Somalia’s war on Islamists threatened by pay dispute

Saturday October 10, 2015

Somalia’s inability to pay and even feed its soldiers threatens to undermine years of hard-won military gains against Islamist al Shabaab rebels.

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According to Reuters, no one expects the rebels to regain swathes of territory they lost since African Union and Somali soldiers pushed them out of Mogadishu in 2011, there are fears that years of efforts to reform the army may come undone as unpaid soldiers defect, erect checkpoints to extract bribes, or lose the appetite to fight.

Somalia’s soldiers have not been paid for up to six months.

“Commanding unpaid troops is a problem as your orders fall on deaf ears,” said Colonel Farah, a military commander in southern Somalia who says disgruntled soldiers have set up illegal checkpoints to shake down civilians.

“You cannot ask them to go with you to the front line. They say, ‘What are we dying for?’,” Farah told Reuters.

An unpublished report by a United Nations monitoring group seen by Reuters suggests corruption was one reason for non-payment of wages. In the report, the group accuses senior Somali military commanders of inflating troop numbers and embezzling funds bound for salaries.

The United States and Britain supplement Somali troops’ government salaries with a stipend worth $100 a month.

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