u.s. foreign assistance to somalia- phoenix from the ashes

8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes

1/26

U.S. FOREIGN

~ ~ S I S T A N ~

O SOMALIA:

P H O E N I X F R O M T H E ~ S ?

Dr. Menwurtcs is associatepro ssor ofpolitical science at D avaon College. In

1993-94, he served

as

pecialplitic l adviser in the United Nations @ration in

Somalkz The author gra te flb acknowledges-ial sq rt that contributed to

thk researchporn the Fulbright abctoral dissertation grantprogram (1987-88),

summer research grmforn the Amerkan University in Cairo I 9901,and a

research gr@j?om D avaon College (1996).

ew

topics inspii

more cynicism

amongseasoned

observers

of

international

politics than

foreign

F

ssistance

o

Somalia. By

m e

reckonings,

no

o k ountrysave Isael

has

received such high levels of military and

economic aid

per

capita; certainly no

country

has

less

to

show for

it.

Even before

its

collapse

into

protracted civil war

and

anarchy

in 1990,

Somalia

had

earned

a reputaton

as

a graveyard

of

foreign aid, a

land

where aid prbjeds were

notoriously unsuccesshl, and where

high

levels

of foreign

assistance

helped

tocreatean

entirely

le,compt

and repressive

state. The

heavilyme violence of Somalias

civil

war,

moreover,

exposed

the

military aid intotheHom of Afiica Finally,

the

massive

armed

humanitarian

intmention

into

and

outof Somalia in 1992-95

dramaticallyexposed the shom min gs of the

entire

industry

of foreign aid -hm the

bihteddonors,whosestrategicandpolitical

of

the

Somali people;

to UN

agencies,whose

inflexible

bmaucraticproceduresfiiled

to

respond

to the

Somali h i n e ;

o

the non-

des tn tC t ivm of yeafi of Cold -W at-inspi

in-

have m l y

i

with

the needs

governmental

organizations,whose

programs

succumbed to

extortion h m omali militias

and

sometimes inadvertentlyheled

local

conflicts;

to

compt

local

leaders, who

systematically d i v e d foreign aid

to

their

own

coffm at

the

expense

of their

own

populations. In

short,

Somalias history

of

foreign aid

yields

an

almost

exclusively

negative

set

of

lessons

leamed.

Yet the

very depth of these failures both

in

Somalia and other crisis-ridden

countries

n the

Greater Horn

of

Afiica

may now

be

providing

fertile

ground

for innovative reforms

in

the

philosophy

and

delivery of foreign aid. Among

thosedonorsat

the fo re hnt of new thinking

on foreign aid

to

Somalia

is

the

U.S.

Agency

for

International

Development

(USAID),

which

is attempting o operatiodizethese

new

approaches

through

its

Greater Horn of

Afica

Initiative(GHAI).

Though

still

in

planning

stagqtheGHAI isconceptually.superiorto

past

approaches

to

development aid.

It

This tern encompasses the region from Burundi

and Tanzania in the south to Sudan in the north-a

zone characterized by endem ic humanitarian,

political, and reh ge c crises that hav e presented the

international community with some of the most

challenging complex emergencies in the world.

124


2/26

MENKHAUS: . S. FOREIGNASSISTANCE

O SOMALIA: PHOENIX FROMTHE

ASHES?

emphasizes conflict preventionas a means of

addressing

roots

causes

of the regions

endemic humanitarian crises; African

ownership of development prioritization;

regional approaches

o

problems transcending

borders,

as

the

GHAIs

name suggests;

capacity-building rather thanproject-driven aid;

the strengtheningof civil society; and effective

mechanisms

to

support transition

h m

elief to

development aid. Though none of these ideas

about aid is new, attemptsto systematically

build

them

into foreign-aid programs in

USAlD

are.

Moreover, coming

at

a time of

significant shrinkage in the foreign-aid budget,

the GHAIs prioritization of local capacity-

building and African-led initiatives, rather than

costly conventional development projects,

provides it with fiscal aswell as conceptual

appeal. TheGHAI isabout doing business

differentlyin the

region, observes

one USAID

official. This is not about more money, its

about progmnming

resources

more

efficiently.

The

GHAI

s already considered a

potential model for

U.S.

foreign aid in other

regions of the world and thus merits close

xrutiny

as

it is moved h m

he

chalkboard

into operation.

It

is of additional interest in that

the principles on which it is founded reflect one

of the pillars of the Clinton administrations

emerging post-Cold

War

foreign policy. This

pillar is the conviction

tha

mong the chief

timats to

American interests and global

stability

are state

collapse, civil

war

and

protmcted humanitarian

crises

in

mnes

like the

Greater Horn of

Africa,

and tha American

interests are

best

promoted through long-term,

For recent media coverage

of

this new aid

philosophy, se e Howard French, Donors of Foreign

Aid Have Second Thoughts,

The

New York Times

(April 7, 1996), p.

5.

Interview with USAID official. June 1996.

comprehensive assistance aimed at preventing

these complex emergencies.

In the case of Somalia, of course, calls for

crisis prevention cometoo late.

Worse,

Somalias current stateofaff ai rs poses a

fundamental challenge to some basic premises

of foreign aid. One of these premises

is

the

existence of

state

authority.In Somalia,

USAID and other donors conhnt the dilemma

of channeling development aid where there is

no sovereignstate, forcing them to consider the

problems and prospects

of

identifylng and

working through alternative

sources

of social

and political authority.

Foreign

Aid and

the Nature of

the Somali

State

on leastdevelopedcountries suggests that

large-scale assistance generallyhas a

distorting effect on both the economic and

political finctioning of the recipient

country.

Economically, high levels of aid

can

shah

the

absorptive capacity of weak economies,

misdirect development priorities towards

expensive and inappropriate large-scale

projects, and foster dependenceon external

sourcesof finding

to

meet both development

and recuning administrativecosts in the states

budget. Politically,high levels

of

foreign aid in

very poor states have been associated with the

rise of endemic political corruption, the

strengthening of repressive

arms

of the state

and the bloating of the civil service, since

external assistance enables rulers to utilize

expanded employment in the state and the

military as a critical form of patronage politics.

In Somalia, however, aid has not so much

distorted politics

as

it has transformed it. The

Somalistate itself is a historically artificial and

Past research on the impact of foreign aid

See

J

Brian Atwood, Suddenly, Chaos.

The

Warh ing ton

Post

(July

3 1,

1994).

125


3/26

MIDDLE

ASTPOLICY, OL.

V,

No.

1,

JANUARY997

unsustainable structure.

First

superimposed on

a

statcless,

predominantly

pastoral

society by

Italian and British colonialism, he

state

in

Somalia was subsequently sustained and

dramatically enlarged by generous levels of

foreign aid. Its growth into the primary source

of employment

in

Somalia in the 1970s

economically viable The Cold War

temporarily obscured this fundamental

problem. Attracted by Somalia's perceived

strategic importance in the Horn of Afiica-a

geopolitical advantage that Somali leaders were

keen

to exploit- diverse range of donors

provided economic

assistance that may

have exceeded

5

billion f iom

1960

to

and 1980s,g

The Somali state ...has never

not only a bloated

bureaucmcy but also been remotely sustaina ble by 1988 and mi)itaryaid

one of subsah- domestic sources of revenue. estimated at

2.4

Africa's

largest

billion.'

In

addition,

armies, co&ided

with extremely

high

levels of foreign assistance

from a wide variety of donors during

the

Cold

War.Conversely, in 1989-90,

when

reduced

Cold War ensions enabled western donors to

f reeze

fm ig n assistanceto Somaliaamidst

charges of gross violations of human-rights by

the Barre

regime-an

ethical luxury th t the

logic of the Cold War

had

prevented in the

pa st- the Somali

state

quickly collapsed

and

has

yet

to

reappear.

Even the prolonged

efforts at nation-building by the U.N. operation

in

Somalia (UNOSOM) fiom

1993

to March

1995

were unable to resusci tate

a

bmal i state

beset

by powerful

centrifugal

olitical f m

and a weak domestic economy that cannot

generate

tax

revenues for a minimalist cen td -

state structure?

It

may be an exaggeration to claim

that

he

Somali state

is

a creation of external

assistance,but it is indisputable that the

state

has

never

been

remotely sustainable by

domestic sourcesof revenue.

