MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — A large amount of food sent by the U.N. to the Somali capital during last year’s famine never reached the starving people it was intended for, an Associated Press investigation has found.
Some of the World Food Program supplies went to the black market, some to feed livestock. One warehouse full of rations was looted in its entirety by a Somali government official. And across the city, feeding sites handed out far less food than records indicate they should have.
The British government estimates between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in Somalia’s famine, and the U.N. has requested $1.5 billion for Somalia this year, partly to prevent a return of famine.
The World Food Program provides much of Somalia’s food aid, and the U.N. says donations of food and cash saved half a million lives in the second half of last year. In the chaos of a civil war, with the aid effort’s own personnel at mortal risk merely for being associated with the West, orderly, corruption-free food distribution could never be guaranteed.
But AP’s three-month investigation into sites providing hot meals to families in government-controlled Mogadishu reveals various shortcomings, some of which WFP says it is already addressing by changing procedures.
A critical problem was keeping track of supplies: WFP knew how much food was being shipped to the capital, but not how much was being cooked or how many people were showing up to eat it.
Barey Muse, a mother of three, illustrated the frustrations.
“My children are hungry but when I go here for food I must return empty-handed,” she said last month, holding two large bowls outside a feeding site called Hodan.
The WFP had to design a flexible program so that families could use the nearest hot-meal center as they moved between neighborhoods to avoid fighting. The price of flexibility was less control over theft, officials acknowledge.
The AP, along with a network of seven Somali observers who for their safety cannot be identified, conducted more than 60 visits to 13 of the 21 sites where hot meals are prepared. From those visits, interviews with aid recipients and internal reports, it emerges that:
— Somali aid groups would cook and distribute at least 30 percent more food when expecting visits by journalists or WFP officials.
— Some food was trucked directly from an aid agency warehouse to the market to be sold for profit.
— WFP’s independent monitors repeatedly sounded the alarm, saying relatives of Somali aid workers would receive large handouts while others went without. One of their reports spoke of supplies being fed to livestock.
— A Somali government official stole 74 metric tons of food, according to an internal WFP report obtained by AP.
Stefano Porretti, head of WFP’s Somalia program, said feeding programs in Mogadishu were expanded rapidly in emergency conditions, and from October to January, WFP’s independent monitoring was suspended.
“Changes to it (WFP procedures) are now being made,” he said.
He said AP’s research was done in that time frame, and that after AP’s findings were shown to WFP, the U.N. body’s new third-party monitor watched the sites closely for a week.
“The amount of food delivered is what is expected, and it is being cooked,” Porretti said. “There is no diversion at the sites.”
Somalia is perhaps the most dangerous country in the world for aid workers, who face kidnappings, suicide bombings and assassination. The hot meals program amounts to 8 percent of WFP operations in Somalia, and 17 of its staffers and partners, all Somalis, have been killed since 2008. Two were shot dead in December when they stumbled upon a “ghost camp” which was said to have been set up to fool aid agencies into delivering food there.
Islamist insurgents from the group al-Shabab still held part of Mogadishu last July, when the U.N. announced that parts of Somalia were suffering from famine. The hunger crisis was blamed on a combination of drought, warfare and a refusal by the insurgents to grant some aid groups access to areas it controls.
By September, the U.N. said more than 100 children were dying every day. WFP was already working to protect its aid from thieves, partly by delivering hot meals that were difficult to resell. But while WFP knew how much food was being given to the hot meals program, it did not track how many people were receiving it.
When foreigners visit a WFP hot-meals site, the pots are always full and the centers teem with people. Once the visitors leave, things change, as the experience at a feeding center called Hodan illustrates.
During an official visit, Sorrdo, the local aid group acting for WFP, made 20 large pots of porridge for lunch. But a Somali woman with whom the AP kept in touch said that on ordinary days only nine to 13 pot loads were made. WFP said the Hodan site was feeding 7,000 people a day. But when the AP made an unannounced visit last month, a flustered supervisor said only 3,000 were being fed.
Another Somali woman, Halimo Mukhtar, said she sometimes saw supervisors at Hodan selling cart loads of supplies to traders to feed to livestock.
“Why do they say they give us food every day?” asked the mother of six, whose youngest child was strapped to her back. She had received nothing, she said, and her children would be hungry that night unless she went begging.
“The food we share between six people is not even enough for two,” she said. “They sell our food to people to feed animals.”
