U.S. Foreign Assistance To Somalia - Phoenix From The Ashes

U.S.
FOREIGN ~ ~ ~ S I S T A N ~ TO SOMALIA:
PHOENI XFROMTHE~ S?
Dr. Menwurtcs is associatepro$ssor ofpolitical science at Davaon College. In
1993-94, he served as special plitical adviser in the United Nations @ration in
Somalkz The author grateflb acknowledges-ial sqprt that contributed to
thk researchporn the Fulbright abctoral dissertation grant program (1987-88), a
summer research grmforn the Amerkan University in Cairo (I 9901, and a
research gr@j?om Davaon College (1996).
ew topics inspii more cynicism
among seasoned observers of
international politics than foreign
F assistance to Somalia. By m e
reckonings, no o k country save 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 to create an
entirely - * le, comptand repressive
state. Theheavily medviolence of Somalias
civil war, moreover, exposed the
military aid into the Homof Afiica Finally,
the massive armed humanitarian intmention
into and out of Somalia in 1992-95
dramatically exposed the shommings of the
entire industry of foreign aid-hm the
bihteddonors,whosestrategicandpolitical
of the Somali people; to UN agencies, whose
inflexible bmaucratic procedures fiiled to
respond to the Somali hi ne; to the non-
destntCtivm of yeafi of Cold-Wat-inspi
in- have ml y i n & with the needs
governmental organizations, whose programs
succumbed to extortion h m Somali militias
and sometimes inadvertently heled local
conflicts; to compt local leaders, who
systematically di ved 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 in the
Greater Horn of Afiica may now be providing
fertile ground for innovative reforms in the
philosophy and delivery of foreign aid. Among
those donors at the forehnt of new thinking
on foreign aid to Somalia is the U.S. Agency
for International Development ( USAID) , which
is attempting to operatiodize these 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 endemic humanitarian,
political, and rehgec crises that have presented the
international community with some of the most
challenging complex emergencies in the world.
124
MENKHAUS: U.S. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE TO SOMALIA: PHOENIX FROM THE ASHES?
emphasizes conflict prevention as a means of
addressing roots causes of the regions
endemic humanitarian crises; African
ownership of development prioritization;
regional approaches to problems transcending
borders, as the GHAIs name suggests;
capacity-building rather thanproject-driven aid;
the strengthening of civil society; and effective
mechanisms to support transition h m relief to
development aid. Though none of these ideas
about aid is new, attempts to systematically
build theminto 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 as well as conceptual
appeal. The GHAI is about doing business
differently in the region, observes one USAID
official. This is not about moremoney, its
about progmnming resources more
efficiently.
The GHAI is 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 the 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! among 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, see Howard French, Donors of Foreign
Aid Have Second Thoughts, The New York Ti mes
(April 7, 1996), p. 5.
Interview with USAID official. June 1996.
3
comprehensive assistance aimed at preventing
these complex emergencies.
In the case of Somalia, of course, calls for
crisis prevention come too late. Worse,
Somalias current state of af f ai rs poses a
fundamental challenge to some basic premises
of foreign aid. One of these premises isthe
existence of state authority. In Somalia,
USAID and other donors conhnt the dilemma
of channeling development aid where there is
no sovereign state, forcing themto 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 leastdeveloped countries suggests that
large-scale assistance generally has 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 dependence on external
sources of finding to meet both development
and recuning administrative costs 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 formof patronage politics.
In Somalia, however, aid has not so much
distorted politics as it has transformed it. The
Somali state itself is a historically artificial and
Past research on the impact of foreign aid
See J. Brian Atwood, Suddenly, Chaos. The
Warhi ngton Post (July 3 1, 1994).
125
MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. V, No. 1, J ANUARY 1997
unsustainable structure. First superimposed on
a statcless, predominantly pastoral society by
Italian and British colonialism, the 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 fiom 1960 to
and 1980s, - g The Somali state ... has never
not only a bloated
bureaucmcy but also been remotely sustainable 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 tensions enabled western donors to
freeze fmign assistance to Somalia amidst
charges of gross violations of human-rights by
the Barre regime-an ethical luxury that the
logic of the Cold War had prevented in the
past-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) fiom1993 to March
1995 were unable to resusci tate a bmali state
beset by powerful centrifugal political f m
and a weak domestic economy that cannot
generate tax revenues for a minimalist centd-
state structure?
It may be an exaggeration to claimthat the
Somali state isa creation of external
assistance, but it is indisputable that the state
has never been remotely sustainable by
domestic sources of revenue. As far back as
the1950s, observers worried that an
independent Somali state would not be
hi s thesis is presented in greater detail in Ken
Menkhaus and J ohn 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-termrehgee crisis
resulting h m the drought of 1974 and the
Ogaden War 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 fi nanced, and a disturbiig 50 percent
of its r ecmt budget dependent on
intemational loans and grants as well.' At the
height of Somalia's foreign-aid dependence in
1987, one analyst calculated that total
development assistance constituted a stunning
6Mark Karp, The Economics ofTrusteeship i n
Somalia (Boston: Boston University Press, I960),
pp. 146-169.
Estimates given here are based on figures from the
US. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency,
World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers
(annual handbook), and crosschecked with the
CIA, The World Factbook (1995). It should be
noted that total economic and military assistance is
difficult to calculate precisely. In addition to
routine problems of comparability with statistics,
Somalia received a variety of unorthodox forms of
foreign aid that did not always appear in official
databases. For instance, in the late 1970s the Bmc
regime unofficially received up to S300 million
annually in cash from Saudi Arabia as part of a
sweetener to brcak ties with the Soviet Union.
crhese figures were disclosed in an interview with a
World Bank official in Mogadishu, 1988.
126
57 percent of Somalia's GNP.9 Somalia had
become"award 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, the military on a constellation of
Westemdonors. Throughout much of the
198% Saudi Arabia supplied most of
Somalia's energy needs for free as part of the
"weaning away" of Somalia h m its 1970s
alliance with the Soviet Union." Somali civil
servants devoted most of their energies to
"project hopping'*-linking up to foreign-aid
projects that would pay viable salaries-rather
than performing their duties within their
ministries, where they went virtually unpaid."
High levels of foreign assistance to
Somalia have had a profound effect on Somali
urban political culture as well. Since 1960, one
of the most important roles of theSomali state
has been as a catchment point through which
This level of aid dependence transformed
9Data are from ACDA, Worl d Mi l i t ar y
Expenditures and Arms Transfirs, cited and
analyzed in Paul Henze, The Hor n of Af i i ca: Fr om
War to Peace (New York: St . 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 Ethiopia 11.7 percent.
%avid Laitin, "Somalia: America's Newest Ally."
(unpublished paper, 1979). p. 8.
The Saudis did, however, link the free supply of
petroleum to demands that Somali civil servants
attend regular Arabic language classes, an
extraordinary case of cultural imperialism which the
Somalis resented. But, having pragmatically sought
membership in the Arab League in I973 in order to
facilitate access to new OPEC wealth, the Somalis
had little recourse but to accede to the request.
A civil servant's monthly pay in the mid-1980s
covered only two to three days worth of household
expenses.