As ar back as

the

1950s,

observers

worried thatan

independent Somali

state

would not be

h i s

hesis

is

presented in greater detail in Ken

Menkhaus and John Prcndergast, "Governance and

Economic Survival in Post-Intervention Somalia"

CSIS Afiica Notes

(May

1999,

pp. 1

12.

Somalia's endemic

food shortages, and

its

long-term rehgeecrisis

resulting h m he drought of

1974

and the

OgadenWar of 1977-78, added enormous

flows of food relief and refbgee assistance into

the foreign-aid lifeline. By the mid-1980% 100

percent of Somalia's development budget was

extemally financed and

a

disturbiig 50 percent

of its r e c m t budget dependent

on

intemationalloansand grantsas well.' At

the

height of Somalia's foreign-aid dependence

in

1987,

one analyst calculated thattotal

development assistanceconstituteda stunning

6Mark Karp,

The Economics ofTrusteeship n

Somalia

(Boston: Boston University Press,

I960 ,

pp. 146-169.

Estimates given here are based on figures from the

U S . Arms Control and Disarmament Agency,

World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers

(annual handbook), and crosscheck ed with the

CIA,

The World Factbook

(1995).

It should be

noted that total eco nom ic and military assistance is

difficult to calculate precisely. In addition

to

routine problems

of

comparability with statistics,

Somalia received a variety o f unorthod ox forms of

foreign aid that did not alwa ys appea r in official

databases. For instance, in th e late 1970s t he B m c

regime unofficially received

up

to

S300

million

annually in cash from S audi Arabia as part of a

sweetener to brcak ties with the So viet Union.

crhese figures were disclosed in an interview with a

World Bank official in Mogadishu,

1988.

126


4/26

MENKHAUS:U.S. FOREIGNASSISTANCEO SOMALIA: PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES?

57 percent of Somalia's

GNP.9

Somalia had

become a ward of the international aid

comunity.""

the institution of the state. Whole ministries

were heavily or even totally reliant on a foreign

donor-the Ministry of Agriculture on the

Germans, the Minisby of National Planning on

the Swedes, Somali National University on the

Italians, he military on a constellation of

Westem donors. Throughout much of the

198%

Saudi Arabia supplied most of

Somalia's

energy

needs for

free

as

part

of the

weaning away of Somaliah m ts

1970s

alliance with the Soviet Union. Somali civil

servants devoted most of their energiesto

project hopping'*-linking up

to

foreign-aid

projectsthatwould pay viable salaries-rather

thanperforming their duties within their

ministries,where they went virtually unpaid.

High levels of foreign assistanceto

Somalia have

had

a profound effect on Somali

urbanpolitical cultureas well. Since 1960,one

of the most important roles of

the

Somali state

has been as a catchment point through which

This level of aid dependence transformed

9Data are from ACD A, W o r l d M i l i t a r y

Expendi tures and A rms Transf i rs , cited and

analyzed in Paul Henze,

The

H o r n

of

A f i i c a: F r o m

War to Peace (New

York: t .

Martin's Press, 1991).

p. 125. To put this figure in context, in 1987

foreign aid

as

a percentage of

GNP

in Sudan was

10.5 percent, and in Eth iopia 11.7 percent.

%avid Laitin, Somalia: America's New est All y.

(unpub lished paper, 1979). p.

8.

The Saudis did, however, link the free supply of

petroleum to deman ds that Som ali civil servants

attend regular Arabic language c lasses,

an

extraordinary case of cultural imperialism which the

Somalis resented. But, having pragmatically sought

membership in the Arab League in I97 3 in order to

facilitate access to new OPEC wealth, the Somalis

had little recou rse but to accede to the request.

A civil servant's monthly pay in the mid-1 980s

covered only two to three days worth of household

expenses.

I I

12

foreign aid is h e l e d into the

country.

This

unintentionally reinforced

a

Mogadishu bias

in modem Somali political culture, a

centralization of political life and competition

in the capital, the point at which foreign aid

entered the country and

was

allocated. And

foreign aid continuesto foster a

cargo

cult

among Somali political figures, n illusion that

the reestablishment of a Somali state will again

be greetedwith Cold

War

evels of

international largess,tobeenjoyed by whoever

is clever and ruthless enough to convince the

international community he presides over a

structure that

can

pass for a state. This illusion

hasexacerbated the pmtracted impasse over

national reconciliationin Somalia today and

has fueled the ongoing civil

war,

which has

largelybeen fought over control of points of

entrance of international emergency relief into

thecountry.Were there no potential foreign-

aid bonanza inked to the capturingof he

central state, it is quite likely that factional

conflict in Somalia would be far more muted.

It

would

be

an error

to

project this

portrait

of dependence on foreign aid

to

the entire

economy of Somalia Most of the rural

sector-thepastoral economy of livestock

herding and the smallholder

agricultural

production in southem, inter-riverine

Somalia-has remained relatively self-reliant,

despite the fact that

this

sectorhas been a major

target of development aid since the 1960s. It

is

the

urban

civil-servant classth t has developed

an entire economy and lifestyle mund the

accessibility of foreign aid and the bloated

Somalistate t has sustained. That segment of

the economy remains the most dysfunctional

and vulnerable in the aftermath of the collapse

of the state.

US.Aid during

the Cold War

Within the narrow geopolitical logic of

the Cold War, independent Somalia found

127


5/26

itself occupying strategicallyvaluable

real

estate in the Hom of

Mca

he

soft

underbelly" of the Arabian Peninsula Like its

neighbors in northeast Afrca-Ept,

Sudan,

and E thi op iA om ali a was able

to

parley

this

strategic significance into high levels of foreign

aid. Yet throughout the Cold War Somalia

was

always a consolation prize for super p~ wen

vying for

influence in

the

muchmore mportant

country

of

Ethiopia. Since Somalia's emnity

with

Ethiopi- function

of

Somali irredentist

claims

on Ethiopia's Somali-inhabited

Ogaden

re gi on -pm lude d an alliance with

both

countries, the f i r s t choice of

both

the

East Bloc

and the West in the Horn of

Afiicawas

Ethiopia, which

possessed

a much

larger

population and

land

mass,M c a ' s largest

army, and

far greater

political

prestige

and

leadershipthanSomalia"

flowed intotheHorn

of

Micawas

military,

helping

to

transform the region

into

one of the

most

militarized zones in the

Third

World.

A

heavy

sham

of the responsibility for

this

weapons flow

rests

wt the fonner Soviet

Union, which

fiom

1%7

to

1987

provided

an

estimated H.2billion in arms deliveries

to

its

clients

in

Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan."

The

U.S.

bansferred

about $1 billion in military

Much of the internationalassistance which

MIDDLE ASTPOLICY, OL.

V,

No.

1,

JANUARY

1997

128

~~

Several

books

document the politics

of

Cold

War

competition in the Horn

of

Africa See Jeffrey

Lefebvre,

Arms

for

t he Horn : US. ecuri ty Pol icy

in Ethio pia and Somal ia, 1953-1991

(Pittsburgh:

University

of

Pittsburgh Press,

1991 ;

Paul Henze.

The

H o r n

of

Af i ica: From W w o Peace

(New

York: St. Martin's Press,

1991 ;

Steven David,

Choosing Sides: Al ignment and Real ignment in

the

Thi rd Wor ld

(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins

University Press.

1991 ;Robert

Patman,

The Soviet

Un ion i n the H o r n

of

Af i i ca

(Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press,

1990).

Henze, The

Horn o fAf i i ca,

p. 119.

I1

14

equipment and

support

intotheHorn over tbe

course

of the Cold

War.

assistance

since

independence

in 1960

can be

broken

down

into

three

distinct

periods,

corresponding roughly

to

each decade.

'I?uough

most of

the

197Os,

Somalia e m b d

a close alliance

with

the Soviet Union;

as

a

consequence, the United

States

provided

virtually no aid h m

970-78.

By contrast,

in

the

1960s

and

1980%

he United

States

played a

relatively significant role

as

a foreign donor, but

always

as

part

of

a much wider, multinational

program of

assistance. In

neither

the

1960s

nor the

1980s

did U.S. bilateral economic and

military

assistance rank as

he

top

sou~ce

f aid

for

Somalia

Still,U.S.

i M conomic aid

to

Somalia

h 954 to 1987

totaled

$677

million

(one

of the

top

recipients of U.S. aid

in

subSaharanAfrica) and

U.S.

military aid to

Somalia

in th t period

reached

$380

million."

