The Road to Hell (32 page)

He talked a bit about his former boss, Tarrah, and repeated some of what I'd already heard about the corrupting influences of aid, how it stopped trade and led to corruption. Yes, Tarrah became rich, he told me, but that was nothing compared to the former finance minister, Mohamed Sheikh Osman. “Siyaad Barre wanted all the money from food handed to Mohamed Sheikh. One year we were instructed to place all the money from monetizing food into a special account controlled by Mohamed Sheikh. There was about $195 million in there at one point. Then suddenly the account was closed. The money disappeared.”

“I was very much disgusted by everything that went on,” Abdi Aden said. “If they start food aid here in Somaliland it will be the same thing.”

•   •   •

I
n Mogadishu again, I tracked down Mohammed Sheikh Osman. He had started out as a policeman in Mogadishu and ended up with the minister's portfolio in 1971, after testifying against enemies of Siyaad Barre's regime. His testimony led to the execution of several “traitors,” the first of Barre's long reign of terror. Ultimately it led Mohamed Sheikh to a real estate empire of more than 100 buildings in Mogadishu, and other holdings in Dubai. Those buildings include numerous homes and offices rented by NGOs and the UN Operation in Somalia, from which the total rent is said to exceed $500,000 a month. That explained why this man of massive wealth chose to remain in a war-torn dangerous city. (Mohammed Sheikh was from the Hawiye clan, which made his presence more palatable to the warlords and their fighters.) There was something boldly poetic about the way he and others stole from the UN and NGOs, used the money to build houses, and then rented those same houses back to the UN and NGOs.

Mohamed Sheikh's own home was a virtual fortress. I was frisked by his young guards at the gate. When I entered, there were another half dozen armed men in his front yard. Flowers bloomed everywhere. The gardens were delicately manicured. Ten people sat on his front porch, apparently waiting for an audience with the former minister.

A young man led me to a large, plush velvet couch in a spacious living room, and as soon as I sat, Osman entered the room. An energetic man in his sixties, he was wearing one of those tropical leisure suits in a style popular among members of the former government. Sensing he might be pressed for time, I got right to the point: I wanted to know how much aid was stolen over the years and exactly how the thievery took place.

Osman seemed surprised. Then he yelled for a servant to bring some grapefruit juice. He told me blankly that there was no corruption he knew about in the Siyaad Barre government. I changed the subject to American politics.

As our conversation wound down toward silence, Osman sat upright and looked at me. “It is delicate,” he said softly, thoughtfully. “Some of the people involved are alive and active in Somali politics, and sometimes it is not easy to tell the truth. You become a target. You may be killed.” His eyes softened, and he made himself comfortable in his chair again. “I was thinking of writing a book about my twenty years in government. But what I know I cannot say. This looting today, a few lorries and the relief food, is nothing compared to what happened here before. This is not looting. I know about looting.

“Myself, I've been in politics thirty years. I can't say why certain things happen. No one can teach these things. I stay here because I was born in Mogadishu. I'm sixty years old and surrounded by family and the people I love. They are here. And I fear. Three or four guys can come and they can kill you. I have an office in Dubai, but most of the time I'm here. I lost a son in the war. He was a doctor, an M.D., shot in Afgooye while he was saving a life. My first son. So this is the situation in Somalia. The country is destroyed morally, economically, and physically. There are half a million to a million Somalis living outside. When they come back, there will be another civil war.”

R
aghe is not a man given to bitterness. He gamely maintained his optimism through three years of anarchy in Mogadishu that were preceded by three years of terror from Siyaad Barre's troops against his Isaaq clan. His solution was to keep working, keep talking it through. I spoke to him periodically during the time of the U.S. and UN intervention in Somalia. Sometimes I couldn't get to his house in the Medina neighborhood of Mogadishu because militia fighting made it too dangerous to drive through the narrow streets or because someone or another had decided to throw up a roadblock and prevent people from moving. But when I did get through, he was always willing to talk, always prefacing his comments about corruption with some bit of optimistic news.

Raghe watched as new foreign NGOs with fresh young foreign faces came into Somalia and received grant money to work. AfriAction never collected a cent. The foreigners lurched from place to place, from project to project, retreating when things became dangerous and returning to start all over again when it was safe and more money was available. His years of experience were not in demand.

At the end of 1995, Raghe gave up and emigrated to Canada.

*
GAO Report #GAO/NSIAD-93-168,
Food Aid: Management Improvements Are Needed to Achieve Program Objectives
.

*
With the guidance of the World Bank, Somalia was supposedly embarking upon what is called a stabilization/structural adjustment program. Under the terms of the agreement, the country received massive loans in exchange for dropping government controls over exchange rates, and for undertaking other measures to decontrol the economy. Somalia took the loans but quickly dispensed with the reforms.

WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS

—Hanna Arendt,
On Violence

[E]very decrease in power is an open invitation to violence.

I
n 1986, as the deluge of aid into Somalia reached new heights, the country began its slow descent toward anarchy. The foreigners at the beach clubs didn't feel it at first. They watched the waves and delighted in the warmth of the safest city in Africa. Their futures there seemed secured by the seemingly insoluble refugee crisis. The Cold War would never end. The money and the jobs would never leave. Somalia would always be a land of great opportunity.

That was the year Siyaad Barre was nearly killed in a car crash. The rebels noted that the dictator was vulnerable, and they were emboldened. In 1987, the rebel Somali National Movement attacked the Hargeysa prison. Bombs went off in Mogadishu. Aid agencies that had tolerated political repression and executions of dissidents for years paused to wonder for the first time how safe it really was in Somalia.

