The Road to Hell (24 page)

On the same day, Hocke wrote a confidential memo to his staff in Mogadishu:

It seems the erroneous belief that there is a third option is influencing many refugees. Their belief that international relief assistance can and will continue as it has in the past is unfortunate. As a matter of principle, the international community's responsibilities have changed with the refugees' changed circumstances. Furthermore, the international community's priorities for humanitarian relief assistance do not include the indefinite maintenance of dependent cases, as in the circumstances I have described above. It
is for these reasons that we plan to phase out relief assistance to Somalia by the middle of 1990.

A month later, Dr. Mohamed Ali Hamud replied to Hocke: “If UNHCR inexorably phases out relief assistance to Somali refugees by 1990, regardless of whether durable solutions are achieved or not, we will consider it as a clear violation of the mandate of the high commissioner's office…. The potential implications of such a hasty assistance pull-out, given the magnitude of the refugee case load, should not be underestimated.”

Whatever those potential implications were, the UN interpreted this as more of a threat than a warning. The letter marked the beginning of a Somali government campaign to thwart any efforts to shut down the refugee programs and to keep the relief coming even as their government was collapsing under rebel assault. The United States and other Western donors had begun to drastically reduce economic and military aid to the Barre regime. The refugee inflows were more important than ever for the government as a source of revenue and, more immediately, as a slush fund so Siyaad could keep his army fed and his most loyal allies happy.

The UN was scared. Aid workers were stuck between the rebels and the government. On the one hand, the Somali government was slipping toward collapse. Siyaad felt abandoned by the international community, represented by the UN and the aid workers. He was also losing control of his troops, who began to attack the aid workers and to loot their homes and vehicles. At the same time, the rebels of the Isaaq-based SNM in the north and the Hawiye-based USC in the south were both aware that the aid projects had been supporting their enemies in the government. The aid community now wanted out. For the first time, there was a concerted effort from the UN and the NGOs to
solve
the refugee problem. They came up with a term for what it was they were now trying to achieve: Durable Solutions.

On the surface, they were trying to solve the problems of the refugees. In reality, the problem they were trying to solve was their own.

Around this time, NRC commissioner Tarrah wrote to UNHCR agreeing that “the time has come to tackle this problem head on.” According to Tarrah, this would require an “increased resource allocation.” More money—one last infusion of cash before the whole mess came tumbling down. Mohamed Abdi Tarrah, an Ogaadeen himself, had gotten rich from his eight years at the helm of the NRC. He was a realist, one of the few in Siyaad's inner circle who wasn't in denial about where the rebellion was leading. And he was one of the few who hadn't invested his wealth outside
the country. Tarrah's money was in Somalia. If the country collapsed, he'd end up broke.

At the same time, Siyaad's emissaries in New York were busy trying to keep the gravy train on track. In January 1989, the head of Somalia's UN delegation, Ambassador Abdillahi Sayeed Osman, wrote UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar:

Excellency, I am directed to write to you on a subject of paramount importance and concern to my government. It relates to the fate and destiny of more than a million refugees whose future happens to be in serious danger in view of the untimely plan of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to termínate relief assistance to refugees by the year 1991.

Later, in February 1989, Somali Prime Minister Mohamed Ali Samatar would visit Pérez de Cuéllar in New York and plead on behalf of the poor refugees. Pérez de Cuéllar took notes at the meeting and reported, “The prime minister explained that while Somalia supported Durable Solutions through voluntary repatriation, he felt that in view of the large number of refugees involved, there was a need to ascertain their wishes.” Samatar then presented the secretary general with the government's five-year plan for dealing with the refugees.

The cables that flew back and forth between UN agencies in Mogadishu and their headquarters in Europe are stark testimony to the failure of the Somali refugee circus. The memos acknowledged that the UN was going to have to bribe the remaining refugees to leave Somalia so they themselves could then leave with as little blood on their hands as possible. Arrangements were made to
purchase
ration cards from the refugees, but the operation had to be kept as confidential as a Wall Street leveraged buyout, and for the same reasons. If word leaked out that the UN was going to buy back ration cards, speculators would start buying them up. In fact, ration cards were traded and sold on the open market like stock options, their price rising and falling with perceived odds that the relief programs would continue.

At the end of 1988, the Mogadishu UNHCR office figured it was going to cost $93 million to buy off the refugees. The program would take two years. Yet another cable to Geneva reiterated the problems, as if they were just being discovered for the first time.

There are many indications that many refugees have quietly returned to Ethiopia over the years to resume nomadic activity, while others have joined the military or moved to towns. At the same time, their family's rations are maintained by other members remaining behind in the camps.

There is no reason for the camp dwellers to decide to change the status quo as long as assistance continues in the camps. Many of the Ogaadeen who are nomadic and unlike some other refugee groups do not have a strong sense of home or place which we would count on to prompt repatriation whenever possible.

Many Somalis who have never lived on the Ethiopian side of the border have acquired ration cards over the years, and a kind of artificial economy has sprung up around the camps dependent on imported food and other assistance to refugees.

The people who read this memo from Mogadishu in 1988 must have had a sense of déjà vu. The problems had been noted over and over. This particular memo also anticipated a problem: “Staff in the [Mogadishu] office are convinced that the government will not cooperate with UNHCR and WFP 's proposals without heavy pressure and support from the donors. . (Not only to provide the funds but to spend them in the manner planned!) As shown in the draft, we believe that the [high commissioner] should consult the key donors… and ask donors to write letters to the government endorsing as specifically as possible the approach we intend to take.” The tone of this and other mémos on the same subject were filled with fear. As Murray Watson had said, UN staff were hostages in Somalia. For years aid workers came and played on the beaches, finished their contracts, and moved on. Now it was ending. It was getting increasingly dangerous—and no one wanted to be the last one out.

