Stop wasting lives, money in Somalia, US report urges

Members of the hardline Al -Shabaab Islamist rebel group parade through the streets of Mogadishu. Picture: File 

IN SUMMARY

The chaos in Somalia during the past 20 years has taken as many as 1.5 million lives and has cost about $55 billion, according to a new report co-authored by a leading critic of US policy.

The estimated losses include 750 fatalities suffered by the Ugandan and Burundian troops that make up the African Union Mission in Somalia, Amisom, authors Bronwyn Bruton and John Norris calculate.

The chaos in Somalia in the past 20 years has taken as many as 1.5 million lives and cost about $55 billion, according to a new report co-authored by a leading critic of US policy.

The estimated losses include 750 fatalities suffered by the Ugandan and Burundian troops that make up the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom), authors Bronwyn Bruton and John Norris calculate.

They also calculate that about $800 million has been spent on the Amisom deployment since its start in 2007, while the military involvement of Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia and Djibouti has amounted to another $444 million.

The report published by the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank, further reckons that drone strikes, surveillance and counterterrorism have consumed $495 million. “Cash payments to warlords” in Somalia is meanwhile figured to be $105 million.

The international bill for piracy is put at $22 billion. Humanitarian and development aid is said to have totalled $13 billion, and the Somali diaspora is believed to have sent home $11.2 billion in remittances since the collapse of the Siad Barre regime in 1991.

The overall outlay for Somalia may seem “modest” in comparison with the costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, “but what’s remarkable is how little we have to show for it,” Bruton and Norris write.

They cite “a recent confidential audit of the Somali government” suggesting that 96 percent of direct bilateral aid to the government in 2009 and 2010 “had simply disappeared, presumably into the pockets of corrupt officials.”

“The repeated failure of international efforts to produce positive change in Somalia has generated fatigue among donors at a time when Somalia’s needs have never been greater,” Bruton and Norris add.

Bruton, a Somalia scholar, caused a stir in 2009 by urging the US to cease its support for Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government. And she argues in a separate study published early this month that the failure to establish order in Somalia underscores “the profound error” of taking a top-down, state-centred approach.

This recent study, co-authored with Africa specialist J. Peter Pham, instead proposes a strategy of “earned engagement.”
“Various Somali actors — governmental entities, regional authorities, clans, and civil society organisations — would be accorded equal access to international resources,” Bruton and Pham suggest, “but only to the extent that they prove themselves capable of meeting defined benchmarks.

Al-Shabaab leaders who renounced al-Qa’ida, promised regional cooperation, and focused on providing for their clan constituencies would be prime targets for engagements, while militant jihadists would be excluded.”

The Bruton-Norris report says that Kenya and Ethiopia have both profited and lost as a result of the conflict in Somalia.

The two neighbouring countries have experienced economic and social strains due to the influx of hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees, the report notes.

It adds, however, that Kenya and Ethiopia “may have accrued certain benefits.”

For instance, Somalis annually purchase about $500 million worth of miraa imports from the two producing countries, the report says.

In addition, “the Eastleigh neighborhood of Nairobi has seen a tremendous economic boom as a result of Somali diaspora investment. Kenya also has profited from humanitarian traffic through its ports and its status as an international development hub.”

Bruton and Norris draw a comparison between US spending in support of Siad Barre’s dictatorship during the Cold War and the money lavished on the Transitional Federal Government as part of the US global anti-terrorism strategy.

Washington’s support of the TFG has endured “despite its proven record of corruption, rampant and admitted use of child soldiers, and frequent inability to maintain control of territory. In fact,” the report adds, the TFG’s record of governance is probably worse than Siad Barre’s in many regards.”

Bruton and Norris caution that their research makes use of a variety of official and unofficial sources as well as “some educated guesswork.”

They add that “the profound lack of reliable data and the enormous variance in the economic and political standing of Somalia’s regions complicated our efforts.”

For instance, Somalis annually purchase about $500 million worth of mira’a imports from the two producing countries, the report says. In addition, “The Eastleigh neighbourhood of Nairobi has seen a tremendous economic boom as a result of Somali diaspora investment.

Kenya also has profited from humanitarian traffic through its ports and its status as an international development hub.”

Bruton and Norris draw a comparison between US spending in support of Siad Barre’s dictatorship during the Cold War and the money lavished on the Transitional Federal Government as part of the US global anti-terrorism strategy.

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