Conflict, hunger, cholera and locusts: Mali's woes mount

Seed Daily via AFP: A toddler's cries ring out in a paediatric ward where about 20 children lie emaciated from malnutrition in this northern Mali town, whose occupation by Islamists has caused a humanitarian crisis. .. Gao, like the rest of northern Mali, has been occupied by Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists since late March, cutting the region off from the south and the capital Bamako.

The arid north is already suffering a food crisis along with the rest of the Sahel region, which has millions going hungry after poor rains last year. Food supplies are either brought in on charter flights by charities and the Malian Islamic High Council, or are smuggled in from neighbouring countries such as Algeria and Niger and sold tax-free in the main cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu. Algeria, Morocco and Qatar have also given food aid.

But some residents of the region fear their new Islamist rulers will co-opt the aid to advance their own agenda. "The problem arises with the distribution of the aid. The Islamists, masters of the region, cannot be ignored," an accountant in the region said on condition of anonymity.

"The risk is that they make the distribution of supplies a formidable weapon" and reserve them for those who support them.

Aside from the food shortage, poor sanitary conditions have increased the risk of epidemics such as cholera, which has broken out in northern Mali and other parts of the Sahel. At the Gao hospital, Alzatou Maiga, who is weighing the children as they arrive, told AFP that three children have died in two months from malnutrition....

Gao, Mali, in 2006, shot by David Sessoms, Wikimedia Commons, via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license