An alarming report by the U.N. monitoring group charged with overseeing Somalia warns the government there has been steering weapons to clan-based militias and possibly even al-Shabaab, according to an article by Reuters on Thursday.
Somalia has long been a vortex for arms shipments. Beginning during the Carter administration and continuing through 1989, the Somali regime of Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre received roughly $1 billion in U.S. military and economic aid. About one-third of that aid was devoted to arms transfers. Prior to that, Somalia served as a Soviet client state and received hundreds of millions of dollars worth of subsidized weaponry in the process.
Somalia has been awash with arms for decades. Nothing new there, but the U.N. report, acquired exclusively by Reuters, cites “systematic abuses” by Somalia’s current government, which the monitors say “has allowed the diversion of weapons that Somali authorities purchased after the U.N. Security Council eased an arms embargo on Mogadishu last year.”
The 14-page document recommends reinstating the arms embargo or creating stricter measures for the Somali government, which has made it difficult for weapons inspectors to check stockpiles, Reuters said.
The disturbing report details how portions of weapons shipments emanating from Uganda and Djibouti, including assault rifles, rocket launchers, grenades and ammunition, “could not be accounted for and mentioned errors in accounting for arms sent from Ethiopia.
Further, “monitors said they had identified at least two clan-based ‘centers of gravity’ for arms procurement within Somali government structures that were distributing arms to ‘parallel security forces and clan militias that are not part of the Somali security forces,’ Reuters reported.
One of those militias is within the Abgaal sub-clan of Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who has requested an extension by the U.N. Security Council for the partial lifting of the embargo because his troops need increased amounts and better quality equipment to fight back against the terrorist group al-Shabaab.
“A key adviser to the president, from his Abgaal sub-clan, has been involved in planning weapons deliveries to al-Shabaab leader Sheikh Yusuf Isse … who is also Abgaal,” Reuters quoted the U.N. report.
The U.N. monitors’ report also cited the role played by a Somali minister from the Habar Gedir sub-clan in connection to arms purchases from a “foreign government in the Gulf,” Reuters reported, but the report does not say which Gulf state.
“Indeed, after delivery, some of the weapons were moved to a private location in Mogadishu,” Reuters quoted from the report.
Private arms markets had popped up in Mogadishu, the report said, where weapons diverted from the army had been sold. Mogadishu’s Bakaara Market has long been a bazaar for illegal weapons.
The U.N. Security Council imposed the arms embargo on Somalia in 1992 in an attempt to stop the tide of weapons being funneled to feuding warlords at the time, who a year earlier had ousted Barre and plunged the country into civil war that lasted two decades.