From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed May 26 2010 - 03:19:19 EDT
http://www.themedialine.org/news/print_news_detail.asp?NewsID=28837
SOMALIA'S GOVERNMENT IS LOSING ITS SOLDIERS
Unpaid Somali soldiers defecting, some to Al-Qa’ida offshoot.
They are fighting one of the most fervent, successful and rapidly expanding
Islamist militias in the world.
The government they are fighting for controls an increasingly limited
portion of the country's territory.
Their political and military leaders are clearly siphoning huge personal
profits off international assistance packages meant to aid the military and
country at large.
Their camps are ghastly, they are provided with no healthcare, and they
often have to survive off international food aid to avoid malnutrition.
They are rarely paid their $100 a month salary.
They face the real threat of being shot, blown up, tortured or hung on a
daily basis.
A reasonable person could understand why a soldier fighting for Somalia's
transitional government might decide to call it quits.
That's exactly what's happening.
Despite U.S. training and tens of millions of dollars given to Somalia's
Transitional Federal Government (TFG) each year, a number of Somali
analysts say the government's soldiers are not only leaving the national
forces, but some are joining A-Shabab, a loose association of militant
Islamist groups with growing links to Al-Qa’ida, who are pushing ahead
with an increasingly successful anti-government insurgency.
"There is simply no loyalty to the state," Dr. Jack Kalpakian, an expert on
Somalia and international security at Al-Akhawayn University told The Media
Line. "One of the most effective weapons anyone has in Somalia is cash, so
you can get soldiers to turn by simply offering to pay their salary."
"$100 a month is not chump change in Somalia, and certainly some of the
money is getting siphoned off," he said. "What's to stop a soldier from
taking $100 a month from the transitional government and then getting
another $40 or $50 from A-Shabab and fighting as it pleases him."
The Somali transitional army is funded by the Somali government and
international donors. The U.S. and other international donors are currently
funding the salaries of over 5,000 Somali soldiers, leaving the rest of the
army's 10,000 soldiers to be paid by the highly inefficient and stretched
transitional government. According to Associated Press, the U.S. spent $6.8
million to train almost 2,100 Somali soldiers in Djibouti and Uganda over
the past year, but almost half of them deserted the army after they were
not paid their $100 a month salary. Some are understood to have joined the
ranks of A-Shabab. A joint U.S. and EU training program for 2,000 new
Somali soldiers is set to begin in Uganda next month.
Somali transitional government officials contacted for this article refused
to comment.
Bashir Goth, a Somali analyst and the former editor of Awdal News, said
that one of the reasons the transitional government is unable to pay its
soldiers is corruption.
"You have to remember most of the transitional government officials are
people from the diaspora, who were unemployed in their host countries," he
told The Media Line. "Their sole aim of joining the government is to earn
as much money as they can. Everyone knows that former transitional
government members, including the former Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi,
a veterinary teacher before he became prime minister, now owns an expensive
property in Nairobi."
Goth argued that low military salaries and the fear of abandonment were
also contributing factors to the high levels of military defections.
"The second reason is that the transitional government military is poorly
paid, while A- Shabab pays better," he said. "We have to also remember that
the transitional government military lacks proper mission and purpose. They
don't know whether they are fighting for the country or for a government
that will run away tomorrow and leave them to face the wrath of the
Islamists alone. It happened before... There are also many Islamists in the
transitional government military who could be playing a double game."
"Also, clanism plays a great role in Somali politics," Goth added. "The
transitional government soldier will not fight against those in the
opposition from his tribe, both for tribal loyalty and for fear of reprisal
by the clan on his family."
Dr Theodore Karasik, the Director for Research and Development at the
Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, pointed to a misplaced
Western approach to military training.
"Western-style military training may work in the long run, but in the
interim you will have desertions because tribe and clan trumps military
allegiance to the transitional government," he told The Media Line. "This
is a tribal based society that is highly divided, so to bring foreign
military values into Somalia doesn't necessarily fit. You have to take into
consideration how that society is made up."
EJ Hogendoorn, the International Crises Group's Horn of Africa Project
Director, warned against assuming that large numbers of Somali soldiers are
defecting to A-Shabab.
"Basically, most of these allegations are true, but while a few of them are
joining A-Shabab, it's not in large numbers," he told The Media Line.
"Normally, if government soldiers defect to A-Shabab, they parade them in
front of the media. In reality most of them are probably just returning to
their clan militias or civilian life, if you can call it that."
