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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Apr 15 2011 - 15:12:02 EDT
Somalia, Wobbly on Ground, Seeks Control of Its Airspace
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/jeffrey_gettle
man/index.html?inline=nyt-per> JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: April 15, 2011
MOGADISHU, Somalia — With pirates running rampant offshore and Islamist
militants boxing lawmakers into a corner of this bullet-ridden capital, the
beleaguered Somali government does not control its land or its seas.
But Somali politicians are confident they can wrest at least one frontier
from the grip of outside forces: the skies.
For almost 15 years, the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_
nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org> United Nations has controlled
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/so
malia/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Somalia’s airspace from a little office in
Nairobi, Kenya, where an international staff of air traffic controllers sit
quietly in front of computers to make sure the scores of commercial jets
that crisscross Somalia each day — usually on their way to somewhere else —
do not crash into one another.
Taking charge of this is far more than a matter of pride. Tens of millions
of dollars in airline flyover fees have been handed over to the United
Nations since the caretaker arrangement began, but Somali officials complain
that very little of that has gone to Somalia itself.
So much of the money is spent paying the generous salaries of United Nations
employees, they contend, that little is left over to train Somali aviation
officials or repair the country’s decrepit airports. At Mogadishu
International Airport, rats have chewed through the wires of X-ray machines,
and chunks of concrete routinely break loose from the ceiling and crash
down, frustrating Somali officials to no end.
“Definitely, we will reclaim that authority,” said Mohamed Abdullahi
Mohamed, Somalia’s prime minister. “It’s very simple. The airspace belongs
to the Somali people. We are a sovereign country. This isn’t just about the
money.”
United Nations officials say they agree, in principle, with allowing Somalia
to play a bigger role in managing its own airspace, but they are worried
about handing over the keys to a complex and potentially dangerous operation
to a government that is constantly teetering on life support.
Even in the little zone of Mogadishu that it loosely controls, the
<http://tfgsomalia.net/English%20Language/> Transitional Federal Government
of Somalia struggles to demonstrate that it can pay its own salaries and
pick up the trash, let alone juggle several dozen jetliners hurtling through
the air at 600 miles per hour.
“It’s fundamentally a question of safety and security,” said Denis Chagnon,
spokesman for the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United
Nations agency that took over Somalia’s airspace in 1996. Mr. Chagnon said
that although the agency had stepped up in disaster zones before by, for
example, temporarily managing the skies above Kosovo and Haiti, “nothing
really compares to Somalia.”
“If you are going to hand over the control to installations in Somalia, you
have to ensure that those facilities are up to par, that the personnel
involved are well trained,” he said.
Talks have been going on between the two sides for months, but some Western
diplomats are suspicious of the Somali government’s interest in the airspace
fees. Transparency International recently
<http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/result
s> ranked Somalia the most corrupt country in the world, and one Western
diplomat contended that there was “a feeding frenzy now” because it is
unclear how much longer the transitional government’s mandate will be valid.
Given the uncertainty over what will happen after that, some Somali
officials are “going after any little pocket of money they can find,” said
the diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
But the Somali officials counter that it is the United Nations that has been
stealing from them.
“The U.N. has been using our money for luxury cars and villas,” said Capt.
Mohamoud Sheikh Ali, who until recently was the general manager of civil
aviation in Somalia. “They are looting our property.”
And therein lies another problem. Captain Mohamoud, a former Somali Air
Force pilot who once crash-landed a Russian-made MIG on a Somali beach after
he ran out of fuel, was abruptly dismissed in one of the frequent, wholesale
change-outs of ministers and top civil servants in the endlessly bickering
Somali government.
“We’ve been trying to find a transition,” said Álvaro Rodríguez, a United
Nations official who works on Somalia. “But with the T.F.G. and all the
staff changes, it kind of comes and goes,” Mr. Rodríguez said, referring to
the Transitional Federal Government.
In many ways, the fight over Somalia’s airspace is similar to the battle
over its pirate-infested seas. The shipping lanes off Somalia’s coasts are
vital to global trade, especially for oil tankers passing from the Middle
East to Europe and the United States, prompting Western powers to send
warships to patrol Somalia’s waters.
Because of Somalia’s strategic position at the crossroads of Africa and
Arabia, about 90 flights enter its airspace every day. That traffic includes
some of the world’s biggest airlines, like
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/air_fra
nce/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Air France and Emirates. And thanks to a
little-known fact in the world of air travel, air navigation charges, every
time a jetliner soars above this war-ravaged country — Air France from Paris
to Réunion, Emirates from Dubai to Johannesburg, or El Al from Tel Aviv to
Thailand, for instance — the authorities managing Somalia’s airspace get
$275.
The Somali government used to collect those fees, now estimated at $4
million a year, but the government collapsed in 1991, suddenly leaving the
airspace wide open.
The United Nations civil aviation authority stepped in to help, part of a
huge
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_
nations/department_of_peacekeeping_operations/index.html?inline=nyt-classifi
er> peacekeeping mission. But when the peacekeepers failed to pacify
Somalia, the flight information center was moved to Nairobi and the airspace
fees were used to pay for the United Nations-run operation. As Captain
Mohamoud pointed out, no Somalis appear to have been consulted.
Then again, nobody knew that Somalia would languish so long without a
functioning government. So what was supposed to be a temporary caretaker
arrangement for Somalia’s airspace is now pushing 15 years.
One of the main goals was to develop “an essential nucleus” for a Somali
civil aviation department. But while Somalis have been hired to work in
Nairobi, they complain of being treated like second-class citizens and say
that few, if any, of them have been promoted to management positions — even
though that was supposed to be a priority of the United Nations program.
Many of the Somali employees make less than $1,000 per month, though Somali
employees say some of the top international staff members make 10 times that
much. United Nations officials declined to provide salary figures.
The Somali government has promised not to change the operation and to keep
the Nairobi flight control center open. It merely wants the ownership of the
airspace transferred back to Somalia; that way, Somali officials say, they
will better manage the money generated by the flyover fees and make more
improvements to Somalia’s airports.
“The right of Somalia to take over the responsibility” of its airspace “is
undeniable in the light of international law,” read a letter from the
previous prime minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, dated last May.
Gesturing to the crumbling terminal building at Mogadishu International,
where passengers wait for crews in grubby overalls to wheel up a decidedly
shaky set of steps, Captain Mohamoud said: “You know, these people are
collecting our money, using our money, and look at us. We just want to be
like any other country and have a real airport.”
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