I I
12
foreign aid is hel ed into the country. This
unintentionally reinforced a "Mogadishu bias"
in modemSomali 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 continues to foster a "cargo cult"
among Somali political figures, an illusion that
thereestablishment of a Somali state will again
begreetedwith Cold War levels of
international largess, to be enjoyed 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
has exacerbated the pmtracted impasse over
national reconciliation in Somalia today and
has fueled the ongoing civil war, which has
largely been fought over control of points of
entrance of international emergency relief into
the country. Werethere no potential foreign-
aid bonanza linked to thecapturing of the
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-the pastoral economy of livestock
herding and the smallholder agricultural
production in southem, inter-riverine
Somalia-has remained relatively self-reliant,
despite the fact that this sector has been a major
target of development aid since the 1960s. It is
theurban, civil-servant class that has developed
an entire economy and lifestyle mund the
accessibility of foreign aid and the bloated
Somali state it has sustained. That segment of
theeconomy remains the most dysfunctional
and vulnerable in the aftermath of the collapse
of the state.
US. Aid during t he Cold War
Within the narrow geopolitical logic of
the Cold War, independent Somalia found
127
itself occupying strategically valuable real
estate in the Hom of Mc a, the "soft
underbelly" of the Arabian Peninsula Like its
neighbors in northeast Afrca-Ept, Sudan,
and EthiopiAomalia 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 superp~wen
vying for influence in the much more important
country of Ethiopia. Since Somalia's emnity
with Ethiopi- function of Somali irredentist
claims on Ethiopia's Somali-inhabited Ogaden
region-pmluded an alliance with both
countries, the fi rst choice of both the East Bloc
and the West in the Horn of Afiica was
Ethiopia, which possessed a much larger
population and land mass, M c a ' s largest
army, and far greater political prestige and
leadership than Somalia"
flowed into the Horn of Mica was 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 withthe fonner Soviet
Union, which fiom 1%7 to 1987 provided an
estimated H.2 billion in arms deliveries to its
clients in Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan." The
U.S. bansferred about $1 billion in military
Much of the international assistance which
MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. 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 the Hor n: US. Security Policy
in Et hi opi a and Somal i a, 1953-1991 (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991); Paul Henze.
The Hor n of Afi i ca: From Ww to Peace (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1991); Steven David,
Choosing Sides: Alignment and Realignment in the
Thi r d Worl d (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press. 1991); Robert Patman, The Soviet
Uni on i n the Hor n of Af i i ca (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Henze, The Hor n ofAfi i ca, p. 119.
I1
14
equipment and support into the Horn 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 mb d
a close alliance with the Soviet Union; as a
consequence, the United States provided
virtually no aid h m 1970-78. By contrast, in
the 1960s and 1980% the 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 the top sou~ce of aid
for Somalia Still, U.S. b i M economic aid
to Somalia h 1954 to 1987 totaled $677
million (one of the top recipients of U.S. aid in
subSaharan Africa)'' and U.S. military aid to
Somalia in that period reached $380 million."
Moreover, inasmuch as U.S. assistance was
closely coordinated with other major donors
like Italy and Saudi M i a, and itspolicy
preferences influential in multilateral lenders
like the World Bank and Lntemational
Monetary Fund, the United States had a
powerful voice in shaping the philosophy and
goals linked to intemational aid to Somalia
Thrwghout the Cold War, American 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 Aid in the 19609. TheUnited States
played a relatively subdued role in foreign
~~ ~
"Lefebvre, Arms for the Hor n p. 15.
'%SAID. Congressional Presentation. Fi scal Year
1990. Annex I, Africa p. 338.
Dilemmas in the Horn of Africa: Contradictions in
the US.-Somalia Relationship." Northeast Afri can
Studies 9. 3 (1987) p. 28.
Peter Schracdet and Jercl Rosati, "Policy
17
assistance to 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 bo r t e d due to
report described as
an imposition of
function of the
close ties between
the United states concessionary loans, poorly "American style"
and Ethiopia in that conceived development projects range management,
development consultants to understand Somali
pastoral land tenure undermined a range
management project in the southern town of
Afhadow. The project sparked intra&n
approach was a As most of the assistance offered whatanembassy
to Somalia was in the form of
era, an alliance saddled Somalia with foreign which was
which would have "completely
beenjeopardized debt which it could not service. contrary to local
had tie United style."21
States provided
Somalia with significant military aid.
match the Soviet Union in development
financing, contributing 17 percent of the
funding of Somalia's total development budget
h m 1963 to 1969. American assistance
focused on infnstmctud projects like port
construCtion, highways and urbanwater
supplies, as well 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 officials pressed the
Somali government to adopt modem land-
tenure laws. They were believed to be a
precondition for h e r s to invest in their land,
but they created a! least as many problems as
they were to
outset, when in 1 % 1 the failure by American
TheUnited States was, however, able to
This was clear at the
~~
"Henze, The Hor n of Afiica p. 101.
Aid-The Case of Somalia," The Journal of Modern
A ri cun Studies 9, 1 ( 197 1 ) pp. 37-40.
'6SCe Catherine Besteman and Lee V. Cassanelli,
eds.The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The
War Behind the Wur (Boulder: Wcstview, 1996).
Ozay Mehmet, "Effectiveness of Foreign
19
U.S. assistance
also contributed to 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 onlargescale infnstmctural projects
as well, including roads, agmindustrial
projects, and telecommunications, as well as
social projects such as technical schools,
stadiums and theaters. The shortcomings of
this type of assistance were predictable. First,
donors tended to tie assistance to high-prestige
projects that did not always coincide with
development priorities in Somalia Second, as
time passed it quickly became apparent that
many of the infktructuml projects were
unsustainable; Somalia was unable to finance
the maintenance ofmack, airports andagro-
industries, which slowly fell into disepair.
21 Frank Mahony. "The Pilot Project in Range
Management Near Afmadu." USOWSomali
Republic (March 1961).
129
Third, foreign assistance in the 1960s, including
U.S. aid, tended to beconcentrated in the south
of the country, leading to a politically sensitive
regional imbalance in development. Finally,
as most of the assistance offered to Somalia
was in the formof 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 1969 military 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 Marxist-Leninismpoorly, but
appreciated the ideological justification 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 Somali 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 Somalia with its
o p m t y to capture the 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 beaten by 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 to view Somalia as a diplomatic
pariah state for its irredentist war for the
Ogaden, and "globalists," for whomSoviet
military adventurismin the Horn of Afiica
boded ill for ditente and had to be countered by
the United States. Despite theCarter
administration's preference for a regionalist
approach, events beyond the Hom-the fall of
the shah of I ran, and the Soviet invasion of
Somalia's stmtegic
importance as a 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 carter administration as a client, a
relationship that brought a tremendous wealth
of foreign aid to Somalia but failed to deliver
the levels of military aid the Barre regime
desired.
