Somalia: Can Amisom cause a miracle?

This year, the British government is putting much of its diplomatic effort into trying to bring peace and stability to Somalia. A BBC reporter who has just returned from Somaliland, Kenya and Uganda, reports on the background to the London Conference on Somalia scheduled for February 23.

Kenya’s late but timely intervention
In Kenya, I came across much more support for the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) incursion into Somalia, which began in October last year. A recent opinion poll showed more than 80 percent backing.

For Kenya, too, though, ‘in Somalia, nowhere to hide’ is a warning worth heeding. War reporting in the Kenyan media can most charitably be described as “incomplete.” Few questions are asked about the sustainability of the operation. None of the grim reality of fighting al-Shabaab is shown in any detail. TV news reports seem to focus on the delight of Somali village children as they received sweets from Kenyan soldiers.

I offer no criticism of reporters whose only access to a battlefront is on an ‘embed’, as we call it, travelling with and protected by the army you’re reporting on. There are some places where it’s plainly foolish to go off reporting on your own. Somalia is one of them; Iraq was another. I was ‘embedded’ with the US army there and was very glad of the armoured Humvees they took me around in.

Respect for the soldiers you’re travelling with does not mean you can’t ask them tough questions, though. Military missions that don’t face scrutiny are more likely to go wrong and go on too long. The way attention was diverted from Afghanistan by the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a widely quoted example.

Why has Kenya decided to deploy its small airforce in Somalia, with the dangers of ‘collateral damage’? A story circulating amongst Kenyan Somalis in the Eastleigh district of Nairobi was of five children killed in a Kenyan air strike in mid-January, an incident under investigation by the KDF.

Other tough questions might usefully be asked in Kenya. Young Kenyan Somalis like one student I met - let’s call him Ismail - are rounded up whether they show their Kenyan IDs or not. “They wouldn’t believe it wasn’t a forgery,” he told me. “They kept me overnight. I missed an important exam...”

One thing that makes Somalia one of the world’s biggest headaches at the moment is how al-Shabaab offers a training ground for radicalised young Muslims. The London based think tank RUSI recently estimated there are 50 Britons among around 200 extremists training in al-Shabaab camps in Somalia. Alienating the Somali population in Kenya won’t help slow the flow of radicals across Somalia’s border.

These are the challenges facing the diplomats arriving shortly for the London Conference on Somalia planned for February 23. All the headlines, and Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague, describe Somalia as the world’s most failed state. Previous attempts to overcome that failure created the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Rashid Abdi, one of the most respected experts on Somalia, describes the TFG now as “divisive, corrupt and hobbled by weak leadership”. The many different Somali clans and families do not believe their interests can be protected on a national basis.

Inside Somalia
Yet Somalia’s clan system need not be the problem. It is not a mixture of ‘ancient hatreds’ and a recipe for disaster, according to Rashid Abdi.

Traditional respect for age and wisdom is said to be behind the success of the most stable part of Somalia: Somaliland with Hargeisa as its capital. “The elders sat down under a tree and agreed to live in peace,” is the legend that all Somalilanders will tell you. It wasn’t that simple, of course - there are still some parts of the territory claimed by Somaliland that do not accept Hargeisa’s authority. But the economic impact of twenty years of relative peace is obvious.

Hargeisa is at the centre of a money transfer or Hawala system that brings in millions of dollars in remittances from Somalis abroad. The US government has tried to restrict those money flows, fearful that Hawala is funding al-Shabaab. But the chief executive of the biggest money transfer company, Abdulrashid Duale of Dahabshiil, insists identity checks ensure the money is as safe as any in the region. His computer records are available for any regulator to check, says Mr Duale. “We have to comply with all international banking regulations.”

In Somalia, nowhere to hide; and the agenda for this month’s London Conference shows that the UK government now recognises that there is no point trying to hide the failure of all previous foreign efforts to stabilise Somalia. Somaliland, which has largely been ignored by the outside world, has a stability that is home-grown. Finding ways to support Somaliland and the other, less secure, autonomous regions Puntland and Galmudug, is on the London agenda.

African-led military operations will be needed and establishing sustainable funding for Amisom is another important aim of the Conference. Al-Shabaab has just been ‘welcomed’ into the al-Qaeda family by Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and remains one of the most serious global security challenges. Disrupting piracy and terrorism training camps are also on the security agenda for the London meeting.

Above all, what to do about the political process, renewed without much hope at the Kampala meeting three years ago and now considered to be broken beyond use? The mandate of the TFG expires in August this year.

After about 19 previous international conferences on Somalia, the likelihood that this gathering will finally design a workable, popular government for the whole of Somalia seems remote. The evidence I found in Somaliland is that Somalis can find their own answers in small ways in small spaces.