Another site, Wadajir, sits less than 200 yards (meters) from the airport base where WFP’s international staff stay, and bustles with hundreds of people during official WFP visits. But when the AP visited the site run by Jumbo Peace and Development Organization last month, it was nearly deserted. Somali aid workers there appeared caught off guard. Two workers contradicted each other about how many people were being fed there, claimed a metal pot that could only hold about one bag of food held three bags, and that people usually came at 5 p.m. to be fed.
The site had closed at 1:30 p.m. on the previous day.
An AP translator overheard a worker named Sharif on a frantic phone call to his superior.
“Have they taken pictures?” the manager asked.
“No, no, we stopped them,” said the worker, glancing over nervously as a journalist snapped photos of the almost empty site.
Keep the journalists outside and stop them from taking photos, the manager yelled; he was coming right over.
At another site an observer who tried to take pictures for the AP was immediately ejected, and staff insisted he delete the images. At some sites, an observer reported, cooked food was sold to livestock traders, sometimes directly by staff, and other times by recipients.
Many of the AP witness observations are corroborated in reports by Pbi2, the company that previously carried out independent monitoring for WFP.
A July report obtained by the AP said that at several sites run by Saacid, a Somali aid agency, “you will see good-looking beneficiaries … who give the food to their animals and they are the ones who get served first and they are relatives of management.”
“They load donkey carts of cooked food each day because they receive extra ratios and even sometimes they come back several times while they know that others don’t get their ratio,” the report said.
Tony Burns, Saacid director of operations, said it was “impossible” for cart loads of food to be carried off, though he acknowledged a small amount may have been used as animal feed. He said that once food was given away no one could control what became of it and that the problem has “never risen to serious levels.”
Saacid is the biggest Somali aid agency in the capital. Until this month, it ran 16 out of 21 of WFP’s hot-meal centers for families in partnership with the Danish Refugee Council. Saacid says it left the program because it was “inefficient.”
One Pbi2 report alleges that Saacid brought extra people from another center to bump up the numbers when a WFP delegation visited the Howl-Wadaag center in July. Burns denied such an event ever happened. In Bondere, also run by Saacid, some people got 10 times their ration and others got nothing, the report said. Burns said some favoritism takes place in the lines and the group cannot curb it.
Saacid says that due to complex clan politics, visitors cannot visit sites unannounced. The AP, each time it tried a surprise visit, was quickly told to leave, and staff declined to give any information.
Pbi2′s contract was not renewed in early October for reasons that neither it nor WFP would disclose. The company declined an interview.
Following an August AP report about aid theft, when a journalist photographed convoys of trucks unloading food aid at the market, WFP assigned two investigators to look at the issue of food diversion. They have not yet issued a report.
The Somali government fired and jailed two district commissioners, one of whom was accused of looting the 74 tons of food from the warehouse. Both were later pardoned and freed.
Some critics of the overall aid effort go so far as to claim that it does more harm than good, because the influx of food and the associated looting feed Somalia’s black-market war economy. The powerful in Somali society have little incentive to stop the suffering that brings in the aid — or to stop the violence that prevents it being monitored, said Linda Polman, author of “War Games,” one of a growing number of books critical of aid dispensation in combat zones.
“The solutions are not easy,” said Polman. “Aid organizations have a problem. It is difficult for them to be honest (about theft) because they will be punished. Donations will go down and donor governments will be angry. So it stays a well-kept secret,” she said. “To change this you would have to change the whole aid system.”
Porretti said that WFP did its best to keep donors updated about the risks of working in Somalia.
“Donor governments are updated regularly on the challenges we face working in complex and insecure places like Somalia,” he said. “They are aware that WFP has to weigh these risks carefully against the danger that lives may be lost if we stop providing life-saving food assistance to vulnerable women and children in places like Mogadishu.”
__
Follow Katharine Houreld at http://twitter.com/khoureld
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — One Kenyan had to pay a $24 bribe to a traffic cop for speeding — but then successfully argued that $8 of it should be returned so he could have something left to pay bribes farther down the road.
Another resident said policemen only released her husband from a traffic stop after she hopped out of the car while breastfeeding her child.
“We wasted about 10 min and i bacame furious as it was already past 9pm at nite.i was breastfeeding and came out with my baby still on the breast and without shoes,” she wrote. “The traffic officer was so embarassed.”
Requests for bribes are so frequent that Kenyans like to trade their favorite tips for dealing with them, and now one man fed up with the country’s pervasive corruption has launched a website where people can share their stories.
Already the site has collected more than 300 stories in less than three weeks, said its founder, Anthony Ragui.
