Countries
like Yemen, Chad and South Sudan have been devastated by famine and
starvation in recent years, with millions of people suffering despite
a global surplus of food. But the problem is not a lack of resources
- they are starving due to the effects of unending Western
imperialism.
by
Eric Draitser
Part
1
I’ve
never known hunger, not in a real sense. And chances are, very few of
you reading this have either. Is it because our families and
communities are more loving than those throughout much of the
non-Western world? Is it because we’ve simply been lucky enough to
be born into an age when hunger is no longer an issue?
Or
is it because most of us had the good fortune to be born in the
U.S.-led empire, rather than on the receiving end of its brutality?
Indeed,
it seems that in today’s world, hunger is a manifestation of
economic and political imperatives more than the mere result of a bad
harvest or overtaxed resources, as it was historically. Instead, it
is the twin sentinels of injustice – poverty and violent oppression
– which today are prerequisites for hunger and famine, along with
the insuperable torment of climate change, with its attendant
ecological impacts.
By
examining three contemporary examples of food insecurity and famine –
Yemen, the Lake Chad basin of West Africa, and South Sudan – it
becomes clear that famine is today inextricably linked with
geopolitics and imperialism. For in each case, it is the U.S.-led
empire which is ultimately responsible for the disturbing images of
skeleton-like children, nursing mothers unable to produce milk for
their babies and elderly bodies wasting away to nothing.
And,
it must be said, that placing the blame where it belongs (America’s
empire) is not an exercise in sophistry, but rather is an attempt to
go beyond the mainstream narrative which tells of poor, wretched
Africans and Arabs desperate for your donations to the world’s
largest charities, foundations and non-profit organizations. No
mention is made of why the famine really began, what material forces
are at work in undermining food security and who benefits from the
starvation of millions.
And
it makes sense that these issues are almost never discussed, for to
do so would expose the fact that the dead felled by hunger and
related illnesses are not the victims of naturally occurring forces,
but are actually victims of imperialism – no different from the
teenager who is murdered by a drone strike, or the child soldier who
is forcefully conscripted by a U.S.-backed warlord.
But
to get to the root of the issue, one must examine the political,
economic and environmental forces that come together to create hunger
and famine. And one simply cannot do so without addressing the
imperial agenda for continued global hegemony.
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