When good intentions go bad in Somalia and Afghanistan

(Photo: AFP/GETTY)

By Rob Crilly      

He didn't look much like Mad Abdi, the famed Mogadishu warlord whose arrest by Delta Force was portrayed in the film Black Hawk Down. No, by the time I met him in a smart Nairobi hotel in 2008, Abdi Hasan Awale Qeybdiid was one of ours. He was dressed in a smart military uniform and ran Mogadishu's police force, all paid for with millions of pounds of European and British money.

This was how it was supposed to work. Somalia was a failed state and the best way to help it rebuild was to pour millions of pounds into law and order, providing security for future development aid. Some £15m of donor funding – including more than £3m from the UK's Department for International Development – was being spent via the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

There was just one problem. No one really knew where the money was going. Somalia was too dangerous for UN officials to visit. There were reports of 4x4s were being converted into battle wagons and evidence the cash was being used to pay salaries of Brigadier-General Qeybdiid's own militia.

I put all this to a friend at one of the embassies in Nairobi. His response was typical of those I received in any discussion of aid and development. “An element of a leap of faith is required,” is what he told me. “Otherwise we have to walk away.”

Fast forward five years and one could be forgiven for thinking walking away might have been the better option. As a new book, Al-Shabaab in Somalia by Stig Jarle Hansen (published by Hurst), sets out, ill-conceived donor programmes in part created the conditions for Somalia's takeover by the hardline Islamists of al-Shabaab.

Starting in 2005 with just 36 fighters it grew to become 5000-strong in 2009 – probably the peak of its power – filling a security vacuum and making life all but impossible for Somalia's internationally-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Mr Hansen's detailed account sets out how al-Shabaab set aside the clan divisions that stymied other movements and offered its own form of law and order:

The UNDP, supported by Norway and the United States, trained the police, but failed to ensure its payment, over and over again. In fact the desertion rate of the unpaid police and soldiers of the TFG was growing above 100%: the number of defections was actually larger than the total amount of policemen scheduled to be in the police force. A majority of the policemen just stayed some months in the force before they defected. Donors and supporters failed to understand the seriousness of the situation before it was too late.

The police that were left engaged in systematic pillaging and fought among themselves. The same thing happened in the army. The donor cash had not just failed to bring about security, it contributed to growing lawlessness and a key condition for the rise of the Islamist extremists. The book concludes:

TFG policies, as well as the failed rule of law project managed by the UNDP, had more or less prepared the stage for al-Shabaab by creating a highly corrupt and predatory police force despised by many Somalis.

While there are few universal rules of aid or foreign policy, there are clearly lessons to be learned. As the world ponders once again how best to rebuild Somalia and donors continue to pour money into Afghanistan to shore up local security forces riddled with desertions, it is clear that doing something is not always better than doing nothing. In the case of al-Shabaab, despite being pushed back from the Somali capital, their influence across Africa means they remain a deadly threat.

Last week, at least 15 people died in a Shabaab attack on the UNDP compound in Mogadishu.

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