From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue May 12 2009 - 08:13:36 EDT
"The United States should resume serious efforts to fully implement the
Ethiopia-Eritrea peace deal, demarcate the Ethiopia/Eritrea border, and
normalize relations between the two countries"
Beyond Piracy: Next Steps to Stabilize Somalia
Created *May 7 2009 - 9:28am*
*Author: *
Ken Menkhaus, John Prendergast, and Colin Thomas-Jensen
Strategy Paper
http://www.enoughproject.org/files/publications/SomaliaBeyondPiracy.pdf
Audio
http://www.enoughproject.org/files/publications/somalia_beyond_piracy_050709.mp3
May 7, 2009
For the first time in a long time, Americans are paying attention to what
their government does in Somalia. Following last month’s hostage drama off
the coast of Somalia, President Barack Obama is under increasing political
pressure to address the threat of piracy in the Gulf of Aden. While
short-term measures to curb pirate attacks are certainly necessary, the
Obama administration must not allow the politics of the piracy problem to
distract it from putting in place a long-term strategy to help Somalis forge
a state that, with measured external support, can fight piracy, promote
peace and reconciliation, and combat the threat of terrorism within its
borders.
Historically, the international community’s engagement with Somalia has more
often made matters worse for both Somalis and external actors. Rather than
invest in the time-consuming and undoubtedly frustrating process of helping
Somalis forge consensus and build functioning state institutions, the United
States, the United Nations, and others have often backed governments based
on narrow coalitions, or they have opted to partner with questionable
nonstate actors in pursuit of near-term counterterrorism goals. This
approach has frequently stoked further conflict and human rights abuses.
Fourteen attempts in the past 19 years to reconstitute state authority in
Somalia have failed, with ordinary Somalis bearing the brunt of these
ill-advised, poorly executed, underresourced efforts. The latest effort—a
five-year transition to democratic elections administered by a Transitional
Federal Government, or TFG<http://www.enoughproject.org/glossary/term/85?Array>
[3]—nearly collapsed after two years of Ethiopian occupation and brutal
counterinsurgency warfare. Ethiopia has now withdrawn, and a new, more
broad-based TFG offers some hope, but the human rights crisis in Somalia
remains acute and continues to deepen, the threat of Islamist extremism that
the U.S.-backed incursion sought to neutralize persists, and piracy
continues despite the deployment of a multinational armada.
Although the situation on the ground remains critical, we believe that the
election of a new president, Sheikh Sharif
Ahmed<http://www.enoughproject.org/glossary/term/72?Array>
[4], and the establishment of a moderate Islamist government under his
authority—“TFG version 2.0”—are potentially the best chance Somalia has had
to pull itself out of nearly two decades of state collapse. For this effort
to succeed, however, the Obama administration must resist calls for
immediate, unilateral military action against terrorist and pirate targets
on Somali soil and chart a new course in its approach to Somalia that
privileges Somali-driven political processes, prioritizes inclusive
governance, and respects Somali preferences. It not only needs to reshape
U.S. policies toward Somalia, but must also press other external actors not
to proceed with policies that are either flawed or intentionally
destructive. This short paper describes the current state of international
engagement with the TFG and offers recommendations for improvement.
Analysis: The current state of play
The establishment of a new TFG in January 2009 featuring a more broad-based
coalition and moderate Islamist leadership is a significant step forward.
That, along with the withdrawal of Ethiopian occupying forces in January,
was a setback for the jihadist group
al-shabaab<http://www.enoughproject.org/glossary/term/82?Array>
[5], which had emerged as the strongest insurgency force against both
Ethiopian forces and the TFG. The shabaab continues to control the largest
swath of territory in southern Somalia, but it has been unable to exploit
the vacuum left by the departing Ethiopians, and faces growing armed
resistance from clan militias. While many Somalis were skeptical that the
new TFG could succeed, they recognized that Sheikh Sharif and his newly
formed government were more closely aligned with their long-term interests
than the shabaab.
