The new government in Mogadishu has yet to prove its mettle

Backing Britain to bash the SL

AT THE end of the colonial era Somalia was arguably in ethnic terms the most homogeneous country in sub-Saharan Africa. The nearest to it was probably Botswana, which is four-fifths Tswana—and turned out to be peaceful and prosperous, suggesting to some that countries populated and run by a single big tribe have a better chance of stability than those with a hotch-potch of smaller ones.

Somalia, however, became a byword for conflict, poverty and ungovernability. Yet its ethnic homogeneity is misleading. Despite also sharing a single language and religion, it is divided into more than 500 clans and sub-clans, who are notoriously fractious and competitive. This, as well as their largely nomadic way of life, has made many Somalis fiercely loth to accept the edicts of a central government.

The last man to exert real authority from the capital, Mogadishu, was a military dictator, Siad Barre, who was ousted in 1991. His downfall was the cue for two decades of civil war. Can the country’s latest president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was elected by parliament last September, do any better, while using democratic methods?

So far, so good. An uneasy peace holds in much of Somalia, thanks largely to a promise of federalism and decentralised power. Under the prodding of Britain, which has been leading a foreign push to put Somalia on its feet again, the new government accepts that the half a dozen or so of Somalia’s fiefs that enjoy a measure of autonomy should be given their head—and should be only gradually drawn back, if possible, into accepting central authority. So far the mosaic of clans, with their shifting alliances, have mainly held back from openly challenging Mr Mohamud’s government while they wait to see how resources and authority will be shared.

But Mohamed Omar, the foreign minister of Somaliland, a northern breakaway from the rump of Somalia, says the government in Mogadishu has achieved little despite its international backing. Both Somaliland and Puntland, a semi-autonomous north-eastern region, cold-shouldered a grand international conference on Somalia in London on May 7th. “The days when Somalia could be governed from the centre are over,” he said. “Anyone who brings them back will not bring peace.”

A former university dean and civil-rights activist, Mr Mohamud is well liked by foreign governments. In London they pledged $300m in aid in return for his promise of a “new Somalia”. But at home his writ only runs in the areas controlled by forces (mostly Ugandans, Kenyans and Ethiopians) under the aegis of the African Union. He is being closely watched for any signs of breaching his federal pledge.

Some worry that big tasks, such as completing a new constitution, outlining how power will be shared and setting up commissions to define boundaries and electoral systems, have yet to begin. Matt Bryden, a Canadian who runs Sahan Research, a Somali-oriented think-tank in Nairobi, notes that “none of the work has been done towards federalism,” letting critics allege that the government is more centralist than it admits. They fret that the new security forces and police will be dominated by Mr Mohamud’s powerful Hawiye clan.

Abdi Aynte, the head of the Heritage Institute, a think-tank based in Somalia, complains that too many conspiracy theories abound. The president has no hidden agenda, he says, and “an incredibly hard job”. Still, some of Mr Mohamud’s opponents in rival clans are still backing the Shabab, the armed Islamists linked to al-Qaeda that previously dominated the country, to destabilise him. In the past month, scores of people were killed in two Shabab suicide-attacks in Mogadishu.

The United States, which has spent $1.5 billion channelled through the African Union to bring better security, and Britain, which promised another $280m in aid this week, are keen to take credit for gains in Somalia. “Somalia has begun a rapid recovery in the last year,” said Justine Greening, Britain’s development minister, at the conference. “But this will be put at risk if the Somali government cannot manage its own public finances properly, avoid future famines or tackle terrorism and piracy.” Quite so.

Up to 3,000 African peacekeepers killed in Somalia since 2007 - U.N.

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - As many as 3,000 African Union peacekeepers have been killed in Somalia in recent years in an attempt to end an Islamist insurgency and bring stability to the Horn of Africa nation, a senior U.N. official said on Thursday.

Troops from the Kenyan Contingent of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) sit on the back of a flat-bed military truck as they begin an advance on the Somali port city of Kismayu, in this handout photograph taken October 2, 2012 by the African Union-United Nations Information Support Team and released October 3, 2012. MANDATORY CREDIT. REUTERS/African Union-United Nations Information Support Team/Stuart Price/Handout

"I want to pay tribute to the countries and to their soldiers who paid such an enormously heavy price," U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told reporters.

"You would be shocked to learn that maybe it is up to 3,000 AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) soldiers that have been killed during these years that AMISOM has been there," he said.

