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ABSTRACT
Improving defence accountability and effectiveness is even more difficult when wars are actively underway. Southern Somalia bears considerable resemblance to previous counterinsurgency theatres in Afghanistan and Iraq, and thus considerations of defence assistance should be actively informed by those campaigns. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) intervention force has been critical to seizing much of the towns and terrain now freed from the Islamist Al-Shabaab insurgents. But after 13 years AMISOM’s power is waning. There are vanishingly few instant and game-changing initiatives donors could take quickly to aid the build-up of Somali military forces either at the federal or regional levels. Yet decentralised Federal Member State governments represent important political forces in southern Somalia, and since 2012 efforts have been made to reinforce them. Perhaps the most immediate action that donors could take to aid the build-up of legitimate Somali military forces is to supply and work with, not just the Federal Government’s forces as has long been the case, but also the various military forces maintained by the Federal Member States.
Acknowledgements
My greatest thanks goes to Brigadier Ants Howie, Senior Military Advisor UNPOS and UNSOM 2011-2016, for making this research initially possible. Also I would like to thank all my confidential sources, Paul D. Williams, Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek, and Mary Slatter and Carolyn Carr at HQ New Zealand Defence Force Library.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Rohan Maxwell chapter on Bosnia-Herzegovina in Licklider, ‘New Armies from Old,’ 2014.
2. Robinson, ‘Army Reconstruction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 2003–2009.’
3. Knights, ‘Free Rein: Domestic Security Forces Take over in Iraq.’
4. Robinson, ‘What Explains the Failure of U.S. Army Reconstruction in Afghanistan?’.
5. David Galula, Counterinsurgency War: Theory and Practice, 2006 Prager Security International edition, 51–52, 62, 63, 66, as discussed in Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, 19–20.
6. Dr Rob Johnson conversation 2012; Antonio Giustozzi, The Army of Afghanistan: A Political History of a Fragile Institution, Hurst & Company, London, 2015, 211.
7. Hughes, ‘Moving beyond Rethinking the “State of the State.”’
8. Robinson, ‘What Explains the Failure of U.S. Army Reconstruction in Afghanistan?’ 250.
9. Bruneau and Matei, The Routledge Handbook of Civil-Military Relations Chapter 1 by Thomas C. Bruneau and Chapter 6 by José A. Olmeda; Ouedraogo, ‘Advancing Military Professionalism in Africa.’
10. Howe, Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in African States, 9 analysing Weberian concepts.
11. Robinson, ‘Rising Politicization Risks Splitting Somali National Army’; Giustozzi, The Army of Afghanistan; Robinson, ‘A Forgotten Decade?’; Knights, ‘Free Rein: Domestic Security Forces Take over in Iraq.’
12. Munch, ‘Resolute Support Lite: NATO’s New Mission versus the Political Economy of the Afghan National Security Forces,’ 6.
13. Richard Joseph (1997), Democratisation in Africa after 1989, Comparative Politics, Vol. 29, No. 7.
14. Nicole Ball, ‘The Evolution of the SSR Agenda.’ Day 1 Conference Paper at the Future of SSR E-Conference, May 2009, 3.
15. The term was first used in a speech by Clare Short, ‘Security, development, and conflict prevention’, at the Royal College for Defence Studies, London, 13 May 1998. Saferworld staff coined the term before the speech. Saferworld hosted a seminar, ‘Security Sector Reform in Developing Countries’, the same month, and were heavily involved in developing the overall SSR concept.
16. Ball, ‘The Evolution of the SSR Agenda.’
17. Sedra, ‘Slide to Expediency.’
18. Barnes and Hassan, ‘The Rise and Fall of Mogadishu’s Islamic Courts,’ 154.
19. Anderson, ‘Peacekeepers Fighting a Counterinsurgency Campaign: A Net Assessment of the African Union Mission in Somalia.’
20. Hagmann, Stabilisation, Extraversion and Political Settlements in Somalia, 10–11, 37–45, 48–55; Colin Robinson and Jahara Matisek, Assistance to Locally Appropriate Military Forces in Southern Somalia, 2020, 71.
