Three Somalia-related items from over the past month:
On a dusty street that runs through this town of 80,000 in central Somalia [Galkayo], a cluster of men sit on low stools, lost in their daily ritual -- chewing the green leaves of a mild narcotic called khat. Lethargic and stupefied, they seem oblivious to everything. Only when their cellphones jangle -- a surreal sound in this otherwise-primitive place -- do they snap to life. Soon they've arranged the money transfers [that] they've been waiting for, and lapse back into their somnolent masticating.
Nothing much works in Somalia -- not water or sanitation, not health or education. But despite the absence of state structures (or perhaps because of it), three things function with amazing smoothness: the commerce of khat, an impressive system of cellphone networks, and the business of international money transfers.
Welcome to the paradox that is the failed state of Somalia. This nation of 9 million in the Horn of Africa hasn't had a functioning government since January 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted from power by the country's warlords. Over the past 16 years, a permanent clan conflict has engulfed most of the country. The United States tried to end the chaos in the 1990s, but failed. That "humanitarian intervention" never lived up to its code name, Operation Restore Hope. It's better known by its unfortunate final chapter, Black Hawk Down, the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.
A transitional federal government was formed three years ago and sat in Baidoa, in central-western Somalia. Last December, with external support, it took on the radical Muslims who had run ("governed" is not quite the right word) the southern and central portion of the country for six months. With tacit approval from Washington, which saw the move as part of the "global war on terror," Ethiopian troops forced the Union of Islamic Courts out of Mogadishu. Since then an urban guerrilla war -- complete with roadside explosive devices, mortar fire and suicide bombs -- has been raging in the capital, with no end in sight.
In the past six months, reports of unrest coming out of the Somali capital have been almost as dramatic and monotonous as those from the Iraqi capital, only on a smaller scale. In Mogadishu, a town that reporters have nicknamed "Baghdad-on-the-Sea," 30 people were killed last week, including two prominent journalists. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Somalis have had a compelling reason to flee their capital: It's awash in mayhem.
Yet somehow, despite the bloodshed, a few things work. The import and internal distribution of Catha edulis, or khat, from neighboring Kenya has endured all the "failed state" periods, with the exception of the months between June and December 2006, when the Union of Islamic Courts ran the country. The Islamists banned khat, along with alcohol and cigarettes, sparking protests. Yet it turned out that not only was it possible for Somali men not to chew khat, but all the locals [whom] I spoke to agreed that it was the first peaceful period in Mogadishu since 1991. Women mentioned that their husbands had even started working in the afternoons.
Khat, which is similar to amphetamines in its effects, is a narcotic, but it's not illegal in Somalia. Far be it from me as a humanitarian aid worker to praise the khat industry, but I can't help envying the clockwork precision of its operations. The flights taken by aid organizations like mine have to adjust their schedules repeatedly in response to fighting, but the planes that are used to import khat land with a promptness [that] you can set your watch by. We need armed guards to escort us on our travels, so we have to rent an extra vehicle to transport them. We've never gotten our expensive private car on time. By contrast, the khat's armed escort is always impeccably punctual.
Here is how the khat delivery works. Every day, large cargo flights land from Kenya: three in Mogadishu, two here in Galkayo and one more in the south, in the town of Kismayo. As soon as the planes land in Galkayo, most of the khat is transferred to five vehicles that head north toward Bossaso -- a town on the Gulf of Aden -- under heavily armed guard, as befits a precious cargo. The cars -- Toyota Mark Twos and Toyota Hilux pickups -- are known locally as "missiles" for the speed with which they travel. The distribution schedule means that life grinds to a halt at various hours in various places. The munching starts just after 10 a.m. in Galkayo, around 1 p.m. in Garowe (180 miles to the north), and at 4 p.m. in Bossaso (360 miles to the north, over a very bad road).
Only men chew khat, but retail sales (and, in Galkayo, wholesale as well) are the exclusive task of women. And it's a serious business: a bunch of twigs to satisfy a man for a day costs the equivalent of $10. (Per capita income is roughly $130 a year.) If payment is made in Somali shillings, the banknotes fill a shopping bag.
