Issue No. 408

A pivot to the UAE

On Sunday, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud flew to Abu Dhabi for the start of a regional tour designed to demonstrate Somalia’s desire for a more pragmatic and 
diversified foreign policy, one less subservient to the state of Qatar. The trip is the first by the new president and comes just over a month since he was elected. By making the UAE his first official destination, HSM is sending a strong message to the world: he is determined to correct a what has been a major imbalance in Somalia’s foreign policy over the last five years.

Under former President Mohammed Abdullahi Farmaajo and spy chief Fahad Yasin, Somalia effectively became a Qatari satrapy. Qatar’s envoy to Somalia was the de facto ruler. Regular shipments of cash ensured that the regime paid the soldiery and kept them content. Qatari money also funded Farmaajo’s re-election campaign. As long as Qatar could ensure regular payments and Farmaajo and his allies could keep a lid on things, little else mattered from the regime’s narrow survival calculations.

Qatar provided the former ruling party Nabad iyo Nolol (N&N) with a vast slush fund to co-opt, coerce, and control regional governments. In Galmudug, Qatari funds were crucial in eviscerating Ahlu Sunnah wal Jama’ah (ASWJ). The Sufi movement was weakened, divided, and then coerced into agreeing to a shortterm demobilisation on very bad terms. After a few months of paying for the demobilisation of 5,000 fighters, Doha stalled the project and said it could only pay for 2,500 men. The fallout from the botched demobilisation saw many soldiers of ASWJ origin drift back to their clans. The peace pact between ASWJ and the regional government subsequently unravelled.

The only concrete developmental investment by Qatar was the construction of the Mogadishu-Afgooye Highway (earmarked to cost $200 million). The project, being implemented by a Turkish engineering firm, has been dogged by insecurity and staff targeted by Al-Shabaab. The tarmacking of the road will make the sowing of IEDs difficult, besides increasing the speed and mobility of the army. This explains why it has been repeatedly targeted by Al-Shabaab.

HSM is being accompanied on his trip to the UAE by his intelligence chief, Mahad Salad, and his National Security Adviser, Hussein Sheikh Ali. The aim is to introduce Mahad and Hussein to UAE security and intelligence officials. The Emirati re-engagement in the Somali security sector will take time. Abu Dhabi’s security support – mainly training of special forces and providing stipends for the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) – was disrupted in 2018, after a row triggered by seizure of a nearly $10 million cash consignment meant for paying the troops. The UAE halted the training and mentoring of Somali National Army commandos and withdrew from the General Gordon Academy outside of Mogadishu. The base was then looted. The UAE then cut off all security support to the federal government and its forces, though it continued to bankroll the PMPF.

HSM’s swift recalibration is also a matter of survival. The Somali state is bankrupt. For two years, it has been surviving on Qatari largesse after Europe suspended budgetary support. By the time Farmaajo left office last month, there was barely enough money in its coffers to sustain the government beyond two months, according to insiders.

Since coming into office, HSM has been discreetly sending out urgent messages of appeal to the international community. The Europeans are well-disposed to the government but worry about the HSM government’s past record of sleaze and corruption. Many EU donors will likely demand to see concrete steps of better systems of accountability and transparency being put in place before committing funds.

The most urgent task facing the new Somali government is the payment of salaries for soldiers and police offices. Experts say two consecutive months of non-payment could foment a mutiny. The precise amount necessary to pay for for troop sustainment and upkeep is unknown, but Sahan analysts suggest HSM needs roughly $6 million a month to prevent a catastrophic collapse of the security structure. More than a gesture of repudiating Qatar, the trip to Abu Dhabi may be a form of an emergency appeal to the Emiratis for help.

Sources say Qatar has halted all its engagements and support to the Somali government, despite the fact that he HSM administration has not made any overt criticism of Qatar. The new president actually met the Qatari envoy. The Qatari foreign minister was invited to the inauguration ceremony on 9 June. Yet Qatar appears to have chafed at statements by Somali officials indicating that the new government is intent on rebalancing ties and constructing mutually beneficial relations with all states. The aim, it would seem, is not to simply replace Qatar with the UAE – to exchange one form of patron-client relations with another. Instead, it is to have a more balanced foreign policy and a more diversified portfolio – the international relations version of having a diversified stock portfolio rather than the all-eggs-in-one-basket approach. This will be a tough proposition, but doable. But it will require frank and open engagement and dialogue between Mogadishu and Abu Dhabi.

Supporters of HSM say he is astute and has seen the negative and destabilising impact of subservience to the Gulf. What he wants is a new relationship based on mutuality and respect, they say. Will the UAE grant HSM that wish? Is Abu Dhabi keen to build that kind of a relationship with Somalia? The answer to that question is what HSM and his delegation will be seeking to answer in Abu Dhabi this week.

The Somali Wire Team