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The Road to Hell

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The Road to Hell

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Overview

Michael Maren spent years in Africa, first as an aid worker, later as a journalist, where he witnessed at a harrowing series of wars, famines, and natural disasters. In this book, he claims that charities, such as CARE and Save the Children, are less concerned with relief than we think. Maren also attacks the United Nation's "humanitarian" missions are controlled by agribusinesses and infighting bureaucrats.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743227865
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	07/01/2002
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Michael Maren is a journalist, author, screenwriter, and director who has written as a foreign correspondent for The Village Voice, Newsweek, Harper’s, and GQ, among others. His newest film, Shiver, releases in 2022.

	Author's Note	xi
	On the Spelling of Somali Words	xiii
	Introduction: Darkness and Light	1
1.	Land Cruisers	13
2.	Far from Somalia	25
3.	Fixers	42
4.	Potemkin Villages	58
5.	Death in Mogadishu	79
6.	Crazy with Food	92
7.	Geneva	116
8.	Selling the Children	136
9.	Creating Dependency	162
10.	Withdrawal Symptoms	178
11.	Pigs at a Trough	189
12.	Feeding the Famine	203
13.	The Mogadishu Line	216
14.	The Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone	239
15.	Running Toward Rwanda	257
16.	Merchants of Peace	270
	Somalia Timeline	281
	Index	289

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Editorial Reviews

Despite the overstated title, this book is a forceful and disturbing portrait of Western intervention in Somalia, plus an investigation of underscrutinized aid foundations. Perhaps because of the book's ambition, Maren's narrative is disjointed, but readers will find it worth the effort. "[D]oing relief and development work in the context of oppression is counterproductive," he asserts, and his personal experience in Somalia, where, after a Peace Corps stint in Kenya, he returned as an aid worker and journalist, bears this out. While the Cold War fueled aid to Somalia, much of the aid was channeled by local power brokers to further their own ends. Indeed, while Somalia was once self-sufficient, it is now chronically dependent on imports of foreign food. Maren is equally scathing about prominent charities such as CARE and Save the Children, which he terms mercenaries more concerned with self-perpetuation than actual famine relief. CARE, he charges, once shipped food to armed fighters in Somalia, while Save the Children "projects don't work." His portrait of the aid biz emphasizes that it is driven mainly by grain-trading companies eager to unload excess capacity, even as their advertisements feature starving victims. Maren's brief report from Rwanda suggests that there, too, aid is falling into the wrong hands and thus financing a war. Maren maintains that journalists are too dependent on such aid organizations to properly evaluate them, and he proposes that an independent agency be established for that purpose. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This book is a contribution to the growing critique of international aid, similiar in force of argument to Ian Hancock's Lords of Poverty, but both more focused and more tightly argued. Maren targets the deceptions of nongovernmental organizations in soliciting public donations and very effectively contrasts disaster realities against aid agency publicity and their abilities to protect and assist communities. Maren was an aid worker and journalist in Somalia during the famine and civil war there in the early 1990s. His firsthand observations and analysis of numerous documents of that international crisis provide a powerful and provocative account of the flaws, faults, and failings of U.S. charities, such as Save the Children and the United Nations in providing assistance in times of crises. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.-Bill Rau, Takoma Park, Md.

Library Journal

Maren hurls stinging accusations and makes them stick: He paints development agencies (such as CARE) as self-perpetuating opportunists, funding their significant overhead through the misery of the world's unfortunates.
Drawing on his own experience as an aid worker and journalist in Somalia and on the disastrous professional relationship there of aid worker Chris Cassidy with the relief organization Save the Children, Maren examines the economic and humanitarian damage done, ironically, by the very organizations that distribute free food or administer development projects in the name of famine relief. Somalia, of course, recently saw one of the world's largest mobilizations of humanitarian aid. But approximately two thirds of food shipments for refugees in Maren's area of Somalia were being stolen. Some of the stolen food was sold on the black market in order to purchase arms, which in turn escalated conflicts, often creating more refugees. Foreign aid destroyed what was left of local markets by flooding the country with cheap or free food, thus ruining the livelihood of many farmers. Others became "rich from food"; one Somali referred to his second wife as "CARE wife," because the overabundance of relief food he sold enabled him to marry again. Free food also created a disincentive for development- project participants. Somali nomads, for instance, traditionally disdainful of farming, were unlikely to take up agriculture when food was plentiful. Throughout, Maren unleashes caustic salvos against the relief industry—with substantiation. The book is tenaciously and passionately researched through interviews with key players and references to primary documents. Much of what Maren uncovers is shocking, some of it surreal. The agency AmeriCares, for instance, often serves corporate rather than relief interests; it sent 17 tons of Pop Tarts to Bosnia and 12,000 Maidenform bras to earthquake victims in Japan.
An uncompromising look at the thriving industry of relief agencies—which may do more harm than good to those they purport to serve.

Kirkus Reviews

The Road to Hell

The Road to Hell

Paperback(Original)

Paperback(Original)

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Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews