UN says US aid restrictions hurting hungry Somalis

NAIROBI, Kenya — U.S. restrictions designed to stop terrorists in Somalia from diverting aid are hurting humanitarian operations in the lawless Horn of Africa country, U.N. officials said Wednesday.

U.N. agencies have not seen any evidence from the American government that food aid is being diverted to Islamists fighting the U.N.-backed Somali government, said the top U.N. humanitarian official for Somalia, Mark Bowden.

"What we are seeing is a politicization of humanitarian issues," Bowden told journalists in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. "The options for a lot of Somalis look pretty bleak."

The U.S. reduced its funding to Somalia last year after its Office of Foreign Assets Control expressed fear that the extended supply line and insurgent-heavy areas where aid agencies were operating meant aid could be diverted to a group with links to al-Qaida.

The reduction contributed to a shortfall in funding that meant only two-thirds of the $900 million needed in 2009 was raised, said Kiki Ghebo, the head of the office responsible for coordinating humanitarian affairs in Somalia. The U.S. is the biggest contributor of humanitarian aid in Somalia.

Bowden says agencies were being asked to comply with impractical requirements by the U.S., but he declined to give details. He said stateside employees of the U.S. government's aid agency, USAID, were eager to resolve the impasse but said that they faced resistance from higher up in the administration.

"The whole issue seems to be dragging on for far too long," he said.

In Washington, a White House spokesman placed blame for the situation on terror groups active in Somalia.

"The actions of al-Shabaab and other violent extremists are what are denying Somalis urgently needed humanitarian aid," spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "The United States is committed to meeting humanitarian needs, including those in Somalia, and ensuring that our assistance does not fuel conflict."

Al-Shabaab is the most active group targeting Somalia's impotent transitional government, which is backed by the United States.

American reluctance to release funds is not the only problem agencies are facing. The World Food Program pulled out of much of southern and central Somalia after local Islamist commanders demanded $20,000 payments every six months to allow them to operate.

The Islamists also demanded that WFP fire all women working for them unless they were in clinics or health centers.

WFP will not restart its operations until the conditions are lifted and they are given assurances they will be allowed to operate safely, said spokesman Peter Smerdon.

The funding crisis and partial withdrawal of WFP comes as the government is preparing to launch an offensive against the Islamists. The U.N. refugee agency says 100,000 people have fled their homes throughout the country since January amid an upsurge in fighting.

Somalia has not had a functioning government for a generation. Successive administrations supported by the international community have failed to deliver either security or services to the people. Nearly half the Somali population is dependent on external aid

Somali militants order U.N. food agency to leave

(CNN) -- Somalia's main militant group has banned the United Nations food agency and ordered its aid workers to leave the impoverished country.

Al-Shabaab released a statement to the media Sunday, accusing the World Food Programme of distributing expired food and undermining local farmers, said Peter Smerdon, a WFP spokesman.

Smerdon declined to comment on the accusations, but said the agency is committed to the failed nation in the Horn of Africa.

"WFP is determined to help the people of Somalia in need of assistance, regardless of who controls the areas in which they live, as long as it is safe for our staff to do so," Smerdon said.

About half the population -- or nearly four million Somalis -- is starving, according to the United Nations.

The food aid agency suspended work in southern Somalia in January, saying rising attacks and unacceptable demands from armed groups had made it impossible to work in the region.

Smerdon declined to say whether the agency had resumed operations in the south.

However, a statement on the WFP Web site says it continues to deliver food to other parts of the country, including the volatile capital, Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab, the al Qaeda proxy in the country, controls much of southern Somalia. It has accused the food aid agency of having a political motive and supporting the U.N.-backed transitional government. WFP has denied the allegations and said it is impartial and nonpolitical.

Somalia has not had a stable government since 1991, and fighting between the rebels and government troops has escalated the humanitarian crisis in the famine-ravaged country.

Somalia: 'WFP Will Continue Its Aid Support in Somalis' - Official

Peter Somerton, the spokesman of the World Food Program (WFP) has Monday said that they will continue their aid support to the Somali people, just a day after Harakat Al-shabab Mujahideen issued a press release suspending whole activities of the agency.

