The decision last week by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to approve $150 million in military aid to Yemen is the latest effort to shore up the government there as a war on terror ally. But if victory could be bought, the war would have been over long ago, Shaun Waterman writes for ISN Security Watch.
The Yemen aid package represents a near trebling of US military assistance to the government headed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, which received $67 million last year. It is the latest in a series of efforts undertaken or supported by the US to turn the tide in its global conflict with al-Qaida by shoveling money at the problem.
Last month, an international conference in London pledged $140 million to support an Afghan government effort to reconcile Taliban leaders and reintegrate their foot soldiers.
The effort, run by an Independent National Commission for Peace and Reconciliation headed by former anti-Communist mujahedin leader Sibghatullah Mojadeddi, has in fact been ongoing since 2005, but has been dogged by problems.
The Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics analyzed the Afghan effort – known as the Takhim-e-Solh, or ‘Strengthening Peace,’ program – in a report last month. According to the center, some of those who accepted reintegration “found out that they were not necessarily safe, and in a significant number of cases participants were not treated by international military forces in keeping with the [reintegration] agreement.” Other participants did not receive promised financial support, “creating problems with the credibility of the whole process.”
“As a result,” the center’s report concludes, “trust was lost” and no more than 2,000-3,000 combatants were successfully processed through the program.
Nonetheless, this kind of effort is now seen by US policymakers as part and parcel of any low intensity conflict. So much so that since the end of 2008 it has even merited its own place in the US Army’s vaunted Field Manual – its ‘how to’ guide on military operations.
“Reintegration is the process through which former combatants [and] belligerents […]receive amnesty, reenter civil society, gain sustainable employment, and become contributing members of the local populace,” reads FM 3-07, the section of the manual covering stability operations. “Reintegration […] includes programs to impart marketable skills to demobilized armed forces and groups […] relocation assistance to support their resettlement in civilian communities; basic and vocational education; and assistance in finding employment in local economies.”
The sub-text is clear: We pay, they stop fighting.
The rent-an-insurgent phenomenon
But what is sauce for the goose is obviously sauce for the gander, too. It is not just in Afghanistan – where more than a third of the insurgency’s foot soldiers are estimated to be among the so-called $10-a-day-Taliban – that US enemies are apparently attempting to buy support and loyalty from the local population.
In Somalia, the al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab has been recruiting ethnic Somalis from Kenya to fight with them against the internationally backed transitional government in Mogadishu – offering unemployed youth up to $600 a month, according to the BBC. The same report alleged that the Kenyan military was training other ethnic Somalis to fight with the Mogadishu government against al-Shabab.
The problems with this strategy are manifold and increasingly manifest.
To begin with, efforts to buy support can easily boomerang, as one British diplomat points out.
US and allied backing for reintegration efforts risks alienating Afghans, creating a public perception that the coalition wants “to strike a ‘power-sharing’ deal with the Taliban so we can leave quickly,” wrote Simon Shercliff, a senior official at the British Embassy in Washington.
The US aid to Yemen will be used to buy equipment and training for the country’s counterterrorism forces, reported Reuters, citing unnamed US officials.
But other reports have pointed out that increasing US support for the Saleh government “risks tying the United States more closely to an autocratic ruler whose repression of economic and political grievances is strengthening the terrorists and pushing his impoverished nation toward breakup.”
”Any association with the [Yemeni] regime will only confirm al-Qaida’s narrative, which is that America is only interested in maintaining corrupt and despotic rulers and is not interested in the fate of Arabs and Muslims,” warns Bernard Haykel, a Princeton University professor.
Moreover, he who pays the piper only calls the tune as long as he continues to pay. The ethnic Somalis the BBC interviewed gave up the insurgency and returned to Kenya as soon as al-Shabab stopped paying them.
If it is true, as Afghans are fond of saying, that you cannot buy an Afghan’s friendship, but you can rent it, for how long will the US and its allies keep paying the rent? And what will happen when they stop?
Shaun Waterman is a senior writer and analyst for ISN Security Watch. He is a UK journalist based in Washington, DC, covering homeland and national security.
