The scene: A cramped Westminster committee room, where the ghosts of empire shuffle uneasily in the rafters. Before a panel of MPs whose combined understanding of Somalia could be scrawled on a gin coaster, a young man who was once handed an AK-47 before he could properly tie his shoes recounts the unfathomable. He speaks of bodies in the street, of the particular metallic tang of fear that coats your tongue when you are eight and ordered to shoot. It is raw. It is real. It is exactly the kind of human wreckage that makes our foreign secretary's fingers itch for the signing pen.
For lo, the British government, ever alert to the theatrical cry of 'something must be done,' has announced a fresh dollop of funding for counter-terror operations across the Horn of Africa. The precise figure is, naturally, 'significant' and 'targeted,' which is Whitehall code for 'enough to keep the defence contractors in chardonnay for another fiscal quarter.' The money will, we are assured, go towards 'stabilisation' and 'capacity building.' Translation: more drones, more 'advisors,' and a steady supply of jargon to obscure the fact that every conflict we touch seems to metastasise.
Let us pause to admire the magnificent cognitive dissonance on display. Here is a survivor of a conflict fuelled by Western interventions, Cold War afterbirths, and a global arms trade that treats child soldiers as an unfortunate externality. And here is Britain, solemnly pledging more of the same medicine that made the patient sick in the first place. It is like watching arsonists apply for the position of fire chief.
The ex-child soldier, his voice a fragile wire, describes the terror of night raids, the casual brutality of commanders who were themselves once children with guns. He is not asking for vengeance. He is asking, with a simplicity that shames the entire chamber, for a world where children are allowed to be children. Meanwhile, the committee chairman nods gravely and asks about 'measurable outcomes' and 'exit strategies.' The disconnect is so vast you could land a Chinook in it.
One must not, however, be entirely churlish. The funding comes with a commitment to 'humanitarian support' and 'education programmes.' Who could argue with that? But the cynical corkscrew in my spleen notes that the money for bombs always arrives first, and the money for books follows years later, often siphoned through 'overhead costs' into Swiss accounts. The Horn of Africa is not a problem to be solved. It is a theatre; a stage upon which the great powers rehearse their endless proxy wars. And the audience, huddled in refugee camps, has seen the show before.
The real terror, you see, is not just the memory of a Kalashnikov pressed into childish hands. It is the realisation that the men in suits, with their 'comprehensive strategies' and 'partnership frameworks,' have learned precisely nothing. They believe, with the fervour of the truly thick, that the answer to a failed policy is more of the same. It is a testament to the human capacity for denial that we can sit through testimony of such gut-wrenching horror and then adjourn for a working lunch to discuss 'next steps.'
In the end, the ex-soldier steps down. The MPs shuffle papers. The news cameras pack away. And somewhere in the Ministry of Defence, a civil servant tots up the cost of a single missile and imagines it will buy peace. It will not. It buys only more children with guns, more ghosts for the committee room, and more mornings where the gin cabinet calls my name with siren urgency. The Horn of Africa burns, and Britain offers a cheque written in invisible ink. The terror is not in Mogadishu alone. It is here, in the same room, in the same breath, as we cluck and tut and do it all again.