"WFP will not stop providing food aid to the displaced Somalis in the camps. It will continue its work. How ever is possible for the staff of WFP can go ahead for their support, we shall continue our aiding the Somalis anymore," said the spokesman.

Speaking to Shabelle radio, Peter Somerton said, 'We will not consider the rulers, but our aim is to help the feeble and needy people of Somalia," he added.

The spokesman declined to comment on more about the repeated statements from the Islamic administration of Harakat Al-shabab Mujahdeen for suspending the program's activities in Somalia.

The statement of the World Food Program comes as press release banning its activities issued by Harkata Al-shabab Mujahideen in Somalia on Sunday.

UN agency acts on Somali food-aid claims

The UN's food agency has blacklisted three contractors named in a UN report which alleged that food aid in Somalia was being diverted.

The World Food Programme said it would not engage in any new work with the contractors and welcomed the report.

The WFP stressed that it had dealt with many of the concerns in the report.

The UN monitoring group document said corrupt contractors, militants and local UN workers were diverting food aid and selling it illegally.

Earlier this year, the WFP was forced to suspend food distribution in southern Somalia because of threats from armed groups.

Widespread corruption

"The integrity of our organisation is paramount and we will be reviewing and investigating each and every issue raised by this report," said WFP executive director, Josette Sheeran.

"WFP stands ready to offer full co-operation with any independent inquiry into its work in Somalia."

The UN document says up to half of the food aid in Somalia is diverted to a web of corrupt contractors, distributors, transporters and armed groups.

Some local UN workers are also accused of taking a cut in the profits.

It blames the problem on the food distribution system in the war-torn country, where transporters have to navigate roadblocks operated by various militias and bandits. Charges that food aid was being diverted first surfaced in 2009.

The US has since reduced funding to Somalia, fearing that aid was falling into the hands of the Islamist group al-Shabab.

The report, which was leaked to various media organisations this week, is due to be officially presented to the UN Security Council on 16 March.

UN food agency welcomes any probe into Somalia aid

ROME — A U.N. food agency said Thursday it will cooperate with any independent probe into its food operations in Somalia, after a report found that up to half the food aid intended for the nation's hungry people does not reach its destination.

The report said food aid in Somalia is being diverted to corrupt contractors, radical Islamic militants and local U.N. workers. It calls on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to authorize an independent investigation of the operations of the World Food Program in the country.

"The integrity of our organization is paramount and we will be reviewing and investigating each and every issue raised by this report," WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said in a statement.

"WFP stands ready to offer full cooperation with any independent inquiry into its work in Somalia," it said.

The Rome-based agency also promised not to engage with transport contractors that the report alleges were involved in arms trading.

The report was made by the panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against the African nation. It is to be presented to the U.N. Security Council next week, WFP says. The findings were first reported by The New York Times this week.

Sheeran said her organization "would do everything it could to reach the hungry in Somalia" — a country where around 3.7 million people, or nearly half of the population, need aid.

Sheeran said that "vulnerabilities are always present in conflict areas." Some of the issues raised in the report have already been addressed, she said, while in other cases the agency wanted to correct some factual information. She did not single out any issues.

The WFP suspended operations across southern Somalia in January. The agency said it was acting in response to intimidation of its staff and because armed groups have made "unreasonable demands ... that contravened WFP's rules."

Somalia Food Aid Bypasses Needy, U.N. Study Finds

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and NEIL MacFARQUHAR

As much as half the food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from needy people to a web of corrupt contractors, radical Islamist militants and local United Nations staff members, according to a new Security Council report.

The report, which has not yet been made public but was shown to The New York Times by diplomats, outlines a host of problems so grave that it recommends that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon open an independent investigation into the World Food Program’s Somalia operations. It suggests that the program rebuild the food distribution system — which serves at least 2.5 million people and whose aid was worth about $485 million in 2009 — from scratch to break what it describes as a corrupt cartel of Somali distributors.

In addition to the diversion of food aid, regional Somali authorities are collaborating with pirates who hijack ships along the lawless coast, the report says, and Somali government ministers have auctioned off diplomatic visas for trips to Europe to the highest bidders, some of whom may have beenpirates or insurgents.

Somali officials denied that the visa problem was widespread, and officials for the World Food Program said they had not yet seen the report but would investigate its conclusions once it was presented to the Security Council next Tuesday.