Moreover, inasmuch asU.S. ssistance

was

closely

coordinatedwith other

major donors

like

Italy

and

Saudi

M i a ,

and

its

policy

preferences influential

in

multilateral

lenders

like

theWorld

Bank

and

Lntemational

Monetary

Fund,

he United

States had

a

powerful

voice in shaping the philosophy and

goals linked

to

intemational aid to Somalia

Thrwghout he ColdWar, merican foreign

aid

to

Somalia

was

defined and driven by

strategic rationales, often

at

the expense of

developmental

concerns.

Somalia's legacy of international

U S

id

in

the

19609.

The

United

States

played a relatively subdued role in foreign

~~ ~

Lefebvre,

Arms or t he Hor n

p.

15.

'%SAID.

Congressional Presentat ion. Fisc al Year

1990.

Annex

I,

Africa

p.

338.

Dilemmas in the Horn

of

Africa: Contradictions in

the US.-So mal ia Relationship.

Northeast Afr ican

Studies 9. 3 (19 87)

p. 28.

Peter Schracdet and

Jercl

Rosati, Policy

7


6/26

MENKHAUS: .S . FOREIGN SSISTANCEO SOMALIA: PHOENIX FROMTHEASHES?

assistanceto Somalia in the

1960s.

U.S.

military aid

to

Somalia for the entire decade

totaled only

$1 million, in

conbast to $47

million provided h m

1963

to

1969

by the

Soviet Union." hostilities and had

Part of

this

low-key

to be

a b o r t e d

due to

report described as

an imposition of

function of the

close ties between

the United st tes concessionary loan s, poorly "American style"

and Ethiopia in that conceived de velopm ent projects range management,

development consultants

to

understand Somali

pastoral land tenure undermined a rang e

managem ent project in the southerntown of

Afhad ow. The project

sparked

i n t r a & n

approach was a As most of the assistance offered whatanembassy

to Somalia wa s in the form o f

era,

an alliance saddled Soma lia with foreign which was

which would have "completely

beenjeopardized

debt which it could n ot service. contrary

to local

hadtie

United

style. 21

Statesprovided

Somalia with significant military aid.

match the Soviet Union in development

financing, contributing 17 percent

of

the

funding of Somalia'stotaldevelopment budget

h m

963

to

1969.

American assistance

focused on infnstmctud projects like port

construCtion,

highways and

urban

water

supplies,aswell as range management and

rain-fed agricultural development

in

the inter-

riverhe region."

As

pad of its effort to help

develop Somali agriculture,which was

predominantly small-holder, subsistence

farming, American aid officialspressed the

Somali government

to

adopt modem land-

tenure laws. They were believed to be a

precondition for h e r s o invest

in

their land,

but they created a least as many problems

as

they were

to

outset, when

in

1% the failure by American

The United Stateswas, however, able to

This

was

clear

at

the

~~

"Henze,

T h e H o r n

of Afiica p. 101.

Aid-The Cas e of Somalia,

The Jou rna l

of

M o d e r n

A r icun Stud ies 9, 1 (

197

1) pp. 37-40.

'6SCe Cath erine Bestem an and Lee V.Cassanelli,

eds.The

St rugg le o r Lan d i n Sou thern

Somalia: The

War Behind the Wur (Boulder: Wcstview, 1996).

Ozay Mehmet, "Effectiveness of Foreign

9

U.S.

assistance

also contributedto a multilateral,Westem aid

program aimed at

training

and support for

the

Somali national police force. Not surprisingly,

the combination of Western aid to the Somali

police and Soviet aid to the Somali military set

up an internal

security

rivahy which

was

resolved by the

1969

military coup .

In

keeping with

the

predominant aid

philosophy of the times,

other

donors focused

resources

on

largescale infnstmctural projects

as well, including roads,agmindustrial

projects, and telecommunications, as well as

social projects such as echnical schools,

stadiums and theaters. The shortcomings of

this

type of

assistancewere predictable.

First,

donors tended to tie assistance to high-prestige

projects thatdid not always coincide with

developmentpriorities in Soma lia Second,as

time

passed

it

quickly became apparent

that

many of

the

infktructuml projects were

unsustainable; Somalia

was

unable to finance

themaintenance ofmack, airportsandagro-

industries,which slowly fell

into

disepair.

21Frank Mahony. "The Pilot Project in Range

Management Near Afmadu." USOWSomali

Republic (March 1961).

129


7/26

MIDDLEASTPOLICY,OL. V, No. 1, JANUARY 1997

Third,

oreign assistance

in

the 1960s, including

U.S.

aid, tended

to

be concentrated

in

the south

of the country, eading to a politically sensitive

regional imbalance in development. Finally,

as

most of the assistance offered to Somalia

was

in the form of concessionary loans, poorly

conceived development projects saddled

Somalia with foreign debt which it could not

service.

As

early as 1968, the Somali

government pro@ rescheduling and

renegotiation of its debt, a harbinger of things

to

come.n

US.

Aid to Somalia

197781988. In

the

aftermath of the 1969military coup that

brought Mohamed Siyad Barre to power, the

Somali government forged intensive ties with

the Soviet Union, embracing "scientific

socialism" in the process. In reality, Barre

understood M arxist-Leninism poorly, but

appreciated the ideological ustification it

provided for his consolidation of power within

a single vanguard party and the suppression

of

dissent within the Somali polity. Somalia's

ideological conversion was an attempt to

maximize

Soviet military support, which

Somalia intended to devote to its irredentist

claims on the Ogaden region of Ethiopia

Under Soviet patronage, the Som ali military

more thandoubled in

size

from

197

1

to 1977.

But

in 1977, when Ethiopia

was

weakened by

revolution, internal political strife and multiple

civil wars, providing Somaliawith its

o p m t y o

capture

he Ogaden, Somalia

found

that

its

erstwhile superpower patron

abandoned it in favor of a new alliance

with the

revolutionary Ethiopian regime. This left

Somalia badly beatenby Soviet and Cuban-

backed Ethiopian

forces

in the 1977-78 Ogaden

War.

In

response, the

Barre

regime was quick

to

abandon its revolutionary socialist

slogans

and

embrace anti-Soviet "containment" rhetoric

in

an

effort to gamer American military aid

against the Soviet-backed Ethiopians. What

ensued

was

a pivotal debate in the Carter

administration between "regionalists,"who

were inclined toview Somalia as a diplomatic

pariah

state for its irredentist war for the

Ogaden, and "globalists," for whom Soviet

military

adventurism in the Horn of Afiica

boded ill for ditente and had to becountered by

the United States. Despite

the

Carter

administration's preference for a regionalist

approach, events beyond the Hom -t he fall of

the

shah

of I ran, and the Soviet invasion of

Somalia's stmtegic

importance

asa

potential component

of

an

evolving American Rapid Deployment

Force

for the Persian Gulf?' In the end, Somalia was

somewhat

reluctantly

taken on by an internally

divided car ter administration

as

a client, a

relationship

that

brought a tremendous wealth

of foreign aid

to

Som alia but failed

to

deliver

the levels of m ilitary aid the

Barre

regime

desired.

U.S. m ilitary and economic aid to

Somalia from 1978 to 1989 formed part of a

semi-coordinated,

multilateral

effort between

the U.S. and its

Western

and Arab allies,

particularly Saudi Arabia Militarily, the

United Statescould not afford the diplomatic

fallout of providing

an

irredentist state with

offensive

weaponry. So

beginning

in

1980, the

United

States

provided Somalia

wt

a

package

of

military

aid that

was

defined as defensive

in

nature. This aid, which began at 45 million

for theperiod of 1980-81, came to total over

5 0 0

million up

to

1989, the largest

U.S.

security-assistance program ever provided to a

Afghan-

UMehmut, Effectiveness of Foreign Aid, pp. 42-

46.

For more detailed discussion , see Lefebvrc.

Arms

for the

Horn, pp.

175-205.

130


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MENKHAUS: .S. FOREIGN SSISTANCEO SOMALIA:HOENIX FROM THE ASHES?

subsaham African

state.

But the

"defensive" U.S. military aid constituted only a

small portion of

total

arms bansfers to Somalia

in the

1980s.

Generous financial assistance

h m audi Arabia and elsewhere enabled the

Barre

regime to purchase

$580

million

in arms

between 1979

and

1983;

most of the

weaponry was imported &om Italy.u No

defensive restrictions were placed on these

purchases, allowing Somalia to continue to

build up

its

offensive capacity while shielding

the United States h m riticism that it was

aiding

that

process.

