I received an email on my recent blogs about remittances and Somalia from one reader, Knut Flottorp, and thought it worth posting on the blog to add to the debate.
The banks will have problems with Somalia no matter what they do, because the so called government is based upon the mandate of foreigners, including the United Nations.
These foreign institutions back this action because of US pressure. The US wants this government in order to take the natural resources (oil and uranium) in the country for their own interests.
Somalia is actually a country that is not that divided.
The clans more or less agree that they want to live peacefully, and it is just a few Muslims that have gathered national coverage and some support from most of the clans. These Muslims are the Al Shabab movement, and it is this movement that the US claim has ties to terrorist organisations.
The level of evidence to support this is incredibly weak however, and so the politics is the real play here. For example, accusing all Somalian groups of being terrorists for a weak link to an extremist group would be like saying that no-one should deal with Labour, the Conservatives or the Liberals in the UK because they may be supporting a terrorist organisation like the IRA.
In Somalia, Puntland in the north is peaceful and works to become a separate country. It has achieved a status to move towards this, and is under consideration by the African Union as an independent country with its own elected government.
The country was never “colonised” but was disputed between the French, Italian and British. They never saw the reason to end the discussion about this area, because of the small value of the land.
Most of the Somali you find in Europe will support the “terrorist” activity because their clan, family and friends have struck some agreement with them and, as you can see, they are predominant Muslims. As long as the foreign office in the European countries are not open to discuss with the majority of people in the country, the banks will end up being unable to serve anyone in the country. Just as most Somalis will have nothing to do with the government established by foreigners (similar to Vidkun Quisling. who did not expand his popular base in Norway during WW2).
The banks are therefore faced with a moral issue as tow whether they should allow funds to be transferred to individuals who are definitely not criminals and who have never had any allegations of that or of terrorist activity, or follow the opinions spoken in the media and enforced by the foreign office that condemns most of a nation as “terrorist” and a threat to their “democratically elected government”.
I have been to Somalia, seen the people, negotiated peace, achieved peace for a while and am pretty fed up with the arrogance exhibited by the rest of the world.
If you base a decision on wrong information, the decision will most likely be wrong.
This is why they have tried prosecuting Somalis in Norway for supporting terrorist groups, just to find that the funds were used for local community projects, hospitals and general aid, and where every penny could be accounted for.
Barclays and HSBC should do the same: follow the money and see what it is used for, because the Somalis will show its clean and, when they can show that it goes to aid and family, make the Americans prove that they are terrorists. When they cannot, they will have to let them go, and their allegation of Al Qaida links will be more and more ridiculous by every lost case.
This is their hard earned money, and of course they keep account of every penny. Denying fund transfer just moves the transfer to US “wire transfer” companies such as Western Union, that do not comply with any EC Anti-Money Laundering regulations, and makes it impossible to trace.
That is the agencies the real terrorists use.
In conclusion, we were all outraged when the IRA exploded bombs in London in the 1980s and 90s, and now we know how much the IRA relied on “tax deductible donations” from the USA.
These are the people who now tell us where to point the gun and how to manage the money flows.
The issue today is that banks move, and money can be used for good and bad but it is not a bank’s role to impose a political sanction or moral judgement. If they do this then the rules will favour those in power, which is usually the countries that do not need aid and claim to “use of money ethically for good“.
When the banks do get involved in such political stances, they simply force the villains to use alternative means of money transfer that avoids sanctions, such as buying arms abroad and paying by Western Union.
We need to get the message across that the banks should not execute the penalties for the state, and that some other institution has to do that.
Of course, banks can report knowledge they gain to the Intelligence Services about who sends the money and where it goes, but it should then be the role of the Intelligence Services to investigate those activities, not the banks.
This means the Intelligence Services should investigate the other means of payment as well, particularly commodity trading using Western Union, Moneygram, Forex and the rest.
We cannot have multiple sets of rules, and the banks’ role is to manage funds and payments and not police the world. If they do try to do this, then they will do more damage than good.