U.S. Donations for Somalia Lagging : Charity: Gifts are only 1% of the total that went to Ethiopia in 1985.

American private donations for food relief in Somalia this year amount to less than 1% of what relief agencies collected in 1985 at the height of the Ethiopian famine, an aid official said Tuesday.

“Thousands of children and adults who need help desperately are dying in silence,” in part because Americans and Europeans have failed to respond quickly to the tragedy, said Peter J. Davies, president of InterAction, a coalition of American relief agencies.

Those agencies have received well under $1 million in donations to Somalia this year, he said. That compares to $110 million in contributions to Ethiopia between October, 1984, and March, 1985.

A raging civil war, combined with drought, has led to widespread starvation in the East African nation. But until recent weeks, the famine received little attention in the West and was overshadowed by the violence and death in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In Somalia, at least one-fourth of the children under age 5 have already died, U.S. officials said, and an estimated 1.5 million of the nation’s 6.5 million people are in danger of starvation.

Relief officials said the United States has been suffering from “compassion fatigue” because of economic and social difficulties at home and problems around the world that have drawn American attention and resources. At the United Nations, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has complained that the West has shown far more concern over the fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina than for Somalia, even though far more people are dying in East Africa.

Davies and Bush Administration officials stressed in a briefing Tuesday that the problem of famine relief in Somalia goes far beyond obtaining food and money. So far, relief efforts have been stymied by the violence and anarchy that helped create the famine.

“The bane of relief work in Africa is young teen-age boys with guns,” said Andrew Natsios, the Administration’s special coordinator for Somali relief. “This is not a civil war with two sides or three sides or four. It is anarchy. There is no government.”

Relief agencies have had to hire scores of armed Somalis to protect food stocks, but even that does not ensure that mothers and their starving children will be fed.

“The relief agencies are passing out food to women, the women take the food, walk down the street, someone shoots them dead on the street, steals the food and we have this repeated over and over again,” Natsios said.

Trade in relief supplies “is the main commercial enterprise” in Mogadishu, the State Department said in a new report on Somalia.

U.S. officials said they want to pour more food into Somalia to help drive down prices. “There is a lot of food that is being hoarded right now,” Natsios said. “It’s as good as gold. Since this crisis began, food prices have gone up by 500%.”

If extra food pours in, merchants will have an incentive to sell what they have quickly, he said. The U.S. government has provided $85 million in aid to Somalia over the last year, and last week the Administration announced that it will deliver an additional 145,000 tons of food to the region.

Those airlifts may begin as early as today, Pentagon officials said. Four C-141 cargo planes will ship food from the Kenyan port of Mombasa, where 150 U.S. military personnel are stationed, said Robert Wolthuis, a deputy assistant secretary for defense.

Davies said that the private relief agencies not only provide additional food but also pay for most of the personnel who actually distribute the food and medical help.

“I cannot stress too strongly that these voluntary agencies desperately need--and I repeat, desperately need--the public’s financial support,” he said.