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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. The war in Iran has had some visible consequences, like skyrocketing energy costs and higher gas prices. But the effects of this war are often far less obvious and much more serious for the world's most vulnerable people.
Today, my colleague Peter Goodman tells us about what he learned on a recent trip to Somalia and why the system of global aid is no longer in a position to help. It's Wednesday, June 10th. Peter Goodman, welcome back to The Daily.
Thanks for having me.
So, Peter, we're now 101 days into the war with Iran, and we have talked a lot on the show about its effect on gas prices. But you cover global supply chains, which means that you've gone all over the world, you've reported on how something gets from point A to point B, and you have focused a lot on all the people who are affected in between.
So for that reason, we wanted to ask you for your take on how the war has disrupted things all over the world in less visible ways.
Well, first of all, the price of energy goes so far beyond putting gas in your car, right? I mean, we've seen cooking fuel get scarce in India, in South America. We've seen the Philippines limit the hours that people can work in office buildings to limit the cost of air conditioning. We've seen helium, which is used by computer chip factories from Taiwan, get expensive and hard to secure.
The ripple effects of this are almost infinite.
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Chapter 2: What visible consequences has the Iran war caused?
aid cuts, of course, refer to USAID. We covered this on the show. That was something that happened very early on in the second Trump administration.
Yes. I mean, that's a critically important part of the story, but it's far from the only part. I mean, in addition, major European donors like the United Kingdom, like Germany, have also pulled back. And this is in part because the Trump administration has pressed European allies...
to spend more money on their own defense or financing NATO, as opposed to, in the Trump view, just relying on the good graces and largesse of the United States. And so in London, in Berlin, major governments have also cut back significantly on overseas aid. And that has contributed to this picture. So let me give you an example.
You know, four years ago, when Russia invaded Ukraine, there were similar fears about a fertilizer crisis and hits to food security because Russia and Ukraine together produce a lot of grain. They also produce a lot of the piece parts for fertilizers. And so from Egypt to Indonesia, there were worries about the price of bread and grains.
And the energy prices did go up because of that war, too.
Absolutely. They were not unfounded. Oh, no. These were real effects. In fact, I went to Nigeria back in 2023 to write about the shock to the fertilizer situation, and it was pretty dire. But here's what was different.
There was $43 billion in international humanitarian relief led by $17 billion from the United States that got marshaled to take on this crisis and staved off famine in places like Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
So when the war in Ukraine shocked the world economy, the humanitarian system more or less worked.
Exactly. And then came the war in Iran. And this time, we're in a moment where the politics are completely different, and much of the developed wealthy world is pulling back. And so now we're in a situation where we've got tremendous need for aid. We've got climate crises around the world, and yet...
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Chapter 3: How does the war in Iran affect global food and energy prices?
First of all, you could end up with the mother of all migration crisis.
Now, I'm not here to fearmonger about immigration, but if your perspective is you don't want millions of people heading to the Darien Gap in Panama or streaming toward places like Greece and Turkey and on toward northern Europe, well, you got to give a thought to what's going to happen if you remove all of this aid and then add on an enormous crisis.
You're describing a bunch of reasons why people risk everything to travel to other countries in search of a better life. Hunger, climate change, desperation. And all of that, as you're describing, is poised to get even worse because of the shocks caused by the Iran war.
Right. People are not going to sit in their villages and starve. People are going to go to where they can better support their families. And the worse the crisis gets, the more likely that people will be on the move. It's also worth reminding people that, you know, al-Shabaab, which is this al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militia, is active in the Horn of Africa.
And certainly trauma, like famine, provides recruits. It's another societal shock.
Right. There are a lot of reasons why it might be bad for a country to become, for lack of a better term, a failed state.
That's right. What happens when a state sinks into absolute dysfunction? That can play out a lot of different ways. They're generally not good. And it's not tenable for the rest of the world to pretend that it's living in some sort of giant gated community.
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Chapter 4: What are the ripple effects of the war on supply chains worldwide?
Gated community as national security policy tends not to work very well. Right. So, you know, I was already thinking about places I could go to illustrate the crisis from rising fertilizer prices and malnutrition. And I was talking to aid groups around the world.
And then I had a conversation with Mercy Corps, this American aid organization that I had known from traveling with them in Nigeria to write about the fertilizer crisis back in 2023. And they suggested that I think about going to Somalia. Hmm. a country that is especially susceptible to climate change, drought.
My reflexive take on that was that Somalia was not a place on my map of potential places to do reporting because it's traditionally thought of as very difficult, dangerous. But they suggested that it would be possible.
And as I saw how dependent Somalia was on not only imported food, but also imported fertilizer coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, I realized that it was the perfect place to see up close this grave test of what one person put it to me as the post-Aid era.
We'll be right back.
Hey, I'm Joel. And I'm Juliet from New York Times Games.
And we're out here talking to people about games.
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Create four groups of four. This is actually a pretty cool game. What's your favorite game? The crossword. The crossword. I do it with my brother. We get Thursday sometimes, but I don't think I can do Thursday on my own.
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Chapter 5: How has the humanitarian aid system been affected by the Iran war?
Did they tell you how it felt to arrive only to find out that this was just an aid camp with no aid?
I mean, they were in disbelief and they understood, like most of the people in these camps, they can't go back. They set up a tent alongside hundreds of others with some plastic sheeting that gets donated by some other people in the camp. They find some sticks and they set up the shelter and they're just waiting and hoping that some aid will return.
What you are describing is a mass starvation crisis in the making, if not already here. Can you talk a little bit about what treatment is available for people who do not have enough food, for these children who do not have enough food? And has that changed also as a result of the war?
Yeah, that's changed dramatically. I think maybe the most harrowing thing I saw, I was taken to a UNICEF ward of a hospital in Mogadishu where the most severe malnourishment cases were taken. This hospital has seen a doubling of cases in the last few months. This is since the disruptions of the war. I saw babies needing feeding tubes and oxygen to be kept alive.
And I talked through a translator with a mother who was sitting next to her 18-month-old baby boy leaning up alongside her. So she's saying the river dried up, so they cannot cultivate. So they lost their crops, so they got... And when her infant son couldn't hold down any food, she had to beg to get $24 to get her child to the city in a place where farm laborers are making a dollar a day.
And he was actually a quote-unquote positive outcome. He was about to be discharged. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. But here was the part of this that was most striking to me. The doctors there told me a third of these cases, they think, could have been avoided had these kids been assessed and treated earlier.
Now, UNICEF has been forced to close 205 health and nutrition centers throughout Somalia. Mm-hmm. If those centers were still there, then a lot of these kids ending up in the hospital needing oxygen to breathe and feeding tubes to stay alive would be treated and assessed earlier. But that capacity has been dismantled.
Peter, you mentioned that Somalia was already facing a cascading series of crises even before the Iran war.
Right.
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