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We Need to Apply Somalia Lessons in Afghanistan - NGOs - Global policy Forum We Need to Apply Somalia Lessons in Afghanistan
By Debarati Guha-Sapir
Alertnet
February 14, 2003
Debarati Guha-Sapir is director of the WHO collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters and professor in the Epidemiology Unit at the University of Louvain School of Public Health in Belgium. She writes that the experience of Somalia in 1994 should have taught the international force in Afghanistan that mixing humanitarian goals with military goals is a recipe for disaster.
The international forces of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan are remodelling their military presence. Winning the hearts and minds of Afghans has now become part of the objective of the 22-nation coalition through the joint civilian-military operation task force. However, its expansion into humanitarian aid could lead to a minefield. It should stop now.
Up to 300 uniformed, armed civil affairs officers will be soon deployed on small nation-building initiatives, so-called "quick impact projects". Humanitarian operators are not pleased. They complain that armed military personnel doubling as development workers confuse local warlords and put everybody in danger. A useful contribution of the military would be to stick to their roles and work at maintaining security, which is disastrous in most regions.
Personally, I find it difficult to understand. Is Somalia in 1994 so far back in time as to have disappeared from our collective memory? Are we really doomed to repeat our past mistakes because of our inability to learn from history?
The debacle in Somalia with the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) should have been a towering lesson for all concerned. Particularly so for those deciding for Afghanistan. UNITAF, like the Coalition Forces, was a non-U.N. military deployment of forces from some 30 countries operating under military, not U.N., command. It started as a manhunt for warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed, the villain of the piece.
Combat troops arrived, including U.S. Marines and Rangers, along with troops from Italy, Belgium, India, Pakistan and many other countries. The wording of their mandate was vague and it was interpreted variously by different contingents. An undefined enemy and the lack of rules of engagement or an exit strategy created confusion among the troops about the reasons for their presence.
The Delta Force, the crack contingent of the U.S. Army, was sent in on December 8, 1994, to be home for Christmas. The whole sorry affair dragged on until October 1995. The situation deteriorated rapidly, with UNITAF forces becoming a third party in the local war, heavily involved in pitched battles in the streets of Mogadishu. Many soldiers died in humiliating circumstances and many more Somalis lost lives.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), under the mistaken impression that UNITAF was there to protect them, became increasingly resentful when that did not happen. Unpopular with the local population and actively resented by the NGOs, UNITAF decided to get involved in community-based humanitarian action to capture the hearts and minds of the locals. It was an unqualified failure.
The NGOs, increasingly irritated by the various military contingents that were freely battling the Somalis behind barbed wire barricades in the streets of Mogadishu, became openly hostile when the "hearts and minds" operation began.
Military contingents competed with NGOs for humanitarian funds. Co-operation came to a virtual standstill and rapidly the U.N. Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) -- the U.N. civil humanitarian co-ordination body) -- the NGOs and the military were all at loggerheads.
PHENOMENALLY EXPENSIVE
Increasingly, it was discovered that having military personnel undertake development work was a phenomenally expensive affair. The costs of keeping one fully trained soldier on the ground varied from about $180,000 a year in Sierra Leone to $500,000 in Kosovo compared with most NGO personnel, who are quasi voluntary.
Expertise in social development activities and dealing with civilians were also an issue. The military were not trained how to hold small children and vaccinate them, and even less able to work under civilian authority.
They were trained to fight and win, as a ranking U.S. Marine officer remarked to me in Mogadishu He was right of course, but nobody listened to him. Nobody listened to experts from the region either, who repeatedly emphasised the need for a local approach to peacemaking rather than the international model of peace conferences with fixed agendas and timings.
After nearly two years of failures, fights, resignations and deaths, the troops left without having arrested Aideed or brought peace to the country. Whatever success story I may have missed in the Somalia military intervention, their performance as humanitarian workers, was not one of them.
Less than 10 years since the Somalia debacle, the Afghanistan situation has unnerving elements of déjà vu. The security situation is unresolved, the military is taking on development projects and Osama Bin Laden is still at large.
So what are the Coalition Forces' chances of doing any better in Afghanistan? Admittedly, they would have an advantage over NGOs in public-works-type projects.
They could probably deliver a bridge to get children to school in the remote and rugged district of Parwan in weeks -- providing they did not have to drop everything for redeployment in the event of war with Iraq.
The NGOs would be slower and less well-organised. They would involve the community and discuss with the village elders -- time-consuming stuff. They would hire local staff and participate in a UN civilian co-ordination process. For them, the process would probably be as important as the end since they are likely to stay long after the army is gone.
RANCOUR, CONTEMPT
The chances that the Coalition Forces', given recent history, would actually be welcomed by the population in their new role, seems remote. By overstepping their boundaries of competence, they are also more likely to chalk up rancour, contempt and a bad press from the expatriate civil society.
The "humanitarian" military option is neither good value for money, nor politically sound. For Afghanistan, things do not look so good in the international crisis arena. The Middle East is boiling over, Ethiopia is heading for a hunger crisis, North Korea is gearing up, Zimbabwe is sliding towards calamity. Ivory Coast already has.
The chances are that Afghanistan will shortly slip off the news altogether. The Afghan foreign minister is concerned, as well he might be. Aid prospects are not encouraging.
Compared with an average of $250 per capita per year provided to East Timor, Kosovo, Bosnia and Rwanda, Afghanistan has $75 this year and $42 for the next five years.
In June 2002, it had less than half of its the $1.8 m pledged. Pledges are notoriously ephemeral, wafting off when a new and more politically exigent crisis arises. We should learn from the Somalia experience and give the army a clear military mandate and defined exit strategy.
We should not mix humanitarian goals with military goals; territorial ground battles between these two protagonists will invariably end in stalemate, loss of face and mutual recriminations.
We should tender public works to commercial engineering firms from the greater Asian region. We should get in policing forces working under civilian, rather than military, command to help improve security. We should firmly support the role of the United Nations as the single co-ordinating body. And we should listen to specialists who know the history, geography and culture of the region.
It is critical for Afghanistan, for the region and, indeed, for us all that we get it as right as we can this time.
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