Khat is a mild drug, but very addictive. The other Somali addiction is cellphones. They're everywhere. But the communications networks aren't uniform. Your tribal affiliation determines your area code. In Galkayo, there are two networks (with no way to call from one to the other) roughly reflecting the clan division that runs through the town from the south, where cell numbers start with a 4, to the north, where they start with a 7.
About 60 miles south of Galkayo, we came across Docol, a village where the only modern feature is a huge mobile-phone tower. The owner of two cellphones (one 4, one 7) told me excitedly that he was expecting a third one soon. I tried to envision the advantages [that] this would bring: Soon many of the 3,000 inhabitants of Docol will be able to call their cousins in Maine and complain -- in real time, at a relatively low cost of 45 cents a minute -- about the lack of latrines in Docol. They'll have the option of sending a text message to friends who emigrated to Sweden, describing the decline of their camel and goat herds because there's no functioning watering hole within a several-hundred-mile radius, or even take a digital picture of the primitive berked, or pond, with its filthy water.
Somalia may have a global wireless connection, but many of its people have nowhere to relieve themselves and no water to drink. According to the World Bank, Somalia has 1.5 more telephones per capita than Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia, but only one-third as many Somalis have access to safe water as their neighbors in those countries.
On an expedition to the field [in order] to survey water and sanitation needs, I went to peek into the dry wells in a camp for displaced former residents of Mogadishu. The women there immediately surrounded me, shaking their empty jerry cans. I didn't need an interpreter; I knew what they wanted.
Later, I met with the head of the camp committee, who complained about the lack of school and health facilities for the displaced. As he gesticulated toward the camp, I noted that he was holding a cellphone better than the one [that] I'd just bought [in order] to accommodate our many clan-correct SIM cards.
It struck me as ironic, because I assumed that this man earned his income in a camp for the displaced. But he set me straight -- most of his income consists of money transfers from his wife, a refugee in Nairobi. Remittances from abroad are in fact the main source of income for countless Somalis, and the transfers work amazingly well. A 2004 World Bank study on Somalia, aptly titled "Anarchy and Invention," reports: "The hawala system, a trust-based money transfer system, used in many Muslim countries, moves US$0.5 [billion to] 1 billion into Somalia every year."
If Somalis can deliver khat on time, establish a nationwide cellphone system to coordinate its delivery, and set up a functioning money-transfer system, why can't they bring water to their taps, and build latrines for their people? It would be too easy to blame these failures on the effects of khat.
Reconstruction and development would require a minimum of unity and reconciliation. But is that possible among Somalis? More than a month ago, 1,300 delegates, clan elders and warlords from various parts of the country came together in Mogadishu. Their reconciliation mega-conference is still going on, but the main effect so far appears to have been a sharp increase in violence in the capital, and a resulting exodus on an order not seen since the days of Barre's dictatorship.
A failed state doesn't fail because of khat-munching alone.
Anna Husarska is senior policy adviser with the International Rescue Committee.
The Aug. 23 story on the Reuters wire was short and to the point:
At least 18 Somalis died this week after a generator-powered well used by thousands of people in a semi-desert region broke down, elders said on Thursday. Some of the dead had drunk contaminated water after the electric-powered pump bringing clean supplies from deep underground stopped working. Others, left with no water at all, died of thirst.
Given the steady flow of reports about serious violence, indeed a guerrilla war, in Mogadishu—roadside bombs; the murder of prominent people; mortars hitting public gatherings, markets, and even hospitals—this infrastructure failure in the Dif district close to the Kenyan border could very easily have been overlooked. Water shortages are nothing new in the Horn of Africa. Besides, the place seems remote and is not on the way to anywhere. Who on earth goes to Dif? Or to Somalia, for that matter?
Indeed, who does go to Somalia? Nowadays, the only visitors to the country's capital are a few daredevils from international humanitarian organizations, and hardly anyone else. Traveling to the northern part of Somalia is dangerous, but when there is a lull in the interclan conflicts, as there is now, it can be done.
A few weeks ago, I visited Gol Gorum, a village 150 miles northeast of Mogadishu, another place that owes its local fame to its borehole (a machine-drilled narrow well), which was once a source of water for roughly 7,000 residents and nomads. As I read the news report from Dif, my day in Gol Gorum appeared in hindsight to predict a disaster in the making. The well there is not yet broken, but it is in serious trouble.
