit the popular story line.

Here are the five steps:

Step One
takes the form of what might be called the early predictor story, which usually appears as a wire service piece from Rome (headquarters of the UN's World Food Program) or Geneva. Such stories warn of huge populations in danger of famine if something is not done, and say more donations are needed to avert disaster. Sometimes there are follow-ups to this story, but unless photographs of the famine materialize—which is to say, unless the next step is reached—the early predictor story remains just a news brief.

Step Two
occurs as the few relief organizations working in an area persuade some members of the news media—especially those who work in television—that the press is ignoring a famine story. A few news organizations show up, usually at the invitation and with the assistance of the relief organizations, and produce stories that do have pictures. These stories are about not just the hunger but how it has been ignored. Having “discovered” the famine, the correspondents vigorously publicize it.

Step Three
is taken as more news organizations show up and, with the story now thoroughly simplified, “expose” the famine, commenting on “forgotten people” in remote and dangerous places. The suffering of people is a morality tale starring the news media. News accounts imply that neglect by the West is partly responsible for the mass starvation. Readers and viewers are supposed to be concerned, even feel guilty: The West must act now. News reports are saturated with graphic descriptions of hunger and misery. Numbers of people dead and in danger are offered as TV coverage dominates.

Step Four
occurs as the numbers of starving and dying people grow. This is the key moment in the evolution of famine coverage. How many people have to die before the famine fires its booster rockets and becomes a major media event? There doesn't appear to be a set number. But one can be sure of a turning point when words like “holocaust” or “hell” or “famine of the century” are found regularly in media accounts.

Step Five
is reached when more journalists arrive from smaller papers and local television stations. Now the crisis has become a cause. An international public has been mobilized. Donations flow to relief organizations. Newspaper articles include lists of relief agencies accepting donations, and during newscasts, television networks provide the toll-free numbers of the agencies.

In reality, parts of Africa are always at Step One, though often the predicted famines fail to materialize either because the people predicting the famine are wrong or because governments find other ways around food shortages. For example, in undramatic fashion and without the aid of CARE or the UN, governments purchase food on international markets to shore up reserves.

In Somalia's case, articles about an impending famine were published as early as February 1991, just after the fall of dictator Siyaad Barre. “Twenty-seven million people in Africa are threatened with starvation in a disaster that aid agencies fear could be far worse than the 1984-85 Ethiopian famine,”
Newsday
reported on February 21, 1991, on the basis of wire service accounts. This early predictor story listed Somalia along with Ethiopia and the Sudan as crisis spots. For the next two months, UN agencies flogged the 27-million-in-danger story, which ran in most U.S. papers. It bears noting that a famine “far worse” than the 1984-85 Ethiopian famine never materialized—not in the Sudan, Ethiopia, or Somalia. Similar stories
ran at various times in 1994 and 1995, claiming that upwards of 30 million people were in danger of starving. Neither famine materialized.

Step Two coverage generally follows immediately from Step One. If a follow-up story is going to be written about a predicted African famine, it is usually about how nothing is being done. This reflects the agenda of the aid agencies, who are the main source of the story—and who are trying to raise money to mobilize.

Steps Two and Three occurred over the next year. The ouster of Siyaad Barre didn't get much press coverage because it coincided with the beginning of the Gulf War. But the war soon became more than just the reason Somalia was ignored. It was seen as the moral antithesis to feeding the hungry. News reports started quoting air officials who blamed the United States for pouring all its attention and resources into the war while Africa was facing starvation. On February 18, 1991, Julian M. Isherwood of United Press International wrote: “The Gulf War, potentially one of the most devastating wars in history because of its use of advanced technology of destruction, has stolen the headlines from these other wars and catastrophes around the world, as well as the diplomatic momentum to solve long-standing armed quarrels and help those in need.”

On March 10, 1991, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
reported from London, “Aid organizations believe the Persian Gulf War is largely to blame for the huge shortfall in government donations, diverting attention from the African drought.” The challenge to America was apparent: You are willing to use your money and might to kill, but not to help starving Africans.

By the summer of 1992, months of lobbying by aid agencies resulted in a jump in press coverage about starvation in Somalia.

By this time, too, the morality of U.S. policy in Africa had particular resonance; the presidential race was moving into high gear. The Bush policy regarding Haitian refugees had been attacked as “immoral and racist.” At the same time, there was an expectation that the United States soon would militarily intervene in the Balkans and that Somalia would be ignored. In July, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali chastised the Security Council for ignoring the fate of Africans and focusing too much on “a rich man's war” in former Yugoslavia. Boutros-Ghali borrowed this slogan from anti-Gulf War protesters who had chanted: “Why should the poor fight a rich man's war?” With the Gulf War a distant memory, Somalia was now held up against Bosnia as a morality test for President Bush's foreign policy. The press corps duly assisted this effort.

On August 12, the
Washington Post
headlined an article by Nairobi correspondent
Keith Richburg, “Somalia's Overshadowed Tragedy: World Anxious About Balkan Turmoil, Aloof to That in Africa,” in which Richburg wrote: “If tragedy were measured simply in numbers of human lives destroyed, the one in Somalia would, by many accounts, be judged greater than that in Croatia and Bosnia. Here, civil war has been compounded by a famine that is starving entire villages. But unlike the Balkans, the Somali crisis has attracted little international attention or aid, and only faint, distant calls for Western military involvement.”

