Famine as a weapon

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, having made several major mistakes in his attempt to make Ukraine at least a satellite state is now prepared to go to almost any length to cover some distance where he wanted to be. His Ukraine adventure – ‘misadventure’ would be a better word – has already resulted in the enactment of a number of sub-plots. One of them is closing the distance between Beijing and Moscow; another is uniting Europe into one effective bloc. The third – the subject of the article this week – is bringing famine to several parts of the world.

Putin’s latest maneuver is to starve a good part of the world that is resisting him. Starving millions of people across the world, he believes, would save his face. Using famine as a weapon involves blocking the flow of food out of Ukraine which is the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil, the fourth largest exporter of corn and the fifth largest exporter of wheat. The crisis in the United States resulting from shortage of milk for children is one consequence of the Russian moves in the Black Sea. Sunflower oil is an important ingredient of the milk formula for children. As Russia’s navy effectively controls all traffic in the northern third of the Black Sea, Ukraine has lost access to shipping. With access to the Black Sea blocked, Ukraine has become a landlocked country. Tens of thousands of tons of food grains are rotting in the silos on the Black Sea ports unbale to load the waiting cargo ships.

On May 26, 2022, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no ships would be allowed to leave the Black Sea ports until Western governments lift their sanctions on Russia. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss condemned Moscow for attempting to “hold the world to ransom” and essentially weaponising hunger. In calling on Putin to end the blockade, she rejected the idea of lifting sanctions and said “any appeasement” would only make the Russian leader “stronger in the longer term”. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi talked to Putin because “millions and millions of lives are at stake”.

In his appearance before the Armed Services Committee seeking his confirmation to become NATO’s next supreme allied commander, General Christopher Cavoli said that after getting to Brussels to take up his new job, he would work with the European governments to help find alternative routes for Ukraine’s food to reach the world. For now, he said, “It’s going to be a combination of modes of transportation that we’re going to have to use” to get around Russian efforts to stymie grain shipments from Ukraine. Romania has already made the Black Sea port of Constanta available to exports of Ukrainian grain though that accounts for only about 90,000 tons a day. About 22 million tons remain backed up in Ukraine. The Germans, recalling the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and 1949 when the United States joined with the countries of free Europe to fly food and other basic needs to West Berlin to circumvent a Soviet blockade of the roads and rail links, began working on developing a corridor through Poland that would reach the ports in northern Germany.

Famine in many parts of the world was not the only consequence of Putin’s Ukraine war. In his testimony, Cavoli expressed the fear that Islamic militants would take advantage of the food stress that would be caused in parts of Africa and Asia. Groups including the Islamic State, al-Shabab and Bako Haram stand to benefit from food shortages resulting from the Russian actions. Those groups, he said, “feed on weak governance and food insecurity and corruption and poverty”.

Putin’s moves will greatly hurt the world, particularly those who live in poor countries. Global food prices are at all-time high, and 276 million people are “food insecure”, the United Nations description of those who are near starvation. As The Washington Post editorialised, “Mr Putin’s next moves will decide whether much of the developing world experiences hunger and even famine this year and next. World leaders are urging the Russian leader to at least allow shipments of grain out of Ukraine to help feed tens of millions of people in countries that rely on imported food – such as Sri Lanka, Burkina Faso, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon, Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt, Tunisia and Cameroon.” And there is, of course, Afghanistan. The newspaper’s editorial focused attention on Sri Lanka which it wrote was “the latest example of how devastating Mr. Putin’s global food crisis is becoming. The island nation has nearly run out of food and fuel. People are lining up for days for what little is available.” The situation in Afghanistan is even worse.

“If you have any heart at all for the rest of the world, regardless of how you feel about Ukraine, you need to open up those ports,” UN World Food Programme head David Beasley said at the recent Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing conference. His team normally sources grain from Ukraine. “Millions of people around the world will die because these ports are blocked.” There are reports that Russian ships steal grain and try to sell it to foreign buyers. This is real cynicism on the part of official Russia and the Russians.

The West is coming to the aid of those who are near starvation. The United States has already given $2.6 billion to help prevent the food crisis from turning into widespread famine and lawmakers in late May approved nearly $5 billion more for food and humanitarian needs as a part of the Ukraine aid bill.

But Russia is not the only country that is traveling on the wrong path. Some of the worst affected countries are suffering because of the misguided policies of the United States. Afghanistan is one of the countries that would be profoundly affected. The United States, having fought in the country for 20 years but failed to win, is using drastic economic measures to punish the victor. The victor, the Taliban, are disregarding the Western demands for respecting human rights, in particular the rights of women. In return the Americans have imposed sanctions that include blocking the money the Afghans have in the American banking system.

Also affected is the Afghan access to the global banking system. Afghanistan now has more than a million people who make up the country’s diasporas in several parts of the world. Remittances by them would amount to more than a billion dollars a year. But that would need access to the banking system. The consequence of these moves is to cause widespread hunger and poor health in Afghanistan that may take millions of Afghan lives. The Taliban government does not have the financial resources to buy food and healthcare for their long-suffering poor people. The Washington Post concluded its above cited editorial by writing, “But with 20 million metric tons of grain and corn just sitting in storage in at Ukrainian ports right now, there’s only so much the rest of the world can do. Mr. Putin’s war is on the verge of becoming Mr. Putin’s global famine.” The same conclusion could be applied to the American policy in Afghanistan. Famine is coming to that unfortunate country. Should it be called the American famine?

Published in The Express Tribune, June 6^th, 2022.

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