Everything You Have Told Me Is True, page 23
‘I am not allowed to go out of this compound at any time, day or night. The only time I am allowed to leave is when I travel to the airport to fly to Kenya for my holiday. I am the only African member of staff and I have no friends here. I asked my boss to let me work seven days a week because there is no point in having a day off here in Mogadishu, as there is nothing for me to do and nobody for me to talk to.
‘I feel the white people who work here look down on me and, as everybody knows, the Somalis hate most other Africans. Behind our backs, they call us “Bantu” or “slave”. They crack cruel jokes about our wide noses and tight, curly hair. One time, I saw a Somali girl make a face with her lips, somehow turning them inside out so they became very large and took up almost half her face. She also pushed her nose up with her finger, so the nostrils were showing. She did this to mock the way I look.
‘Once, a Somali guest called me over to where he was sitting with his friends, who were also Somalis. He told two jokes. One was about how a Somali made the terrible mistake of opening a bottle of expensive perfume and allowing a “black African”, as he put it, to have a smell. “All the perfume in the bottle disappeared,” the man said. “The African’s nostrils were so big that all the perfume went up his nose as soon as he took his first sniff from the bottle.” The man then pointed at my nose, and fell about laughing.
‘The next joke was just as bad. The man asked his friends why “black African” babies cried so much that even their mothers could not quieten them down by offering them the breast. “It’s because their hair is so wiry and tightly curled that when it grows in for the first time it is agonisingly slow and painful, like having a corkscrew twisted through their scalps.” Once again, the man pointed at me, this time making spiralling motions with his finger as he thrust it near my head. If Somalis make these kinds of jokes about me, imagine what they say about AMISOM.’
* * *
Many Somali businesspeople and politicians, especially those in South Central Somalia, currently stand to profit more from war than peace. In order to keep their business and political models intact, these individuals need to block the state security forces from developing in any meaningful way. Some powerful politicians have stakes in private security companies. Menkhaus argues that some of those who have invested in the security sector have gone so far as to provoke violence themselves: ‘There is no question that at least some Somali non-state security providers have staged insecurity in order to provide protection, and have worked to undermine the revival of an effective central government and security sector.’4
Private security has been good business in Somalia since the government of President Siad Barre collapsed in the early 1990s. International humanitarian agencies working in the country at the time started to hire armed guards to protect their personnel and equipment. In order to avoid embarrassment, some agencies, which officially had a ‘no arms’ policy, listed these expenses under the neutral area of ‘technical support’. This gave rise to the word ‘technical’, the name Somalis give to the pick-up trucks mounted with big weapons that have become such a hallmark of the conflicts in the country. Some are fitted with anti-aircraft guns. During the civil war of the 1990s, I saw civilians with horrific injuries, their bodies blasted apart by clan militias who used anti-aircraft guns for street fighting, firing them horizontally at people rather than pointing them up into the air to shoot at planes.
As laws and regulations are weak or non-existent, some private security companies have significantly overstepped the mark. One example is that of Saracen International, a firm reportedly linked to Lieutenant General Salim Saleh—the half-brother of the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni—and Erik Prince, the founder of the controversial security giant, Blackwater Worldwide, although he denies any links with the company.5
Saracen and its offshoot, Sterling Corporate Services, allegedly sent dozens of South African mercenaries to train an anti-piracy force in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland. This was during the heyday of Somali piracy when small groups of armed men in tiny skiffs threw ladders up the sides of vast tankers, boarded them and seized the crew. The sailors and their vessels were only released once hefty ransoms were paid, often amounting to millions of dollars. UN investigators accused the company of violating the arms embargo on Somalia and documented the abuse and killing of Somali trainees. They alleged that in October 2010 a trainee was beaten, his arms and feet bound behind his back. The UN monitors said he later died from his injuries, although the firm denied this.6 Puntland suspended its contract with the company in 2011, leaving more than 1,000 half-trained and well-armed members of the ‘Puntland Maritime Police Force’ to fend for themselves in a desert camp. It is unclear what happened to them, although locals speculate some joined pirate gangs, clan militias and Al Shabaab.
It is not just private security firms that are doing well out of conflict and instability in Somalia. Many foreign countries have troops based in the country. At its height, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) provided paid roles for 22,000 African troops, much of this funded by the European Union (EU). Soldiers and police officers from Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Zambia have received better pay than they would at home, although in some cases their governments siphoned off a portion of their wages for ‘running costs’. Former police officers from Britain make a good living training the security forces in Somaliland. The US, the EU, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and other foreign powers have sent troops to the country to train and advise the Somali security forces, while other Somalis are sent abroad for military training. It is not unusual to see Western security ‘advisers’ directing Somali government troops as they battle with Al Shabaab.
British spin-doctors, paid for by UK taxpayers, have lived in Villa Somalia with the Somali president and other senior government officials, writing speeches and press briefings. Other communications experts live in shipping containers at the airport designing messages to counter Al Shabaab’s enthusiastic propaganda machine. At least three British PR companies have made sizeable profits providing services for the governments of Somalia and Somaliland, and for Somali businesspeople.