21. Wulf, ‘Security Sector Reform in Developing and Transitional Countries,’ 6.
22. Bagayoko et al., ‘Hybrid security governance in Africa,’ 9, 20.
23. See Burton, Brian, and John Nagl. ‘Learning as we go: the US army adapts to counterinsurgency in Iraq, July 2004–December 2006.’ Small Wars & Insurgencies 19, no. 3 (2008): 303–327.
24. See descriptions in Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, especially 222 and following.
25. Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War describes the U.S. process in detail.
26. Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, 269.
27. Mockaitis et al., The COIN Conundrum, 62.
28. For the origins of the phrase, which stem from 2005 modifications of Vietnam War historical research, see Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War, 194–95.
29. Hammond, ‘Somalia Rising’.
30. United Nations, Report of the Monitoring Group (S/2014/726), 281; Report of the Monitoring Group, (S/2017/924), 9.
31. Countering Terrorism Centre West Point, ‘A View from the CT Foxhole.’ It should be emphasised that al-Shabaab issues receipts and does not trouble travellers after a single payment is made, in comparison to the approximately 23 other checkpoint extortionists on the Mogadishu-Baidoa route, including fighters reporting to the commander of SNA Brigade 6, Hussein Hoosh (Hawiye/Habir Gedir/Ayr) along the Afgoye to Wanlaweyn sector, recorded in an international contractor study of November 2018.
32. Metz, Somalia: A Country Study, 76; Ibrahim, ‘The Role of the Traditional Somali Model in Peacemaking,’ 63.
33. Williams, Fighting for Peace in Somalia, 183.
34. Marston and Malkasian, Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare, 242, 244.
35. S/2016/919, p. 13, Sec. 21; Paul D. Williams, Fighting for Peace in Somalia, pp. 195–202.
36. Hills, ‘Making Mogadishu Safe: Localization, Policing, and Sustainable Security,’ 32.
37. Report from policing mentor in Hirshabelle, late 2018.
38. Williams, Fighting for Peace in Somalia, 311.
39. Ibid., 310.
40. Ibid., 318.
41. Bryden and Thomas, ‘Somalia’s Troubled Transition: Vision 2016 Revisited,’ 7, 9–14.
42. Williams, ‘AMISOM under Review,’ 43.
43. It was alleged that a pregnant woman and a 13-year-old girl were gang raped. See https://www.garoweonline.com/en/news/somalia/somalia-sna-raped-pregnant-woman-and-girl-in-town-liberated-from-al-shabaab, 16 April 2020. Another example was the killing of eight health workers from Golooley Da’uud village in Middle Shabelle on 27–28 May 2020, probably by SNA fighters under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Abukaar Ali Hiiraane (aka Abukaar ‘Boonow’), commanding 19th Battalion, Brigade 3, Division 27, a member of the Hawiye/Abgaal/Da’uud/Isaaq sub-clan, likely revenge killings linked to an Al-Shabaab IED attack on 26 May 2020.
44. http://life-peace.org/hab/the-gulf-crisis-the-impasse-between-mogadishu-and-the-regions/; International Crisis Group, ‘Somalia and the Gulf Crisis,’ Africa Report No. 260, 5 June 2018.
45. Max Weber, ‘The Pure Types of Legitimate Authority,’ in S.N. Eisenstadt, ‘Max Weber on Charisma and Nation-building,’ Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968, 46, cited in Howe, ‘Ambiguous Order,’ 2005, 9.
46. Robinson and Matisek, ‘Assistance to Locally Appropriate Military Forces in Southern Somalia.’
47. Knights, ‘Free Rein: Domestic Security Forces Take over in Iraq’; Pollack, Arabs at War, 190; see also Pollack, Armies of Sand, 386.
48. Knights, ‘Free Rein: Domestic Security Forces Take over in Iraq’; Kadhim, ‘Rebuilding the Military under Democratic Control: Iraq,’ 138.
49. Confidential source, interview Nairobi, 7 August 2014.
50. See discussion at Robinson, ‘The Somali National Army,’ 2019, 212.
51. Abyrint, ‘Securing Payroll: Somali National Army,’ slide 11.
52. Panel of Experts on Somalia, Midterm Update 2019, 18/32. For what the Panel actually decided to report publicly and formally, the average of three reports, see United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts (S/2019/858), 24–25, 94–96.