A spokesman for Kenya’s government-funded Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission said officials would welcome the information being gathered online at www.ipaidabribe.or.ke.
“The fight against corruption calls for concerted efforts from everyone. This kind of initiative is something that would be most welcomed but it is important the information is carefully analyzed,” said Nicholas Simani. “It is a noble initiative.”
Almost every Kenyan has a bribery story to tell. Some are punchlines to jokes about the country’s corruption. Others, like officials taking bribes to grant licenses to dangerous drivers, have more serious consequences.
Ragui, the website’s founder, returned to his native Kenya in 2007 after working for the American bank Wells Fargo.
“I saw a system that works, where you pay your taxes and get services in return,” said the 37-year-old, his eyes shining behind his glasses. “I came back and everyone was complaining about corruption here. But no one was doing anything about it. So I decided to take the first step.”
Ragui’s website uses software from an Indian site — also called ipaidabribe — that has collected information on more than 15,000 bribes since it was put up in 2010.
The Kenyan site, which Ragui and some web designers are funding themselves, is the first spin-off from the Indian site. But T.R. Raghunandan, who administers the Indian site, said he had had inquiries from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Russia, Nepal and the Philippines.
The software blocks out the names of payers or receivers of bribes to avoid the service being abused. But Ragui hopes the information he collects will identify where and why bribes are most commonly paid.
The site has three main sections. One part collects details on bribes paid. Another part records ways people have avoided paying bribes. And a final part asks readers to send in positive stories about honest officials or services freely and quickly provided.
“I want to show the good as well as the bad,” Ragui said. “I want to create competition between departments and regions, so that leaders want to be rated in the top five and not the bottom five. Not everyone in the system is corrupt.”
Kenya is ranked 154th out of 182 nations by anti-corruption campaigners Transparency International. Requests for bribes are so frequent that Kenyans like to trade their favorite tips for dealing with them.
Environmentalist Brian Harding, a former Nairobi resident, said he kept a stack of tea bags in the car to give out whenever the inevitable request came to buy police ‘a cup of tea.’
But more frequently, the police get their way. Ben Loyseau was stopped last year for speeding although the police speed gun was broken. When the shirtless Loyseau challenged his fine, he said they fined him $5 instead for driving “naked.”
Stories on Ragui’s website also detail police confiscating driving licenses and demanding payment for their return, or describe police asking for money to blame an innocent party for an accident.
“This traffic cop wanted 300 shillings because I hit the car behind me while reversing so as to charge the other guy with the offense,” one entry read.
Ragui says humorous stories often hide the fact that even petty corruption costs lives. Criminals pay bribes to walk free and drivers pay to get their licenses, then cause fatal accidents.
Kenya’s driving test requires participants to drive a short distance, often just few hundred feet (100 meters) and then push a toy car around on a board with their fingers, calling out ‘checking mirrors or ‘indicating’ to instructors.
When Alice Leslie did her test, she said applicants who went through a driving school passed no matter how badly they did but much better drivers who did their tests independently from a driving school failed.
She paid a driving school to book her test but lost control of the car going around a corner and again by hitting a speed bump.
She passed anyway and was told: “You’ll be a good driver one day.”
___
Online:
http://www.ipaidabribe.or.ke
___
Follow Katharine Houreld at http://twitter.com/khoureld
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — One Kenyan had to pay a $24 bribe to a traffic cop for speeding — but then successfully argued that $8 of it should be returned so he could have something left to pay bribes farther down the road.
Another resident said policemen only released her husband from a traffic stop after she hopped out of the car while breastfeeding her child.
“We wasted about 10 min and i bacame furious as it was already past 9pm at nite.i was breastfeeding and came out with my baby still on the breast and without shoes,” she wrote. “The traffic officer was so embarassed.”
Requests for bribes are so frequent that Kenyans like to trade their favorite tips for dealing with them, and now one man fed up with the country’s pervasive corruption has launched a website where people can share their stories.
Already the site has collected more than 300 stories in less than three weeks, said its founder, Anthony Ragui.
A spokesman for Kenya’s government-funded Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission said officials would welcome the information being gathered online at www.ipaidabribe.or.ke.
“The fight against corruption calls for concerted efforts from everyone. This kind of initiative is something that would be most welcomed but it is important the information is carefully analyzed,” said Nicholas Simani. “It is a noble initiative.”
Almost every Kenyan has a bribery story to tell. Some are punchlines to jokes about the country’s corruption. Others, like officials taking bribes to grant licenses to dangerous drivers, have more serious consequences.
Ragui, the website’s founder, returned to his native Kenya in 2007 after working for the American bank Wells Fargo.
“I saw a system that works, where you pay your taxes and get services in return,” said the 37-year-old, his eyes shining behind his glasses. “I came back and everyone was complaining about corruption here. But no one was doing anything about it. So I decided to take the first step.”
Ragui’s website uses software from an Indian site — also called ipaidabribe — that has collected information on more than 15,000 bribes since it was put up in 2010.
The Kenyan site, which Ragui and some web designers are funding themselves, is the first spin-off from the Indian site. But T.R. Raghunandan, who administers the Indian site, said he had had inquiries from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Russia, Nepal and the Philippines.
The software blocks out the names of payers or receivers of bribes to avoid the service being abused. But Ragui hopes the information he collects will identify where and why bribes are most commonly paid.
The site has three main sections. One part collects details on bribes paid. Another part records ways people have avoided paying bribes. And a final part asks readers to send in positive stories about honest officials or services freely and quickly provided.
“I want to show the good as well as the bad,” Ragui said. “I want to create competition between departments and regions, so that leaders want to be rated in the top five and not the bottom five. Not everyone in the system is corrupt.”
Kenya is ranked 154th out of 182 nations by anti-corruption campaigners Transparency International. Requests for bribes are so frequent that Kenyans like to trade their favorite tips for dealing with them.
Environmentalist Brian Harding, a former Nairobi resident, said he kept a stack of tea bags in the car to give out whenever the inevitable request came to buy police ‘a cup of tea.’
But more frequently, the police get their way. Ben Loyseau was stopped last year for speeding although the police speed gun was broken. When the shirtless Loyseau challenged his fine, he said they fined him $5 instead for driving “naked.”
Stories on Ragui’s website also detail police confiscating driving licenses and demanding payment for their return, or describe police asking for money to blame an innocent party for an accident.
“This traffic cop wanted 300 shillings because I hit the car behind me while reversing so as to charge the other guy with the offense,” one entry read.
Ragui says humorous stories often hide the fact that even petty corruption costs lives. Criminals pay bribes to walk free and drivers pay to get their licenses, then cause fatal accidents.
Kenya’s driving test requires participants to drive a short distance, often just few hundred feet (100 meters) and then push a toy car around on a board with their fingers, calling out ‘checking mirrors or ‘indicating’ to instructors.
When Alice Leslie did her test, she said applicants who went through a driving school passed no matter how badly they did but much better drivers who did their tests independently from a driving school failed.
She paid a driving school to book her test but lost control of the car going around a corner and again by hitting a speed bump.
She passed anyway and was told: “You’ll be a good driver one day.”
___
Online:
http://www.ipaidabribe.or.ke
___
Follow Katharine Houreld at http://twitter.com/khoureld
Sudan’s president gave northern troops a “green light” to attack southern forces if provoked, while gunmen from an Arab tribe fired on four U.N. helicopters taking off from a disputed border town at the heart of a new north-south conflict, officials said Wednesday.
Both Sudan’s north and south claim Abyei, a fertile region about the size of Connecticut that is located near several oil fields. Northern tanks and soldiers rolled into the disputed region Saturday following the attack on a northern army convoy Thursday, raising fears the dispute could trigger a return to civil war in Africa’s largest nation.
President Omar al-Bashir said his troops do not need permission from Khartoum to attack southern forces if they feel provoked, the state news agency SUNA said. He accused the U.S. of double standards because he said it protested loudly over the occupation of Abyei by the north, but less loudly over the preceding attack on northern troops and U.N. forces.
President Barack Obama, speaking at a news conference in London, called for the rapid reinforcement of U.N. peacekeeping troops in the Abyei region, from which tens of thousands of civilians have fled over the last week.
Some U.N. peacekeepers remain in Abyei, although U.N. spokeswoman Hua Jiang said U.N. helicopters were fired on as they took off from there late Tuesday. She said about 14 rounds were fired from positions close to the U.N. compound. No helicopters were hit.
Southern Sudan voted in January to secede from the north, and it is scheduled to declare independence in July. But the north’s occupation of Abyei has greatly strained north-south relations. The two regions fought a two-decade-plus civil war that claimed 2 million lives.
Northern aircraft are reported to have made bombing runs in the region, and the U.N. said gunmen set homes ablaze and looted in Abyei town. The accusations were supported by satellite images released Wednesday by the Satellite Sentinel Project, which showed burnt structures north of Abyei town and fires burning in the region.
