From Nigeria, South Sudan, and Somalia to Yemen across the Red Sea, famines threaten the lives of tens of millions of workers. Mass starvation in Africa and the Middle East has been triggered by climate change (including more intense and longer-lasting droughts) and, even more significantly, by ever wider and more brutal wars. The root cause of this genocidal disaster is the sharpening rivalry between U.S. imperialism and capitalist bosses in China. As the U.S. rulers’ own mouthpiece, the New York Times, noted, “Each country facing famine is in war, or in the case of Somalia, recovering from decades of conflict” (NYT, 2/22).
Half of the 20 million threatened with starvation are children, including 1.4 million “at imminent risk of death” (NYT, 2/22). How did imperialism lead to this famine disaster? More important, how do we respond to it? The United Nations, controlled by the world’s dominant imperialist powers, can offer no real solution. While UN chiefs circle the planet begging for billions of dollars for food aid from the very imperialists causing the wars that created the famine, the institution itself has a murderous track record in similar disasters (NYT, 3/27).
Imperialist Roots of Famine
The famine in South Sudan is a case study in how imperialism and deadly proxy wars lead directly to mass misery for workers. China controls 75 percent of Sudan’s oil, and has invested billions of dollars in the country’s infrastructure (Sudan Tribune, 8/3/16). The Chinese bosses’ interests have been threatened by U.S. financing of rebel groups in the oil-rich south, which led to the creation in 2012 of South Sudan. The resulting civil war has conscripted tens of thousands of child soldiers, among other atrocities (TeleSur, 2/21/15). Meanwhile, China has maneuvered among South Sudan’s bosses to regain access to oil there (Huffington Post, 6/23/16), and even to instigate attacks against U.S. aid workers (Foreign Policy, 8/16/16).
As among all thieves, there is no honor among capitalists. The U.S. and China continue funding whatever proxy forces might benefit their interests, no matter the cost. More than 250,000 workers have been forced to abandon crops and flee for their lives. Famine is the inevitable result. As Stephen O’Brien, the UN’s chief of humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, noted,  “The famine in South Sudan is man-made. Parties to the conflict are parties to the famine—as are those not intervening to make the conflict stop” (Al Jazeera, 3/11). Predictably, O’Brien avoided any direct criticism of the two imperialist super-powers responsible for this catastrophe.
Dark Night Shall Have Its End
To build a mass anti-imperialist movement to smash this capitalist system, its racist borders, and imperialist wars and famines, the international working class must organize a revolutionary communist party. Communism means a world where workers unite to free us from hunger and material deprivation while sharing what we have in times of both abundance and scarcity. We need all workers, students, and soldiers—you!—to join Progressive Labor Party and fight to make communism a reality.