When we arrived at Gol Gorum, a village of a few thousand, we found several-hundred desperate Somalis—locals and nomads alike—standing idly, empty yellow or blue jerry-cans in hand. A few men were squatting under a long-unused water tower; children and camels gathered in the extremely short shadow of an almost empty water tank. Women in dresses as colorful as those worn in Darfur (this colorfulness always strikes me as somehow defying the tragedy that is happening around them) were patiently sitting on the cement tap stands where the faucets are located, covering their faces from the blowing dust.
In its heyday, the Gol Gorum pump produced 4,000 gallons per hour. Now, because the water table is extremely low (due to several very bad rainy seasons), it is a shadow of its former self. In practice, this means that the operator can make the generator extract water for precisely three minutes, during which time he can get 100 gallons pumped. Then he must wait for 57 minutes, until he can pump again for another three minutes. If it were allowed to run, the generator would burn out with no water to pump.
It was obvious that most of the jerry-cans that had been brought that day would remain empty. I had doubts about the survival of some of the skinny camels (they drink 50 gallons at a time when they are thirsty), but I told myself that "somehow" the people would manage. Now I doubt they will.
Local Somali authorities are, of course, completely incapable of solving the problem. The country has not had any government, local or otherwise, for 16 years. The best that can be done for Gol Gorum is for "someone" to drill a new borehole, taking advantage of other components of the water system that are currently idle or semi-idle: generator, tank, and tower. At least Gol Gorum has a trained maintenance team and a well-organized committee overseeing the water distribution, collecting money for it, using that money to buy gas for the generator, and so on.
But drilling a new hole costs around $70,000 (money that must be found from foreign donors) and involves complicated logistics such as transporting the equipment, which is almost impossible, given the primitive state of the infrastructure, the general insecurity, and banditry on the roads—along with piracy at sea—that all hamper commercial and humanitarian transport. This "someone" arranging for the borehole to be drilled must be able to operate securely in Somalia. And in Somalia, the quintessential failed state, security is even scarcer than water.
The elders who informed the Reuters journalist about the broken-down well were speaking from Mogadishu, where they were attending the National Reconciliation Conference that is supposed to deal with precisely these security issues. The conference, which started in mid-July, ended [on] Aug. 30. The only result is that Somalia is becoming increasingly volatile as supporters and opponents of the conference fight an urban guerrilla war. The Union of Islamic Courts, which ran Somalia for six months, until December 2006, refused to take part in the conference, which was organized by the Transitional Federal Government installed with support from the Ethiopian army.
After my visit to Gol Gorum, all international nongovernmental organizations and even the UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, evacuated its staff from the regional capital of Galkayo because of a "credible threat of kidnapping" concerning the whole of the semiautonomous region of Puntland in the northeastern part of Somalia. After two weeks, Garowe, the next big town, 125 miles to the north, and Bossaso, farther north on the Red Sea coast, were declared "OK," but Galkayo remains on the no-go list for NGOs. These evacuations and shutdowns temporarily paralyzed most of the humanitarian work in the area.
Somalia needs water. But it needs peace, too.
Anna Husarska is senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee.
It sounds like just another week in Baghdad. Two journalists are killed, a local peacemaker is assassinated in cold blood, a dignitary escapes a roadside attack by land mine, mortars hit a hospital as leaders discuss the advantages of establishing a Green Zone in the capital. Armed groups attack each other as well as foreign troops who entered the country to eliminate the Islamists accused of harboring Al Qaeda. But this isn’t Baghdad—it’s Mogadishu.
In Somalia, clashes between Islamist-led insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government forces are constant—and underreported. They started in December 2006 when the Union of Islamic Courts (in power in south and central Somalia for just six months) was ousted by the current Transitional Federal Government, with support from the Ethiopian military, and with more than a tacit blessing from the United States.