However, the TFG has thus far enjoyed only limited progress in establishing
itself as a functional authority. Its main successes have been in
negotiating alliances with clan militias and authorities—which have helped
to block the shabaab—and developing a more accountable, transparent customs
revenue collection system at the seaport, which has earned support from
businesspeople and generated at least a modest flow of revenues to pay some
TFG salaries. It is also reaching out to elements of the shabaab and other
Islamist rejectionists in the hopes of broadening its coalition and
weakening the jihadists. But the government’s civil service has yet to
become functional, and crime and insecurity remain high. Armed groups which
were supposed to be integrated into a joint security force continue to
remain separate militias answering to separate commanders. Shabaab
insurgents, whose numbers now include foreign fighters, continue to launch
attacks on the African Union mission in Somalia, or
AMISOM<http://www.enoughproject.org/glossary/term/87?Array>
[6], protecting key government installations in the capital.
Meanwhile, one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters continues to
unfold. Three and a half million Somalis need emergency assistance (nearly
as many as in Darfur <http://www.enoughproject.org/glossary/term/102?Array>
[7]), and humanitarian access is terrible: Forty-nine aid workers have been
killed in 2008 and 2009 and scores more kidnapped. The TFG is still, for the
most part, a government on paper, and would face difficulty remaining in
Mogadishu without the protection of AMISOM forces.
International actors have rhetorically committed to making the TFG work, and
the U.N. Special Representative Ahmedou Ould Abdallah has been especially
active in generating external support for the TFG. A major donor conference
on Somalia was held on April 23 in Brussels, where these priority needs were
discussed and donors pledged more than $200 million to support AMISOM and
strengthen TFG security forces. The key question for policymakers is how to
condition and monitor the dispersal of those funds. In a report from the
U.N. secretary general to the Security Council this week, the United Nations
emphasized the need for strong donor support to the TFG, especially in the
security sector. This is a priority shared by the TFG leadership. The United
Nations is specifically calling for the international community to provide
funding for training and equipping the TFG police and security forces, and
for stipends for 10,000 police officers.
Significantly, the secretary general’s report does not recommend replacing
the 4,000-strong AMISOM force with a 23,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping
operation. A proposed U.N. force has been on the table for well over a year,
but although the proposal had strong backing from the Bush administration,
the Obama administration’s support has been lukewarm, and rightly so. The
United Nations itself concluded that such a force would be counterproductive
at this time, by catalyzing armed insurgents and thereby endangering rather
than protecting the TFG. The TFG’s security against the shabaab will have to
come largely from its own capacity to recruit and maintain the loyalty of
its own security forces, albeit with generous external financial backing.
Establishing security: Challenges and policy implications
The immediate policy dilemma for international donors is one of sequencing:
Must a security force first create conditions in which a civil government
can survive and operate? Or must government authorities first establish a
capacity to control security forces? Some may see a preference for checks
and balances—and constraints on government security forces—as a normative
agenda for human rights groups. But in Somalia it is also a cold realist
calculation—abusive security forces will undermine, not protect, the TFG.
And as in 2007 and 2008, such forces will strengthen public support for the
shabaab and other opposition and extremist groups.
The international community has already had one calamitous experience
providing direct salary support to the TFG police in 2007 and 2008, when the
government was under different leadership. The TFG police under
then-President Abdullahi
Yusuf<http://www.enoughproject.org/glossary/term/78?Array>
[8] committed grave human rights abuses against the Mogadishu population.
The police commissioner during this period, Abdi Qeybdid, is still in place
despite a track record of abusive behavior, lack of confidence among
ordinary Somalis, and protests by human rights groups. Moreover, key
branches of the transitional government—the judiciary, the interior
ministry, and others—that are supposed to exercise oversight of police and
other security forces are not yet functional. What the United Nations and
some donors are proposing, then, is the strengthening of security forces in
a context where the new government appears to lack the ability to hold them
accountable. The U.N. secretary general’s report is clear on this,
identifying its strategic objective as “to assist the TFG in creating
security conditions in which the process of building the country’s state
institutions can take root.”
