Union to Balkanize Somalia - Newsletter 1
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan's Reconstruction (SIGAR) April 2021, Quarterly Report to Congress contained some interesting points about the conditionality of aid:
Just four months after this report was published:
Own thoughts:
It's clear that the current FGS, decrepit and corrupt will never be able to reform or meaningfully improve. Unlike Afghanistan the international community has legitimate grounds up political projects to turn to instead of the FGS. It is therefore incumbent on all of us within the union to call for the immediate balkanization of Somalia. The creation of the Republic of Somaliland and the Republic of Puntland. External support should be directed towards strengthening the institutions and military capacity of these two new sovereign states. This will prevent total collapse of the Somali territories.
More work is needed on how to stabilize the south with an alternative political project. Perhaps going under UN trusteeship before the full withdrawal of AU troops until maybe later going under the sovereignty and management of the two new Somali Republics. Either way radical surgery is required to save the patient.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan's Reconstruction (SIGAR) April 2021, Quarterly Report to Congress contained some interesting points about the conditionality of aid:
- When donors have a strategic interest in the recipient, Girod argued, the recipient lacks incentives to use the assistance responsibly because donors are less likely to make the aid contingent upon meeting reconstruction goals.
- Strategically driven aid often comes with demands that go unenforced because foreign donors are more interested in keeping the recipient leadership in power to advance the donor’s particular objectives than in enforcing constraints on their assistance.
- In such a scenario, the aid recipient, often correctly, interprets these demands as peripheral to the donor’s strategic interests. This enables the recipient to, in essence, call the donor’s bluff.
- Robert Komer wrote for the RAND Corporation think tank in 1972 when reflecting on the U.S.-Republic of Vietnam relationship: However much policy may call for helping those who help themselves or tying aid to performance, such policies tend to become eroded in execution by the U.S. agencies concerned. This certainly occurred frequently in Vietnam. […] We became their prisoners rather than they ours—the classic trap into which great powers have so often fallen in their relationships with weak allies. The [Government of South Vietnam] used its weakness as leverage on us far more effectively than we used our strength to lever it.
- Where does this leave Afghanistan? According to Girod, post-2001 donors to Afghanistan “lacked leverage […] because strategic interests were at stake.” Because of this—as with Komer’s recollection of Vietnam War dynamics—U.S. officials could not credibly say “reform or else” to Afghanistan’s leadership because the political survival of the recipient regime was viewed as necessary for U.S. strategic interests of preventing a Taliban military victory.
Just four months after this report was published:
Own thoughts:
It's clear that the current FGS, decrepit and corrupt will never be able to reform or meaningfully improve. Unlike Afghanistan the international community has legitimate grounds up political projects to turn to instead of the FGS. It is therefore incumbent on all of us within the union to call for the immediate balkanization of Somalia. The creation of the Republic of Somaliland and the Republic of Puntland. External support should be directed towards strengthening the institutions and military capacity of these two new sovereign states. This will prevent total collapse of the Somali territories.
More work is needed on how to stabilize the south with an alternative political project. Perhaps going under UN trusteeship before the full withdrawal of AU troops until maybe later going under the sovereignty and management of the two new Somali Republics. Either way radical surgery is required to save the patient.