T
he countries of the Horn of Africa had a long-standing tradition of sheltering rebel groups trying to overthrow neighboring governments. In that spirit, Sudan helped out the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigrean People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which were trying to overthrow the Mengistu regime in Ethiopia. The Ethiopians returned the favor by supplying and sheltering the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) fighting the Sudanese government. The Ethiopians backed the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) and later the Isaaq-based SNM trying to overthrow Siyaad Barre in Somalia, and Siyaad helped out the Oromo Liberation Front and the Western Somalia Liberation Front (WSLF) in their fights against Ethiopia. This is risky business for the liberation groups, as the SNM found when in April of 1988, Mengistu, whose government was on the verge of collapse, agreed with Siyaad Barre to stop backing rebel groups. The SNM was suddenly homeless, and as they were forced back into Somalia, they weren't about to give up their arms. They came home
fighting. Suddenly the Ogaadeen refugees in Somalia, many of whom had assisted the government in its campaign against the Isaaq, figured it might be best to get out, go back to Ethiopia.

On January 16, 1989, the World Food Program representative in Somalia cabled his headquarters in Rome, apprising them of the situation:

In the course of 1988, there were a number of important developments with regard to the future of Ethiopian refugees in Somalia. Indeed, long before the 3 April ‘88 agreement between Ethiopia and Somalia the refugees had shown by spontaneous return, whether temporary or permanent, and, since Decent ber 1986, by organized repatriation, that the causes of their original flight were for them no longer significant considerations. There is thus a real prospect for solution to this long-standing problem. To achieve this will require careful negotiation and, of course, cooperation of the parties directly concerned as well as the support of the international community …

On 5 October 1988, the high commissioner wrote to the minister of foreign affairs addressing his grave concern over recent events in northwest Somalia as they affected refugees. This letter noted that Ethiopian refugees had been armed and become direct parties in the conflict, thereby ceasing to be refugees. Vehicles and supplies provided as UNHCR assistance had been used for other purposes. International monitoring of the use of assistance is no longer possible and there have been reports of military conscription in refugee camps elsewhere in the country. The high commissioner stated that in these circumstances UNHCR should only continue to assist those refugees who had taken no part in the conflict, and requested the minister's assistance in reestablishing the conditions necessary for the discharge of the UNHCR's responsibilities. No reply has been received to date.

Meanwhile the limited information available from independent sources suggests that the situation has deteriorated further. Refugee camps that had been armed have been attacked by the other party to the conflict with loss of life. On 23 October 1988, the high commissioner addressed a second letter on the subject to the minister and a letter to the Somali Permanent Mission in Geneva on 28 December 1988. In the letter the commissioner stated that he agreed with executives of WFP that in present circumstances UNHCR and WFP were able to assist only those refugees who have not become party to the conflict and to whom access was possible.

Please treat this cable with great discretion,

In the scramble to put things in perspective, the World Food Program also felt it necessary to get real about a number of issues, among them the
CARE food delivery system. The rosy reports of food delivery in the years preceding the chaos did not square with reality in Somalia. Food was everywhere. If CARE was actually delivering on their now $8 million contract, why was so much refugee food still turning up in markets, still in original bags, as far away as Addis Ababa, Ethiopia?
*
This was not food bartered by refugees. A WFP memo of June 12, 1990, coolly states that CARE was “routinely underestimating losses.”

On June 12, 1990, the UNHCR representative, after reviewing some material, placed a hand-written note into the file:

These documents indicate a very depressing state of affairs regarding receipt, transport, storage and delivery of food in Somalia. I'm most surprised by the losses and their size, which seems to be the responsibility of CARE. If indeed as WFP indicates this is a major reason for reduced rations for refugees in April, it is not an acceptable situation. I wonder why UNHCR has not expressed its concern to CARE about this as we pay for the people who would appear to be stealing. After all, ELU/CARE exists precisely to avoid losses and diversions…. Given all of this plus the sheer physical danger of working in Somalia, it would really not surprise me if WFP would not only wish to stop all operations in the northwest but in the south as well.

The note was attached to a casualty report indicating that during the period of April-July 1989, nine ELU/CARE local staff lost their lives and several others were wounded in Somalia. Yet CARE continued its operations, continued collecting its money to carry out a program that was clearly not benefiting anyone. Document after document said that the entire operation was a wasteful fraud. I'd sat on a cold cement floor for two days searching through thousands of papers, and not one of them was a positive independent report about people's lives being saved or of children being provided with a brighter future. Every document and confidential memo over a nine-year period concerned the politics of the relief operation, showing that everyone involved at every level knew it was a politically driven fiasco pushing Somalia to the edge of anarchy.

Yet through all of this, the UN agencies, CARE, and other NGOs stayed in Somalia. They stayed for the contracts. They stayed for the money. They were, in every sense of the word, mercenaries.

*
The report,
A Government at War With Its Own People
, was published in 1989 and provides detailed testimony about government activities in northern Somalia during the 1980s.

*
The use of the term “technical” for improvised battlewagons began in northern Somalia in the early 1980s. The Somali National Movement (SNM) had gotten their hands on some heavy ar tillery but needed to make them mobile. Some engineers in the region had been trained by the Soviet arms manufacturer Tekniko, and they undertook the task of mounting the weapons on Land Cruisers. Early attempts failed, often leading to the destruction of the vehicles themselves. Once they'd worked out the engineering, the vehicles became known as Tekniko vehicles, which quickly became anglicized to “technicals.”

*
The skills I had developed as a food monitor for USAID served me well in subsequent years as a journalist. I retained an eye for spotting U.S.-donated commodities in markets and the connections to trace the lot numbers on bags to find out for which programs the food had been intended.