The good news is that the TFG has made some progress on its own, and the
international community may finally have a more credible partner than the
previous TFG or its predecessors. A bank account has been established in
Djibouti and an interdepartmental financial oversight body has been
established to monitor the use of funds. Revenues from the port are
reportedly now flowing to the central government, and although corruption
has not been eliminated, it has been reduced. From these funds, the TFG
announced this month that it had begun to pay salaries to its security
forces. The key challenges for the United States and other external actors
in the immediate term are help to ensure that the TFG continues to pay its
security forces, provides training and nonlethal equipment conditioned on
their improved conduct, and establishes oversight mechanisms to ensure that
funding does not support abusive forces or political score-settling.
This daunting task is further complicated by the diversity of security
threats facing the TFG, which include the following:
Insurgency by the shabaab and other radical groups
The shabaab and other Islamic extremist movements in Somalia are an
existential threat to the TFG and a major security concern for neighboring
states and the West. As noted above, these extremist groups have lost much
of their credibility in Somali circles now that Ethiopian occupying forces
have withdrawn and the old TFG leadership has been replaced with new,
moderate Islamist leaders. A portion of the shabaab—some argue most of the
movement—are not ideologically committed hardliners, but rather tactical
allies who could be negotiated with and brought into an expanding TFG
power-sharing circle. If this group can be successfully weaned from the
shabaab through negotiations, it would leave the recalcitrant hardliners
exposed and weakened, and easier to defeat outright.
This is the two-pronged approach that President Sharif and his supporters
are seeking to employ, and the TFG has reportedly already enjoyed some
successes in pulling some armed groups away from the insurgency. The most
important contribution the international community can make to this effort
is to protect and expand political space for Sharif to negotiate—even with
individuals who might raise eyebrows in some corners. Ethiopia’s security
concerns are especially important to address in this regard. The United
States and its allies must avoid the temptation to arbitrarily “redline”
individuals and groups to whom Sharif will attempt to reach out. The
acceptability of Somali armed opposition groups should be judged principally
on their positions on a few core positions: Do they accept peaceful
coexistence with their neighbors, especially Ethiopia? Do they reject
affiliation and alliance with Al Qaeda? Do they renounce terrorist attacks
and assassinations against domestic rivals and foreigners?
Even as it negotiates with part of the insurgency, the TFG will unavoidably
have to fight to defeat the most hardline, foreign-backed wing of the
shabaab. Direct external aid to TFG security forces is seen by many as
unavoidable if the TFG is to defeat the hardliners and expand its authority
in south and central Somalia, and the United Nations has asked donors to
provide training, equipment, and stipends to the emerging TFG security
forces. However, this places the United Nations and other external actors
again in the position of a direct backer of one party in an ongoing civil
war, a fact which contributes significantly to the targeting of
international humanitarian aid workers by insurgents. External donors must
be very clear about what they are doing if providing direct support to
national security forces: They are choosing sides in a war.
Fragmentation of ad hoc militia
The TFG has forged alliances and understandings with a range of local,
mainly clan-based militias that have resisted the shabaab encroachment but
that remain outside the TFG military. Bringing these groups into the formal
TFG national security forces is a high priority, as they otherwise are
vulnerable to defection to opposition groups and pose a potential armed
obstacle to extension of TFG authority. To maintain these fragile alliances
the TFG primarily needs cash to provide regular salaries. This should mainly
be the responsibility of the TFG, not external donors. External donors
should ensure that their funding does not provide salary support for clan
paramilitaries, which are largely unaccountable.