Some years after Al Shabaab established itself as a dominant and enduring force, ‘CVE’ became the buzzword for Somalia. At first I had no idea what it meant, but quickly learned that the acronym, which flew so frequently from the tongues of foreign diplomats, analysts and aid workers, stood for ‘Countering Violent Extremism’. CVE became an essential component of funding applications for projects in Somalia and other countries affected by violent Islamist extremism. The world was suddenly awash with CVE ‘experts’. Critics say the money poured into CVE projects diverted funding from more meaningful, longterm development work. A former British army officer who has worked for years in the Horn of Africa said that, in some cases, the obsession with CVE was hitting the availability of funding for useful projects, such as training young people in marketable skills so that they would have some hope of finding a job instead of drifting into crime or militancy. The latest fashion was CVE and that was what donors were interested in, often engaging in nebulous information campaigns that appeared to have little or no impact on the target population.
Some in Somalia have become very adept at ‘milking the development cow’. A wall surrounding an NGO compound in Hargeisa tells this story very well. One can track the current donor buzzword by reading the list of names painted on the wall, of which all but the most recent have been crossed out with a simple X. ‘Combating female genital mutilation’, ‘Mine clearance’, ‘AIDS awareness charity’, ‘Sustainability and development NGO’, ‘Counter-radicalisation programme’, and the latest one, ‘Tackling illegal migration’. It appeared that whoever was behind these messages was obtaining foreign funding for whatever was the most fashionable development theme at any time. Unscrupulous local NGOs can profit from instability in Somalia, since, for many donors, the country is deemed too risky for them to send in experts to perform proper evaluations and audits.
Of course, there are highly qualified, committed individuals, Somali and non-Somali, who are doing exceptional work in this difficult, dangerous, complex and contradictory environment. I have met UN staff, communications consultants, psychiatrists, security personnel, water engineers and others who are using their impressive skills to make things better for Somalia and its people. Between 2015 and 2018, for instance, the UN and other agencies helped to prevent a devasting drought from becoming a famine.
* * *
Many of the internationals working in the ‘Somalia industry’ are based at Mogadishu International Airport, or ‘MIA’ as it is known locally. There are now two Mogadishus: the one confined inside the airport, the other sprawling outside.
On one visit in 2018, I did not set foot outside the MIA. It felt like another country. It is a vast complex that houses not just one but two airports, as the UN has its own facility, which is out of bounds for most Somalis. Kenyans deal with the tickets, security checks are performed by Ugandan AMISOM troops, and logistics are facilitated by Nepalese. Even the tea is made and sold not by Somalis but by Indians.
At the other airport, all travellers are instructed to deposit their suitcases, bags and purses in long lines on the floor. A Somali appears in a royal blue boiler suit, his face wrapped almost entirely in black cloth, his eyes hidden behind wraparound dark glasses. He is leading a dog. He releases it and points to the line of bags and cases. The dog sniffs each one, darting back and forth. Later, a Turkish dog handler carries out the same procedure on the same bags, which this time are lined up on the tarmac directly outside the plane. All with good reason, as became clear in February 2016, when a laptop bomb exploded aboard Daallo Airlines Flight 159 to Djibouti, blowing a large, jagged hole in the side of the plane and hurling the bomber to his death below. As the aircraft had not yet reached cruising altitude and the cabin was not fully pressurised, the remaining seventy-three passengers and seven crew members survived, and the plane was able to make an emergency landing in Mogadishu. Shortly afterwards, residents of the town of Balad, 30 kilometres north of the capital, told police they had found the body of a man who had fallen from the sky. Daallo’s chief executive, Mohamed Ibrahim Yassin Olad, said the laptop bomber and most of the other passengers on the flight were scheduled to take a Turkish Airlines plane that morning but it had been cancelled due to bad weather.7 Al Shabaab later said it carried out the attack.
The zone around the airport is filled with clusters of container-built embassies, UN compounds and accommodation blocks, like some sort of giant children’s toy. At the British embassy, there is a black door with a number 10 screwed to it, just like the front door of the prime minister’s residence in Downing Street. The East Africans guarding the embassy work for the private security company Bancroft, which has a significant presence in Somalia. In ‘The Village’ restaurant, where internationals, many of whom rarely set foot outside the airport, meet their Somali visitors, the waiters and waitresses come from Kenya. Burly Nigerian AMISOM police stroll around the UN compounds, sweating profusely.
UN and other diplomatic staff, as well as their foreign advisers, spend their evenings at the tukul, a collection of round thatched-roof buildings with tables set out in the open air around them. A good bottle of wine costs $8 and alcohol flows aplenty. Newcomers are eyed up, with burly men in tight T-shirts telling young women about ‘the ratio’ in MIA, whereby males significantly outnumber females.
One of the more bizarre spots at the airport is ‘Chelsea Village’. This is a complex of sand-coloured shipping containers surrounded by a thick, sand-coloured wall. The facility, which can accommodate more than 180 people, advertises itself as ‘your home in the heart of the Mogadishu International Airport zone’ and prides itself on ‘the comfort and safety of our rooms, the quality of our catering and the peace of mind provided by our security’. It charges $175 a night.