The 17,700 strong African Union force began deploying to Somalia in 2007. It includes troops from Burundi, Uganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone and Djibouti.

"Uganda, Burundi have paid a tremendous price," he added. "The Kenyan troops are, of course, also a large part of AMISOM."

By way of comparison, 3,096 U.N. peacekeepers have died since 1948, according to the website of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

Somalia is only just emerging from two decades of civil war. Its government is struggling to rebuild a country riven by clan divisions and whose infrastructure and institutions are in tatters.

A newly appointed parliament last year elected a new president, the first vote of its kind since the toppling of former military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

African Union peacekeepers have been largely responsible for pushing al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab out of the capital Mogadishu and other urban centres in the past two years, but the group is still able to launch major attacks, including a suicide bombing on Sunday that killed at least eight people.

Eliasson said on the sidelines of a donor conference in London earlier this week that sought pledges to rebuild Somalia that the United Nations has given strong backing to the country's new leadership.
Copyright © 2013 Reuters

From fear to hope – Getting it right in Somalia

Dr Donald Kaberuka

It has been two decades of mayhem, chaos and bloodletting in Somalia.  A child born at the onset of the Somali crisis is now twenty one.  Somalia has still a long way to go: the Al Shabaab are defeated, but they are not yet fully eliminated, and they still have the capacity to kill and to maim.

The risks of reversal – and of humanitarian crisis – are always there, and we are not yet done with the effects of disaster.  News agency reports last week remind us of the delicate humanitarian and fragile political situation.

But while Somalia has a long way to go, it is clear that it has also come a long way. The country now – with its new Government, Parliament, President, Prime Minister and 6-point reconstruction plan – is getting to its feet.  This week’s Lancaster House Conference, convened by the UK and the Somali Government, marked a significant step on a long journey.

This is the first time in a long time that there has been such optimism, even if it is tempered by the unfinished business on the security and humanitarian front.

Pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia have fallen by three-quarters in a year.

Somali armed forces – with the help of the AU and the UN’s newly extended AMISOM mission – have reclaimed territory from the insurgents of al-Shabaab, retaking their last urban stronghold of Kismayo in October. What was the world’s largest settlement of internally displaced people at Afgoye, outside Mogadishu, has seen its numbers drop by two-thirds in a year.  Canvas is replaced by brick, and fear is replaced by hope as business picks up, from construction in Mogadishu, to mobile telephony and property.

Somalis are returning: over 60,000 came back last year alone. We estimate that two billion dollars are sent back each year. The Somali shilling has appreciated; commercial airlines are doing well; and there are nine mobile phone networks across the country.  Cargo ship arrivals in Mogadishu, seeking to regain its reputation as the white pearl of the Indian Ocean, have risen dramatically in a year.  UNICEF reports that children are going back to school in large numbers.  Somalis are not just talking with their neighbours; they are talking amongst themselves. Their commitment to dialogue with all the regions of Somalia is testimony to the potential of a collective national will.

The country of one language, one history, and one religion has more to unite it than divide it: Somalia can build itself anew.

In this, the international community which turned out in force to join the Somalis at Lancaster House has a critical role to play. If it is to play an active role in Somalia, however, there are certain preconditions.

First, we must apply the lessons we have learned in post-conflict state-building in Africa and elsewhere.  The meeting on Tuesday was a good beginning.  The Somali Authorities reported on their own progress on their own plans, especially in the security sector, the judiciary, the rule of law, and the management of public finances.  These are indeed the start-points.  The Somalis must be in the driver’s seat, and be seen by all – above all their own people – to be so.

Our task is to support them as they build their own capacity, plan, and execute.  At no time should the international community want to supplant what the Somalis themselves are planning and doing.  It may be well intended, but it will not work.

Second, we need to manage the complex relationship between humanitarian agencies providing short-term emergency help, and those addressing longer-term issues of development, ‘resilience’ and reconstruction. Time has taught us that the two phases can blend and reinforce each other.

The famine and drought of 2011-12 claimed over a quarter of a million Somali lives, reminding us of the close links between security, humanitarian support and long-term resilience-building.

Thirdly, we must remember the regional context.  The Greater Horn is not only a collateral victim of the Somali crisis; it is also the bedrock of the security solution. If today we see light at the end of the tunnel, it is thanks to Kenyans, Ugandans and Burundians who have been ready to lay down their lives.  There is no solution for Somalia which does not involve the people and the countries of East Africa and the Greater Horn.

