The United Nations was paying one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups after getting “too close” to it, secret documents disclose. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) had to suspend activities in southern Somalia after being manipulated by al-Shabaab, which is linked to al-Qaeda. In a meeting last year with the UN ambassador Susan Rice, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the special representative for Somalia, said the WFP had been withdrawn “because it had become too reliant upon al-Shabaab and its system of pay-offs”. Al-Shabaab, an Islamic group fighting to overthrow the Somalian government, controls much of south and central Somalia and...