Northern Mali risks starvation thanks to al-Qaeda, drought and no aid Tom McCormack, country director of Save the Children, speaking from the capital Bamako, said: "We were talking about this potential food crisis - and then the conflict came in. That has had a profound impact. The result, he added, was a "refugee crisis" combined with "worsening food insecurity." I would think of the people in the North as hostages: they're being held hostage by armed groups. Because AQIM now dominates the area, aid agencies are increasingly restricted. "Accessing the population is extremely difficult," said Mbacke Niang, regional programme manager for Oxfam. So far, we have been able to operate, but not to the scale we would want to, because of the security situation. We're not happy with the scale of the aid that we're able to provide: we can provide more aid. Of the 300,000 people whom Oxfam has targeted for food distribution, only 46,000 - or 15 per cent - can actually be reached. Mali's army, gravely weakened by the loss of weapons, ammunition and bases to AQIM, is probably incapable of retaking the North. Other West African states have proposed deploying 3,000 troops for this task. But any counter-offensive would inflame the conflict and force yet more people out of their homes. Aid agencies are quietly planning for a still greater number of refugees. "If another military intervention happens, we fear these figures will increase," said Mr Yiang. It's something that we, as an aid agency, need to be ready for.