U.S. military and economic aid to
Somalia from1978 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 States could not afford the diplomatic
fallout of providing an irredentist state with
offensive weaponry. So beginning in 1980, the
United States provided Somalia witha package
of military aid that was defined as defensive in
nature. This aid, which began at $45 million
for the period of 1980-8 1, came to total over
$500 million up to 1989, the largest U.S.
security-assistance programever 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
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 Saudi Arabia and elsewhere enabled the
Barre regime to purchase $580 million in arms
between 1979 and 1983; most of the
weaponry was imported &omItaly.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 criticism 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% the only security threat of
consequence to the Barre regime emanated
Fromwithin an increasingly rebellious Somali
society, so that the main pmupati on of the
Somali military was repmive internal security
operations. This posed a very different type of
dilemma 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, the
Somali National Movement. TheBarre
regime's brutal treatment of the Isaaq clan in
the north of the count^^was carried out with
weaponry supplied by the United States and its
allies, and by military leaders trained in the
U.S. I MET program. Many observers
subsequently faulted the West for having been
oblivious to the costs of anning a military
whose sole enemies were its own citizens.
In retrospecs justifications for U.S.
military aid to Somalia as a quid pro quo for
U.S. access to the strategic airfield at Berbera in
northwest Somalia appear unwarranted.
Charged with planning a Rapid Deployment
Force capable of enforcing the carter Doctrine
in the Persian Gulf, U.S. officials sought access
to naval and air bases throughout the Middle
East and the Indian Ocean, including Egypt,
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 the redundancy of
the Somali facility, especially when the United
States was initially presented with extremely
high "mt" requests by the Barre regime." The
margmal importance of the Berbera facility
was demonstrated during the Gulf War, when
the deployment of over 250,000 U.S. troops to
the Persian Gulf was 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. economic
aid, which totaled $639 million over the course
of the decade, included roughly equal ratios of
development assistance (earmarked through
USAID'S Development Fund for Afiica
budget), Economic Support Funds
American mi l my 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 cash arms agreements.
251bid., p. 228.
24
Ibid., pp. 199-200. Misreading its bargaining
16
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 Forei gn Aid
(Washington, D.C.: Foreign Service Institute, 1993).
Rawson's study is a detailed and valuable analysis
of U.S. and Western foreign aid to Somalia in the
1980s.
131
MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. V, NO. 1 , JANUARY 1997
(development assistance designed to support
stmtcgic intemts) and commodity i mpoe
which were channeled through the PL 480
Food For Peace programand the Commodity
Import P r o p P Collectively, these
American aid pr ows formed 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,
as well as an estimated $2 billion through U.N.
agencies, the World Bank and the M."
U.S. bilateral aid wasdelivered 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-mangement and
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
packages were deemed outright failures. One
unusually candid USAID intemal assessment
confirmed, "USAID projects accomplished
close to nothing if measured against theii
original design.'mAnd the USAD mission in
Mogadishu was not alone on this score. Nearly
all other external donors, many of them
partners with USAID in multidonor 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, 1994), p 1.
fiuhations. In the case of 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
rangemanagement project in the 1980s. Yet
follow-up evaluations found that virtually none
of the agricultural and pastoral projects
succeeded. Theseevaluations 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
far more fundamental flaw in these rural
development projects, rooted in the predatory
natm of the Somali state. In the absence of
an effective and legitimate land-tenure system,
projects which increased the value of
mngeland or farmland often inadvertently
triggered struggles for control over that
res0u~ce.f' Land-grabbing by politically
empowered clans and civil sewants was rife in
zones demarcated for internationally h d e d
irrigation projects, resulting in the expropriation
of tens of thousands of hectares of riverine land
fiomminority farming communities. Even the
activities of the AID-hded feasibilility study
for the proposed Badhere Dam triggered
speculative land-grabbing.)' Rangeland
improvements also exacerbated pastoral
"lbid. See also the summary of these various audits
and evaluations in Rawson. The Somali Sfafe and
Foreign Aid, pp. 7 1-74.
"The Somali had established "modem" land-tenure
laws in 1974 to replace customary tenure, but the
system was badly abused by civil servants and
powerful political figures to lay claim to land
farmed by smallholders for generations.
"See Besteman and Cassanelli, The Struggle for
Land.
132
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 unintentionally helped to accelerate a Ethiopian origin) and since there appeared to
historically unprecedented wave of land beno near-termresolution to the Ethiopian-
expropriation insouthern 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 government and military Somalia
Proposed these
strengthen schemes, it was
publiesector refugee aid, the regime had a strong ambivalent
capacity, fared interest in overestimating the refugee about actually
officials were diverting much of the
nobetter. One population and threatened aid officials closing down
report
refilgee camps,
which
AID who challenged their numbers.
&ncluded that generated
considerable fewer 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, is spending money to
produce what may bea 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.
J effrey Franks, Brain Drain or Brain Gain? 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 State and Forei gn Ai d 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 theSomali military in its battle
against northern Somali insurgency
movements. This bansformed refbgee
assistance into logistical support for an army
accused of atrocities against its ownpeople,
and placed donors in a politically untenable
36Docurnented in U.S. General Accounting Office
(GAO) study Fami ne i n Afi i ca: Improving
Emergenry Food RelieJPrograms (Washington:
GAO, March 1986); it concluded that Somali
military diversion of refugee food aid was the worst
in the history of U.S. food aid programs.
133
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 criticismfor
abandoning refbgees- allowed refbgee aid
to continue to flow until 1990.
The most important development goals set
by the donor community in Somalia, however,
were policy reforms, not projects. ?hroughout
the 198b Westemdonors, led by USAID, the
IMF and the World Bank, sought to link
assistance to economic and fiscal policy
reform: liberalidon, privatization and
financial stabilization.
Superficially, this conditional assistance
appeared to enjoy some successes in the
1980s. Under pressure h m the World Bank
and the United States, the Bane regime agreed
in 1981 to liberalize agricultural policies by
lifting price conmls on staple crops. Donors
hoped that this and other bmarket reforms in
the d sector would provide h e n greater
incentives to expand crop production and
reduce Somalias chronic food deficits.
Likewise, the IMF was able to press the Somali
government to accept stabilization schemes
and Shuctural adjustment reforms, which
included moving the value of the Somali
shilling closer to real market value, privatizing
some state-contmlled industries and reducing
government spending. But these proved to be
ephemeral victories, leading to far less
substantive and enduring policy reformand
outcomes than donors desired.
In the case of agricultural liberalization,
policies changed but wtcomes did not.
Detxpbvely, he-market reforms pushed by
Westemdonors did appear to trigger
impressive growth rates in Somali agricultural
output as early as 1982. By 1987, the Somali
Minisby of Agricultm reported that total grain
production had more than doubled between
1980 and 1986, af ter a decade of Stagnafi~n,~
and the World Banks WorkiDewlopmenf
Report 1988 listed Somalia first in Africa in
increased grain production between 1980 and
86, with an average annual increase of 7.9
percent Not surprisingly, donors celebrated
this dramatic improvement in production as
clear evidence of the success of conditionality
and bmar ket reforms, and of the failure of
price controls, which, they contended, had so
depressed incentives that many farmers in the
1970s had reduced their efforts and work
volume to a level which simply guaranteed
subsistence. One consultants repott
produced for USAID went so far as to claim
that agricultural refom had enabled Somalia to
become more than self-sufficient inmaize and
sorghum, had driven agricultural wages above
the salaries of government civil servants, and
had triggered a reverse Nfal exodus of city-
dwellers returning to the farms, though none of
these contentions was remotely close to the
buth. The causal link between price
liberalization and increased agricultd output
in Somalia, so intuitively 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
Stafisrics 198tV87, prepared in cooperation with
GTZ (Mogadishu: State Printing Agency, 1987).
h o ma s LaBahn. The Development of the
Cultivated Areas of the Shabelle River and the
Relationship between Smallholders and the State,
in Somalia: Agriculture and the Wi n h of Change,
ed. by Peter Con= and Thomas LaBahn
(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 Somalia (USAID:
March 1987). pp.2-3.