“These images provide supporting documentary evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Abyei,” said Enough Project Executive Director John C. Bradshaw. “It is imperative that the international community not reward these crimes by allowing the government of Sudan to improve its bargaining position at the negotiating table.”
The group also released pictures of attack planes and Antonov transport craft, which the Sudanese government use as bombers, at an air base within striking distance of Abyei. Charlie Clements, the Harvard Carr Center Executive Director, said the military buildup indicates that the invasion of Abyei was premeditated and well-planned.
The south has called the move into Abyei an act of war but has not yet responded with force. Its army is far weaker than the north’s and it fears endangering its upcoming independence.
The south’s secession vote was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended the north-south civil war. The conflict over Abyei could scuttle the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that promised the January independence referendum and the July 9 independence date.
A referendum on Abyei’s future was supposed to have been held simultaneously, but the two sides could not agree on who was eligible to vote, and Abyei’s referendum wasn’t held. The black African tribe of the Ngok Dinka, which is allied with the south, and the Arab tribe of Misseriya, which is allied with the north, both claim the area.
Jiang, the U.N. spokesman, said that Misseriya tribesmen are moving south into Abyei town, though she did not know how many.
The U.S. has said it would reward al-Bashir’s government for a successful southern independence process by removing Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terror, helping it get relief for its debt burden and normalizing relations with the U.S. Princeton Lyman, Obama’s Special Envoy to Sudan, said this week that those rewards are in jeopardy if the independence process is not completed.
But al-Bashir indicated he was no longer interested in those items.
“We no longer fear the American stick nor do we desire its carrots,” Sudan’s news agency quoted him as saying.
——
Associated Press reporter Mohamed Osman in Khartoum, Sudan contributed to this report.
Erik Prince, whose former company Blackwater Worldwide became synonymous with the use of private U.S. security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has quietly taken on a new role in helping to train troops in lawless Somalia.
Prince is involved in a multimillion-dollar program financed by several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, to mobilize some 2,000 Somali recruits to fight pirates who are terrorizing the African coast, according to a person familiar with the project and an intelligence report seen by The Associated Press.
Prince’s name has surfaced in the Somalia conflict amid the debate over how private security forces should be used in some of the world’s most dangerous spots. Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, became a symbol in Washington of contractors run amok after a series of incidents, including one in 2007 in which its guards were charged with killing 14 civilians in the Iraqi capital.
Though Somali pirates have seized ships flying under various flags, most governments are reluctant to send ground troops to wipe out pirate havens in a nation that has been in near-anarchy for two decades and whose weak U.N.-backed administration is confined to a few neighborhoods of the capital. The forces now being trained are intended to help fill that void. They will also go after a warlord linked to Islamist insurgents, one official said.
In response to requests for an interview with Prince, his spokesman e-mailed a brief statement that the Blackwater founder is interested in “helping Somalia overcome the scourge of piracy” and has advised antipiracy efforts. Spokesman Mark Corallo said Prince has “no financial role” in the project and declined to answer any questions about Prince’s involvement.
Prince’s role revives questions about the use of military contractors. Critics say it could undercut the international community’s effort to train and fund Somali forces to fight al-Qaida-linked Islamist insurgents.
The European Union is training about 2,000 Somali soldiers with U.S. support, and an African Union force of 8,000 Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers is propping up the government.
By introducing contractors, “You could see the privatization of war, with very little accountability to the international community,” said E.J. Hogendoorn, a Nairobi-based analyst with the International Crisis Group think tank. “Who are these private companies accountable to and what prevents them from changing clients when it’s convenient for them?”
Although Hogendoorn’s concerns are shared by some U.S. officials, the director of one private security company welcomed the effort and Prince’s involvement.
“There are 34 nations with naval assets trying to stop piracy and it can only be stopped on land,” said John Burnett, director of Maritime Underwater Security Consultants. “With Prince’s background and rather illustrious reputation, I think it’s quite possible that it might work.”
Prince, now based in the United Arab Emirates, is no longer with Blackwater. He has stoutly defended the company, telling Vanity Fair magazine that “when it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.”
Last month, the AP reported that the Somalia project encompassed training a 1,000-man antipiracy force in Somalia’s northern semiautonomous region of Puntland and presidential guards in Mogadishu, the ruined seaside capital. The story identified Saracen International, a private security company, as being involved, along with a former U.S. ambassador, Pierre Prosper; a senior ex-CIA officer, Michael Shanklin; and an unidentified Muslim donor nation. Prosper and Shanklin confirmed they were working as advisers to the Somali government.
