The EU’s Risky Policy On Somalia

EDITORIAL

The European Union had in collaboration with IGAD and the UN succeeded in cobbling together the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia in October 2004 following protracted talks held among the country’s warlords in Nairobi, Kenya. The TFG wouldn’t have materialized had the EU not continued funding the Nairobi talks which went on and off for 2 years. EU officers and diplomats in Nairobi were so generous to Somalia’s warlords that they even accepted to pay the latters accommodation bills for staying in 5-star hotels. The TFG’s split into 2 factions immediately after its formation in Kenya, didn’t dissuade the EU from bankrolling the so-called Somalia peace process.

In fact when in mid last year the TFG succumbed to donor pressure and accepted to relocate to Somalia, the EU promised to underwrite all the needs of the new government. The EU fulfilled its promise only to find itself siding with one faction of the TFG headed by President Abdillahi Yusuf and his premier Ali Geedi while alienating the other TFG faction led by Parliament Speaker Sharif Hassan.

As Yusuf and Geedi established themselves in Jowhar, they were soon followed by EU officers and UN agencies which together started spending millions of dollars in support of one TFG faction, with the Italians going the extra mile by openly providing it with weapons. The EU’s highly risky strategy for dealing with Somalia, has only deepened divisions within the TFG.

For the last one year and a half the TFG only existed in name and in the minds of Nairobi-based European Commission’s Somalia policy advisors who often kept misleading Brussels on the nature of the situation on ground so as not to jeopardize the flow of funds.

Last month’s agreement between Abdillahi Yusuf and Sharif Hassan to convene the first meeting of the TFG parliament in the country has apparently raised hopes among the EC Nairobi mafia that their Somalia project might be salvaged. But the deal has also split the Yusuf—Geedi alliance into 2 opposed camps with Geedi unhappy with the decision to hold the parliamentary session in Baidowa rather than at his native town Jowhar. Some EU diplomats and experts spearheaded by the Italians are in fact so desperate for the Baidowa meeting to take place that they openly call for Geedi’s replacement with a man from his own Abgal sub-clan.

This increasingly sectarian turn taken by the EU’s policy on Somalia has only fuelled fears of further unrest in the region. This reckless strategy has also undermined the potentiality of the EU as an honest and neutral mediator of Somalia’s crisis.

The EU should objectively review its current policy on Somalia before committing further plunders that might spoil the whole situation. EU member states must ensure that they do not blindly adopt whatever Italy suggests as should be the EU’s policy options on Somalia.

The EC needs to draw lessons from past externally-led failed attempts at resolving Somalia’s crisis. The TFG can’t work because it is politically not correct. The top-down approach for conflict resolution will never work among Somalis of today. The problem is that in the last 15 years, the people of Somalia have never been allowed to solve their problems on their own. And unless they are left to find their own solution for their own crisis, neither the EU nor IGAD or any other external mediator would be able to help them.

Source: Somaliland Times

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