Criminal violence and lack of public order
Reducing criminality and establishing public order is a critical matter of
legitimacy and credibility for the TFG in the eyes of the Somali public, and
it is the principal yardstick that Somalis will use to assess the TFG’s
performance. A more effective police force is a necessary first step. The
international community already has established police support, and is
likely to provide stipends as well, but the burden rests with the TFG to
ensure that the police are a source of order and not predation. Under the
old TFG, the police were a menace to the public. Until Police Commissioner
Abdi Qeybdid is removed from office, it is not clear that citizens of
Mogadishu will have any confidence in the police force. International donors
must press hard for accountability in the ranks of the Somali police as a
precondition for aid.
The TFG is likely to relax rules on the operation of private security forces
employed by businesses, which in the past have been important sources of
security for neighborhoods adjacent to the business compounds. Additionally,
the TFG may opt to encourage the re-establishment of nonradical, local
Islamic courts, which were the foundation for the dramatic improvements in
security under the Islamic Courts Union in 2006. Under the courts’ brief
rule, Somalis were willing to trade some of their personal freedoms for
greater security. Donor states can play a constructive role by protecting
political space for Sheikh Sharif and his government to pursue this option
if they so choose, rather than reacting in alarm at the prospect of courts
based on sharia law. At the same time, donors can support Somali-driven
efforts to reduce the incompatibilities of sharia court proceedings and
rulings with international judicial and human rights standards.
Piracy
The lowest order of threat to the TFG, the Somali people, the region, and
the United States is actually the security item enjoying the greatest
attention right now—piracy. Even so, the continued epidemic of piracy off
the Somali coast is a problem and a test of the capacity of the TFG to
extend its authority. Proposals to provide external assistance to the TFG
for the establishment of a coast guard are premature, do not reflect the
security priorities of the Somali people, and are unlikely to work. Indeed,
training up coast guard officers could easily produce unintended
consequences, as that new skill set will be more valuable in the piracy
sector than in the public sector, producing defections from the coast guard.
A more appropriate approach for the TFG will be to tackle piracy onshore.
That will require time, funds, and extensive negotiations. External actors
will have only limited roles to play in this internal Somali process.
Antipiracy measures would attract much greater support among Somalis if
those efforts were accompanied by international action to end illegal
fishing off Somalia’s coast. Like the shabaab during the Ethiopian
occupation, pirates have managed to cloak their criminal agenda beneath a
veil of Somali nationalism. Although illegal fishing has undoubtedly
decreased due to the effectiveness of Somali pirates, international
commercial fishing boats have for years violated Somalia’s territorial
integrity and severely disrupted local Somali livelihoods.
Upending the status quo: Next steps for the Obama administration
Given the significant national security interests that the United States has
in Somalia with respect to counterterrorism, and the international political
and commercial pressure generated due to piracy, the Obama administration
should more deeply engage in Somalia’s state reconstruction. The United
States should appoint a senior diplomat along with a small diplomatic team
to work with the U.N. mediation team. The American officials can provide
focused, low-key support to this process of state reconstruction through the
TFG. If this support is too visible or forceful, it will undermine President
Sharif’s efforts to reach out to disaffected clans and constituencies. In
this space, the United States should work within the already established
International Contact Group to maintain the focus on the transition and help
ensure that President Sharif does not embark on a failed attempt at
empire-building like so many before him.
The immediate priorities and recommendations for the United States should be
the following:
*1. Improve security: Support locally owned efforts to improve security and
public order and reduce the threat posed by armed insurgents.*
Somalia’s most urgent need is unquestionably improved security. There are
multiple security threats in Somalia, each of which requires a distinct
response. Some security threats in the country are amenable to carefully
calibrated external support—others are not. In all cases, local ownership of
security policies is essential if those responses are to be sustainable,
effective, and viewed in the eyes of local communities as legitimate.
External aid is important, but it must not be allowed to overtake local
responsibility to finance essential security operations. Moreover, direct
support to the Transitional Security Forces must be conditioned on
increasing inclusiveness of the TFG and effective steps to curb human rights
abuses, including a commitment to investigate allegations of abuse and
removal of officials implicated in serious abuses. The United States and
other donors should establish oversight mechanisms under the auspices of the
Joint Security Committee and AMISOM and must be prepared to halt funding if,
as was the case last year, TFG forces engage in widespread human rights
violations and other forms of criminal behavior.
