Friday, March 29, 2024
Wardheer News
  • News
  • Slideshow
  • Somali News & Politics

Somalia: why orthodox aid policy must give way to battlefield reality

Jens Mjaugedal, Special Envoy of Norway to Somalia, is frustrated… which is hardly surprising given his mission to try to turn Somalia, which has officially been the world’s most failed state for many years, into a success. The biggest problem in Somalia is how to keep the deadly al-Qaeda-affiliated, Islamist militant group al-Shabaab at bay.

The African Union’s robust peacekeeping mission in Somalia (AMISOM) expelled al-Shabaab from Mogadishu two years ago, and is now engaged in a major offensive to try to rid the country of the scourge altogether. AMISOM claims to have liberated 10 strategic towns so far, though the war is very far from won.

Norway has had a long engagement in the country (partly because of the 30 000 Somalis living in Norway), and Mjaugedal warns that war alone cannot save Somalia. It will not be very helpful to clear al-Shabaab from the territories it holds, unless the Somali government replaces al-Shabaab’s administration in those areas with its own administration – rather than just military barracks.

And that raises Somalia’s second-biggest problem. The state has virtually no capacity, nor money, to run anything. It cannot even issue birth and death certificates because all records have been destroyed by over two decades of war. There are five public schools and virtually no other services. And the skill levels of the public service are pathetically low.

‘This is one of the most privatised countries in the world,’ Mjaugedal says, in a wry reference to the state’s incapacity. He was visiting South Africa this week to compare notes and discuss possible cooperation with the government in tackling the Somali crisis.

Last October, the international community pledged US$2,3 billion to help Somalia. ‘This was fantastic,’ says Mjaugedal, ‘but until today, not a single dollar has come in.’

This is partly because the Somali government lacks the capacity to receive and to properly spend the money. So, Norway created a financial pipeline into the government last year and has pumped US$30 million of its own money through to the government in Mogadishu.

‘When the World Bank does something like that, it takes years. We did it in six months,’ he says. Oslo’s US$30 million was supposed to prime the pump, but still the dollars did not flow in from the international community. Evidently, other countries are still too concerned that corruption in President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s government would siphon off their aid.

Read more: why orthodox aid policy

Source: ISS

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.