But the

real

problem in fashioning

military aid to Somalia

was

not insuring that it

would be limited to "legitimate defensive

needs." By the 1980 he only securitythreat of

consequence to the Barre regime emanated

From within an increasingly rebellious Somali

society,so hat the main p m u p a t i o n of the

Somali military was re pm iv e internal security

operations. Thisposed a very different

type

of

dilemm a for military aid donors, but one which

was downplayed until

1988,

when a full-scale

civil

war

broke out between

the

Somali

government and a northern liberation

ht

he

Somali National Movem ent. The Barre

regime's brutal treatment of the Isaaq clan in

the north of the count^^ was carried out with

weaponry supplied by the United Statesand its

allies, and by military leaders rained in the

U.S.

I MET

program. Many observers

subsequently faulted the West for having been

obliviousto the costs of anning

a

military

whose

sole

enemies were

its

own

citizens.

In retrospecs

ustifications for U.S.

military aid to Somalia asa quid pro quo for

U.S. access to the strategic airfield at Berbera in

northwest Somaliaappear unwarranted.

Charged with planning a Rapid Deployment

Force capable of enforcing the car ter Doctrine

in the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials sought access

to naval and air

bases

throughout the Middle

East and the Indian

Ocean

includingEgypt,

Kenya, Oman and Diego Garcia Somalia's

airfield

at

Behem,

the longest runway

in

Africa,was viewed as an athactive additional

facility.

But

even

within Washington circles,

questions

were raised

h u t

he

redundancy of

the Somali facility, especially when the United

Stateswas initially presented with extremely

high " m t " requests by the Barre regime." The

margmal importance of the Berberafacility

was demonstrated during the Gul fWar hen

the deployment of over

250,000

U.S.

troops

to

the Persian Gulfwas accomplished without

use

of the Somalia runway.

was always

part

of a broader package, one

which David Rawson has termed the

"secuity/development U.S. econom ic

aid, which totaled

$639

million over the

course

of the decade, included roughly equal ratios of

development assistance (earmarked through

USAID'S Development Fund fo r Afiica

budget), Economic SupportFunds

American

m il m y assistance to Somalia

Ibid.. p. 14, 241.

U.S.

military aid during this

period included $128 million in Military Assistance

Program

(MAP)

funds,

S175

million in Economic

Support Funds (ESF ), S60 million in Foreign

Military Sales (FMS ), and S7.5 million for an

lntemational Military Education and Training

(IMET) program. An additional S200 million was

released in FMS ash arms agreements.

251bid., . 228.

24

Ibid., pp. 199-200. Misreading i t s bargaining

6

position, Somalia initially requested

1

billion over

a five year period, a package that would have

included advanced military equipment.

David Rawson.

The Somali Stale and Foreig n Aid

(Washington, D.C.: Foreign Service Institute, 1993).

Rawson's study is a detailed and valuable analysis

o f U.S. nd Western foreign aid to Somalia in the

1980s.

131


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MIDDLEAST POLICY, VOL.V, NO. 1 J A NUARY 1997

(development assistancedesigned to support

stmtcgic intem ts) and commodity

i m p o e

which were channeled through he

PL

480

Food For Peace program and the Commodity

Import P r o p P

Collectively, these

American aid p r o w s ormed an important

part

of an enormous international aid presence

in Somalia in the 1980s, a period

in

which

Somalia received 1.1 billion from

OPEC

states

and $3.8 billion in Western bilateral aid,

aswell as

an

estimated 2 billion

through U.N.

agencies, the World Bank and the

M.

U.S.

bilateral aid

was

delivered

in

two

distinct packages. One

back

centered on

provision of technical assistance to multi-

donor projects, while the other focused on

economic support

for

policy reform. Project-

related assistance included

several

agricultural

extension and training progtarns; a threeyear

feasibility study for a proposed

600-

million,

World Bank-- hydro-electric dam on

the Jubba River, rangeland-mangementand

livestock-marketing projects; groundwater and

irrigation projects; rural health- programs;

and rehgeerelated projects. But for a handhl

of exceptions, nearly all of the project-related

packageswere deemed outright failures. One

unusually candid

USAID

intemal assessment

confirmed, USAID projects accomplished

close to nothing

if

measuredagainsttheii

original design.'m And the

U S A D

mission in

Mogadishu was not alone on this score. Nearly

all

other external

donors,

many of them

partners

with USAID in m ultidonor projects,

experienced similar

setbacks.

Some specific examples help

to

underscore the depth of these foreign-aid

Ibid., pp. 70-80.

CIA, The World Factbook 1995

p. 388.

Melissa Pailthorp, Development before Disaster:

28

29

I0

USAID in Somalia 1978-1990 (Washington:

USAID, 994), p 1.

fiuhations.

In the caseof

rural

development,

USAID and fellow donors

recognized

the

central importance of a revitalized agricultural

and pastoral sector in the Somali economy, and

correctly perceived that the underdeveloped

rural sector

possessed

considerable potential.

As a consequence,

USAID

provided assistance

to nearly every multidonor agricultural and

rangemanagem ent project in the 1980s. Yet

follow-up evaluations found that

virtually

none

of the agricultural and pastoral projects

succeeded.

These

evaluations tended to

focus

on technical and operational problems of

timing and implementation, faulting in

particular the cumbersome nature of multi-

donor project coordination." But there was a

f r more

fundamental

law

in

these rural

development projects,

rooted in

the predatory

natm of the Somali state. In the absenceof

an effective and legitimate land-tenure system,

projects which increased he value of

mngeland or farmland often inadvertently

triggeredstruggles for control over that

res0u~ce.f'

Land-grabbing by politically

empowered clans and civil sewants was rife in

zones

demarcated for internationallyh d e d

irrigation projects, resulting n the expropriation

of tens of thousands of hectaresof riverine land

fiom minority farming communities. Even the

activitiesof the A ID -h de d feasibilility study

for the proposed Badh ere Dam riggered

speculative land-grabbing.)' Rangeland

improvements also exacerbated

pastoral

lbid. See also the summary

of

these various audits

and evaluations

in

Rawson.

The Somali Sfafeand

Foreign Aid, pp. 7 1-74.

The Somali had established mode m and-tenure

laws in 1974

to

replace customary tenure, but the

system was badly abused by ci vil servants and

powerful political figures to lay claim to land

farmed by smallholders for generations.

See Besteman and Cassanelli, The Struggle or

Land.

132


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MENKHAUS:

.S . FOREIGN SSISTANCEO

SOMALIA: PHOENIX

FROM

HE ASHES?

conflicts over wells and pasture,

as

politically Another projectcentered preoccupation of

empowered

clans

such

as

Barres

Marehan donors, including

USAID,

was assistance to

clan) encroached on land traditionally Somalias large refbgee population, victims of

controlled by other clans. By the late 1980~, drought and warfire

in

the

1970s.

Since the

donor priorities and projects

in

the

rural

sector

refbgees

were ethnic Somalis (though most of

had

unintentionallyhelped to accelerate a Ethiopian origin) and since there appeared to

historically unprecedented wave

of

land be no near-term resolution to the Ethiopian-

expropriation in southern Somalia, a process Somali conflict, donor strategy focused on a

which left many riverine agricultural goal of refbgee self-reliance. Ihis

led to

the

communities destitute. fimding of a

number

of

refbgee resettlement

Training projects.

Programs, Though the

intended

to

government of

build Somali

Since governm ent and military

Somalia

Proposed these

strengthen schemes, it was

publiesector

refugee aid, the regime had a strong

ambivalent

capacity, fared

interest in o verestimating the refugee about

actually

officials were diverting much of th e

nobetter. One

population a nd threatened aid officials

closing down

report

refilgee

camps,

which

ID

wh o challenged their num bers.

&ncluded that generated

considerable

ewer

than

a

third of the

Somalis sent to study

in

the United

States

returned to Somalia, leading the author to

wonder whether,

after

spending over 2 1

million,

. .

the

country

is better

off.

The

statistics show that

An

s

spending money

to

produce what may be

a

net brain drain rather

than a brain gain to the

country.

A 1989

World

Bank

report reached a similar

conclusion:

after

tens of millions of dollars

were spent putting thousands of Somalis

through training programs, the quality of

public-sector management

had

actually

deteriorated

in

the mid to late 1980s.

