 In the international Failed States Index, Somalia has this year again come bottom of the pile. Indeed, it has held this unwelcome championship, awarded by the Washington DC-based independent Fund for Peace, for four undisputed consecutive years, defeating by a wide margin even such serious challengers as afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Sudan and Zimbabwe.  So it comes as little surprise that the benighted country in the Horn of africa is yet again at the epicentre of drought and epic human suffering being variously described by aid organisations as a  vision of hell,   the worst drought for half a century  and  a crisis of unimaginable proportions .  This last, however, it is not. We know it only too well, to the point of near-fatigue ourselves. We have been here in africa almost non-stop in various degrees following the man-made Ethiopian famine of 1984 and the subsequent Band aid circus, whose fruits remain to this day a matter of huge controversy as to whether it helped or blighted the needy. Former United States president Bill Clinton became so weary of non-stop Somali disasters that he referred to its thin and hungry citizens as  the skinnies .  We know almost in advance the kind of heart-rending stories emerging from the triangle of hunger where the borders of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia meet in a perfect storm  of inadequate rains, war, costly food, failed politics and useless diplomacy.  Stories like that of Nasir Ibrahim, 40, a father of five queuing at a food depot at the giant Dadaab refugee camp   built for 90,000 people but home to nearly 400,000   just over the border in Kenya. about 1400 people arrive each day at Dadaab from southern and central Somalia, controlled by militant Islamist group al-Shabaab, telling of indiscriminate taxes, of savings stolen and cattle seized.  Ibrahim says:  When we ve had droughts before, we could depend on aid agencies to help us. But al-Shabaab has banned them. That s why we came here.  He has arrived with the cash equivalent of less than ?5. Bandits en route stole his other money, about ?35, and also his shoes.  Still, Ibrahim is one of the  lucky  refugees. He has managed to get inside the United Nations refugee depot where ration cards are issued entitling families to a weekly supply of maize flour. Others struggle outside for days to get cards, either too weak to fight their way forward in the huge queues or unable to bribe local bureaucrats who stand between them and food for survival.  across Dadaab s sprawling 20 square miles, the small mounds of earth marking graves are multiplying: most cover the withered corpses of young children, according to the UN. Children under five often arrive malnourished and dehydrated, wrinkled skin hanging off their ribcages, flies covering their sunken faces, and die within a short time of their arrival.  The agencies of the Disasters Emergency Committee, the UK s umbrella organisation that launches and co-ordinates responses to major disasters overseas, say they face a shortfall of ?85 million for their emergency response to the Somalia drought. Oxfam   which estimates that 12 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are in dire need of clean water, food and basic sanitation   is launching its largest-ever emergency appeal for africa to raise ?50m to reach 2.5 million people.  The chief executive of the British Red Cross, Sir Nicholas Young, says it is hard to blame people who are tired of hearing about africa s troubles, and it is understandable if they are torn between humanitarian concern and a feeling that whatever they give, and whatever aid agencies do, it will never be enough to make a difference to an apparently intractable problem.  Nevertheless, he urges people to donate as much as they can afford to save lives in the short term. But, he asks rhetorically, will such donations ensure that the people of the region are not in a similar dire situation this time next year?  That s harder to guarantee,  he confesses.  as indicated by the Failed States Index, Somalia, as well as being afflicted by drought, is also beset by widespread lawlessness, crime, ineffective government, anarchy, terrorism, insurgency, abysmal development and the well-publicised problem of piracy off its shores. Its unending woes and disarray are the stuff of which hopelessness is made   15 internationally organised conferences seeking Somali peace and reconciliation have failed.  Young says that while emergency food aid is the only realistic immediate option in a calamitous situation and does save lives, it can actually destabilise local markets and lock families into dependency. This is why his own organisation is running food security programmes in the afflicted areas of Ethiopia and Kenya that incorporate environmental rehabilitation, tree planting, development of water access, repair of boreholes and pre-crisis distribution of seeds.  If it s difficult to convince appeal-weary donors to give during a full-blown emergency, it s even harder to garner financial support when rains have fallen, crops are growing and livestock is multiplying,  he says.  But it is exactly those times when this longer-term work must be done to try to change genuinely the prospect for communities in the Horn of africa.  He says this long-term aid needs to be rolled out alongside emergency food aid, and concludes:  We in the aid sector must do better at making the case for investment at the times when there are no harrowing stories to relate.  If we are to begin building resilience within Somalia itself, then somehow the international community will have to find a way of engaging with al-Shabaab ( The Movement of Striving Youth ) which, in its Islamic purity, has imposed a reign of terror. This has included chopping off thieves  hands, stoning alleged adulteresses to death and banning television, music   widely enjoyed by ordinary Somalis, who historically have tended to interpret their Islam liberally   and even bras in its quest to create a seventh century-style Islamic state. The movement also claimed responsibility for co-ordinated bomb attacks that tore through crowds in Uganda s capital, Kampala, watching an open-air screening of the 2010 football World Cup final, killing more than 70 people, including a US aid worker.  al-Shabaab, which has links to al-Qaeda, has repeatedly threatened Uganda and Burundi for contributing troops to the african Union s efforts to stabilise the country and in 2009 banned aid organisations from the swathes of territory it controls, accusing them of being anti-Islamic and hosting spies.  But last week, in an indication of  the seriousness of the crisis and the group s embarrassment about the exodus of Somalis from areas it controls in search of food, al-Shabaab reversed its stance and said all charities,  whether Muslims or non-Muslims  wanting to  assist those suffering  will now be given access to give emergency aid provided they have  no hidden agenda . a spokesman said the movement had formed a committee to deal with the drought, and aid agencies must liaise with it.  Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia, said he hoped the lifting of the ban might stem the flow of refugees to camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, where the biggest camp, Dollo ado, has been receiving an average of 1700 fleeing Somalis every day since early June.  among recent arrivals at Dollo ado   designed for 45,000 but already housing more than 100,000   malnutrition and mortality rates are alarmingly high. Visiting the camp last week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, former Portuguese prime minister antonio Guterres, said:  I have seen exhausted mothers who have walked for days to reach safety, losing children along the way or arriving too late for doctors to be able to save them. Seemingly a whole population is on the move.  al-Shabaab has waged war against Somalia s transition government and african Union peacekeeping forces since 2006. Originally the militant wing of the United Islamic Courts, the group that controlled Somalia prior to a disastrous Ethiopian invasion in 2007, al-Shabaab has an estimated 3000 hard-core fighters and 2000 allied gunmen. Many are from the Hawiye, Somalia s largest pastoral clan.  al-Shabaab has been able to extend its footprint in Somalia with relatively small numbers for two reasons: Somalia has not had a functioning central government since 1991, and many of the clan warlords who filled the vacuum have proven willing to co-operate with al-Shabaab in the south and centre of Somalia.  as the group has drawn increasingly close to al-Qaeda, deploying suicide bombers and attracting jihadists from around the world, it has raised fears in the US that it may be spreading into Kenya, Yemen and beyond. It has severely challenged president Barack Obama s efforts to bolster Somalia s puny central government and try to s 