Chelsea Village has a gym, also within a shipping container, a bunker in the event of attack and a rooftop area, complete with sun loungers laid out on artificial grass. There is a wooden ‘pirate ship’ for parties and a large outdoor TV screen showing football matches, ice-skating at the Winter Olympics or whatever else might take your fancy.
Each guest has his or her own individual shipping container for a hotel room. These have been ‘carefully crafted by respected Croatian shipbuilders. … We know that you’ll sleep well at Chelsea Village’. Inside each container is a double bed, a very small window, a desk, a chair, a wardrobe, a satellite TV and a compact bathroom. Guests are instructed not to try to adjust the air-conditioning and the rooms are uncomfortably cold compared with the hot air outside.
The containers are arranged in a grid system, separated by avenues, each one with a metal plaque bearing the name of a London street. ‘While we’re not sure which “road” you’ll be staying on at Chelsea Village—Oxford Street possibly or Covent Garden—one thing is for certain: your room will be of an exceptional standard.’ Other ‘roads’ include Harley Street, Regent Street and Savile Row.
In the restaurant, cooks from Asia berate Somali cleaners for failing to take their jobs seriously. Most of the food is imported, despite the abundance of fresh meat, fruit and vegetables available in the markets just beyond the outer walls of the MIA. According to the Village’s website, ‘Our food is imported from one of Europe’s top suppliers who supply 65% of the world’s cruise line industry’.
Chelsea Village says its catering staff are used to working in difficult places. ‘Our chefs are hand-picked not just for their proven ability and passion for cooking but also for their experience in extreme environments. All have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and/or across the African continent. They are used to emerging from a bunker and still getting a three-course meal with at least three options out on the service line in time for lunch or dinner!’8
At about ten o’clock one night in Chelsea Village, I was going to my container to sleep when I came across a Somali woman struggling to manoeuvre two large suitcases down a series of concrete steps. I stopped to help her and asked what she was up to. ‘I cannot stay in this place a moment longer,’ she said. ‘I am a Somali woman and I need fresh air to sleep. That small window in the metal container does not open, and the air-conditioning is freezing. I cannot use that tiny bathroom because I am a good Muslim woman and it is not sharia-compliant.’ I asked her where she was planning to go at this late hour. ‘I will go into the city and find a hotel.’ I suggested she wait until morning, as it would be unwise to move around Mogadishu at this time. ‘I am a Somali and I will manage,’ she said, before disappearing into the black night.
Al Shabaab knows about Chelsea Village and other similar facilities in MIA. ‘That place and others like it, they are there to make money for foreigners, pure and simple. The whole of the airport zone has become a foreign business. It is proof of the true purpose of the UN and other apostate organisations. They are not in Somalia to help Somalis. They are here to help themselves with their fat “danger money” wage packets and their sinful, obsessive consumption of alcohol in our Muslim land. The whole complex based in the MIA is about making money for foreigners while, outside the barricades, in the real Somalia, people are dying of hunger.’
Controversy has surrounded some of the companies which, like Chelsea Village, provide accommodation at MIA. One is Bancroft Global Development (BGD), which provides many services in Somalia, including overseeing mobile clinics and mentoring AMISOM personnel. Its airport accommodation site is called ‘Mogadishu International Campus’. The company says it has also made ‘entrepreneurial investments’ in Somalia, making it ‘one of the country’s largest real estate investors and developers’.9
In 2013, the UN conducted a risk review of BGD as it planned to increase the number of its staff staying in Bancroft accommodation from a handful to more than fifty. The review concluded that there was a ‘high level’ of reputational risk to the UN if it entered into an accommodation facility contract with Bancroft.10 It gave three main reasons for its findings. The first related to concerns about the ownership of the land Bancroft was building on. While not referring to BGD directly, the review noted that ‘in many cases land has been developed without the consent of its owners’. More disturbingly, the UN said it had received anecdotal information that BGD ‘has been using its medical facilities, “clinics”, throughout Mogadishu for the purpose of gathering intelligence. When individuals seek medical assistance they are asked to provide information on the whereabouts of Al Shabaab and of militant activities.’11 Thirdly, the UN expressed ‘concern over the military activities that were being staged from the Bancroft facility’. Bancroft has stated that its personnel act as mentors, that they are officially assigned to troop-contributing countries and that they do not take a direct part in hostilities. The company says that, in most cases, Bancroft personnel do not carry weapons.
An earlier UN risk report, of July 2010, stated that there were indications that BGD was ‘also supporting general operational activities with AMISOM against Al-Shabaab/insurgent entities’. It concluded that BGD posed a ‘potential reputational risk to the United Nations in Somalia’ and that it was ‘certainly possible that BGD is undertaking operational activities against Al-Shabaab/insurgent activities while working in partnership with United Nations entities’. The report stated that the overall level of risk was perceived as ‘HIGH’.12
It is not just well-placed Somali politicians and businesspeople, international relief organisations, conflict experts and foreign security companies who do well out of the situation. Exploiting the existence of Al Shabaab for personal gain also occurs on a very local level, deep inside Somali territory.