134
dramatically as 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 state of the 1970s possessed
the capacity to capture surplus grain 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, instead 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 indomestic
grain production.
Ultimately, the inaccuracy of grain
production figures in the 1980s and of
contentions that Somalia was 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 Somalias total 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, 1989). 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: accurate assessments of
the impact of reformmust be mted in astute
political as well as economic analysis. In the
case of Somalia, the donor communitys
misreading stemmed not from an economic
e m but fiom political misjudgment. The
mistake was 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 isless clear iswhether the donors
political misreading were born of ignorance or
cognitive blinders. On the one hand, many
donors and their consultants were alarmingly
far-removed f romday- tdy economic and
social life in Somalia Studies and reports were
produced from air-conditioned offices in
Mogadishu, drawing on market surveys and
official data collected by Somali
countem. Anyone possessing a passing
familiarity with daily life in Somalia knew of
the vibrant black market within which many or
most economic transactions took place and
would have known to factor that into
assessments of the impact of government 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,
1982-1987. (Mogadishu, January 10. 1988)
(mimeo).
41
135
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 that donors were well-aware of the
sohess of the Somali state and its vibrant
parallel economy. In the 198Os, for instance,
USND 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 the revenue
collection system (to no avail). Donor reports
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 that monitored rapidly
rising food imports and food aid into Somalia
in the 1980s.
Westem donors efforts to promote fiscal
reformand stabilization faced quite a different
problem, namely, that policy reforms
Numerous published studies existed on Somalias
vibrant parallel market; see for instance Norman
Miller, The Other Somalia, Horn ofAfrica 5, 3
(1982), pp. 3-19; and Boston University, African
Studies Center, Somalia: A Social and Institutional
ProJle (Boston: Boston University Press, 1983), pp.
5-6.
Two biting critiques of 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 Ai d and Infernational Charity (New York:
Free Press, 1996).
Pailthorp, Development before Disaster, p. 64;
Rawson, The Somali State and Foreign Aid, p. 46.
See for instance. IMF, Somalia: Recent
Economic Developments, I98 1 (mimeo. July 10,
198 I), p. 7; and John Holtzman. Maize Supply and
Price Situation in Somalia: A Historical Overview
and Analysis of 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 ambivalence of
Siyad [Barrels zigzag tactics. Faced with
donor insistence on stabilization and austerity
measw that threatened to undermine the
entire patronage system on which the Somali
state was bcsed, the Barre regime resorted to
delaying, agreeing, reneging and renegotiating,
a strategy designed to give donors hope that the
regime was approaching stabilization schemes
in good faith, but never enough to actually see
the reforms through. Four times over the
course of the 1980s the Somali government
entered into stand-by programs with the tMF;
each time, the government failed to meet
reformtargets. Twice over the come of the
1980s the Somali government signed onto
broad sbuctwal-djustment pgrams with the
World Bank. In each case, it reneged on those
accords as wellu
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
Rawn, attributes this to a combination of
factors: the cunning tactics of baii and
switch on the part of the Barre regime; the
baseless optimism of the donor community,
which, he contends, never filly understood that
the B m regimes agenda was divergent ffom
their own; b m c inertia within aid
agencies, where careets were staked on large-
scale development projects that 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 delivery of aid to Somalia Pailthorp
Rawson, The Somali State and Foreign Aid, p.
4 1
I IS.
Ibid., pp. 39-45
?bid.. pp. I 1 S-I 18.
136
MENKHAUS: U.S. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE TO SOMALIA: PHOENI X 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 strategic reasons,
fmanced almost Western donors in the 1980s kept largely silent.
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 other strategic reasons, kept largely government forces,
human-rights abuses but, for Somalia,
words, success or silent. which were
&lure m d in increasingly manned
developmental
terms was ultimately irrelevant, since the
primary purpose of Cold War economic
assistance was strategic.
The End of the Cold War and the Fmving
of Foreign Aid, 1987-90
After decades of shrewdly playing Cold
War competitors off one another to maximite
its access to foreign aid, it is ironic that Somalia
became one of thefirst targets of post-coid
War political conditionalitf of aicc-the
lmkage of U.S. assistance to improvements in
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. Ihere was relatively little at stake for
donon in post-cold War Somalia, a fsct which
gave themfar greater leverage to link aid to
hm-ri ghts.
Human-rights violations and political
repression had been a hallmark of Somali
politics since the 1 %9 coup that hght
strongman Siyad Barre into power. In the
197% East Bloc patrons of Somalia assisted in
the development of fearsome internal security
?ailthorp, Development Before Disaster, p. 1.
through forced
Conscription, against the Somali National
Movement, representing a liberation hnt of
the northem Isaaq clan. The Barre regimes
response to the W s attacks was brutal,
including the leveling of the city of Hargeisa
and the strafing of 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
genocide against the Isaaq.
Ihe war in northern Somalia,
documented by a highly critical General
Acounting 0!3ce (GAO) investigation
mandated by Congress, energized
congressional calls to keze aid to Somalia
until human-rights improved? Congress,
which had never exhibited great enthusiasmfor
The most carefully documented accounts include
Robert Gersony, Why Somalis Fl ee: Synthesis of
Accounts o$Con/lict f i per i ence in Nort hern Somali
Refugees. Displaced Persons, and Others (Bureau
for Refugee Programs, U.S. Department of State,
August 1989), and Amnesty International, Somal i a:
A Long-Term Human-ri ghts Cri si s (New York:
Amnesty International, September 1988).
%.S. General Accounting Office, Somal i a:
Observations Regardi ng the Nort hern Conflict and
Resulting Conditions (May 4, 1989).
137
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
criticismof 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 hzen shipments of lethal weapons to
Somalia on the advice of the U.S. ambassador,
over the objections of the Pentagon. Still, the
Bush administration hoped to unheze the ESF
hds to Somalia, arguing for a policy of
constructive engagement to assist in a peacehl
transfer of power. But additional massacres and
worsening civil war in Somalia in 1989
i nsuredthat Congress would nd 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 in 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 hnts and a popular uprising in
Mogadishu.
Quoted in Terry Atlas, Cold War Rivals Sowed
Seeds of Somalia Tragedy, Chi cago Tribune (Dcc.
13, 1992), sec. 4, p. I .
Rawson, The Somal i Sfate and Forei gn Ai d, p.
1 1 1 .
54
The Famine and US. Emergency Aid, 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 urban population was trapped in
a war over Mogadishu, rural farming
communities were subjected to endemic
banditry and assaults 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 authority and social structures,
combined withoverwhelming refirgee flows,
warlordismand extortionate bandi w
constellation of crises that came to beknown as
a complex emergencf-presented aid donors
with unprecedented dilemmas. There is near
universal consensus that international
humanitarian organizations failed to meet the
challenges the Somali crisis posed in 1931-92.
This failure of the collective response proved
very costly.