Jeffrey Franks, Brain Drain or Brain Gai n? A

Review

of USAID

Participant Training in Somalia

(for

USAIDISomalia, September 1986), p. 5.

World

Bank,

Somalia: Policy Framework Paper

(1989-1991).

(April

1989),

p.

1 I

quoted

in

Rawson,

The Somali S tate and Fore ign A id

p.

54.

34

levels of

ongoing international assistance. Since

govemment and military officials were

diverting much

of

the refbgee aid, the regime

had a strong interest in overestimating the

refugee

population and threatened aid officials

who challenged their numbers.% The

camps,

moreover, became important

sources

of

recruitment

for the

Somali military

in

its battle

againstnorthern Somali insurgency

movements. This bansformed refbgee

assistance

into

logistical

support for an army

accused

of

atrocities against its own people,

and

placed

donors

in

a politically untenable

36Docurnented n

U.S.

General Accounting Office

(GAO)

study

Famine in A f i i ca : Improv ing

Emergenry Food Rel ieJPrograms

(Washington:

GAO,

March

1986);

it concluded th at Somali

military diversion

of

refugee food aid w as the worst

in the history

of

U.S. food aid programs.

133


11/26

MIDDLE

AST

POLICY,

VOL. V, No.

1, JANUARY 1997

position. Distuhingly, a combination

of

U.S.

strategic

needs

and UNHCR

i n s t i t ~ t i ~ ~ l

imperatives--and a

fear of

criticism

for

abandoning refbgees- allowed

refbgee

aid

to continue

toflow

until

1990.

The most

important

development goals

set

by

the donor community in Somalia, however,

were policy

reforms,

not projects.

?hroughout

the

1 9 8 b

Westem donors, led by

USAID,

he

IMF and the World

Bank,

ought to link

assistance

o economic and

fiscal

policy

reform: libe ra lid on , privatization and

financial stabilization.

Superficially, this conditional assistance

appeared

to

enjoy some

successes

in

the

1980s. Under pressure h m he World Bank

and

he United

States,

the

Bane

regime

agreed

in 1981

to

liberalize agricultural policies by

lifting price conm ls on staple crops.

Donors

hoped that

this

and other

b m a r k e t

reforms

in

the

ector

would

provide

h e n reater

incentives

to

expand crop production and

reduce Somalias chronic

food

deficits.

Likewise,

the

MF

was

able

to

press the Somali

government

to

accept stabilization schemes

and

Shuctural

adjustmentreforms,which

included moving the value

of

the Somali

shilling closer

to real

market value, privatizing

some state-contmlledindustriesand reducing

government spending. But these

proved to

be

ephemeral victories, leading to f r

less

substantive and enduringpolicy

reform

and

outcomes

thandonorsdesired.

In

the case

of

agricultural liberalization,

policies changed

but

wtcomes

did

not.

Detxpbvely,

he-market reforms

pushed by

Westem donors did

appear to

trigger

impressivegrowth rates in

Somali

agricultural

output as

early

as 1982.

By

1987, the

Somali

Minisby

of

Agricultm

reportedthat total grain

production had more han doubled between

1980and 1986,after a decade of Stagnafi~n,~

and the World

Banks

WorkiDewlopmenf

Report

1988

listed Somaliafirst

in

Africa

in

increased grain production

between 1980

and

86,

with an average annual increase

of7.9

percent

Not surprisingly, donors celebrated

this dramatic improvement

in productionas

clear evidence

of

the

success

of

conditionality

and

b m a r k e t reforms,

and

of

the

failureof

price controls, which, they contended, hadso

depressed incentives that many farmers in the

1970shad reduced

their efforts and

work

volume

to

a

level which simply

guaranteed

subsistence. One consultantsrepott

produced

for USAID

went so

far

as

o

claim

th t agricultural

refom

hadenabled Somalia

to

become

more than

self-sufficient in maize and

sorghum,

had

driven agriculturalwages above

the

salariesof

government civil

servants,

and

had triggered

a reverse

Nfal

exodus

of

city-

dwellers returning

to

the

farms,

though none of

thesecontentionswas

remotely close

to

the

buth.

The

causal link

betweenprice

liberalization and increased

agricultd

output

in Somalia,

so

ntuitively obvious

to

the donor

community, quickly became conventional

wisdom.

not increase in the 1980s nearly as

In

reality, however, agricultural

output

did

SDR, Ministry of Agriculture, Department

of

Planning and Statistics, Yearbook of Agriculfural

Stafisrics198tV87, prepared in cooperation with

GTZ Mogadishu:

State

Printing Agency, 1987).

h o m a s LaBahn. The Development of the

Cultivated Areas of the Sha belle River and the

Relationship between Sm allholders and the State,

in

Somalia:

Agriculture and

th e W i n h

of Change,

ed. by Peter Con= and ThomasLaBahn

(Saarbmcken: epi Vcrlag. 1986). p. 137.

%ax Goldensohn, Don Harrison and John Smith.

Donor Influence and Rural Prosperity: The Impact

of Policy Reform on Economic Growth and Equity

in the Agricultural Sector in Som alia (US AID :

March 1987). pp.2-3.

134


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MENKHAUS:.S. FOREIGN SSISTANCE

O SOMALIA: PHOENIX

FROM

THE

ASHES?

dramaticallyas donors and analysts believed.

The statistics,

it

turned

out, were flawed but

went unchallenged

because

they

appeared to

confirm

donors belief systems about policy

reform and liberalization. Donors and outside

consultants had mistakenly assumed that the

socialist Somali stateof the 1970s possessed

the capacityto capturesurplusgrain production

and enforce price controls, when in fact the

Somali

state

proved quite

soff

and relatively

easy for farmers, merchants and even the

states

own

civil servants to evade. As a result,

price controls in the

197Os,

inste d

of

suppressing production,

had

merely heled a

vibrant parallel grain market The result was

that

the state marketing boards statistical

data

on grain production in the 1970s was

attificially low, while the dramatic increase

in grain production

in

the early 1980s actually

represented the statistical rpappearance of gmin

sales formerly hidden fiom official view

ratherthan

a

significant upsurge in domestic

grain production.

Ultimately, the inaccuracy of grain

production figures in the 1980sand of

contentions that Somaliawas approaching self-

sufficiency in maize and sorghum due to price

liberalization, were exposed by dramatic

increases in Somali food imports and food aid

fiom the 1970s

to

late 1980s. According to the

World Banks

own

study, food imports in the

period 1970-79 constituted

less

than

33

percent

of Somaliastotal food consumption, but rose

For further detail see Kenneth Menkhaus, Rural

Transformation and the Roots of Underdevelopment

in Somalias Lower Jubba Valley (University

of

South Carolina Ph.D. dissertation, 1 989). pp.

390-

404;

and International Labor Organization, Jobs and

Skills Program

for

Africa (JASPA),

Generaring

Employment and Incomes in Somalia

(Addis Ababa:

40

JASPA. March 1988). pp.

17-22.

to an alarming

84

percent during 1980-84.

Likewise, World

Food

Programme

(WFP)

records indicate that total food aid deliveries to

Somalia increased nearly twofold fiom 1982 to

1986-87. Somalias food crisis continued to

women through the 1980s despite Western

policy reforms.

impact

of

price liberalization is both

instructive and puzzling. On one level, it

highlights the obvious: accurateassessmentsof

the impact of reform must

be

m t e d in astute

political

as

well

as

economic

analysis.

In

the

case of Somalia, the donor communitys

misreading stemmed not from an econom ic

e m ut fiom political misjudgment. The

mistakewas not in assuming that price

liberalization

serves

as an incentive for

producers, but rather in assuming that price

controls had been enforced by a sufficiently

authoritative state so as to afFect productivity.

What is

less

clear

is

whether the donors

political m isread ing were

born

of ignorance

or

cognitive blinders.

On

the

one

hand, many

donors and their consultants were alarmingly

far-removed f romd a y - t d y economic and

social life in Somalia Studies and

reports

were

produced from air-conditioned

offices

in

Mogadishu,

drawingon market surveys and

official

data

collected by Somali

countem nyone possessinga passing

familiarity with daily life in Som alia knew

of

the vibrant black market within which many or

most economic transactionstook place and

would have

known

to

factor

that

into

assessments of the impact of governmen t price

The donors collective misreading of the

Y.

Hossein Farzin, Food Import Dependence in

Somalia: Magnitude. Causes, and Policy Options

(Washington: World Bank Discussion Paper no. 23.