The U.N. Security Council recently extended the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, and requested [that] the secretary-general “to continue to develop the existing contingency planning for the possible deployment of a United Nations Peacekeeping Operation.” Very tentative language, but the current peacekeeping effort is tentative, too. Last February the United Nations authorized the deployment of an 8,000-strong AU force to Somalia. Six months later only 1,800 peacekeeping troops from Uganda are on the ground. But is there a peace for them to keep? A National Reconciliation Conference, the 13th such effort in a decade, ended [on] Aug. 30 after a month and a half of deliberations in Mogadishu, with no peace and no reconciliation in sight.
On the contrary, mayhem is growing, and the Iraq-style violence is resulting in an Iraq-style internal displacement; the United Nations puts the number of displaced people at 400,000 (from a total population of 7 million). This is almost as high a proportion as in Iraq, where 2 million are internally displaced and the population is 27 million. Because Somalis have nowhere to flee—Ethiopia, the intervening side, is not an option; Kenya closed its border, and the flight across the Red Sea to Yemen is perilous—it is easier to ignore this quagmire internationally, since it has not produced refugees abroad.
One of the favored destinations for the fleeing inhabitants of the Somali capital of Mogadishu is Galkayo, a town [that] I visited recently for an assessment of humanitarian (water and sanitation) needs. It is 300 miles northeast of Mogadishu, and it sits exactly on the border of two clans traditionally at odds: the town’s southern half is Hawirye and the northern half is Darod.
No barbed wire, wall or river separates the two sides. Strangely, it is a range of displaced persons’ settlements that constitutes the buffer zone, because as outsiders—mostly ex-Mogadishu residents—its occupants are pushed toward the outer limit of each part of Galkayo. There are now 42,000 internally displaced persons in the Galkayo region, and July saw more than 1,000 new arrivals.
In the southern part of the town, the camp of Bulo Jawanley is not a typical row of tents but a series of miniscule nests that the newcomers make for themselves in every empty space [that] they can find. The day [that] I visited, five more busloads of people arrived from Mogadishu. Fitting the new arrivals into the already-overcrowded space seemed like trying to squeeze extra bees onto a honeycomb.
What I witnessed in Galkayo is happening all across the country. The U.N. refugee agency expects half a million Somalis to be displaced by the end of 2008. Dealing with such a large displaced population is beyond the capabilities of a weak transitional government, especially since Somalia has not functioned as a state for 16 years.
From a humanitarian point-of-view, the Somali tragedy may have even more dramatic consequences than the Iraqi tragedy, for two reasons. First, owing to the geopolitical situation of Somalia, its people have nowhere to flee and the country is like a pressure cooker. The second reason is that Somalia does not have even the basic infrastructure to fall back on, unlike what Iraq had before the U.S. intervention. This is why the international community must step in.
But who can do it?
- International humanitarian organizations can try to help those who suffer from the combined effect of violence and drought—the EU has just allocated 10 million euros “for victims of continuing insecurity and climatic hazards”—but this will merely treat the symptoms of the crisis, whereas ultimately the solution must be political.
- At the United Nations, another major crisis requires the attention of the Security Council: in Africa, Darfur overshadows Somalia, and there, in Sudan, the U.N. will join forces with the AU to field a new hybrid mission. On Somalia there seems to be full agreement among all sides: the meeting where the continuation of the AU peacekeeping mission was decided lasted just five minutes, from 11:05 a.m. to 11:10 a.m.
- President Bush (the elder) did send a humanitarian intervention to Somalia in late 1992, but it was ill-defined and ill-prepared. Heralded as Operation Restore Hope, it ended up months later in a tragedy known as “Black Hawk Down,” and the U.S. meekly withdrew. In post-9/11 American foreign policy, the Global War on Terror in Somalia was at first outsourced to local warlords, some of whom were supported financially because they were thought to oppose Al Qaeda. Last December’s proxy Ethiopian intervention was aimed at ousting the Islamic Courts but has not as yet achieved its goal. The stakes for the United States are understandably higher in Iraq and Afghanistan, where American troops are on the ground, than in the Horn of Africa.
The current situation is, according to Human Rights Watch, “a human-rights and humanitarian crisis on a scale not seen since the early 1990s.” The quagmire in Somalia is neither easy nor new, but this should not stop the politicians trying to find a solution. Everything and anything must be done, lest another few years in Mogadishu look like the past few years in Baghdad.
Anna Husarska is senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee (www.theIRC.org).
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