In May 1988, the SNM attacked the town of Burao in northern Somalia and boldly took on government troops, who exhibited something less
than soldierly valor.
*
A few days later they attacked the city of Hargeysa. They also went after refugee camps and Somali refugees from Ethiopia who had been taking over businesses in Hargeysa.

The government responded by bombing Hargeysa to the ground. (Estimates of the death toll ranged as high as 50,000—probably an exaggeration. Nonetheless, tens of thousands died at the hands of the government. The SNM rebels were also responsible for some civilian casualties.) Refugees from the Isaaq clan fled across the border into Ethiopia. When the international community remained mute over the killing, the government stepped up its repression, killing civilians and others suspected of backing various rebel movements.

A 1989 State Department report concluded that the Somali army murdered at least 5,000 civilians over an eleven-month period.
†
That year, the United States cut off all military and economic aid to Somalia (while retaining the use of air and naval facilities in Somalia's northern port of Berbera).

In early 1990, several aid agencies withdrew foreign staff from Beledweyne after Hawiye soldiers in the town defected from the army, which then retaliated by attacking civilians. Soldiers rounded up local men, burned houses, killed villagers, and executed a number of refugees.

With the Cold War a nonissue, Siyaad had lost his leverage with the Americans. So he attempted to position himself as a foe to a new perceived danger, Islamic fundamentalism. OnJuIy 9, 1990, the bishop of Mogadishu, Salvatore Colombo, was murdered at the Mogadishu cathedral. Despite a huge reward offered by the government, the lone gunman escaped. Siyaad said it was the work of Muslim extremists, but even his most ardent foreign backers saw the murder for the despicable ploy it was. Although the killing resulted in an uproar in Italy, Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis a few weeks later rejected calls by Parliament for the suspension of economic aid to Somalia. Rome did withdraw fifty-three Italian air force and army personnel helping to train men for the Somali armed forces. But the
foreign minister said that cutting off economic and development aid “would not mean the end of Siyaad Barre but the end of Somalia.”

The U.S. ambassador, T. Frank Crigler, agreed. While acknowledging Siyaad Barre's “appalling human rights record,” Crigler argued that by pulling out all aid at this point, the U.S. and Western donors were losing the possibility of engaging Siyaad. Somalia had become so addicted to aid, its political system so accustomed to ingesting large amounts of foreign cash, that, like any redundant junkie, it had reached a point where withdrawing the aid would do more damage to the system than keeping it flowing. But political pressure from home prevailed, and as Western countries pulled back, Siyaad began to lose control of his troops and his underlings. He also lost any sense of indebtedness to world opinion. Aid workers who administered the drug now became the enemy, targets of the regime's malevolence. Siyaad's minions, fearing the aid was about to end, set out to milk the last drops before it was withdrawn.

Western aid agencies began scaling down much of their work in Somalia because of security threats to staff in many parts of the country, particularly in the north. Several times, aid workers were withdrawn and then returned when it was decided that stability had been restored to Somalia.

Now that the refugee relief operation was untenable, UN agencies officially started to complain about such things as the inflation of refugee numbers. Now that it was unprofitable, they had become idealistic. For the first time, UNHCR became concerned with the arming of refugees and the use of aid to fight the war, and a rift developed between the American approach to Somalia and that of the UN and its aid-giving institutions.

The following January 1989 memo from the head of the UNHCR Branch Office in Mogadishu to headquarters in Geneva outlines the disagreement between the UN and the United States. It was among the documents I found in Geneva. Some excerpts:

Following donor Liaison Committee meeting on 15 January the BO [Branch Office] requested a meeting with the US. ambassador Crigler in an effort to explain and clarify UNHCR's position on the closing of six eastern camps in the north.

Ambassador Crigler addressed the meeting at length speaking with enthusiasm of recent concessions made by the president after recommendations from the council of ministers …

He repeatedly referred to HCR's concerns as “an annoyance” and a “sideshow,” which he felt were the primary issues, i.e. the government's dealings with the rebels …

It is the BO's opinion, however, that the ambassador's optimism is misplaced. All Somalis are aware of the gravity of the situation throughout the country and the need for major changes. The recommendation of senior officials to the president indicate, if nothing else, a government out of control and without real leadership. (The ambassador himself referred to the minister of defense being essentially beyond even the president's control. This is the government on which the ambassador is placing all his hopes.)

The BO tried to explain that fundamental UNHCR principles are at stake as a result of the wanton arming of the Daarood refugees and that to ignore these was tantamount to undermining the integrity and the mandate of the organization. The ambassador minimized this saying that UNHCR's assistance was insignificant. He did, however, reiterate his support for UNHCR's general plan for phasing out in 1990.

The BO's impression was one where the U.S. government, with its back to the wall as a result of congressionally imposed limits on aid to Somalia, is prepared to sacrifice UNHCR principles in an effort to establish itself as a power broker, whose clout is coming under continued question. It is encouraging that other donors are considerably more supportive of UNHCR/WFP 's position. The BO seriously fears it will be compromised by the U.S., which was its own agenda.

I shared the memo with Crigler, who had never seen it before, for his reaction:

“At the moment described in the memo, the refugee issue was NOT important; it
was
a sideshow,” Crigler wrote to me. “I had placed all my emphasis on ‘national reconciliation'—a chimera, of course, but there was no other option that would have reconciled our prime policy objective—maintaining a strategic foothold at Berbera—with the realities of the country's slide into chaos. What did it matter whether the government was (or maybe was not—we weren't sure at the time) arming the Ogaadeen refugees to fight the Isaaq? In my view, it was one of those things you could pretty well expect, like crooks siphoning off food from the refugee feeding centers and selling it in the markets. UNHCR, though, was absolutely consumed by these “violations” of its sacred principles, which as far as I was concerned didn't matter a hill of beans.