The report comes as Somalia’s transitional government is preparing for a major military offensive to retake the capital, Mogadishu, and combat an Islamist insurgency with connections to Al Qaeda.

The United States is providing military aid, as the United Nations tries to roll back two decades of anarchy in the country.

But it may be an uphill battle. According to the report, Somalia’s security forces “remain ineffective, disorganized and corrupt — a composite of independent militias loyal to senior government officials and military officers who profit from the business of war.”

One American official recently conceded that Somalia’s “best hope” was the government’s new military chief, a 60-year-old former artillery officer who, until a few months ago, was assistant manager at a McDonald’s in Germany.

The report’s investigators, part of the Monitoring Group on Somalia, were originally asked to track violations of the United Nations arms embargo on Somalia, but the mandate was expanded.

Several of the report’s authors have received death threats, and the United Nations recently relocated them from Kenya to New York for safety reasons.

Possible aid obstructions have been a nettlesome topic for Somalia over the past year and have contributed to delays in aid shipments by the American government and recent suspensions of food programs in some areas by United Nations officials.

The report singles out the World Food Program, the largest aid agency in the crisis-racked country, as particularly flawed.

“Some humanitarian resources, notably food aid, have been diverted to military uses,” the report said. “A handful of Somali contractors for aid agencies have formed a cartel and become important power brokers — some of whom channel their profits, or the aid itself, directly to armed opposition groups.”

These allegations of food aid diversions first surfaced last year. The World Food Program has consistently denied finding any proof of malfeasance and said that its own recent internal audit found no widespread abuse.

“We have not yet seen the U.N. Somalia Monitoring Group report,” the World Food Program’s deputy executive director, Amir Abdulla, said Tuesday. “But we will investigate all of the allegations, as we have always done in the past if questions have been raised about our operations.”

The current report’s investigators question how independent that past audit was, and called for a new outside investigation of the United Nations agency.

“We have to tell these folks that you cannot go on like this — we know what you are doing, you can’t fool us anymore, so you better stop,” said PresidentAli Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, who was at the United Nations, where his country holds the presidency of the Security Council this month.

The report also charges that Somali officials are selling spots on trips to Europe and that many of the people who are presented as part of an official government entourage are actually pirates or members of militant groups.

The report says that Somali officials use their connections to foreign governments to get visas and travel documents for people who would not otherwise be able to travel abroad and that many of these people then disappear into Europe and do not come back.

“Somali ministers, members of Parliament, diplomats and ‘freelance brokers’ have transformed access to foreign visas into a growth industry, matched possibly only by piracy,” selling visas for $10,000 to $15,000 each, the report said.

The report’s authors estimate that dozens, if not hundreds of Somalis have gained access to Europe or beyond through this under-the-table visa business.

Mohamed Osman Aden, a Somali diplomat in Kenya, said: “Maybe there’s been one or two cases that have happened over the years. But these are just rumors. These allegations have been going around for years.”

The report also takes aim at some of Somalia’s richest, most influential businessmen, Somalia’s so-called money lords. One, Abdulkadir M. Nur, known as Eno, is married to a woman who plays a prominent role in a local aid agency that is supposed to verify whether food aid is actually delivered. That “potential loophole” could “offer considerable potential of large-scale diversion,” the report said.

The report accuses Mr. Nur of staging the hijacking of his own trucks and later selling the food.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Nur said he had sent the investigators many documents that “showed very clearly that the gossip and rumors they are investigating are untrue,” including the alleged hijacking or any link to insurgents. He said that his wife merely sat on the board of the local aid agency and that only “a tiny fraction” of the food he transported was designated for that aid agency.

In September, Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, wrote a letter to Secretary General Ban, defending Mr. Nur as a “very conscientious, diligent and hard-working person” and saying that if it were not for the contractors, “many Somalis would have perished.”

The report questions why the World Food Program would steer 80 percent of its transportation contracts for Somalia, worth about $200 million, to three Somali businessmen, especially when they are suspected of connections to Islamist insurgents.

The report says that fraud is pervasive, with about 30 percent of aid skimmed by local partners and local World Food Program personnel, 10 percent by the ground transporters and 5 to 10 percent by the armed group in control of the area. That means as much as half of the food never makes it to the people who desperately need it.