One problemwas that key players in the
aid community were virtually absent fiom
Somalia hr n January 1991 (when the last set
of intemational diplomats and aid workers were
evacuated) until mid-1992, when intensive
media coverage of the famine 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 Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC) and a small corps of
non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
Jeffrey Clark, Debacle in Somalia: Failure of the
55
Collcctive Response, pp. 205-39, in Enforcing
Restrainf: Col l ecti ve Intervention in Internal
Conflicts. ed. by Lori F. Damrosch (New York:
Council on Foreign Relations, 1993).
138
operated in the country, providing emergency
food relief and medical care. Ihe United
Nations and its agencies were generally inert,
citing security concerns, mandates (most U.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. diplomatic inaction was in no small
m a w due to the indifference of the Security
Council, which, preoccupied by more
important crises in Iraqand Bosnia, was
reluctant to address the Somali crisis. It was,
moreover, the U.S. delegation that blocked
attempts to place Somalia on the Security
Councils agenda and watered down a J anuary
1992 Security Council resolution in order to
keep U.N. diplomatic involvement in Somalia
minimal? Top advisers in the Bush
administration, including Secretary of State
James Baker and Undersecretary of State for
International Organhtion John Bolton,
opposed any resolutions which might
potentially expand U.N. peacekeeping
obligations at 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
hi s latter issue led to a scandalous 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 government. Ibid., p. 220.
J ane 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 Group, Hope Restored?
Humani t ar i an Ai d i n Somal i a, 1990- I994
(Washington DC: Refugee Policy Group, 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:
criticismby U.N. Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali (who called attention to the
naked double standard 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
administration to become much more engaged
inSomaliam
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 Disaster Assistance (OFDA), both
stationed in Nairobi, Kenya Like other
governments, the United States concluded that
Somalia was too dangerous to reopen its
embassy and was reluctant to give the OFDA
officer security clearance to bavel even for
brief periods in the country. 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
aid was being diverted by militias.
Within the U.S. government, agencies
were split over the Somali famine. Those
closest to the crisis, like the OFDA, the State
59An excellent chronicle of congressional action on
Somalia is recorded in Refugee Policy Group, Hope
Restored? Annex 3-2.
%e Ken Menkhaus with Lou Ortmayer. Key
Decisions i n the Somal i a Int ervent i on. Pew Case
Studies in International Affairs, no. 464
(Washington DC: Georgetown University, Institute
for the Study of Diplomacy, 1995), pp. 2-3.
6J an Westcott, The Somal i a Saga: A Personal
Account, 1990-1993 (Washington DC: Refugee
Policy Group, November 1994). pp. 14,22.
I39
MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. V, NO. 1, JANUARY 1997
Department's East Afiica ofice and the
Human-rights Bureau, rang the al m, fought
to maximize emergency assistance to Somalia,
and pressed U.N. agencies to take more active
roles in Somalia. The director of OFDA,
Andrew Natsios, testified to the House Select
Committee on
Hunger in J anuaq
of food, "Operation Provide Relief." ?he
military airlift was intended to be a strictly
temporary measure to cope with immediate
famine conditions until a planned U.N. security
force of 3,500 pakeepers could take control
of the airport and seaport. Politically, it was
attractive as anoption
that promised to
deliver media images
of U.S. militruy planes
1992 that the Somali
famine was "the
greatest humanitarian an option that promised to off-loading famine
emergency inthe deliver media images of U.S. relief while
Politically, it was attractive as
world'" and Publicly military planes off-loading engendering little risk
to U.S. troops and no
long-term
famine relief while
criticized U.N.
inaction, unaware that
h e u.s. delegation to engendering little risk to U.S. mi men&, Itwas
the United Nations troops and no long-term also politically
significant in that it
injected a military
commitments.
was 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 ob were going in
another.'" But even among the "political
folks" in the States Depariment there were
divisions. The Bureau of Afiican Affairs was
stymied when it tried to make Somalia a top
priority of Secretary of State Baker, and
Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen's
efforts to make OFDA hlly operational inside
Somalia were blocked by Bolton and National
Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who
opposed allocating resources to an area deemed
marginal to U.S. intern."
to "do something" finally jolted 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,
HopeRestored? p. 7.
Mlbid., p. 20.
component into
humanitarian efforts, a rising bend in the
aftermath of Operation Provide Comfort in
northern Iraq. The airlift did enjoy some
success- independent estimates held that
some 40,000 lives were saved f i omAugust to
December 1992 thanks to additional food aid
provided by the airlift.".' But problems arose as
well. First, the 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 and several
NG0s-U.S. military authorities were to have
no role onthe grounMut those agencies
lacked the manpower to oversee such sizable
shipments of food aid dropped off at scattered
sites in southem Somalia Inthe town of
Bardhere, the airlifted food attracted
competing militias, triggering episodes of
fighting and looting that left target populations
140
MENKHAUS: U. S. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE TO 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 hdamental obstacle to
the relief effort remained security. Estimates of
the level of food relief diverted by militias
varied-some agencies claimed less than half,
others contended up to 80 percent-but it was
clearly too much. It isappalling that there was
food at the Mogadishu port but it cannot reach
starving people a few kilometen away because
of insecurity, argued OFDA Director J ames
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.167 Militia 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 international staff to that
end.
Until med 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 had become the major 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
66
67
6n
extortion. see Marguerite Michaels, Lemon Aid:
How Relief to Somalia Went Wrong, 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 economy of
extortion and bandiby which had developed
around international relief deliveries.
Meanwhile, reports h m OFDAs Disaster
Assistance Response Team brought 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.O And, 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 shut down by
By November 1992, calls for a more
fighting.
forcefbl humanitarian intervention into
Somalia were receiving favorable hearings
h m President 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 there will be for Americans to
fight abroad, testified Under-Secretary of
For a detailed explanation of the monetization
69
project, see Andrew S. Natsios, 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-
11
141
MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. V, No. 1, J ANUARY 1997
Defense Frank Wisner.R As during the Cold continued U.S. humanitarian and development
War, Somalia would once again attract the aid to Somalia, the U.S.-led intervention
attention and mumsof a superpower, not on possessed several features worth highlighting.
its own terns but as part of broader strategic First, -on Restore Hope was explicitly
interests. identified by Washington as a short-term and
purely humanitarian mission. Reflecting the
Operation Restore Hope and UNOSOM, American preoccupation with avoiding
193-1994 casualties, UMTAF operations 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, led by 30000
U.S. troom. marked a
ending the crisis which
provoked the famine were
mi1-n; post-Cold two separate issues. reconciliation, nation-
war international building and economic
relations and
transforned the nature of the relief mission
into Somalia Thedetails of both the decision
to intervene and various interpretations of what
subsequently went wrong in the ill-fated
intervention are more than adequately treated in
other accounts. From the standpoint of
Testimony, Hearing on International Peacekeeping
72
and Enforcement, Senate Committee on Armed
Services, Subcommittee on Coalition Defense and
Reinforcing Forces, 103rd Congress, 1st sess., 14
J uly 1993.
There are now hundreds of articles, books, and
commissioned studies of UNOSOM and Operation
Restore Hope. Among the most carefully
documented and/or significant accounts include:
Refugee Policy Group, Hope Restored?; Clark,
Debacle in Somalia; Menkhaus, Key Decisions;
J ohn Bolton, Wrong Turn in Somalia, Foreign
Affairs vol. 73, no. 1 (J an.-Feb. 1994), pp. 56-66;
J ohn Drysdale, Whatever Happened to Somalia?
