Report: More Aid Reduces Terrorism Threat in African Horn

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The approach by the United States and its allies in the “most failed of states” needs a drastic overhaul says a March 2010 report. Somalia: A New Approach calls for “constructive disengagement” in addressing security and humanitarian concerns across the African Horn region. Signaling the U.S. to boost diplomatic efforts for foreign aid and development, the report says, “an increase in humanitarian and development assistance to Somali—and Yemeni—communities would stand a better chance of reducing the likelihood that al-Qaeda will find fertile ground in Yemen’s refugee camps.”

 
The report is critical of a “tendency to conflate the [humanitarian] relief effort with unpopular international counterterror operations.” According to the report, “The Shabaab has capitalized on the United States’ too-generic categorization of Somali Islamists as extremists. At the same time, U.S. attempts to isolate the Shabaab as a terrorist organization conflict with the reality on the ground, where humanitarian actors engage daily with Shabaab leaders in order to deliver vital relief to the suffering Somali population. U.S. agencies have begun to fear prosecution for providing food to Shabaab controlled territories, and they have suspended funds for humanitarian relief. The humanitarian pipeline has been broken, and the reduction in aid will both worsen the plight of the Somali public and serve to aggravate anti-Western sentiment in Somalia.” 
 
The report was written for the Council on Foreign Relations by Bronwyn E. Bruton, a former program manager on the Africa team of USAID. Describing the Shabaab as “a coalition of fortune,” she says “development initiatives have the potential to rapidly separate pragmatic, locally oriented fundamentalists from their international jihadi counterparts.” By providing young Somalis with alternatives from joining a militia groups, “the goal of disarming, demobilizing, and reintegrating them will be advanced.”