Rebuilding the Somali state will challenge us all.  There is no manual, no toolkit.  We will be learning as we go, drawing on the lessons of the past.

In London, the Somalis reported on their progress in putting in place a transparent Public Finance Management system, with a strong fiduciary framework.  It is a very good place to begin.  It is this kind of detail – and commitment – that will assure Somalis and their partners that the scarce resources available for the rebuilding Somalia will be well used.

The African Development Bank, with a uniquely African character, is already on the ground, helping to strengthen the foundations in Somalia, and to apply the lessons learned in other fragile states.

In the history of Somalia, especially the 1970s and 1980s, the outside world did not always help, and at times it actually contributed to some of the causes of the Somali crisis of the last twenty years. That is why it is essential that it supports Somalia now – and that it does so with humility.  Let us empower Somalis to take charge; let us minimize the burdens and demands on the new young State.

An immediate priority is regularizing Somalia’s relationship with the International Financial Institutions.  Let us begin by ensuring that a quick external debt arrears clearance scheme is put in place. It took three frustrating years in Liberia to clear the bilateral, multilateral and London Club debt, but Somalia’s modest debt should enable the process to go faster.

Somalia’s journey of reconstruction has begun.  It could be the most complex African journey in fifty years, but it can prove to be the most rewarding if we get it right.

By Donald Kaberuka
President of the African Development Bank

Somalia: Giving Extremists a Second Chance

By Muhyadin Ahmed Roble, 

Mogadishu — At 18, Farah Osman should not be a battle-hardened soldier. He should not have spent the last seven years fighting for the Somali Islamist extremist group Al-Shabaab, or have been trained by foreign jihadists in handling and repairing weapons and improving his shooting skills.

But he has. And now he is also a deserter. The tall, slim teenager is one of about 800 former Al-Shabaab fighters staying at Mogadishu's Sarendi Rehabilitation Centre. He hopes he will soon be integrated back into society and into the Somali Armed Forces.

Osman cannot recall the exact month he was recruited as a fighter by the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab, but it was near the end of 2006, the year when United States-backed Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia to prop up the Somali Transitional Federal Government.

He was walking home from school on a steaming hot day when his former teacher from a local dugsi or religious school stopped him and took him to an Al-Shabaab base.

Osman sat panicked and alone under a tree in the base for a while, then the teacher returned with a group of men and bottles of mineral water and dates which they distributed to the young boys. Preachers then spoke for hours about the holy war, animosity with Ethiopia, and the importance of defending the country.

It was the year he turned 11.

"Heaven, money and prestige were convincing incentives. Their promises were irresistible," says Osman.

He says everyone seemed ready to sacrifice their lives to defend their religion and their country.

His trainers were all Somalis, including Adan Hashi Farah "Eyrow", a war veteran who founded Al-Shabaab, the armed wing of the Union of Islamic Courts. Farah was killed by a U.S. airstrike on his house in the town of Dhuusomareeb in central Somalia in May 2008.

"They offer a mobile phone and a monthly salary of 50 dollars," Osman says. But he adds that this was not the only thing that pushed him to join the organisation. "I wanted to seem powerful and to be a respected man, and people (at that time) respected a man with a gun."

For five years, Osman moved through the war-scarred buildings in Mogadishu, around the forests near the Kenya-Somalia borders and in southern Somalia on his mission to kill Somali and Ethiopian forces and African peacekeepers in the hope of going to heaven after death.

Then in October 2011, Al-Shabaab carried out a suicide attack on the education ministry in Mogadishu. More than 70 people were killed, most of them students checking their scholarship status.

"This is when I realised that Al-Shabaab was no longer fighting for religious or jihad reasons," Osman tells IPS in a restaurant close to Villa Somalia, the country's White House. "That is not what jihad is meant to represent."

Osman is not the first or last Al-Shabaab fighter to desert the organisation. Hundreds of fighters across southern Somalia have turned in their guns and surrendered since 2010, when the government offered them amnesty, protection and a better future.

With Al-Shabaab under financial strain because of multiple frontlines and the loss of strategic towns in the country, many more fighters are expected to turn themselves in to the government, which has offered former fighters accommodation and job opportunities.

On one single day in September 2012, in the town of Jowhar, some 80 km from Mogadishu, 250 Al-Shabaab fighters became the largest number to surrender in a single day to Somali forces and the African Union Mission in Somalia.