Hogendoorn said that the principle problem was corruption, not a scarcity
of funding to provide for the soldiers' salaries.
"The problem is not that the funding is not available, the problem is that
the transitional government lacks the capacity and capability to monitor
where those forces are and whether or not they are getting paid," he said.
"You could give the transitional government $12 million dollars and say pay
10,000 soldiers $100 a month for the next year, but you could not be sure
that the money would ever end up in the hands of those forces, or even if
it did, whether those forces would continue to fight for the transitional
government. So international donors are quite nervous about giving more
money to the transitional government security structure."
Ahmed Egal, a Somali businessman and the CEO of AOST Inc, agreed, arguing
it is a mistake to hold the transitional government up to the standards of
a traditional government.
"Firstly you have to understand that the transitional government is not a
'government' in any sense of the word that is usually applied to such an
entity," he told The Media Line. "It does not control any territory, run
and administer any state bureaucracy or rule over any population. It is, in
fact, maintained in a few blocks of Mogadishu around Villa Somalia (the
Presidential Palace) by 4,500 Ugandan and Rwandan troops."
"Secondly, the funds provided to the transitional government by
international donors is appropriated by the president and his cabinet -
they get the first bite - then doled out to their supporters in the
so-called parliament - they get the second bite - then to the lobbyists and
influence peddlers that the transitional government keeps on retainer
around the world," Egal said. "The police and military come a very distant
fourth in this list of priorities, since they are not essential to the
survival and continued existence of the transitional government."
Somalia has not had a functioning government since the 1991 ouster of
Mohamed Siad Barre. The ensuing years have seen a chaotic system of rival
clans controlling various parts of the capital.
A Western-backed Transitional Federal Government was set up in 2004, but
Mogadishu remained under the control of a coalition of sharia courts known
as the Islamic Courts Union.
Originally the militant wing of the Islamic Courts Union, A-Shabab began an
insurgency in late 2006 with assassinations and suicide bombings targeting
aid workers and transitional government officials. The group has since made
significant gains and now controls much of southern Somalia and parts of
the capital Mogadishu.
Western governments fear that Somalia's instability may provide a safe
haven for international terrorist groups. A-Shabab members have cited links
with Al-Qa’ida, although the affiliation is believed to be minimal. The
group has several thousand fighters divided into regional units which are
thought to operate somewhat independently of one another.
The U.S. has launched selected air attacks against A-Shabab leaders thought
to have ties to Al-Qa’ida, but analysts say this has only increased their
support among Somalis.
The Western-backed Ethiopian military invaded Somalia in 2007, but many
analysts believe this too augmented A-Shabab's military campaign against
the transitional government.
The Ethiopians withdrew in January of last year, after over 16 months of
A-Shabab attacks on its forces.
A former schoolteacher, the new president of Somalia, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh
Ahmed, is a moderate supportive of Sharia law who seeks to integrate
A-Shabab fighters into the transitional government's forces. His overtures
have to date been rejected and the government has largely failed to contain
A-Shabab's expansion. The transitional government's new military chief was
until less than a year ago the assistant manager at a McDonald’s in
Germany.
The Somali National Security Force was meant to have 8,000 soldiers trained
and in the field by now. The UN estimates that as of November 2009 less
than 3,000 soldiers were on the government payroll. There are reports that
there are another 5,000 to 10,000 fighters from government-aligned militias
operating in Mogadishu.
The transitional government is preparing a major military 'surge' to retake
the capital Mogadishu from A-Shabab and various other militant groups.
But for the various reasons discussed in this article, Somali analysts are
highly sceptical of the surge's potential for success.
"There is no effective military resistance to the jihadists in Somalia
except for the AMISOM troops and a much smaller transitional government
contingent charged with securing Villa Somalia and its immediate environs,"
said Egal. "You have to understand that the much vaunted 'surge' that the
transitional government is supposed to be mounting against the jihadists is
a fiction that has been concocted for foreign consumption in order to
secure weaponry and continued political, financial and military support."
"Most of the $40 million worth of arms that the U.S. gave to the
transitional government last year has been sold to, or captured by, the
jihadists," he claimed. "I can personally assure you that there will be no
'surge' against the jihadists mounted by the transitional government soon
or at any time in the future. Whenever we hear this canard stated by the
transitional government or its international supporters/donors, we (Somali
commentators/journalists/analysts etc.) break out into gales of laughter,
and more and more well informed foreign observers of Somalia are starting
to join us."
By Benjamin Joffe-Walt on Sunday, May 16, 2010
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