1988),

p.

14.

WFP, Total Food Aid Deliveries

to

Somalia,

1982-1 987. (Mogadishu, January 10. 1988)

(mimeo).

4 1

135


13/26

MIDDLEAST

POLICY,

OL.V, No. 1,

JANUARY 1997

controls.

But

that

level

of

familiarity with

Somalia could not be assumed within the

insular world of

intemational

aid donors in the

capital.

On the other hand, ample evidence exists

suggesting

h t

donors were well-aware

of

the

sohess

of

the Somali

state and its vibrant

parallel economy. In the

198Os,for

instance,

U S N D

and the World Bank were so

concerned

over the Somali governments

inability

to tax

its citizens

(and

hence increase

state revenues)

that

they provided technical

assistance

designed

to

enhance

he revenue

collectionsystem (to

no avail).

Donor

eports

periodically noted the existence of the patallel

market in Somalia,but rarely conneded it

to

their

macrwnalysis

of

the

economy.Y

And

it

was the major donors

thatmonitored

rapidly

rising food importsand food aid intoSomalia

in the

1980s.

Westem

donors efforts

topromote fiscal

reform and stabilization

faced

quite

a

different

problem, namely,

that

policy reforms

Numerous published studies existed on Somalias

vibrant parallel market; see for instance Norman

Miller, TheOther Somalia,

Horn ofAfrica 5,

3

(1982), pp. 3-19; and Boston U niversity, African

Studies Center,

Somalia:

A

Social and Institutional

ProJle

(Boston: Boston University Press, 1983), pp.

5-6.

Two biting critiques o f international donors in

Somalia can be found in Graham Hancock, Lords of

Poverty

(London: Macmillin. 1989), and Michael

Maren,

The

Road to

Hell: The Ravaging Eflects

of

Foreign

Aid

and

Infernational

Charity

(New

York:

Free Press, 1996).

Pailthorp,

Development before Disaster,

p. 64;

Rawson,

The Somali State and Foreign Aid,

p. 46.

Se e for instance. IMF, Somalia: Recent

Economic Developments, I98 1 (mimeo. July 10,

198

I

p. 7; and John Holtzman. Ma ize Supply and

Price

Situation in Som alia: A Historical Overview

and Analysis o f Recent Changes (SDR Ministry of

Agriculture. Working Paper no. 5 , May 1987). pp.

44

45

4b

8-9, IS.

themselves were short-lived,

casualties

of what

Rawson

calls

the studied am bivalence of

Siyad [Barrels

zigzag tactics. Faced

with

donor insistence on stabilization and austerity

m e a s w

hat threatened

to

undermine the

entire patronage

system on which

the Somali

state was bcsed,

the

Barre

regime resorted

to

delaying,

agreeing,

eneging and renegotiating,

a

strategy

designed to give donors

hope h t

the

regime was approaching stabilization schemes

in good faith, but never enough to actually

see

the reforms through.

Four

imes over the

course

of

the

1980s

the Somali government

entered into stand-by programs with the

tMF;

each ime, the government failed to meet

r form targets.

Twiceover the c o m e of the

1980s

the Somali government signed onto

broadsbuctwal-djustment pgrams

with

the

World

Bank. In

each

case, it

reneged

on

hose

accords

aswellu

Why, then, did

donors

continue

to return to

the negotiating table

in

the hope

that

this

time,

the

Somali government would carry through on

its

promises?

One

view, voiced by David

R a w n ,

attributes this

to

a combination of

factors: the cunning

tacticsof baii

and

switch

on

the part

of the

Barre

regime; the

baseless

optimism of the donor comm unity,

which, he contends, never filly understood

that

the B m egimes agendawas divergent

ffom

their

own; b m c

inertia within aid

agencies,

where

c reetswere

staked on

large-

scale development

projects

th t officials were

understandably

loath to

suspend; and a

p p t f i i dynamic

within

the donor

community.* Another view focuses

more

exclusively on the strategic imperatives that

drove the deliveryof aid to Somalia Pailthorp

Rawson,

The Somali State an d Foreign Aid,

p.

1

I IS.

Ibid., pp. 39-45

?bid.. pp.

I

1S-I18.

136


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MENKHAUS:

.S . FOR EIGN SSISTANCE

O

SOMALIA: PHOENIX FROM THE

ASHES?

concludes

that

despite blatant corruption,

human-rights

abuses

and inconsistent

mperation in policy reform, donors continued

to support a

forces that lived on throughout the 1980s.

Western donors in the

1980s

deplored the

political repression and notorious human-rights

abuses

but, for

government strategicreasons,

fmanced almost

Western donors in the

1980s kept largelysilent.

exclusively by deplored the political

But

in May

1988,

a

sources

in remession and notorious

fill-scale civil

war

m

order

to

uphold

erupted in northern

foreign-policy

agendas.m

~n

ther strategic reasons, kept largely government forces,

hum an-rights abuses but, for Somalia,

words, success or silent. which were

&lure m d

n

increasingly manned

developmental

termswas

ultimately irrelevant, since the

primary

purpose

of

Cold

War economic

assistance was strategic.

The End

of

the

Cold

War and the

Fmving

of ForeignAid, 1987-90

After

decades of shrewdly playing Cold

War

competitors

off

one another to maximite

its access o foreign

aid,

it

is

ironic

that

Somalia

became one of

the

first

targets

of post-coid

War

political conditionalitf of

aicc-the

lmkage of

U.S.

assistance

to

improvements n

human-rights and political liberalization.

Somalia

was

a relatively

easy test case.Once

Somalias perceived strategic value

was

deflated by the waning of the Cold War, the

Bam regime

was

deprived of its sole trump

card Iherewas relatively littleat stake for

donon in post-cold War Somalia, a

fsct

which

gave them far greater

leverage

to

link

aid to

hm-rights.

Human-rights violations

and political

repression

had

been a hallmark of Somali

politics since the 1%9 coup that h g h t

strongman Siyad

Barre

into power.

In the

197%

East

Bloc

patrons

of Somaliaassisted in

the

developmentof fearsomeinternalsecurity

?ailthorp,

Develop ment Before Dis aster,

p. 1.

through

forced

Conscription,

against he Somali

National

Movement, representinga liberation h n t of

the northem

Isaaq

clan. The Barre regimes

response to the W s

ttacks

was brutal,

including the leveling of the city of Hargeisa

and

the

strafingof civilian refugees fleeing for

safety over the Ethiopian border. Casualties

were so

high, and unarmed civilians targeted

so

systematically

as part

of the regimes tactic of

repnsal

and tenor, that some international

observers termed the war a campaign of

genocideagainst the Isaaq.

Ihewar

in

northern Somalia,

documented by a highly critical

General

Acounting 0 3ce

(GAO)

investigation

mandated by Congress,energized

congressional calls to

keze

aid toSomalia

untilhuman-rights improved? Congress,

which

had

never exhibited

great

enthusiasm for

The most carefully documented acco unts include

Robert

Gersony, Why Somalis Flee: Synthesis of

Accounts o Con/l ic t f ip er i enc e in Northern Somal i

Refugees. Displaced Persons, and Ot hers (Bureau

for Refugee Programs,U.S. Department of State,

August

1989),

and Amnesty International,

Somal ia :

A Long-Term Human-r igh ts Cr is is

(New

York:

Amnesty International, September 1988).

%.S. General Accounting Office,

Somal ia :

Observat ions Regard ing the Northern Conf l ic t and

Result ing Condit ions

(May

4, 1989).

137


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MIDDLE AST

POLICY,

OL.V, No.

1,

JANUARY 1997

the strategic rationales behind U.S.foreign aid

to

Somalia,

had

alteady suspended

ESP

funding to Somalia in 1987. Key figures like

Rep. Howard Wolpe

@MI)

led a chorus of

criticism of US. policy

in

Somalia, blaming the

United States for propping up the incredibly

repressive, conupt regime of Siad Bane. By

the summer of

1988,

the United States had

already h z e n shipments of lethal weapons to

Somalia on the advice of the U.S. ambassador,

over the objections of the Pentagon. Still, the

Bush administration hopedto unheze the

ESF

h d s

o

Somalia, arguing for a policy of

constructive engagement

to

assist in a pe cehl

transfer of power. But additional massacres and

worsening civil war in Somalia in 1989

insured

th t Congress would n d appropriate

funds to a regime with such a proven track

record of repression. By 1989, USAID and

other donors began

to

wind down or suspend

projects. Amid worsening violence, the U.S.

embassy

in

Mogadishu, a newly completed,

$50 million complex replete with thnx

swimming

pools,

a golf

course,

and a M o f

430 (the

largest

n subFsahm

Afiica ,

reduced &to fewer than 100. Diplomats

continued to emphasize the need for national

reconciliation and respect for

human-rights,

but

by

1989

nearly all international donors

had

suspended foreign aid to the country. Without

international support and finding,the B m

regime quickly

collapsed

in the

face

of multiple

liberation h n t s and a popular uprising

in

Mogadishu.

