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An Interview with Alex De Waal: “Under UN rules, a country should not normally dispatch troops on a peacekeeping mission into a neighbouring country”

By Ahmed Hirsi

A brief biography: Alex de Waal is Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and a Research Professor at The Fletcher School. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarship and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peacebuilding. He was on the list of Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly’s 27 “brave thinkers” in 2009.
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Ahmed Hirsi: In your new book: “The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa’ you are spot on how pirates cash in on new opportunities that may arise ‘’the pirates cleverly diversified, marketing their services as “consultants” and “experts” on counter-piracy as that business became more lucrative’- could it be argued that cash strapped AMISOM contributing countries employ the same skills in obtaining cash and military hardware from the West? If so how?

Prof Alex De Waal
Prof Alex De Waal

Prof. Alex de Waal: One of the features of the ‘new peacekeeping’ in Africa is that countries have found it possible to put their troops on the international payroll, at the international taxpayers’ expense. Under UN rules, a country should not normally dispatch troops on a peacekeeping mission into a neighbouring country, and neither should peacekeeping troops be mandated to conduct offensive military operations. AMISOM does not follow these rules. This does not mean that what AMISOM and its troop contributors are doing is wrong, but merely that we need to ask the hard questions about their motives, and identify where their economic interests lie. If a ministry of defence is able to obtain all the hard currency needs for its forces by deploying them on peace operations, does this not create a conflict of interest? Does it not create incentives for the troop contributing nation to resist transparency and accountability for its defence budget?

AH: What is your take on the implementation and adoption of Federalism in Somalia?

Prof. De Waal: There is a solid logic to proposing a federal system in Somalia, in that devolution of power to lower levels of government is often a sensible option, especially in a country with weak national institutions. However, the key issue in Somalia is not where the seat of power is located, but the way in which power is exercised. The idea of establishing an executive government, dependent on external flows of finance and external military support, runs contrary to the logic of the Somali political economy, which is based on a very inclusive, highly-efficient societal system that has successfully resisted capture by successive governments since the 1970s. By that I mean the dynamic sectors of the Somali economy: livestock, wage earners spread around the world sending remittances home, the financial and telecoms sectors, and other small-scale entrepreneurial sectors. These work tremendously well. It is tragic that for forty years or more, the formula for government in Somalia has been based on trying to capture, suppress, or work contrary to, these successful societal and economic mechanisms, and impose on them a foreign-designed, foreign-interested executive order.

AH: Apropos Federalism what type of Federalism is best suited for Somalia?

Prof. De Waal: Hence I would advocate a federal system based on the operation of the private sector. The first step in functioning governance in Somalia is for those in charge of political finance–the business class–to organize to support democracy and to withdraw support from those who oppose democracy. A well-organized chamber of commerce would be able to dictate to the politicians how they should behave, and should be able to mediate among the interests of different factions.

AH: With the decline of piracy off the coast of Somalia swamps of illicit fishing vessels from far afield have poured into Somali waters, why is the International Community turning a blind eye on this quandary?

Prof. De Waal: The international community’s interests in Somalia are strategic. It is the source of problems for other parts of the world–maritime piracy, terrorism, refugee flows. If something is a problem for Somalia, but not for the rest of the world, we should not expect the international community to act to solve the problem. A case in point was the famine of 2011: it took many months and many scores of thousands of deaths before the UN declared ‘famine’ and the U.S. administration was ready to relax its restrictions on humanitarian assistance to areas that were under the control of Al-Shabaab. (This is not to exonerate Al-Shabaab for its major role in the famine, but rather to say that an already complicated situation was rendered even more desperate by international policy, stemming from Washington DC).

AH: What do you think could be done to reduce or eliminate the threat posed by Al-shabaab in Somalia and to neighbouring countries?

Prof. De Waal: The international community including the African Union and the African neighbours have backed themselves into a corner over the Al-Shabaab issue. The policy of assassinating Al-Shabaab’s leaders through targeted strikes has proved counter-productive, as each killing has brought to power a more radical leader. At the end of the day, the solution to the war with Al-Shabaab will be political. There will have to be a negotiated settlement. That does not mean that there should be negotiations without preconditions, or that military actions should be abandoned. But the idea of pursuing military action without a political strategy is futile and will fail for sure.

AH: Corruption in Somalia and Africa in general is both endemic and alarming, how come we rarely bear witness into frozen accounts owned by corrupt African leaders here in the West?

Prof. De Waal: The issue of corruption is moving up the international agenda. The reason is because corruption is becoming a major problem for the international community: it has been correctly identified as a driver of instability in many countries. However, it is important to analyse not only corruption, but the political management of corruption. The war in South Sudan broke out, in the short term, because of mishandling of a corrupt political system, not because the system was corrupt–a corrupt system can be stable for quite some time. The tools for tackling corruption on an individual, case-by-case basis exist, but the legality of measures to pursue individuals is often uncertain. For sure, those tools will be sharpened in the coming years. But what is needed also is a deeper analysis of the political functionality of corruption in some cases, and its dysfunction in others.

AH: Somalia is said to be sitting on massive oil and gas reserves buried under its sand, given the lack of trained bureaucrats and functioning institutions, how likely is it that Somalia could fall into the ‘resource curse’ trap that we are witnessing unfold in South Sudan and Nigeria?

Prof. De Waal: The ‘resource curse’ is a danger everywhere. Somalia is unusual among African countries in that its economy is based on trade and wages (including remittances). Properly organized, the business class, and the remitters of money to Somalia, could be an extraordinarily influential voice in Somali politics, and could ensure that the resource curse is minimized or avoided altogether.

Ahmed Hirsi
Email: [email protected]
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Ahmed Hirsi is an economist and a freelance writer based in UK.


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