The land the world forgot
Simon Tisdall
The Guardian
Hilary Benn's foray into war-torn, drought-plagued Somalia last week was a brave attempt to focus attention on the land the world forgot. Few politicians have ventured there since the central government collapsed in 1991 and warlords took over. Visiting a camp for displaced persons, the international development secretary pledged an additional £8m in humanitarian and educational assistance.
But Mr Benn was peddling more than handouts, homilies and good intentions. His additional offer of £1.5m "to support the functioning of the parliament and ministers" represented a clear British commitment to Somalia's political rehabilitation. It was the sort of initiative expected of a foreign secretary.
And it contrasted sharply with the Bush administration's current attitude. The US is increasingly pursuing a proxy war against al-Qaida-backed jihadis that analysts say is turning Somalia into a new front in the "war on terror". Badly burned there in the 1990s, nation-building is not Washington's main concern.
"The US is treating Somalia primarily as a counter-terrorism issue. That is the prism through which everything there is seen," a source said yesterday. "Britain is taking a broader, more holistic approach. It believes that is the way to stop Somalia being a problem in the longer term. That's why Benn was there, discussing a wide range of issues."
The UN-backed Somali transitional federal government certainly needs all the help it can get. Like President Hamid Karzai's Afghan administration, it has limited control of a country dominated by warlords. Unlike Mr Karzai, President Abdullahi Yusuf lacks a democratic mandate and foreign military support and is an exile from his capital, Mogadishu. Mr Benn's spokesman said the British funding would be channelled through the UN and used to provide government facilities and pay MPs' stipends.
Britain's hands-on political commitment is not without risks and complications. Somali MPs meeting in the southern city of Baidoa last week said several senior ministers were warlords and clan chiefs guilty of genocide in the last decade. "Their treacherous acts have caused so many civilian deaths, they should be charged with crimes against humanity," MP Muhammad Hassan claimed. Muhammad Dhere, head of a self-styled counter-terrorism alliance comprising secular warlords, has claimed in turn that parliament, far from being a beacon for the future, is packed with hardline Islamists and al-Qaida sympathisers. "They are spies and foreign agents. They are working to undermine government efforts to pacify the country," he said recently.
But Mr Dhere may be an unreliable ally, too. His Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism works in parallel to, rather than under, the control of the transitional leadership - and stands accused of exaggerating the Islamist threat to win US assistance.
Declining to deny it was supporting the warlords' alliance, the White House said last week that its first priority was preventing Somalia becoming a Horn of Africa "beach-head" for al-Qaida. The US continued to work with "responsible members of the Somali political spectrum", the state department said, without specifying with whom.
But President Yusuf said last month there was no doubt Washington was backing Mr Dhere's factions against Islamist groups - and asked that it work through his government instead. Demonstrators in Mogadishu denounced the warlords as Washington's puppets last week. One banner said: "We don't want people who take dollars to kill us." After a brief ceasefire, fighting has flared anew.
According to the International Crisis Group, the US has got it wrong and spreading Islamist ideas are not Somalia's main problem. "Somalis in general show little interest in jihadi Islamism; most are deeply opposed," it said. A bigger danger was that America, fixated on the spectre of al-Qaida, would exacerbate existing divisions and undermine the transitional leadership.
"So much time and effort was put into getting this government in place," said Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society. "Now the US seems to be pulling it all to pieces by setting one side against the other." What with Washington, warlords and the weather, Mr Benn has his work cut out.
