Turkey, Qatar must up their game in Somalia — fast

By The Star Editorial Board

Last Saturday was a special day for Somalia. It’s a day filled with pride, pomp and circumstance, as senior Somali and Turkish civilian and military officials graced the graduation ceremony of nearly 200 Somali soldiers who had undergone a rigorous, yearlong training at the Turkish military base in the nation’s capital, Mogadishu.

The message of the occasion and the import of the location can’t be overstressed. Although the number of the trained soldiers was dismal, yet the sight of them parading through the Turkish base or placing their hands on the holy Quran to solemnly swear that they will defend their country has lifted the spirit of many Somalis who are fed up with the presence of foreign peacekeepers — some of whom are rapists — on their soil.

In less than a decade, Turkey’s humanitarian and development aid to Somalia have won the hearts and minds of Somalis, eclipsing other countries’ efforts. In 2011, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, accompanied by his wife, Emine, and members of his Cabinet, risked it all and visited Somalia to highlight the plight of the famine-struck nation. Many Somali parents have since named their kids after this much-adored leader.

Still, it’s one thing to pump millions of dollars into the country, it’s quite another thing to energize Somalis to change their country’s security and political trajectories, the barometers for the Horn of Africa nation’s stability or instability.

Minting a few hundred army officers each year is not enough. The country’s enemy No. 1, al Shabab, is already inside Mogadishu, and possibly some of its elements are staffers of government offices. The emphasis, therefore, must be on brains over brawn to crush all anti-peace groups from private security companies to foreign mercenaries to unscrupulous businesspeople to assassins stalking their quarries in major cities.

When Turkey involved itself in Somali affairs, we assumed it was serious about its mission and knew a lot of the country it’s venturing into. But sadly it’s now increasingly and painfully becoming clear that Ankara – and to a lesser extent Qatar, the other country that is running interference for Somalia – isn’t taking the Somali issue as seriously as it should, at least not serious enough to change the status quo in the country.

We believe that Ankara and Doha are unfocused and timorous in their policies toward Somalia, naive about the complexities of the Somali situation and too deferential to the unimaginative, truly artless, national government that would have best been saved by taking it by the hand. Turks — and their allies, Qataris — are, in a word, not firing on all cylinders.

We’re not second-guessing the two countries’ sincerity, but we’re worried that they may have become dangerously complacent when they saw the Somali public’s overwhelming admiration for their humanitarian assistance.

In effect, Somalia’s problem is more of a security nature than it’s an exigency of development or humanitarian, and unless Turkey particularly plays a major role in straightening out the vexatious issue of insecurity in the country, all its other efforts will go down the tubes.

Since 1991 – when Ethiopian-backed warlords toppled Somalia’s last central government and then set off decades of anarchy – many countries have jumped in to heal Somalia’s ills. Some of them have trained thousands of soldiers to rebuild its once strong army – to no avail. The overall security in the country remains fragile. And the foreign-backed militant group of al Shabab still retains the capability to target, with varying degrees of success, almost anywhere from the capital city to the smallest villages.

Somalis know their country’s peace saboteurs – be they the misguided Somalis or foreigners. They know that the militant group of al Shabab, the bane of the nation, is an out-and-out criminal enterprise that has little to do with religion and more with the destructive agendas of the foreign powers that fund it. They know the objective of those who support these outlaws is to keep Somalia in perpetual chaos that stymies all peace initiatives. They know that al Shabab is just an instrument of interference, extortion and bullying.

But Somalis lack a trustworthy ally who can jump through all sorts of hoops to help them wipe out this barbarous group. If Turkey, with its impressive intelligence capability, and Qatar, with its enormous wealth, can’t put their heads together and provide Somalis with the necessary means and support to vanquish their enemies to revamp their country, the two Muslim countries must not unknowingly exacerbate Somalis’ problems.

Foreign countries are already closely monitoring and scrutinizing every single step Turkey and Qatar take inside the Horn of Africa nation to counteract it.

When Turkish companies, for example, were allowed to run the seaport and airport, the United Arab Emirates has gone northward and cut deals with regional administrators there to manage the ports of Berbera and Bossaso.

When the world got wind of Ankara’s intention to establish a base in Mogadishu, again the UAE, the US, the UK and others rushed to Mogadishu and Baledogle to set up military bases in the country. (Somalis believe some of these bases are used to assist al Shabab mafiosi.)

