Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteThe lead came out perfect: "The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) suspended aid distribution to more than 75,000 people in Mogadishu on Wednesday after Somali government troops detained the agency's chief in the capital." [1] Here at about 7 a.m. there's not much elaboration on it.
One need not question the immediate facts--the detention, the further privation for 75,000 people--to express curiosity about the surrounding facts.
This now forms or adds to a pattern that would seem familiar to anyone following the primary journalism on Somalia from some distance. As with the government's assault on Shabelle Media's HQ around September 17-18, the headline sensation--government attacks the press!--has yet to evolve into a complete story, especially as regards that famous question: "why?"
To my comment on the matter (http://commart.typepad.com/oppenheim_arts_letters/2007/09/attack-continui.html), one reader responded with a pretty sensible answer but, possibly, a dangerous one too.
The sense of senseless forces operating in Somalia--e.g., the image of a proto-democratic government that readily attacks its own press and encourages through misguided action the further starvation of its people--might well evaporate with clear primary reporting (not a possibility today) and full and detailed disclosure of the government's position after the fact.
With President Yusuf's government--the only entity in Somalia capable of providing disclosure in depth--holding its cards close, one cannot know whether the government's on a witch hunt or acting on decent detective work; we, my fellow Netizens, cannot know the names, social positions, political stances, and personal interests of those the government would call its enemies; from a different sort of writer's perspective, perhaps, the missing data leaves also nothing around which to weave the better story necessary to either re-frame issues in more peacefully resolvable ways or witness mayhem made sensible as a melange of individual acts and struggles.
The recognized government in power may be always the most visible target in wars relying on secrecy for their energy, but it need not be always the culprit.
One thing's certain this morning: there's much one cannot see through news coming out of Somalia and possibly as much one may not wish to see after all.
1. "WFP suspends food distribution in Mogadishu." Reuters Alerts, October 17, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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