(London:Haan Associates, 1994); J ohn Prendergast,
The Gun Talks Louder than the Voice: Somalias
Continuing Cycles of Violence (Washington: Center
of Concern, 1994); and Walter Clarke and J effrey
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. Operation in Somalia
(UNOSOM). With its mission so narrowly
defined, -on Restore Hope could 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. Within weeks, the intervention
effectively broke the back of the famine and
suspended, if not eliminated, the economy of
extortion to which aid agencies had sucumbed.
U.S. emergency relief flowed into Somalia A
total of $174 million was spent in 1993, mostly
in the fonn of USDA Food for Peace, as well
as OFDA p t s to NGOs and U.N. agencies,
and refugee assistance. Collectively U.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 the
crisis which provoked the Fdminewere two
separate issues. Long-term, sustainable efforts
14 Refugee Policy Group, Hope Restored? Annex C-
1.
142
to help rebuild the society and promote
reconciliation, public order and development
were needed for real success inSomalia
Because the OFDAs mandate was limited to
short-termemergencies, it tended to share the
militarys quick response mentality, which
focused more on immediate goals than on
sustainability. This approach was at odds with
the USAID teams, which was more attuned to
long-term development and local capacity
building. At the field level, it was not difficult
for individual aid officials hrnOFDA and
USAID to reconcile short and longer-term
objectives, both of which had obvious merit.
Still, it highlighted one of the interventions
flaws, theyawning gap between the massive
resources and manpower devoted to emergency
relief (as well as military outlays) and the
extremely scarce finding available for the
much more complex task of long-term
recovery.6 USAID in 1993 contributed $29.4
million to a variety of development schemes,
including mining for the Somali police force
and judicial system, demining, and rehabil-
itation of water, inigation, and healthcare
systems but had to rely on ad hoc measures by
OFDA to redefine bdi ng to assist these
programs. Like other major donors, the US.
Refugee Policy Group, Humanitarian Aid in
Somalia: The Role of the Ofice of U.S. Foreign
Disaster Assistance (OFDA). 1990- I994
(Washington, D.C.: Refugee Policy Group,
November 1994). p. 4.
when i t was revealed that for every ten dollars spent
on the intervention, nine was earmarked for
maintaining and paying the U.N. peacekeeping
forces and civilian staff, only one in ten dollars was
available for Somali reconstruction and
development.
nRefugee Policy Group, Humanitarian Aid in
Somalio. Figures are drawn from a U.N. Department
of Humanitarian Affairs situation report, November
3. 1993.
75
UNOSOM had to endure a storm of criticism
76
budgetary process distinguishes between
emergency relief (for which there is ample
finding and surplus foodstuffs) and
development (for which firnding isscarce),
creating enormous bansition problems in post-
emergency settings.
Ihe USAID teamthus found itself
working with very limited finds to help
UNOSOM promote both political and econ-
omic reconstruction. In 1993 and 1994,
USAID focused especially on the
reestablishment of a police and judicial
system, which was deemed necessary to
provide Somalis a sense of security and an
environment in which the economy could
prosper. However, USAID facsd the Same
problem as other providers of postemergency
development aid: namely, the prolonged
absence of a recognized and authoritative
government to which police and judges would
be accountable and through which broader
development policies could be rationalized and
articulated. The very statelessness of Somalia
posed a firndamental challenge to donors, and
presaged donor troubles in other complex
emergencies. UNOSOM and donor agencies
hoped that the establishment of a Somali
Transitional National Council would serve as
the repository of Somali sovereignty to
resolve this dilemma, but endless setbacks in
Somali national reconciliation conferences
made this impossible.R Donors were left with
the unenviable task of wi ng to determine who,
Compounding this budgetary problem still further
was that most of the implementing agencies (the
NGOs) through which AID and OFDA funds were
dispersed were defined either as relief agencies or as
development agencies and were not structured to
cope with transitions from relief to development.
For analysis of Somali national reconciliation. see
Ken Menkhaus, International Peacebuilding and
the Dynamics of Local and National Reconciliation
in Somalia, International Peacekeeping, vol3, no.
1 (Spring 1996), pp. 42-67.
79
143
in the contentious arena of stateless Somali
politics, constituted authoritative local
leadership thrwgh which development
programs could proceed. Militia leaders,
factional politicians, elders, intellectuals,
merchants and clerics all laid claim to
authority, in reality, few possessed it.
The scramble by Somalis to emerge as
recognized local leaders through which aid
agencies worked was not only an attempt to
use foreigners to legitimize their claims on
authority; it was also an effort to conml the
lucrative flow of foreign aid. As in the past,
foreign aid during the intervention had a
corrosive and distomng effkct on Somali
politics and economic activity. Employment
and conbacts with the U.N. agencies and
intemationalNGOsbecamepnzed
commodities, monopolized by factional
mafias.lhegiganticUNOSOMpresencein
Mogadishu genemted an estimated 11,OOO
local jobs, which helped Somali households in
the short-term but created yet another instance
of unsustainable dependence on i ntemat~~l
aid. And attempts by international donors to
fund small projects through local NGOS, as
part of a strategy of capacity-building,
inadvertently mpted the collcepf as Somali
factions and entrepreneurs cfeated do= of
bogus local self-help groups (all with
impressive English names and stationery!) that
corneredintemationalgmntsand
misappropriated f unds and commodities.
Somalis were quick to comprehend and exploit
the latest approaches of the donor community
in order to access their foreign aid. Donor
cynicism toward Somalia, already a legacy of
had experiences h m the 198Os, deepened with
every new case of f i aud and d o n . Somali
cynicism toward foreign aid deepened as well;
local expecMions of a foreign-aid bonanza
were huge and unrealistic, as many Somalis
expededthehtemamd * communitytofhd
the reconstruction of the entire country. When
development aid appeared only in much more
modest amounts, Somalis suspected that U.N.
and aid officials were diverting h d s into their
own pockets.
transitioned to UNOSOM in May 1993,
divisions surfsced within the U.S. government
over the level of development aid the United
States should commit to Somali reconshuction.
Many in USAID, State, and the NSC saw the
need to insure the success of the U.N. mission
in order to strengthen U.N. capacity in peace
enforcement, and sought to maximize U.S.
support for U.N. reconciliation and
development initiatives. But ollce armed
hostilities erupted between UNOSOM forces
and Genenil Aideeds Somali National
Alliance in June 1993, leading to the highly
publicized deaths of 17 U.S. Army Rangers
that October, congressional support for aid to
Somalia withered, Political figures and pundits
fell over themselves to express outrage at the
ungratehl Somalis, and the Clinton
adminisbation announced the complete
withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel by
March 1994. A small staff of U.S. diplomats
and USAID officials stayed on until the closure
of UNOSOM in March 1995 and oversaw
continued aid to police and judicial programs.
But the fiasco in Mogadishu had badly
damaged U.N. credibility and U.S. hopes of
building up U.N. capacities for peace
enforcement; the prevailing sentiment in
Washington was simply to let the U.N. mission
quietly wind down, place blame for the failure
of the mission on the United Nations, and leave
Somalia alone. For some critics of the
intewention, leaving Somalia alone was the
best prescription for the countxys recovery.