Qatar’s cozy relationship with the nation’s top leadership has also come into sharp focus last year, when four Arab states called on Mogadishu to sever ties with Doha. The Saudi-led bloc, which includes the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, broke off diplomatic relations with Doha and imposed an air, sea and land blockade on the tiny Gulf nation. Somalia rejected to follow suit. Angered by this decision, the United Arab Emirates has linked up with Somali regional administrators and pitted them against the Mogadishu-based central government.

Mogadishu, livid at Abu Dhabi’s interference, earlier this year asked the United Nations Security Council to take action against the Gulf state for violating its sovereignty.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE haven’t concealed their dissatisfaction with Somalia’s strengthening ties with Ankara and Qatar. But Ankara and Doha are not on high alert, at their peril. They’re either woefully clueless about Somalia’s state of affairs and don’t have the slightest notion of what actually ails Somalia or they’re so helpless that they opted to confine themselves to humanitarian and symbolic issues.

Either way, we doubt that Ankara and Doha are receiving accurate intelligence briefings on the urgency of the current Somali situation to formulate a coherent and comprehensive policy. Because they don’t seem to be in a race against time to deliver a country in the middle of many crises. Turkey and Qatar should know that if they don’t pull off a success in the shortest time possible, they risk sparking off more problems in Somalia. Those wishing them — and Somalia — failure are many, and they’re hard at work.

Last year’s intelligence reports that the Turkish military base in Mogadishu was the target of the huge blast that killed more than 500 people, slightly wounded Qatar’s charge d`affaires and severely damaged its Embassy should have jolted Turkish and Qatari policy-makers into the bitter, cold Somali reality.

If Ankara can’t specifically aid the Somali government to move the needle on the capital’s security, it shouldn’t give false hopes to poor Somalis. To help pacify Mogadishu, Ankara must provide Somalia with the necessary equipment and support to out and outfox foreign conspirators and their Somali collaborators whose only goal is to keep the capital city, the symbol of the nation, in a state of lawlessness.

Mogadishu’s insecurity was never because of the lack of enough policemen and soldiers. It’s — and still is — the product of an evident lack of strategic planning and foresight by the nation’s commanders who have a penchant for spending big on new recruits but little on planning and strategy. It would be insane to expect anything other than failure in such a situation. Fighting faceless al Shabab elements inside Mogadishu with armored vehicles and blocked streets is as futile as trying to overpower a merciless robber who’s already holding a gun to your head.

Turkey and Qatar need to be smart, bold, proactive and even assertive in their intervention if they really want to help Somalia eliminate the 5,000 Shabab criminals who’re being fed by Somalis’ enemies. In other words, Ankara and Doha must prod Somalia to get the basics right to drain the swamp of insecurity in the country.

We’re not calling on Turkey and Qatar to take advantage of their aid to Somalia and dictate orders to national leaders, but we’re urging them to carve out an inimitable and impactful niche for themselves by adopting a new, we’re-in-this-together approach whose essence is to forge closer ties with Somalis to bring about a real change in the country.

Somalis are particularly grateful to Turkey and Qatar for their immeasurable support, but we believe that they can play a much bigger and better role. They can’t be unaware of what their rivals — Saudis and the Emirates — are doing in Somalia and in the larger Eastern Africa region, with their killer instincts clearly on display.

Ankara and Doha should remember that they’re the ones that willingly elected to go in to bat for Somalis in their time of need. It is, therefore, essential that they not only inject millions into Somalia’s recovery, but billions more, so as the country secures its capital city, trounces foreign-backed mafiosi and gets a functioning government that can provide services to its citizens.

Adopting a hands-off approach toward Somalia or handling its problems half-heartedly won’t pull Somalia out of the sorry state it’s in. The Somali government is already so puny that it can’t fight foreign-backed terrorists alone. The bulk of its paltry budget of hundreds of millions of dollars is being shelled out on salaries, leaving very small amounts to spend on the burning issue of security.

If Ankara and Doha don’t act in good time, they may one day wake up in a new Somalia overrun by evil forces whose overriding objective is to frustrate Turkey’s and Qatar’s noble mission. Spiteful agents of chaos won’t be happy to see a peaceful and united Somalia. They want to split this beautiful country into cantons, which are at daggers drawn and ruled by venal politicians.

Ankara and Doha shouldn’t allow that to happen under their watch. They must go all out to revive Somalia until it stands on its own feet. Time is, however, of the essence.