In January, the United States halted tens of millions of dollars of aid shipments to southern Somalia because of fears of such diversions, and American officials believe that some American aid may have fallen into the hands of Al Shabab, the most militant of Somalia’s insurgent groups.

The report also said that the president of Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northern Somalia, had extensive ties to pirates in the area, who then funneled some of the money they made from hijacking ships to authorities.

Puntland authorities could not be reached on Tuesday, but Mr. Aden, the Somali diplomat, dismissed the allegations, saying that the Puntland government had jailed more than 150 pirates and that it had not “received a penny from them.”

“It’s unfortunate that this monitoring group thinks they can stick everything on the Somalis,” he said.

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Gisenyi, Rwanda, and Neil MacFarquhar from New York.

Sticker Shock: Experts Say World Food Program's Afghan Relief Effort Overpriced

Saturday , February 06, 2010

By George Russell

ADVERTISEMENT

The United Nations’ World Food Program, or WFP, is preparing to launch a mammoth, three-year relief operation in Afghanistan this year for 7.4 million people at a cost of $1.2 billion — but less than half of that amount will actually go to purchasing food for the war-ravaged country.

The majority of the money — nearly $730 million — is being spent on shipping, land transportation, handling, office construction and U.N. staffing and administration costs, according to program documents obtained by Fox News. Outside experts consulted by Fox News say that some of the costs are more than 100 percent higher than they need to be.

WFP’s response is that some of its costs are actually less than in the past, and that higher expenses are required because of the nature of the new relief operation. In other words, they say they’re inefficient because they need to be.

The WFP program is expected to come up for approval at a meeting of WFP’s 37–member Executive Board beginning on Feb. 8 in Rome. By far, the biggest share of the $1.2 billion relief tab is likely to come from the U.S., which picked up 47 percent of the cost of WFP’s previous Afghan relief program.

Just as arresting as the size of the new WFP program is the way the money is being spent. Less than 40 percent of the total is expected to purchase nearly 816,882 metric tons of food for the program, at a projected cost of $474.7 million.

An evaluation report of WFP’s last major Afghan food relief project, done by independent outside consultants and also intended for next week’s executive board meeting, noted that food costs made up 52 percent of the total relief budget in an $878 million effort that covered 390 of 398 administrative districts in the country. (That operation offered relief to about 6.5 million Afghans per year; the new operation aims to help 7.4 million.)

The same report noted that a 52 percent ratio of food costs to total spending was similar to WFP food relief operations elsewhere, and “can be taken as an indicator of efficiency.”

This time, even though its new relief project is very similar in many respects to its previous Afghan program — which ran for more than four years — WFP’s food costs make up 39.5 percent of the total.

In its latest project proposal documents, the organization notes mildly that the “fluid security environment and limited infrastructure in Afghanistan” mean that “operational and support costs are higher than average.”

In response to questions from Fox News, WFP further replied that “moving goods to and within Afghanistan is more expensive due to increased competition and congestion on limited available transportation routes.” It also cited the need to construct additional warehouses and replace 55 trucks in a WFP fleet of 150.

Most of the food itself, WFP said, would be purchased on international markets “through a transparent tendering process.”

Outside shipping and grain handling experts who are familiar with conditions in the region, nonetheless, told Fox News that they consider some the WFP costs, notably for transportation and handling, to be roughly double what is commercially required. The amounts run into tens of millions of dollars.

Moreover, some of the most outsized costs, according to those experts, are incurred outside Afghanistan, where the security and infrastructure issues cited as justification by WFP do not apply.

Among other things, the experts, who are familiar with transportation of grain and other commodities in the central Asian region, pointed to:

— “External transport” costs of $60 million: Essentially, shipping grain and other foodstuffs, mainly to ports such as Karachi in Pakistan and, to a much lesser extent, Bandar Abbas in Iran, for subsequent transit to Afghanistan.

That would work out to more than $73 per metric ton of relief supplies shipped, if all of them came from abroad. In fact, WFP says the shipping costs would be even higher: $101 per metric ton, as the operation intends to buy 92,000 metric tons of local wheat as part of its operation. The relief agency says that its projected prices are actually a saving over the overseas shipping costs of its last operation.

