Deja vu in Somalia

"Starving families flee war and drought in Somalia."

"Militia in Somalia blocks food aid."

"Somali tragedy decades in the making."

If today's headlines seem strangely familiar, it's because they are. Nearly twenty years ago, the U.S. sent aid and troops to Somalia to assist with a famine caused by a civil war. It later withdrew after a failed raid on a Somali warlord.

Since then, Somalia has been engaged in a bloody civil war, culminating in the humanitarian disaster before us today. It's déj?vu on a tragic scale.

More than 29,000 children have already died, and 500,000 more now face death without rapid intervention — a figure that would bring the number of Somali casualties to more than that of the Haitian and Japanese earthquakes combined.

Yet heartbreaking pictures of swollen bellies, buzzing flies and gaunt expressions are not doing what they once did to stir compassion and generate relief funds. Donations from individuals are down for a variety of reasons, including the sagging economy. But there is also fear about whether relief funds reach starving people, or whether they are stolen by corrupt officials or blocked by insurgents.

It is true that corruption has hampered the response. The U.N. is investigating food theft and aid rations appearing on the black market. Other impediments include al-Shabaab, a militant group with ties to al-Qaeda that still controls the south of the country and has not allowed delivery of food aid, denying the existence of famine. And neighboring Kenya is dragging its feet on opening a large refugee camp, leaving refugee women and children at the mercy of mauraders and rapists.

The Western-backed Transitional Federal Government of Somalia isn't clean, either, with human rights violations and war crimes documented against all sides in this seemingly endless conflict. An aptly titled report on these violations, released today by the NGO Human Rights Watch, sums up the situation: "You Don't Know Who to Blame: War Crimes in Somalia."

Droughts are a fact of nature, and there is little humankind can do to avert them. Famines, however, are avoidable in the 21st century, and this one is caused in part by al-Shabaab's destruction of the country's agricultural system, refusal to provide any infrastructure or services and blocking of aid for starving civilians. This famine is primarily a political problem.