Arming Somalia

The United States sent RPGs, machine guns, mortars, and -- in the words of one U.S. official -- "cash in a brown paper bag" to Somalia last spring. Foreign Policy reports on how the shipments took place, and who's not happy about it.

Late in May, as violence consumed the streets of the infamously violent capital city of Mogadishu, Somalia, packages of ammunition, weapons, and cash began arriving from the United States as part of an attempt to help the country's flailing Transitional Federal Government (TFG) stave off collapse. At the time, the Somali government was literally about to fail, reportedly controlling no more than a neighborhood in Mogadishu thanks to a fresh assault by two Islamist insurgent groups: al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam.The contents of those shipments, not previously reported, included 19 tons of ammunition, 48 rifle-propelled grenades, 36 PKM machine guns (a model of the Russian-made Kalashnikov), 12 DShK machine guns (Russian-made heavy artillery weapons), and 10 mortars (the firing apparatus for shells). The shipment was detailed in a letter from a U.S. official to the U.N. Security Council committee set up to oversee the 17-year-old arms embargo on Somalia. The U.S. official, Alejandro D. Wolff, deputy permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations, requested an exemption to the embargo, which was put in place in 1992 at the onset of civil conflict. In a second letter to the Security Council, Wolff explained that $2 million was also being sent to the Somali government "for the immediate procurement of equipment (weapons and ammunition) and logistics support (food, fuel, water, engineering services)."All told, a State Department official admitted at a June 26 news briefing that it shipped "in the neighborhood of 40 tons worth of arms and munitions" to Somalia. "We have also asked the two units that are there, particularly the Ugandans, to provide weapons to the TFG, and we have backfilled the Ugandans for what they have provided to the TFG government," the official told journalists. The cost was "under $10 million." A different State Department official working on Somalia counterterrorism policy told Foreign Policy that of the total amount, the bulk was spent on ammunition, while the air freight bill was $900,000 and $1.25 million was "cash in a brown paper bag."The letters from Wolff explain that the cash was to be transferred to Nairobi, Kenya, and then moved by air to Mogadishu. The money was intended to be spent locally to buy arms, ammunition, and other supplies. (In recent years, AK-47s have sold on the streets of Mogadishu for anywhere from $100 to $600, depending on how heavy the fighting is at the time.) Meanwhile, ammunition was to be shipped to Somalia's capital by air from Entebbe, Uganda. The transfer of the weapons is not described in the letters. However, a regional analyst, who was not authorized to speak on behalf of his affiliation, told FP that the shipments have been arriving in installments, doled out by the African Union peacekeepers who are guarding the Mogadishu airport.The arms transfer was among the new U.S. administration's first moves toward Somalia, a country that many see as a test case for President Barack Obama's counterterrorism policy. The country has been in a state of war for nearly two decades, displacing a quarter of the country's population, with half a million refugees scattered across the region and another 1.5 million displaced internally within Somalia. But in recent months, the East African country has become a growing concern for U.S. officials as local groups, most notably an Islamist faction named al-Shabab -- some of whose leaders are thought to have been trained by al Qaeda -- have expanded their control of the country.
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