As the U.S.-led UNITAF mission
Michael Maren, Leave Somalia Now The New
I0
York Ti mes, July 6, 1994, p. Al 9.
144
MENKHAUS: U.S. FOREIGN ASSISTANCE TO SOMALIA: PHOENI X FROM THE ASHES?
The Greater Horn of Africa Initiative
Out of this bleak set of negative
experiences with foreign aid to Somalia, as
well as similar fhtrations in prolonged
humanitarian and political crises in Ethiopia,
Rwandaand Sudan, officials in USAID have
begun exploring alternative approaches to
development assistance in the Greater Horn of
Aiiica. The fust attempt to articulate a new
development philosophy occurred in the midst
of a region-wide drought in 1994, when the
director of USAID, Brian Atwood, was briefed
on the regions core problems: the
predominance of man-made rather than natural
disasters, which suggested the need for a
conflict early-waming system to complement
the regional nature of the emergencies,
especially rehgee flows, which defied state
boundaries and rendered state-cmtered aid
strategies irrelevant; difficutties associated with
the relief-todevelopment continuum in post-
emergency settings; and the pressing need to
enhance regional capacity and Afiican
ownership of solutions to the regions
problems. A powerful argument put forward
by advocates of a new approach to the region
was thegrim fact that the Greater Horn of
Afiica had become, over the come of the past
20 years, the site of the worlds most
intractable, endemic and expensive
humanitarian crises, a cauklron of human
misery that $4 billion of international aid
between 1985 and 1992 had done little to
resolve. International aid, it was argued, med
to dress the wounds of regional disasten but
was doing little to address their root causes.
famine early-warning systems already in place;
Out of these discussions emerged what became
the Greater Horn of Afiican Initiative (GHAI).
As one of Atwoods top priorities and as a
presidential initiative enjoying the active
interest and support of President Clinton, the
GHAI has received priority inter-agency
attention in its formulation.
As of early 1997, the GHAI has yet to
move f i omchalkboard to the field, and
opetationalizing the new approach it embodies
will beextxmefy difficult Conceptually,
however, the GHAI isa considerable advance
over conventional, project-oriented aid
philosophies. Among its most significant
strengths are the following:
1) Promotion of regional capacity-building.
TheGHAIs primary aim will be to
strengthen the processes by which both
governments and civil society in the Greater
Horn prevent or address conflicts and
improve food secun-ty themselves. At the
governmental level, this has ledthe GHAI to
encourage the revitalization of a regional
organization, IGADD (Inter-Govemmental
Authority on Drought and Development)
which governments in the Horn hope will
serve as a central forumthrough which to
ad- regional problems. At the level of civil
society, the GHAI seeks to strengthen the role
of local NGOs in development aid.
2) Crisis prevention. A twd has emphasized
that one of the primary aims of the Clinton
administtation is to help societies build the
capacity to deal with the social, economic and
a p t - Within the U.S. government, the
GHAI has catalyLed an inter-agency process
political forcesthat threaten to tear them
Interview with USAID officials. March 1996.
Clintons Initiative on the Horn of Africa Building
a Foundation for Food Security and Crisis
Prevention in the Greater Horn of Africa: A Concept
Paper for Discussion, (November 1994), p. I .
USAID, Breaking the Cycle of Despair: President
12
Discussion papers and other information on the
Greater Horn of Africa can be accessed via
USAIDs web site.
Atwood, Suddenly, Chaos.
145
MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. V, No. I , JANUARY 1997
bringing together members of the State collaborative relationship with them. Rather
Department, USAID, DIA, CIA and other than seeking to impose structures and
agencies for periodic meetings under the rubric pmses on the regiowan approach which
of a Repotting, Analysis, Decision-making failed in Somalia--the GHAI will sewe as an
and Response(RADAR) team. This has enabler, supporting structures and pwxdures
improved information-sharing among agencies deemed most appropriate by the regional
and between embassies on emerging regional authorities themselves. Because not all of the
crises and conflicts. states in the region
In the region, the are equally
GHAI has also Past humanitarian emergencies enthusiastic about a
helped to set up in the region have offered little regionalapproachto
aid and diplomacy
(Ethiopia, Eritrea
assistance for sustainable, long-
internet llnkages
between regional
governments in he term reconstruction. Of special and U g h are
Greater Horn, importance in this regard is an strong supporters of
enabling themto
effort to promote food security
better share Kenya and Sudan
information as well.
in the region.
the approach, while
are more reluctant or
A significant step in
establishing crisis
management mechanisms in the region
occurred this spring, when governments in the
IGADD met and agreed to include conflict
prevention in its charter. This will enable
IGADD to formulate its own approaches to
conflict-prevention measures, which the
international community can assist as
3) A regional approach to development aid. As
the name of the initiative suggests, the GHAI
assumes that crises in the Greater Horn
transcend national borders and can only be
addressed in a regional hewo&. Though
aid will continue to beallocated bilaterally, the
GHAI will encourage efforts to seek Value
added on bilateral projects through regional
coordination and facilitate regional efforts to
enhance food security. Again, revitalitation of
IGADD will becentral to this objective.
4) African ownership of the development
process. The GHAI is committed to
proceeding along lines prioritized by
governments inthe Greater Horn in a
requested.
suspicious),
adherence to the
principle of African ownership means that the
GHAI will beslow to evolve.
5 ) Emphasis on the continuumbetween relief
and development. Where disasters have
erupted, the GHAI isintended to help
overcome insitutitional baniers to reduce
transition problems between emergency relief
and development. Past humanitarian
emergencies in the region have mobilized vast
resources for relief but have offered little
assistance for sustainable, long-term
reconstruction. Ofspecial importance in this
regard is an effort to promote food security in
the region.
Significantly, this general approach to
foreign aid is shared by most regional
governments in the Horn of Africa, and
increasingly by other major donors. The
coordinating body for emergency assistance
from European Community states (ECHO), for
instance, has ernbraced the approach and
coordinates policy with USAID in the region.
And the U.N. Development Programme has
146
launched a $25-billion development program
for Afiica that centers on capacity-building.
This broad consensus among the main donors
and states in the region is critical in preventing
the initiative fiom being perceived as an
exclusively American agenda.
For all of its appeal, however, the GHAI
and the ideas it embodies face nummus and
potentially debilitating challenges. First, one of
its central objectives, conflict prevention, isan
inherently elusive goal. Fostering regional
integmtion via IGADD may help reduce inter-
state conflict in the long run, but most of the
conflicts provoking humanitarian crises in the
region are infru-state in nature, which IGADD
ismuch less equipped to address. second,
IGADD is problematic as a regional forum
serving as the engine of the initiative. For one
thing, it does not include several of the
southern-tier members of the Greater Horn of
Aliica, including Rwanda and Burundi. The
GHAI isthus of questionable relevance to two
of the most pressing political and humanitarian
crises in the region. Somalia, meanwhile,
remains unrepresented in IGADD as it lacks
the essential prerequisite, a recognized
government In addition, a key member of
IGADD, Sudan, is virtually at war with
neighbors Uganda, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
IGADD can either serve as a regional
development agency or as a coalition against
Sudan, but not both.u Still, observers concur
that there are no institutional alternatives to
IGADD however imperfecf it isall weve got
in the region.