Using their most generous estimates, the experts consulted by Fox News judged that the actual cost of overseas food shipping should run to somewhere between $33 and $50 per metric ton — or between one-half and one-third the price projected by WFP.

— “Landside transport” costs of nearly $60.2 million: Trucking from Pakistan and Iran to centers such as Kandahar, Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, plus $74.5 million in anticipated “internal transport, storage and handling” charges as the food moves to much smaller Afghan outposts for distribution.

Experts consulted by Fox News calculated that the WFP shipping estimates were roughly 100 percent more expensive than required — and once again, that did not factor in local grain purchases, which would lower the landside and internal transportation costs even further. Moreover, current international fuel costs have declined substantially since their sky-high price hikes of 2007, which should also moderate costs. The same declines have also helped to cause a substantial moderation in international food prices.

WFP’s response is that its new program requires building seven new sub-offices, atop eight already in existence, to handle its expanded distribution, and said some of the additional transportation funds would be used to buy 55 new trucks for its operations. It also argues that its operations are substantially different than in the past, due to its local food purchases and additional security needs.

Local security is a deadly serious matter for WFP: One of its security guards was killed in a terrorist bomb blast in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in late December. But $15 million in local security costs allocated for the new food relief program in Afghanistan do not form part of the transportation, storage and handling totals in the new proposed plan, but are itemized separately.

WFP also said some of the high prices would result from diversifying its “transport corridors” for funneling food into Afghanistan via a “northern corridor” — a veiled reference to a shipment through Iran. Its project documents, however, say that the alternative corridors “may” be used, but only "depending on the cost efficiency of local transporters and overall conditions.”

Indeed, the documents say that precisely because of increased traffic on those corridors, they are unlikely to replace traditional overland transport routes.

— Staffing: U.N. staffing costs are $57 million, as compared to local staffing costs of $36.2 million. The 115 U.N. staffers planned for the operation are also eligible for “hazard pay and hardship allowance,” which adds another $26.3 million to their cost, bringing the total for U.N. employees salaries and allowances to $83.3 million.

That is more than the entire budgeted cost for “internal transport, storage and handling” of the food involved. According to an official with a highly respected U.S. aid group that also works in Afghanistan, WFP salaries for staffers are “double” what the U.S. agency pays.

By contrast, the international staffing plans for the first three years of its previous food aid program in Afghanistan — which aimed to help about 6.6 million Afghans, or nearly 90 percent of the number targeted in the new plan — ran to only $22.5 million, including hazard pay.

— Helicopters: Rental costs for six helicopters during the life of the program run to more than $118 million, or more than half a million dollars per helicopter per month. The WFP budget contains an additional $14.5 million for actual running costs, meaning mainly fuel. Total: $132.5 million.

WFP justifies the cost in its program documents by arguing that the machines “will allow WFP staff to travel more frequently and rapidly and will improve performance measurement and allow continuous oversight, ensuring a proper level of accountability and transparency to all stakeholders.”

“Except for the space shuttle, helicopters are the most expensive form of transportation on the planet,” rejoins a transportation expert consulted by Fox News. Nonetheless, he estimated that rental, maintenance and operating costs, including fuel, for “medium-sized” helicopters should be no higher than $78.2 million.

Overall, one of the experts consulted by Fox News estimated that the total cost of the food transportation, handling and delivery portion of the program ought to run to no more than $100 million — and even then, he added, “there is so much fat in [the estimate] that I can’t make it more.”

Instead, the total for those items in the proposed WFP budget comes to $195.56 million, with “direct support costs” — meaning WFP’s staffing costs, equipment, communications and office space, plus equipment leasing and security — adding another $318 million.

Click here to see WFP's proposed cost breakdown

All told, the WFP plan calls for spending an average of about $1,474 for each metric ton of food aid delivered, even though world grain prices have eased dramatically from their sudden peaks in 2007-2008, and a bumper harvest is expected in Afghanistan in 2009-2010. The previous WFP aid plan averaged $848 per metric ton delivered over its four-year span. But within that total, costs were also escalating: The last three months of the previous plan, slated to cover from January to March 2010, are planned at an average $1,026 of total costs per metric ton.