Quoted

in

Terry

Atlas,

Cold

War

Rivals Sowed

Seeds

of

Somalia Tragedy,

Chicago Tr ibune

(Dcc.

13,

1992), sec.

4,

. I .

Rawson, The

Somal i Sfate and Fo reign Aid, p.

1 1 1 .

54

The Famine

andUS.EmergencyAid, 1991-

92

Somalias fall into heavily armed anarchy

in

199

1 and

1992

quickly provoked famine

conditions

in

the southern half of the country,

where a large urbanpopulation was

trapped

in

a war over Mogadishu,

rural

farming

communities were subjected to endemic

banditryandassaults by roving militias, and the

entire economy

collapsed

amidst such

extensive looting that even copper telephone

lines and sewage pipes were stripped and sold

for

scrap

metal. By late

199

1,

relief agencies

wamed of an impending famine of massive

proportions. But the complete breakdown of

governmental authorityand social structures,

combinedwt overwhelmingrefirgee

flows,

warlordism and extortionate b a n d i w

constellationof crises that came to be known as

a complex emergencf-presented aid donors

with unprecedented dilemmas.

There

is near

universal

consensus that

international

humanitarianorganizations failed to meet the

challenges the Somali crisis posed

in

1931-92.

This failure of the collective

response

proved

very costly.

One problem was that

key

players in the

aid community were virtually absent fiom

Somalia

h r n

January

1991

(when the last set

of intemational diplomats and aid workers were

evacuated)

until

mid-1992, when intensive

media coverage of

th

amine triggered a tidal

wave of new relief agencies, food airlifts and

U.N.

activity.

Throughout all of

1991 and half

of

1992,

only the

Intemational

Committeeof

the Red Cross (ICRC) and a small corps of

non-governmental organizations

NGOs)

Jeffrey

Clark,

Debacle

in

Somalia: Failure

of

the

5

Collcctive Response, pp. 205-39,

in Enforcing

Restrainf: Col lec t ive Intervent ion in Internal

Conflicts.

ed. by Lori F.

Damrosch

(New York:

Council on Foreign Relations, 1993) .

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MENKHAUS:

.S.

FOREIGN SSISTANCE

O

SOMALIA: PHOENIX

FROM

THE

ASHES?

operated in the

country,

providing emergency

food relief and

medical

care

Ihe United

Nations and its agencies were generally inert,

citingsecurity concerns, mandates (mostU.N.

agencies do not work in active war zones) and

politidegal complications(U.N. agencies

work through a host government, which

was

absent in Somalia).

U.N. diplomaticinactionwas in no small

m a w

ue to the indifference of the Security

Council, which, preoccupied by more

important crises in IraqandBosnia, was

reluctant

to

address

he Somali crisis. It

was,

moreover, the

U.S.

delegation

that

blocked

attempts

to

place Somalia on the

Security

Councils agenda

and

watered down a

January

1992 SecurityCouncil resolution in order

to

keep U.N. diplomatic involvement in Somalia

minimal? Top advisers in the Bush

administration, includingSecretaryofState

JamesBaker

and

Undersecretary of

State

for

InternationalOrganhtion John Bolton,

opposed any resolutions which

might

potentially expand U.N. peacekeeping

obligationsat a time when its budget was in

arrears? It was

only in the summer of

1992

that a combination of political pressures,

including sudden and intensive media coverage

h i s atter issue led to a sc andalous situation in

which the U.N. Development Program (UNDP)

failed to use

$68

million budgeted for Somalia for

nine months because it could not secure the

signature of a Somali governmen t. Ibid., p.

220.

Jane Perlez, Somalia Self-Destructs, and the

World Looks On, The New York Times (December

29, 1991).

p.

I ;

for a stinging and detailed

indictment of UN inaction in Somalia, see Clark,

Debacle in Somalia

Refugee Policy Grou p,

Hope Restored?

Human i ta r ian A id in Soma l ia, 1990-

I994

(Washington DC: Refugee Policy G roup, November

1994),

p.

20.

This is the most extensive

reconstruction of decisions involved in humanitarian

action in Somalia, rich with interviews with top

officials.

5

of the worsening famine, stinging public:

criticism by U.N. Secretary-General

Boutros

Boutros-Ghali

who

called

attention to the

naked doublestandard between Western

largess in the Bosnia crisis and inaction in

Somalia) and

pwing,

bipartisan congressional

demands for action in SomaliaB*ll coming in

the

midst

of a presidential election

campaign-which mobilized the Bush

administrationto become much

more

engaged

in Somaliam

Until that time, however,

U.S.

government monitoring of Somalia was

limited

to

a single State Department political

officer,

and a single officer of the

Office

of

Foreign DisasterAssistance

OFDA),

both

stationed in Nairobi, Kenya Like other

governments,theUnited States concluded that

Somaliawas

too

dangerousto reopen its

embassyandwas reluctant to give the

OFDA

officersecurity

clearanceto bavel even for

brief periods in thecountry.Still,

OFDA

was

able to channel over $21 million in emergency

assistance

in

1991

through the ICRC,

CARE

and other NGOs working in Somalia6

Monitoring the effmtive delivery of that aid to

starving populations, however, was next

to

impossible,

an

increasingly worrisome problem

as

reports

grew that much

or

even most food

aidwas being diverted by militias.

Within the U.S. government, agencies

were splitover the Somali famine.

Those

closest to the crisis, like theOFDA, the

State

59Anexcellent chronicle of cong ressional action on

Somalia is recorded in Refugee Policy Group,

H o p e

Restored?

Annex

3-2.

%e Ken Menkhau s with Lou Ortmayer.

Key

Decisions in the Somali a Intervent ion.

Pew Case

Studies in International

Affairs,

no.

464

(Washington DC: eorgetown University, Institute

for the Study of Diplomacy,

1995),

pp.

2-3.

6Jan W estcott, The Som alia Saga: A Personal

Account, 1990-1993 (Washington DC: Refugee

Policy Group, November

1994).

pp.

14,22.

I39


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MIDDLE

ASTPOLICY, VOL.

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O.

1, JANUARY

1997

Department's East

Afiica ofice

and the

Human-rights

Bureau,

ang

the a l m , fought

to

maximize emergency assistance to Somalia,

and pressed U.N. agencies to take more active

roles n

Somalia. The director of

OFDA,

Andrew Natsios,

testifiedto

the

House

Select

Committee on

Hunger in Januaq

of food, OperationProvide Relief." ?he

military airlift was intended

to

be a strictly

temporary measure tocopewith immediate

famine conditions until a planned U.N. security

force of 3,500p a k e e p e rs could take control

of the airport and seaport. Politically, it was

attractiveasan option

that promised to

deliver media images

of

U.S.

militruy planes

1992 hat the

Somali

famine was "the

greatesthumanitarian an option that promised to off-loading famine

emergency in the deliver m edia images of

U.S.

relief while

Politically, it was a ttractive as

world'" and Publicly

military planes off-loading

engendering little risk

to U.S. troops and no

long-term

amine relief while

riticized U.N.

inaction, unaware that

h e

u.s.

delegation

to

engendering little risk to

U.S.

m i m e n & , twas

the United Nations troops and no long-term also

politically

significant in that it

injected

a military

commitments.

as trying to keep

U.N. involvement in

Somali limited.

Later, an OFDA official admitted that we

were going off in one direction

and

didn't

realize

that

the political f o b were going in

another.'"

But

even among the

"political

folks" in

the

States

Depariment there were

divisions. The Bureau o f

fiican

Affairs

was

stymied when it tried

to

make Somalia a top

priority

of

Secretary of

State

Baker, and

Assistant Secretary of StateHerman Cohen's

efforts

to

make OFDA

hlly operational

inside

Somalia were blocked by Bolton and National

Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who

opposed allocating resourcesto an areadeemed

marginal

to

U.S.

intern.

to

"do something" finally

olted

the Bush

administration into action in August

1992,

producing the high-visibility emergency airlift

Media, congressional, and public pressure

Clark.