Mogadishu intelligence chief Khalif Ahmed Ereg told reporters at a press conference in February that defections by Al-Shabaab members were rising dramatically, with many more expected in the coming months.

However, the country's National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) first investigates defectors before allowing them to join rehabilitation programmes.

Critics have raised concerns about the vetting process for defectors, claiming that many of them still have close ties to the extremist organisation.

Ibrahim Sheikh Hassan, an analyst and former professor of political science at Mogadishu's pre-war Strategy College, tells IPS that NISA's screening process is weak and insufficient and that Al-Shabaab are taking advantage to carry out a "planned infiltration" of the government's security forces.

"They offer some accurate information to make their 'sham' defections appear genuine while planning destruction operations within the government," Hassan adds.

It is a claim that NISA denies, but many of the recent killings, including a bomb blast and suicide attacks in the capital, have been blamed on sham defectors.

In January, an Al-Shabaab member who claimed to have defected from the group tried to kill the prime minister in a suicide bombing at the presidential palace. One government soldier was killed and several others were wounded.

"The agency should come up with another strategy of using the defectors as an asset without officially incorporating them into the agency. Their long-term effect should be a matter of concern."

The Sarendi Rehabilitation Centre in Mogadishu, where Osman resides, is currently the only one of its kind in the country. But speaking to the national assembly in March, Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdoon said his government planned to open 10 centres to accommodate and rehabilitate Al-Shabaab deserters and soldiers captured in the war.

An official from the government's rehabilitation programme, who asked to be referred to only as Ahmed, told IPS that there were currently another 800 Al-Shabaab defectors in southern and central regions of Somalia.

Ahmed told IPS the interior ministry was planning to open other rehabilitation centres in south and central Somalia - in Kismayo, Balad Weyne, Baido, Garbaharey, Jowhar, Marka and Guriceel - to accommodate the defectors.

The Sarendi Centre, which opened in March 2012, is run by Somalia's interior and national security ministry and financially supported by Norway's foreign ministry. It provides skills training, including football, driving and fishing lessons, and also teaches technical skills.

"Everyone is taught what he has an interest in," says Osman.

But his interests remain centred on war. He wants to finish his mission of killing the "bad guys" - but as a soldier wearing a government uniform.

 

Mogadishu — Sources close to the Somali Federal Government (SFG) tell Garowe Online that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is planning to conduct a major reshuffle in his administration, Garowe Online reports.
President Hassan Sheikh who is currently in London where he co-chaired the Somalia conference with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron might be getting ready for an overhaul of his administration.
Sources tell GO that on his list of changes the SFG President will return the number of Cabinet Ministers from 10 to 18 which was the number of ministers during former Prime Ministers Abdiweli Mohamed Ali Gaas and Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo.
The undersized cabinet appointed by Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon defied the 4.5 quota - a formula in which clans share government representation - and forced many ministries to be joined which resulted in 25 Deputy Ministers.
According to our source, the high number of deputy ministers brought confusion, which resulted in political aides advising that the President return to the 18 ministry cabinet.
Prime Minister Shirdon appointed the small cabinet which was backed by President Hassan who according to SFG sources had influence in the decision.
The source also told GO that President Hassan is contemplating sacking Prime Minister Shirdon after he failed to subdue the ongoing Jubaland state process which has seen international backing from IGAD and mentions at the Somalia conference in London.
After the conference in Lancaster House the official communique welcomed "progress on forming regional administrations and looked forward to the completion of that process," which political insiders say is an oblique reference to the state building process.
In the past, President Hassan has firmly stood against the Jubaland process in Kismayo. Addressing the Federal Parliament in Mogadishu earlier this month, President Hassan said "The Federal Government does not support the current Jubaland conference in Kismayo".
Prime Minister Shirdon - whose clan resides in Gedo region, one of the regions that make Jubaland -visited Kismayo in March and after meeting with process organizers returned to Mogadishu to reject the Jubaland state formation. Although Prime Minister Shirdon has firmly stood by President Hassan the source says that President Hassan was disappointed in his effort.
According to the source, the possible reshuffle does not stop at Prime Minister Shirdon but key officials at the presidential palace might also be sacked. The source would not name some of the officials in question.
The talk of a possible reshuffle of his administration comes at a time when President Hassan is being pledged millions of dollars to rebuild Somalia.
Britain pledged 279 million US dollars which included funding for a doubling of the police force. The United States pledged 40 million US dollars, while the United Arab Emirates pledged 50 million in assistance.