*2. End impunity: Support Somali efforts to seek justice for war crimes and
end a culture of impunity.*
The Ethiopian intervention in late 2006 calcified a brutal insurgency that
in turn provoked a heavy-handed and vicious counterinsurgency campaign.
Without fear of punishment, all sides committed atrocities against
civilians. Continued impunity is an affront to the victims and fuel for
further conflict. A necessary first step is a credible investigation of
crimes committed. As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, the
United States should call for a U.N. Commission of Inquiry to investigate
and document war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ultimately the question
of how to hold perpetrators accountable must be answered by Somalis
themselves, but a credible external investigation must occur to begin the
process.
*3. Focus on the transition and governance: Help President Sharif refocus on
transitional tasks and improve governance in order to enlarge participation
in the political process and defuse armed opposition as Somalia prepares for
possible elections in 2011.
*
Under former President Abdullahi Yusuf, the TFG ignored the “T”
(transition). Yusuf and his allies (including the Ethiopians) sought to
destroy their enemies without building functioning Somali institutions or
advancing key transitional tasks. The success of the transition now depends
on whether President Sharif can establish credible, inclusive, and
consultative national commissions to complete the transition.
As with transitional governments in other settings, the TFG will face
complex problems related to constitutional choices on systems of
representation, central and local government division of labor, checks and
balances, and many other matters that will have a powerful impact on the
question of “who rules” in Somalia in the future. It will also face daunting
technical challenges with regard to other key transitional tasks, especially
those related to the work of the electoral commission. Here the outside
world has considerable experience and expertise that can be offered to
Somali representatives. Again, donors must be careful not to erode Somali
ownership of decision making on these matters by overloading the
transitional process with outside consultants and preset templates that may
not fit in a Somali political setting.
*4. Manage external spoilers: Somalia is a theater for regional meddling and
proxy conflict, and the United States must seek to end cross-border
adventurism and neutralize sources of support for groups inside Somalia
seeking to undermine the peace process.*
Eritrea, Libya, Qatar, and Iran, among others, are actively supporting
groups that oppose the TFG, and the Obama administration should construct a
diplomatic strategy to erode that support. The Security Council has already
authorized sanctions against individuals and groups that obstruct the peace
process, and as an immediate first step the United States should work with
other members of the Security Council to build consensus for sanctions
against those individuals and groups identified by the U.N. group of experts
to be implemented if they become spoilers to the peace process.
Ethiopia’s cautious support for Sheikh Sharif is promising, but there will
be great temptation for Ethiopia to intervene again if the shabaab and other
extremist elements make further gains, or if the TFG’s outreach to the
opposition includes figures Ethiopia deems unacceptable. Renewed Ethiopian
military activities in Somalia would undermine and likely collapse the TFG
and fuel the insurgency. Simmering tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea
continue to destabilize the subregion and undermine Somalis’ state-building
efforts. The United States should resume serious efforts to fully implement
the Ethiopia-Eritrea peace deal, demarcate the Ethiopia/Eritrea border, and
normalize relations between the two countries. Without a resolution of the
Ethiopian-Eritrean impasse, Somalia is likely to remain a site of ongoing
proxy war between the two.
Conclusion
Somalia has become the poster child for transnational threats emanating from
Africa. By sea, pirates much more dangerous than their predecessors from
centuries past prowl the Indian Ocean and Red Sea waterways and make tens of
millions of dollars in ransom. By land, extremist militias connected to Al
Qaeda units ensure that Somalia remains anarchic and the only country in the
world without a functioning central government.
In fighting terrorism on land and piracy at sea, U.S. national security
interests will be better secured if we aligned ourselves more with the
interest of most Somalis in better security and effective governance.
Helping to build the house and using the back door will be much more
effective than barging into the front door of a house that has yet to be
built.
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