Issue No. 915

Bulldozing US-Somali relations

In early January, bulldozers took to demolishing a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse at Mogadishu's seaport, tearing down parts of the structure in the capital's green zone. Ordered to make way for the Turkish-facilitated expansion of Mogadishu Port, the demolition triggered an immediate backlash from the US and has left American-Somali relations teetering. Amid a broader disengagement of the US from Somalia and much of the international system, the government appears to have handed Washington a gold-plated excuse to leave altogether.

The precise version of events remains contested, but on 7 January, the US State Department released a blistering statement, asserting that the demolition had occurred unilaterally and that 76 tonnes of donated food aid "for vulnerable Somalis" had been unlawfully seized or rendered unusable. The statement further revealed that "any resumption of assistance will be dependent upon the Somali Federal Government taking accountability for its unacceptable actions and taking appropriate remedial steps," and that the Trump government has a "zero-tolerance policy for waste, theft and diversion of life-saving assistance." 

The scandal has implicated Villa Somalia as well, with one official quoted by Agence France-Presse asserting that the warehouse was demolished at the express wishes of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, without notifying donor countries. A leaked WFP letter, meanwhile, stated that while the Ministry of Ports served an eviction notice at the beginning of November, the deputy prime minister promised they would be permitted to keep using the warehouse. However, on 3 January, access was blocked without warning, and demolition began, with WFP commodities and assets still inside —and the federal government had provided no information on the whereabouts of these items. WFP is caught in an unenviable position as requiring host government consent and port access, it is left arguably constrained in its ability to confront Mogadishu.

Somalia's Foreign Ministry has countered that the food aid has remained under the "custody and control of the World Food Programme, including assistance provided by the United States," while the warehouse was torn down as part of ongoing "expansion and repurposing works." But humanitarian officials have dismissed the first claim, with several reports citing that the assistance was rendered unusable by the humid Mogadishu air. The second, though, relates to ongoing expansion work by the Turkish firm Favori at Mogadishu Port, with a new container terminal opened last August. It is improbable that the bete noire of US-Somali relations, Ports Minister Abdulkadir Mohamed Jama, was unaware of, or did not sign off on, the demolition either. The former defence minister has been implicated in a host of corruption scandals and remains a Turkish-Somali go-between, often travelling with the federal president to Ankara to facilitate the flood of bilateral defence and political agreements in the past two years.

Washington, too, has been chomping at the bit to draw down its presence in Somalia, having already gutted USAID in 2025. With traditional American foreign policy upended overnight by the carnival in Washington, Somalia has fallen squarely in the firing line. Not just development assistance, but much of the support for the US-backed Danab, the most effective special forces in Somalia, too, has been rolled back, including stipends and food rations, with only short-term contracts being extended to the contractor Bancroft. Now, attention on Somalia appears to be constricted wholly to xenophobic broadsides by senior American officials, including the president himself, and the weight of US institutions bearing down on the Somali community in Minnesota.

Meanwhile, in Somalia, American foreign policy remains in limbo, caught between its historic presence and the pivot towards a more limited transactionalist and counter-terror focused position. Diversifying security assistance to Somaliland, Puntland, and Jubaland away from Mogadishu has been notable-- and a positive development-- in the past year, but it is similarly evident that the US-- and other 'traditional' powers-- are increasingly divesting from the business of state-building, nor that famine and humanitarian emergencies motivate in the way they once did. And conservative American outlets such as the Daily Wire have reported in recent days that all US foreign assistance will definitively end in May, though the veracity of this is difficult to ascertain. A refusal of the federal government to take responsibility for the aid's apparent looting appears to be the ultimatum for the US.

Any further suspension of US assistance would represent a severe blow to the very nature of the federal government, where well over half of its budget arrives from the largesse of foreign powers. Last year, Washington provided roughly USD 770 million in foreign assistance to Somalia, including over USD 360 million in humanitarian aid and USD 270 million in security and peace support. Much of this is expected to be cut, leaving gaping wounds in the budget and finances of this federal administration, despite repeated fantastical claims of increased tax collection. And bilateral transactionalist pledges of support from Ankara, Doha, and Riyadh alone cannot bridge this eyewatering sum. However, the bellwether for an American presence in south-central Somalia remains their military base at Baledogle, the vast Cold War-era air base that also houses African Union peacekeeping operations.

Mogadishu — having already prostrated itself last year by offering control over the ports in Bosaaso and Berbera — can do little more than urge the Americans to stay, bat away corruption allegations, and generally ignore the treatment of the Somali diaspora. And yet, even though Somalia's humanitarian industry is far from sparkling clean, with the commodification and political economy of permanent hunger well known, the apparent loss of 76 tonnes of vital aid is galling. The WFP has already been forced to repeatedly cut its programmes, despite the Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis showing that roughly 4.4 million people are already facing acute food insecurity in Somalia —IPC Phase 3 or worse. A toxic cocktail of drought, perennial conflict, and high food prices has pushed Somalia's teetering humanitarian situation back into another emergency —and with the country now in the dry 'jilaal' season, which typically exacerbates hunger before the increasingly intermittent rains return. 

If the US does withdraw entirely from Mogadishu, barring some bare bones diplomatic and security presence, it would mark the current end of one of its few remaining 'forever wars', as well as decades of intermittent militarised humanitarianism in Somalia since in the early 1990s. And yet it is hard to feel much– or any– sympathy for this federal administration, which appears to have instructed or allowed the looting of yet another piece of land in the capital and, in recent days, facilitated the same with the Emirati withdrawal from Mogadishu. But if this is to be the end of American intervention in Somalia, it is a sorry tale to end on.

The Somali Wire Team