Since then, AP has learned from officials and documents that Prince is involved and that a second 1,000-man antipiracy force is planned for Mogadishu, where insurgents battle poorly equipped government forces.
Lafras Luitingh, the chief operating officer of Beirut-registered Saracen International, said the company had sought to keep the project secret to surprise the pirates. He said his company signed a contract with the Somali government in March. He declined to say whether Prince was involved in the project and said he was not part of Saracen.
Since the signing, a new Somali government has taken office and has appointed a panel to investigate the Saracen deal and others, said Minister of Information Abdulkareem Jama. He said he had not been aware of Prince’s involvement. Separately, the U.N. is quietly investigating whether the Somalia projects have broken the blanket embargo on arms supplies to Somali factions.
The money is moving through a web of international companies, the addresses of which didn’t always check out when the AP sought to verify them.
There are at least three Saracens — the one registered in Lebanon, and two run by Luitingh’s business partner and based in Uganda, where government office employees told the AP the registration papers have disappeared. An AP reporter in Beirut could not find the address Luitingh’s company provided in the Somali contract. Lebanese authorities had no address listed for Saracen in Lebanon and said it is based in the United Arab Emirates.
Afloat Leasing, which owns two ships that have been working with Saracen, said it was Liberian-registered, but an AP reporter didn’t find it at the address given or in Liberian records.
The force’s mission may be more than just curbing piracy.
A former U.S. government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to talk to the media, said that besides targeting pirates, the new force in Puntland will go after a warlord who allegedly supplies weapons to al-Shabab, Somalia’s most feared insurgent group. Luitingh said he had never heard of such a plan.
Luitingh was a founding member of Executive Outcomes, a controversial South African mercenary outfit linked in the 1990s to conflicts in Sierra Leone, Angola and as far away as Papua New Guinea.
He said Saracen will ensure it does not recruit child soldiers, will pay recruits regularly, and will be legally answerable to the Somali government. One group of 150 recruits finished training in November in Puntland and a second batch will soon complete the training course there. Training has not yet begun in Mogadishu.
Saracen has declined to disclose the source of its financing. A person familiar with the project, insisting on anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said Prince is overseeing the antipiracy training.
The intelligence report, in which the United Arab Emirates was identified as a funder and Prince as a participant, was given to the AP on condition its author and agency not be disclosed because the document was confidential. Several Western security officials said in interviews that those findings were trustworthy.
Pirates use long stretches of Somali coastline as a base to prey on busy shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Al-Shabab controls most of south and central Somalia and much of Mogadishu. Western governments fear Somalia could be used as a base for attacks on the West.
Some American officials worry that the Saracen projects encourage the idea that more guns and money — rather than better governance and transparent defense training — can defeat the insurgency. The Somali army has been weakened by defections because a series of corrupt administrations has been incapable of paying its soldiers.
The Somalis being trained by the European Union are supposed to earn $100 a month. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, said Saracen is offering $300 a month during training and $500 a month after graduation.
That could lure the best trained people away from the Somali army, the U.S. official said, and lessen the burden on the government to follow higher standards.
Many nations, including the Gulf states, have offered Somalia assistance. Several Arab nations who gave cash then found that the money could not be accounted for, said Hogendoorn, the Somalia analyst. That could be one reason for Arab rulers to support the Saracen project, he said.
——
AP writers Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Godfrey Olukya in Kampala, Uganda; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Juan Zamorano in Panama City, Panama; Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia; and Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman in Washington contributed to this report.
In this photo released by the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), armored personnel carriers manned by Zambian soldiers serving with the international peacekeeping force patrol the streets of Abyei, Sudan Tuesday, May 24, 2011. Seventy northern Sudanese troops were killed and more than 120 are missing from an attack last week by southern Sudanese forces near the disputed region of Abyei, a Sudanese diplomat said Tuesday. (AP Photo/UNMIS, Stuart Price) EDITORIAL USE ONLY, NO SALES(Credit: AP) 
FILE - In a July, 21, 2008 file photo, Erik Prince, founder and CEO of Blackwater Worldwide is seen at Blackwater's offices in Moyock, N.C. Prince, the controversial U.S. businessman whose company Blackwater Worldwide became synonymous with the use of private security forces in Iraq, has quietly taken on a new role helping to train troops in lawless Somalia. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)(Credit: AP) 