53. This calculation is based upon some 250 in the Somali Armed Forces headquarters; 1,050 in the central MOD guard, logistics, and transport battalions, Mogadishu; 1,400 in Brigade 77, the Villa Somalia guard force; 850 in Danab; 480 in the Jazeera training centre (possibly including some ‘ghost soldiers’); 2,250 in the Gorgor Brigade; 180 in the TurkeySom training centre, Mogadishu; 450 in centrally controlled engineer, medical, justice, Arts # Sports Units, and Fiyaamo Barracks, Mogadishu (with, possibly, more ‘ghost soldiers’); as high as 250 for the Navy and Air Force (many of which may be elderly, over retirement age); and 8,276 in the five sectors. See third photo at https://twitter.com/TheVillaSomalia/status/1227602034469298176 for the sector total, 13 February 2020.Those figures total 15,436.
54. United Nations, Report of the Monitoring Group (S/2016/919), Appendix 2.1, p.74.
55. Abyrint, ‘Securing Payroll: Somali National Army,’ slide 35.
56. Steigman, ‘Logistics at the Edge of the Empire: US Army Logistics Trainers in Somalia.’
57. Robinson, ‘The Somali National Army.’
58. London Somalia Conference 2017: Security Pact, 5–7. Accessed at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/london-somalia-conference-2017-security-pact, 6 July 2017.
59. Robinson, ‘The Somali National Army,’ 218.
60. The fourth battalion of an initial set of five graduated reportedly on 6 March 2020, see https://twitter.com/SomaliEmir/status/1235566641058021377 and https://twitter.com/Imran_somali/status/1235508648098619392; another set of five battalions were also planned at the time. Each has around 450 personnel. The potential for creating resentment and fractures within the army is discussed at Colin Robinson, ‘Rising Politicization Risks Splitting Somali National Army,’ IPI Global Observatory, 17 March 2021, accessible at https://theglobalobservatory.org/2021/03/rising-politicization-risks-splitting-somali-national-army/.
61. For the U.S., see Bruton and Williams, ‘Counterinsurgency in Somalia,’ 74; UK see https://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/uk-pledges-further-support-address-humanitarian-needs-caused-drought-somalia. The wider motivations are well explored by Selby, ‘The Myth of Liberal Peacebuilding.’
62. Bureau of Investigative Journalism, ‘Somalia: Reported US Actions 2017,’ accessed at https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/drone-war/data/somalia-reported-us-covert-actions-2017, March 2018.
63. European Union, ‘Joint Reflection Non-Paper on Improving the Support to the Somali Security Sector,’ 8 December 2016; Gegout, Why Europe Intervenes in Africa.
64. It is also reported that platoons of SEAL Team 10 were dispatched to Mogadishu for at least a month in March-April 2021.
65. ‘United States to Partially Restart Programs with Somali National Army.’ From mid-February 2020, Battalion 143 was supplied with food, fuel, and paid stipends.
66. Robinson, ‘The Somali National Army.’
67. Bruton and Williams, ‘Counterinsurgency in Somalia,’ 47–48, 79–80.
68. CSSF Programme Summaries, Somalia Security Sector Reform, versions published 6 November 2019 and 15 November 2018, both accessed via https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/conflict-stability-and-security-fund-programme-summaries, June 2020.
69. See ‘British Forces Somalia,’ The Craftsman: Magazine of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, January 2018, 6–8.
70. See for example ‘UK Completes Training of Somali Battalion,’ https://pathfinderinternational.co.uk/uk-completes-training-of-somali-battalion/, 20 March 2020.
71. CSSF programme summaries for Fiscal Years 2018–19 and 2019–20, as noted above.
72. Sazak and Woods, ‘Thinking Outside the Compound,’ 172–73.
73. Wasuge, ‘Turkey’s Assistance Model in Somalia: Achieving Much With Little,’ 19.
74. Interview with former Somali military official February 2020. At the end of May 2021 the seventh battalion to complete training arrived back in Mogadishu. ‘Dozens of Somali Commandos Complete Military Training in Turkey,’ Somali Guardian, 29 May 2021.
