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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
8/26
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
9/26
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
10/26
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
12/26
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
14/26
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
15/26
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) .
138
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
16/26
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
17/26
MIDDLE
ASTPOLICY, VOL.
V,
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
18/26
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
8/11/2019 U.S. Foreign Assistance to Somalia- Phoenix From the Ashes
19/26
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