By Kevin Sieff

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Five years after a U.N.-backed force began to push al-Qaeda-linked militants out of their strongholds, Somalia boasts clear signs of progress. Large swaths of the country have been reclaimed. Streets, beaches and markets have come back to life in once forsaken cities. The United States has promised to rebuild its long-shuttered embassy.

But as Somalia now approaches a critical period, with parliamentary and presidential elections due by August, those gains are showing signs of reversal.

The al-Shabab rebels are “resurgent,” President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said in an interview last week. He and other senior officials acknowledged that Somalia’s government is still unable to provide security or public services to regions that have been liberated. The government must choose between giving its soldiers wages or weapons, he said.

“The Somali government cannot afford to pay the soldiers and at the same time to purchase lethal equipment,” Mohamud said. “This is the dilemma that we have.”

Western officials say they have provided ample aid but that much of it is diverted through corruption, and that the Somali government must do a better job of constructing a security force that fits within its budget.

Somalia has been racked by near-constant conflict for the past quarter-century, resulting in chaos that has provided fertile ground for the rise of the al-Shabab militants in 2005. The United States has since spent more than $2 billion on Somalia, sending military trainers and killing militants in drone strikes, including two al-Shabab commanders. The White House sees the group as one of its top concerns in sub-Saharan Africa, in part because its attacks extend beyond Somalia to civilian targets in neighboring Kenya, such as Nairobi’s upscale Westgate Mall.

African Union forces led an operation to push al-Shabab from Mogadishu in 2011, and went on to launch a series of offensives that prompted the militants to withdraw unilaterally from much of the territory they occupied.

For their part, some foreign donors have grown frustrated with the military’s dysfunction. The United States provides a $100 monthly stipend to 7,000 Somali soldiers — in theory a supplement to their wages, but it is often their only income.

“There’s now very serious rethinking in donor capitals about whether support for the army is appropriate,” said Matt Bryden, a Somalia expert and the founder of Sahan Research, a Nairobi-based research organization. “For the first two to three years of this [Mohamud] administration, there was almost blind support. Now there’s recognition that it’s not going to work.”

Like it did years ago, al-Shabab is again using children to fight on its behalf. Some of them are forcibly recruited. But others join willingly because the extremists are the only ones offering education or jobs.

“We don’t have the resources to provide what [young people] need,” said Mohamud, a former academic and UNICEF employee who was elected in 2012.

Outside his office there were pictures of Somalia’s former leaders, including Mohamed Siad Barre, a military dictator who ruled from 1969 to 1991, when he was overthrown and Somalia disintegrated. His heavy-handed rule inflamed clan and regional rivalries, leading to fractures still visible today.

“When the state collapsed, people got allegiance to their clans,” Mohamud said. “Now, convincing them to realign themselves with the state, handing over their weapons . . . this is what we’re working very hard to do.”

Somalia experts say that while the country improves its security forces, it must simultaneously work on reaching a political settlement with al-Shabab. That is essential because “al-Shabab’s freedom to operate depends in large measure on its ability to exploit long-standing clan dynamics, mistrust among the Somali people and the lack of economic opportunity,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly.

The U.S. government has been reluctant to send troops to Somalia since the “Black Hawk Down” operation that left 18 Americans dead in October 1993. Instead, it has conducted one of its largest drone programs, welcomed by the Somali government.

“I heard that in Pakistan and Afghanistan the experience of the drones was not good,” Mohamud said. “But here they are precise, and we are informed of them before.”

Read more: Somalia’s president says al-Qaeda-backed rebels are ‘resurgent’

Source: Washington post