75. International Crisis Group, ‘A Dangerous Gulf in the Horn.’
76. Robinson and Matisek, ‘Assistance to Locally Appropriate Military Forces in Southern Somalia: Bypassing Mogadishu for Local Legitimacy,’ 73.
77. See for example Abdullahi Mohamed Ali, ‘Somalia must save itself from Qatar,’ The National Interest, 22 June 2020, accessed at https://nationalinterest.org/feature/somalia-must-save-itself-qatar-163233, June 2020.
78. See United Nations, Report of the Monitoring Group (S/2015/801), 6; continuing examples, Galkayo S/2017/919, 73; if anything, the trends reported in 2015–17 have only accelerated.
79. Bruton and Williams, ‘Counterinsurgency in Somalia,’ 81–82; confidential source, early 2017.
80. See for example Robert Gates’ lament that ‘too often we tried to build the Afghan force in our own image, not based on a more sustainable indigenous design.’ Robert Gates ‘Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War’, 569. See also Giustozzi, The Army of Afghanistan, 175, 224–5.
81. Robinson, ‘What Explains the Failure of U.S. Army Reconstruction in Afghanistan?,’ 251. U.S. advocacy of a long-service model can actually be traced earlier, to advisors sent to South Korea in the late 1940s, or even beforehand.
82. Williams, ‘Building the Somali National Army,’ 379.
83. Small Arms Survey 2007, quoted in Somali Security and Justice Public Expenditure Review, 29.
84. Robinson, ‘The Somali National Army,’ 6.
85. Robinson and Matisek, ‘Assistance to Locally Appropriate Military Forces in Southern Somalia,’ 75.
86. See for example S6 Workshop Defence Reform Discussion Paper, final version 7 July 2016.
87. Sahan Research focus group discussions in Baidoa, 2018; interview with Commander Sector 43, March 2017.
88. Jahara Matisek, ‘The crisis of American military assistance: strategic dithering and Fabergé Egg armies’, Defense & Security Analysis 34, no. 3 (2018): 267–290.
89. Robinson, ‘Army Reconstruction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 2003–2009,’ 491.
90. The current Chief of Defence Force is one of the clearest examples. Brigadier General Ismail Yussuf Raage ‘Odowaa’ was born, reports indicate, in 1987. On assuming the post of CDF in August 2019 he was aged just 32, and widely reported as the ‘youngest chief of staff in Africa.’ In the British Army, an officer by the age of 32 might be a captain or major.
91. See description at Albrecht and Jackson, ‘Security System Transformation in Sierra Leone 1997–2007,’ 155.
92. Originally numbered Brigades 1, 2, and 3, now after late 2017 designated Brigades 3, 4, and 6. Robinson and Matisek, ‘Assistance to Locally Appropriate Military Forces in Southern Somalia,’ 73–74.
93. James Fergusson, The World’s Most Dangerous Place, Transworld (hardback), 2013, 114.
94. For comparable examples in Liberia and the DR Congo, see International Crisis Group, ‘Liberia: Uneven Progress in Security Sector Reform,’ 2009, annex; and Peace Direct/CRC, ‘Coming Home’, 2011.
95. Mohamoud, ‘State Collapse and Post-Conflict Development,’158–9, 164; for the author’s initial more general discussions on the issue in 2011–12, see Robinson, ‘Where the State is not Strong Enough.’ 148–150.
96. NATO, September 2014. ‘NATO’s Commitment to Afghanistan after 2014’, Backgrounder.
97. Söderberg Kovacs, ‘Bringing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,’205–206; Albrecht and Jackson, “State-building through SSR,’ 97.
98. Conversation with Ambassador John Blaney, U.S. Ambassador to Liberia 2003–05, Arlington, Virginia, 19 June 2011; Office of Security Cooperation (U.S. Embassy Liberia), ‘Memorandum for Record: Briefing Notes on U.S. Office of Security Cooperation – Liberia’, 15 July 2008, 3.
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Colin D. Robinson
Colin D. Robinson is a Senior Researcher with the African Research Institute, Obuda University, Budapest. He has carried out defence reform research and work in East Timor, Somalia, Kenya, Liberia, and Malawi, worked at universities in Liberia and New Zealand, worked three times for the New Zealand defence establishment, in Georgia and Liberia for the United Nations, and with policy research institutes in London and Washington DC.