August 24, 2021 10:35
In his autobiographical book Decision points, in 2010, former US President George W. Bush explained the underlying logic of his decision to invade Afghanistan with these words: “Afghanistan was the supreme nation-building mission. We had liberated the country from a primitive dictatorship, and we had a moral obligation to leave something better behind. We also had a strategic interest in helping the Afghan people to build a free society… because a democratic Afghanistan would have been a hopeful alternative to the vision of the extremists ”.
After twenty years of Western occupation, however, there seem to be very few signs of the “alternative of hope” heralded by Bush, at least judging by the desperate scenes at the Kabul airport, where people jostle to leave the country after the extraordinarily rapid conquest of the country. country accomplished by the Taliban. All this despite the lives and wealth that the West has poured into rebuilding the Afghan institutions and economy, and training and equipping the country’s army and police.
There are important lessons to be learned from the fate of Afghanistan for those engaged in the fight against extremist groups in Somalia, where the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) is carrying out a similar experiment of national construction. For 14 years, African countries, with the support of the West, have deployed troops from Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia to fight the terrorist group Al Shabab (affiliated with Al Qaeda) and to support the weak government of Somalia. Amisom also has civilian and police components whose goal is to help rebuild public institutions.
The birth of Al Shabab
Yet, despite years of effort and an outlay of around $ 900 million a year, the government of Mogadishu remains weak and divided, with little popular legitimacy. Furthermore, even if pushed out of most urban areas, the Islamist insurrection remains dominant in many rural areas and is capable of carrying out devastating attacks in the capital.
Like Afghanistan, Somalia has also experienced some economic growth since Al Shabab was expelled from Mogadishu and many cities (the World Bank estimates annual GDP growth of 5-6 percent in 2015 and 2016). But this is mainly a growth limited to cities, driven by consumption and fueled by the support of donors and remittances from the Somali diaspora.
Employment is concentrated in poorly productive agriculture, where political instability, institutional weakness, inadequate infrastructure, widespread corruption and a difficult business environment contribute to holding back the development and diversification of the private sector. Last year, the country ranked last in the statistical survey Doing business 2020.
The extremist Al Shabab insurrection was born from the UCI, a coalition of Islamic courts
The similarities with Afghanistan don’t end there. In December 2006, following a reckless declaration of holy war against Ethiopia, the Union of Islamic Courts (UCI) was forced out of power by a United States-backed Ethiopian invasion, which ended that. which some have called a six-month “golden age” in which Somalia enjoyed a fleeting glimpse of tranquility.
The UCI, a coalition of Islamic courts backed by the country’s big business leaders, had previously kicked out warlords infamous for their indiscriminate violence and established a strict Taliban-style interpretation of Islamic law, banning music, cinema. and sports, and pressuring women to wear the veil. But their government had also brought a semblance of normality, with fewer guns on the streets of Mogadishu and relative freedom of movement. The airport had reopened and basic needs were guaranteed.
But all this ended with the Ethiopian invasion and the armed wing of the UCI turned into the Al Shabab insurrection, which at the time of the withdrawal of the Ethiopian army in 2009 was raging throughout the country, confining the government to a few blocks in the capital. transitional federal supported by the international community, protected by a few thousand soldiers from Uganda and Burundi.
Builders’ boots
In a recent editorial for the Financial Times, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari stressed that for Africa the lesson from the Afghan debacle is that military strength is not enough to defeat extremists or guarantee the transformation of societies. “While force alone can mitigate terror,” he writes, “its removal can cause the threat itself to return.”
Buhari argues that what Africa needs to eliminate terror “are not swords but plows”, economic cooperation that brings real benefits (for example jobs). “The boots we need in the field are those of the builders, not those of the military.”
Even if it tells a truth, it is not the whole truth. Economic growth, even if generalized, and investments in security for unstable states are perhaps necessary, but not sufficient. A fundamental component of what is lacking in both Afghanistan and Somalia is the legitimacy of the government based on the participation of the population in the creation of the government itself and in the decision-making process, and the possibility of demanding an account of its failures: in short, a real democracy.
One has to ask why, despite the progress, the country still fell into their hands
“The Taliban are inheriting a different country from the one they left 20 years ago,” Democrat Jake Auchincloss, a Marine veteran who led the reconnaissance in Afghanistan, said recently in an interview. “The literacy rate has doubled, infant mortality has halved, access to electricity has tripled or quadrupled, the number of children enrolled in school is ten times that of 20 years ago, and 40 percent of them are little girls. The Taliban are inheriting a country where real progress has been made ”.
The question for Western rulers should not just be whether, as Auchincloss demands, the Taliban will keep this progress, but why, despite that progress, the country has still fallen into their hands.
The idea that there are two options, either to push populations into obedience with fear with the prospect of a possible return to anarchy, or to buy them with economic growth and symbolic participation in the form of a vote in non-credible elections, it is the pillar of international interventions that tend to make peace and to forge relationships with corrupt elites, strengthening them, and doing little to ensure transparency and accountability of their actions. But this assumption has proved wrong in Afghanistan.
As journalist Sarah Chayes wrote in a fierce reflection on the US occupation, “Afghans cannot be expected to take risks on behalf of a government that has been as hostile to their interests as the Taliban are… For twenty ‘ years the US leadership on the ground and in Washington has proved unable to fully understand this simple message ”. In that period, he writes, “clientelism, rampant corruption and a Ponzi scheme disguised as a banking system” flourished.
The Faustian pact that trades real investment in responsible institutions for malleable and adequately Westernized individuals promising progress in security and the economy is short-lived. And when foreign interventions establish, tolerate and protect rulers who manipulate elections and build superficial regimes characterized by impunity, they lay the foundations of fragility rather than stability, becoming part of the problem rather than an instrument of solution.
This is the real lesson of Afghanistan. A lesson that anyone working to help Somalia should pay attention to.
(Translation by Francesco De Lellis)
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