Richburg quoted Sanford J. Ungar, a former Post correspondent stationed in Africa who is now dean of American University's communications school. Speaking of what he called “a Eurocentric bias,” Ungar told the Post, “It's part of the old myths and assumptions that the most important things happening in the world at any given time are the things happening in Europe.”

The same day, Anna Quindlen in her
New York Times
column sounded the interventionist war cry, blaming United States inaction on Eurocentrism: “But the truth is that we are a deeply Eurocentric nation…. Bosnia, with all its horrors, is at the center of public and political dialogue and Somalia, with all its horrors, is a peripheral discussion.” She quoted Jack Healey, executive director of Amnesty International to explain why: “It's racism.” That tons of relief food and supplies were flowing into Somalia, with more on the way, did not impress Quindlen. “The United Nations has agreed to airlift food into the interior,” she wrote, “but that is neither an adequate nor a long-term solution. Senator Nancy Kassebaum, who sits on the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs, supports the use of an international force of soldiers to make sure food shipments get to the people.”

Quindlen then played the Gulf War card: “Just a year ago some of us, unpersuaded by the high moral principles involved in giving our all for cheap oil, were saying that America could no longer afford to police the world. With the President's Gulf War bluster about liberation, we lost sight of the best reason to involve ourselves in foreign affairs—because it is sometimes obviously the moral thing to do.” Her conclusion: “Surely our empathy can transcend race.”

This was a perfect foreign policy cudgel to use on President Bush—no one expected him to send the marines to Somalia. Once he did, however, those who were so quick to point out the immorality of inaction seemed utterly unprepared to deal with the entirely new set of moral quandaries that accompanied the use of overwhelming military force in the service of humanitarian goals.

Although most Americans know about Operation Restore Hope, the
military intervention in Somalia, few know about Operation Provide Relief, the massive airlift of food that began in the summer of 1992 and was financed primarily by the United States. As a result of this effort, food was reaching those in need, and death rates were beginning to fall. But the possibility of an invasion already had been raised, and this began to shape the famine coverage in the papers and on TV.

Indeed, it was this possibility of U.S. intervention—and far less the hungry people of Somalia—that led to the surge of media attention in the fall of 1992. Journalists who had never been to Africa were horrified at what they found and filed gruesome stories. Though no one really knew how many had died, press accounts were filled with numbers of dead and dying. Coverage of the famine in Somalia had moved to Step Four—the growth in the number of deaths.

On September 15, the Associated Press quoted CARE president Philip Johnston: “‘From 2,000 to 5,000 Somalis are dying each day,' he said.” Johnston, described in the article as a “private relief expert,” was in the United States raising money for CARE.

On October 2, the
Washington Post
's Richburg found an honest source to comment on the death rates in Somalia: “‘I don't think anyone has a clue how many people have died,' said Roy Williams of the International Rescue Committee.”

On October 4, Associated Press correspondent Mort Rosenblum wrote: “Even now, the relief officials said, efforts lag far behind the need. An estimated 1.5 million Somalis are in danger of starving to death and already are dying at a rate of 2,000 a day.”

On October 8, the AP reported: “Up to two million Somalis are said to be at imminent risk of starving to death. Estimates of the number who have died vary widely, but experts agree it far exceeds 100,000.”

That figure appeared in thousands of newspaper articles until October 12, when Boutros-Ghali's special envoy to Somalia, Mohamed Sahnoun, told a fund-raising conference in Geneva that 300,000 people might have died from war and famine while the United Nations did nothing and Somalia “descended into hell.” The 300,000 figure was then cited as the UN estimate, while the Red Cross and CARE continued to tell reporters the death figure was around 100,000. But the higher number prevailed in news accounts.

Reports conflicted on the severity of conditions in Somalia. A careful reader would have noticed that the situation in Baidoa was improving, while the situation in Bardera was getting worse. These details, and the questions they might have raised about the localized impact of the famine,
were lost in the overall impression that the entire country was starving. Television cameras continued to seek out and broadcast the worst cases, while print coverage took a backseat to the pictures. On October 11, Reuters reported that the international relief efforts had turned the tide of death in Baidoa, a symbol of Somalia's agony. “The known daily death rate has dropped from 400 to around 100 in recent weeks, [the Red Cross] says.”

Jane Perlez, then covering Africa for the
New York Times
, was one of the few correspondents who tried to be more specific. On October 22, she reported that 65 people in Baidoa had died that night. (In fact, 65 deaths per day was about average for the month of October according to official Red Cross documents examined later.)

At the same time that conditions in Baidoa were improving without international military intervention, news accounts conveyed that 1,000 people were dying every day in Somalia. Most echoed this October 29 report from the United Nations as found in the
Washington Post:
“The new UN plan comes amid growing concern that unless international relief efforts intensify, an estimated 250,000 Somalis could die by the end of the year and an additional 4.5 million could face starvation.”