Mirno R Pasquali: Combatting the worst drought in decades in Somalia

Flying into Mogadishu, I saw the waves crashing on the Somalia coastline, the longest coastline on the continent of Africa. Ethiopia lies to the west, Kenya to the southwest, the tiny secluded country of Eritrea to the north, and across the ocean to the north, Yemen. East Africa in its entirety is going through its worst drought in 40 years, and I was coming into country to support our operations to expand into new areas of the country to respond.

Although there are certainly defined droughts, capturing their impact is not so straightforward. Rains can fail entirely, or partly, through a season. The hangover of one drought can impact cycles of crops for years, while failing to adequately refill aquifers. Unfortunately, rainy seasons have been failing at a frightening steady pace, and just like 2011, we are once again facing the "worst drought in decades".

That tagline is not an exaggeration, this time, or the previous times it has been used. Four straight rainy seasons have failed the East Africa region, with a fifth failure expected in the coming months — an environmental catastrophe that has not been seen in 40 years. In 2011, the drought in Somalia killed over 250,000 people, half of which were children. In 2017, six million Somalis were impacted, over two million of them faced extreme hunger, with millions relocating in search of aid. The scale up of humanitarian response at the time was significant, and was able to limit the deaths to just the tens of thousands.

"This feels like 2011, but worse." I heard this line a few times during my visit to Somalia from experienced aid workers. What does that mean? International attention is elsewhere, Ukraine in particular, where I was myself just a few weeks ago. In addition, the response is lethargic, failing to speed up to the needs, failing to get the money to do so.

To add to the complexity, Al Shabab, an ideologically motivated armed group designated by many nations as a terrorist organization, controls large regions of the country. Somalia, as a state, is essentially a nation composed of islands of control, with a sea of roving AS presence around them. Small cities and villages with a few layers of increasingly exposed checkpoints, until no man’s land.

During the plane's descent, my stomach lurched into my throat as we took a hard left bank and started to, what felt like, plummet to the airstrip in the middle region of Bay. I delicately balanced an outward nonchalance, while frantically searching for signs of concern in the faces of the other passengers on our flight. Yet I only found what I came to know as the often relaxed and casual faces of the Somali passengers. Pilots in Somalia fly old propeller planes at high elevation and then quickly descend over the island of control below them to the landing strip to avoid being shot at by AS fighters. My colleague, a fellow aid worker who is from the Bay region, assured me with an offhanded smile that, "Sometimes AS shoot at the planes, but never bad enough to shoot one down."

Once we landed, and for the coming two weeks, I ran training and workshops with our teams to plan to scale up our ability to provide aid to increasingly desperate populations. Due to security concerns, I did not move around much outside of our office, yet I still felt the warm hospitality of our teams while eating liver in the morning, sweet milk teas paired with beef samosas throughout the day, and mutton in the evenings.

Our task was to figure out how to safely deliver aid to civilians living around the often shifting conflict lines. Aid in these areas is limited, yet needs are incredibly high. Delivering aid where people are living can prevent the trauma of displacement, reinforce the resilience of communities as a whole and prevent overcrowding in hosting communities. Not an easy task, but possible.

Somalia is being hit hard by climate change, and despite not knowing the extent of the impacts personally, I could feel the hints of familiar frustration and anger. Frustration with the inaction, and the suppressed second layer of anger fueled by the knowledge that this will only get worse, with a deep third layer of desperation. Climate change will drive displacement and conflict for resources — at home and abroad.

It already has, and will continue to do so. If the dots haven’t been connected already, just look at the fires in on the west coast of the United States last summer, the displacement that resulted and the likelihood it will happen again soon.

How will we respond as a community?

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Mirno Robert Pasquali is currently working with the Danish Refugee Council, a humanitarian aid organization. Since 2013, he has worked in Jordan, Tanzania, Iraq, Bangladesh, Yemen, and most recently, Ukraine. Mirno is a 2007 graduate of Laconia High School.