A third challenge relates to the GHAIs
principle of African ownership of aid
French, Donors of Foreign Aid Have Second
Thoughts.
Indeed, some observers suspect that U.S.
enthusiasm to revitalize IGADD is animated in part
by a strategic desire to strengthen regional
containment of Sudans radical Islamism.
84
15
prioritization, which begs a hndarnental
political question in the Horn of Afiica: which
Africans are to own the process, governments
or civil soci ev Put another way, isthe
political crisis in the Greater Horn due to
parasitic and oppressive state authority, to be
remedied by decentralization and the
channeling of assistance away fiom cenbal
governments to grass-mots organizations? Or,
conversely, are pmbacted political and
humanitarian crises in the region a function of
the collapse of effective governance, to be
remedied by the strengthening of state
authoriw A compelling case can bemade for
both arguments. A case can also be made for
the simultaneous strengthening of both state
and societal organization as mutually
reinforcing processes. But in the context of
disputed authority, civil war and scarce
resources in the Greater Horn, control over
relief and development is viewed by local
protagonists in starkly zero-sum terms. States
in the region are distrustfid of both international
and local NGOs, of rhetoric embracing the
strengthening of civil society and of any
circumvention of sovereign states control over
relief and development aid within their
bordersu
On paper, the GHAI appears to embrace
both a topdown and bottom-up approach in
the region. On the one hand, USAID claims to
be committed to working to strengthen civil
society. As Brian Atwood notes:
We cannot prevent failed states with a top
down approach. No amount of international
resources or organizational capacity can Serve as
a substitute for building stable, pluralist
societies New partnerships and new tools are
For a fresh look at the limits of sovereignty in
zones of crisis, see Francis Deng et al., Sovereignty
as Respomibiliw: Conflict Management in Africa
(Washington: Brookings, 1996).
16
147
needed to strengthen the indigenous capacity of
people to manage and resolve conflict within their
own societies.
f i s advocacy of a grass-roots approach to
capacity-building coincides with the views of
most international NGOs, which for years have
served as vital conduits of emergency aid in the
Greater Horn and which possess considerable
political clout. Their distrust of central state
authority isthe result of years of experience in
which states have often been the primary
source of conflict, corruption and humanitarian
crises. In one GHAI workshop in October
1995, for instance, a top NGO representative
went so far as to conclude that the government
of Sudan constituted an enemy state in
humanitarian terms. In the field, NGOs have
sometimes challenged the principle of state
sovereignty, refusing to recognize real or
alleged state authority. In Somalia, where no
state exists, USAID has resolved the
sovereignty issue by funneling aid through
international NGOs to local communities,
essentially sub-contracting a thorny diplomatic
issue to actors for whomthe issue is less
problematic.
the rule. Elsewhere in the Horn, U.S.
diplomacy has tilted strongly towards
accommodating central governments and their
demands for ownership of development
priorities and allocation. This has meant that
But Somalia is the exception rather than
Atwood, Suddenly, Chaos.
A few NGOs have long ignored the authority of
the government of Sudan in their work in southern
Sudan. In Rwanda, 39 NGOs were expelled for
refusing to register with and pay customs taxes to
the new RPF government in 1994; in Somalia,
General Aideed sought unsuccessfully to use
international NGOs to shore up his claim of
sovereign control over Somalia by kidnapping aid
workers in the town of Baidoa on the grounds that
they had not obtained visas from his government.
a7
86
colloboration within the GHAl has been almost
entirely between donors and states. At the
insistence of regional states, international and
local NGOs have been given marginal roles to
play in the GHAI, a fact which has not sat well
with NGO officials; indeed, representatives of
international NGOs complain that they were
not brought into planning discussions of the
GHAI until a year after its genesis. But as long
as regional governments continue to distrust
development rhetoric that embmxs
empowerment of civic society, seeing such
agendas as meddling in Mu internal affairs
and potentially eroding their own often shaky
authority, it is unlikely that the GHAI will be
able to effectively implement a two track policy
of capacity-building at bothstate and local
levels. Meanwhile, the dilemma for USAID is
that misjudgments over the channeling of aid
can easily lead to accusations either of
strengthening a centml states capacity for
repression or a local politys capacity for
secession.
The final and most potent threat to the
success of the GHAI is budgetary. Though the
GHAI is not premised on large allocations of
foreign aid, adequate donor resources are still
essential. The decline of Cold War strategic
interests in the region, which has freed USAID
to pursue more sustainable and thoughtful
initiatives there, has simultaneously eliminated
the rationale that justified aid in the first place.
Ironically, aid resources for the region may dry
up at the very moment when a promising
philosophy of assistance is being developed.
This is precisely the constraint faced by
USAID in Somalia, where a paucity of
fimding has dramatically reduced both the
capacity and influence of American assistance
19John Prendergast, Fr ont -Li ne Di pl omacy:
Humani t ari an Ai d and Confl i ct Preventi on i n Afi i ca
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner Pub., 1996).
148
programs. The vacuumcreated by the
shrunken USAID mission has been filled by a
robust European Commission, which now
dominates donor policies and priorities in the
Somalia Aid Coordination Body (SACB), a
consortium of donors, U.N. agencies, and
N OS operating in Somalia For instance, U.S.
contributions to food monetization pmgrams, a
critical instrument in the shaping of
rehabilitation priorities in Somalia, was
dominant hr n 1992 to 1994, but by 1996 had
dropped to only $4 million, compared to $48
million fiom the European Union. Indeed, the
total USAID budget proposal for Somalia for
fiscal year 1998, including the categories of
development assistance, emergency feeding,
food-for-work, monetization and disaster-
assistance funds, comes to a mere $15.4
million, and it is likely that request will not be
hlly funded. As a result, U.S. aid officials
have had a much harder time shaping donor
policy in the SACB, and American influence
over political as well as economic
developments inthe country have been
marginalized."
Figures based on discussions with UN, EC. and
USAID officials in Nairobi, Kenya, August 1996.
90
For Somalis, the real external power
broker has become the European Commission,
which, armed with a large budget and an
extensive teamof European technical advisers
and consultants, constitutes a virtual surrogate
government based inNairobi, Kenya"
Given these constaints, there is, some
critics predict, a real possibility that the GHAl
will remain an attractive set of principles that
will prove difficult to operationalize in the
turbulent Greater Horn. On the other hand, past
approaches have so clearly failed the region
that no justification can be made for continued
business as usual. Without ambitious and
creative departures h m past practices, and
without reasonable levels of hdi ng from
donors, the region will again be consigned to
another generation of endemic crises, and the
United States will continue to spend hundreds
of millions of dollars on reactive humanitarian
assistance to preventable crises.
As of August 1996, the EC Somalia Unit included
91
one special envoy, three delegates, ten technical
advisers, and 25-40 short-term consultants;
collectively they prioritize, oversee, and evaluate all
EC-funded aid projects in Somalia, which currently
totals about $60 million. While this figure i s
expected to drop significantly in the coming two
years, it at least temporarily gives the EC special
envoy and his team imperial authority over the weak
and fragmented Somali society.
149

U.S. Foreign Assistance To Somalia - Phoenix From The Ashes

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