"Debacle

in

Somalia,"

p, 2

12.

61

Bill

Garvelink, quoted in Refugee Policy Group,

Hope Restored?

p. 7.

Mlbid., p. 20

component into

humanitarian efforts, a rising bend

in

the

aftermath of Operation Provide Comfort in

northern Iraq.The irlift did enjoy some

success- independent estimates held that

some

40,000

lives were saved

fiom

August to

December 1992thanks to additional food aid

provided by the airlift.".' But problems

arose

as

well. First, he proposed U.N.

security force

faced innumerable political problems and

logistical delays, forcing the U.S.

planners

to

extend the airlift. Second, the food

dropped off

by the airlift was supposed to be distributed and

monitored by the

ICRC

nd several

N G0 s- U. S. military authoritieswere to have

no role

on

the

grounMut

those

agencies

lacked

the manpower to oversee such sizable

shipments

of food

aid

dropped off at

scattered

sites

in southem Somalia

Inthe

own

of

Bardhere, the airlifted food attracted

competing

militias riggering

episodes of

fighting and looting that left target populations

140


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M E N K H A U S :

. S .

FOREIGN SSISTANCE

O SOMALIA:

PHOENIX

FROM

THE

ASHES?

worse off than before.@And finally, media

coverage of the famine

was

not sated by the

airlift, but remained intense, and often critical,

right through the election.

Meanwhile, the hd am en ta l obstacle to

the relief effort remained security. Estimates of

the level of food relief diverted by militias

va rie d-s om e agencies claimed less than half,

others contended up to 80 percen t-but it was

clearly too m uch. It is appalling that there

was

food at the Mogadishu port but it cannot

reach

starving people a few k ilometen away because

of insecurity, argued OFD A Director James

Kunder

in

July

1992.

People

are

dying in the

thousands daily because aid workers cannot

move relief food. The world has a

responsibility

to

end that.167Militia leaders

understood and cynically exploited the fact that

relief agencies had institutional imperatives to

get food

to

starving populations and would

tolerate virtually any level of looting,extortion

and even the deaths of internationalstaff to that

end.

Until

me

intervention was considered,

OFDA and EU officials tried to cope with

worsening problems of extottion and looting,

much of it orchestrated by militia-backed

merchants in Mogadishu, by introducing a

monetization scheme in which some high-

value food commodities were sold to

merchants while low-value food aid continued

to

be be

brought

in as

emergency relief. This,

it

was hoped, would

both

drive down the value of

food

aid,

which hadbecome the m ajor item

over which militias fought

and

enriched

themselves, and would give the merchants a

~ ~~ ~~~~~ ~

Menkhaus, Key Decisions, pp. 5-6.

Quoted in Ibid., p.

2.

For critical commentaries on NGO acquiescence to

67

6n

extortion.

see

Marguerite Michaels, Lem on Aid:

How Relief

to

Somalia Went W rong,

The New

Republic (April 19, 1993), p. 16; and Maren, The

Road to Hell.

financial stake in security tather than looting.

However,

since

most of the diverted food aid

was

sold in markets in Ethiopia and Kenya, the

policy did not have the anticipated impact on

local prices, nor did it break the econom y of

extortion and bandiby which had developed

around international relief deliveries.

Meanwhile, reports h m OFD As Disaster

Assistance Response

Team

rought back

bleak news to Washington.

In

Baidoa, the

center of the famine, an estimated 75 percent of

the children under five

had

already died, while

over a million more Somalis remained at

immediate risk of starvation.OAnd, despite a

Herculean international relief effort, including a

U.S.

contribution of food and refbgee aid

totaling 95 million in fiscal year

1992,

humanitarian relief remained crippled by

militias diverting and blocking aid convoys.

Even the port

in

Mogadishu was sh ut down by

By November

1992,

calls for a more

fighting.

forcefbl humanitarian intervention into

Somalia were receiving favorable hearings

h m resident Bush and his cabinet. Some

hoped to

use

Somalia

as

a doable test

case

to

strengthen

U.N. peace

enforcement in the post-

Cold-War era for eminently pragmatic reasons.

The more effective an international

peacekeeping capacity becomes, the more

conflicts can

be

prevented or contained , and the

fewer reasons here will

be

for Americans to

fight abroad, testified Under-Secretary o f

For a detailed explanation

of

the monetization

9

project, see Andrew S. Nat sios , Humanitarian

Relief Interventions in Somalia:

The

Economics of

Chaos, International Peacekeeping. vol3, no. 1

(Spring 1996 . pp. 68-91.

7%enkhaus,

Key Decisions,

p.

6.

I

Refugee Policy Group, Hope

Restored?

Annex

C-

1

141


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MIDD LE ASTPOLICY, OL.V, No.

1

JANUARY997

Defense Frank Wisner.R As during the Cold continuedU.S. umanitarian and development

War,

omalia would once again attract the aid to Somalia, the

U.S.-led

intervention

attention and

mums

of a superpower, not on possessed several featuresworth highlighting.

i t s own

terns

but as

part

of broader strategic First, -on Restore H ope was explicitly

interests.

identified by Washington

as

a short-term and

purely humanitarian mission. Reflecting the

OperationRestoreHope and

UNOSOM,

American preoccupation with avoiding

193-1994 casualties,UMTAFoperations

were highly

risk-averse.

Forces

were tasked with securing

November 1992

to

humanitarian relief to

approve a massive starving populations,

humanitarian

But ending the famine and

leavingthe problematic

The

Bush

administrations decision in late

issues

of

demobilization and

disarmament national

intervention into

Somalia,

ed by 30000

U.S.

room.

marked a

end ing the crisis which

provoked the famine wer e

mi1-n; post-Cold two eparate issues. reconciliation, nation-

war international building and economic

relations and

transforned

the

nature

of the relief mission

into Som alia

The

details of

both

the decision

to intervene and various interpretationsof what

subsequently went w rong in the ill-fated

interventionaremore thanadequatelytreated in

other

accounts.

From the standpoint of

Testimony, Hearing on International Peacekeeping

2

and Enforcement, Senate Committee on Armed

Services, Subcommittee o n Coalition Defense and

Reinforcing Forces, 103rd Congress, 1s t sess., 14

July 1993.

There are now hundreds of articles, books, and

commissioned s tudies of UNOSOM nd Operation

Restore Hope. Among he most carefully

documented and/o r significant accounts include:

Refugee Policy Group,

Hope Restored?;

Clark,

Debacle in Somalia; Menkhaus,

Key Decisions;

John Bolton, Wrong Turn in Somalia, Foreign

Affairs vol.

73, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1994), pp. 56-66;

John Drysdale, Whatever Happened to Somalia?

(London:Haan Associates, 1994); John Prendergast,

The Gun Talks Louder th an the Voice : Somalias

Continuing Cycles of Violence(Washington: Center

of Concern, 1994); and Walter Clark e and Jeffrey

Herbst, Somalia and the Future

of

Humanitarian

Intervention,

Foreign Affairs

vol. 75, no. 2

(March-April 1996), pp. 70-85.

71

development to its

successoT, the

U.N.

peration in Somalia

(UNOSOM). With its mission so narrowly

defined, -on Restore

Hope

ould not but

be an unqualified success. The militarys

ability

to secure airports,

seaports,

and protect-

relief convoys and feeding

centers

enabled an

unintenupted

flow

of food aid to reach famine

victims. Withinweeks, he intervention

effectively broke the back of the amine and

suspended, if not eliminated, the economy of

extortion to which aid agencies had sucum bed.

U.S.

mergency reliefflowed nto Somalia

A

total

of

$174

million

was

spent in 1993, mostly

in the fonn of

USDA

Food for

Peace, as

well

asOFDA

p t s

o

NGOs and U.N. gencies,

and refugee assistance. CollectivelyU.S. aid

constituted

65

percent

of the

total

food aid

Somalia received in

1993,

a generous and

substantial contribution.

But ending the famine and ending he

crisis which provoked the Fdmine

were two

separate issues.Long-term, sustainable efforts

14

Refugee Policy Group,

Hope Restored?

Annex C-

1.

142

u.s. foreign assistance to somalia- phoenix from the ashes

Documents