WFP says such comparisons are invalid, due to the differences between the current and previous plans.

Part of the bill for the proposed new food operation in Afghanistan is a 7 percent levy on the gross cost — common to all WFP projects — that adds up in this case to $78.8 million. That money goes back to WFP’s Rome headquarters to pay for its central and regional overhead.

By the levy’s very nature, the bigger the overall cost for WFP operations, the bigger the dollar amount of the headquarters 7 percent share.

This is not the first time that WFP’s transportation and handling costs have seemed significantly oversized in relation to the program they are supporting. Last July, Fox News pointed out that WFP project documents for planned relief operations showed average “external” shipping costs of $206.90 per metric ton of food aid that was supposed to be delivered to North Korea — an amount that was nearly 50 percent of the planned food purchase involved, and which an expert on bulk shipping consulted by Fox News termed “absolutely ridiculous.”

Part of that money — WFP did not reveal how much — was apparently destined to pay for shipping from China to North Korea on vessels controlled by the government of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. The North Korean government is under United Nations sanctions, including financial sanctions, that have so far been dramatically unsuccessful in forcing the communist nation to put a brake on its burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

Questions Are Raised About Who Profits from U.N. Aid to North Korea

In the end, only 18 percent of that food program was ever funded by WFP donors, due to North Korea’s intransigence over its nuclear weapons program and its refusal to allow full inspection of its food delivery sites.

WFP’s partner in the upcoming Afghan food aid program is the government of Afghanistan, led by President Hamid Karzai, whose various ministries will be working with WFP in virtually every phase of its program. The corruption of the Karzai administration has been a subject of open discussion among the governments now showering Afghanistan with aid.

As recently as last November, President Obama personally urged Karzai to clean up his government and bring some of its more blatantly corrupt senior officials to justice.

For his part, Karzai has admitted that “Afghanistan has been tarnished by administrative corruption” and promised to lead a clean-up campaign.

Goodly portions of WFP’s food aid program are also taking place in parts of the country where battles have raged with the fundamentalist Taliban — who the U.S. and other allies have now decided to begin wooing, at least to some degree.

When asked how WFP proposed to keep food aid out of the hands of actively hostile Taliban members, the agency replied only that “in line with humanitarian principles, WFP food assistance is targeted to hungry people who are assessed as needing our food assistance.”

There is little doubt that Afghanistan is in dire need of the kind of help that WFP provides. As the WFP project documents report, the country, which has been a battleground for the past 30 years, has a badly undernourished, under-educated population of about 26 million; 3.1 million of them still live in refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

About 59 percent of Afghans suffer from malnutrition, and 33 percent are underweight. Afghanistan also has the dubious distinction of the world’s highest rate of active tuberculosis, averaging 213 cases per 100,000 population; about 40,000 new cases are added every year.

Most of WFP’s planned new program of food aid — as it was in its previous program — is aimed at the most vulnerable members of Afghan society: children, pregnant and nursing women, refugees. Many of the aid programs are aimed not merely at feeding the chronically malnourished but also, in collaboration with other U.N. agencies, at encouraging women to remain in school —most leave after the fifth grade — as well as supporting anti-tuberculosis campaigns.

Some of the food aid will to go support community and agricultural improvement projects, such as low-tech irrigation. In addition, as it underlined in its responses to Fox News, WFP is also aiming to help subsistence farmers who have managed to grow extra crops get better prices for their surpluses.

Click here to see WFP's entire proposal.

Indeed, the Afghan government seems to prefer that WFP buy food even when it is available for free.

According to a 2009 food security update published by USAID in November, the neighboring Indian government offered the Karzai administration 250,000 tons of wheat — the main Afghan staple — as a donation. The Afghan government “postponed” the offer, according to USAID, over fears that such large amounts of free grain might depress prices for local farmers.

If past experience is any guide, the $1.2 billion estimate for WFP’s Afghan food aid project may only be the beginning. The proposed program is a follow-on to an emergency feeding project in Afghanistan that began in January 2006 as a three-year effort to assist 6.6 million Afghans with 520,000 metric tons of food—at a total cost to WFP of $360 million. By the time the program ends next March, it will have lasted 39 months, purchased 1,000 metric tons of food — and climbed in cost by nearly 250 percent.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.