     Hakiim | Sunday, February 04, 2001 - 11:29 pm
Africa's most spectacular failed state remains in pieces eleven years after it fell apart. Most of its "national" institutions in the capital, Mogadishu are little more than rubble in the snipers' alley. Ang ordinary Somalis can well regret it.
Fiercely individualitic they may be, clan-minded, rather than natoin-minded, and glad to be free of both dictatorship and taxes. But there are pockets of hanger but not famine, ang there is plenty food in the market, at prices that all but very poor can afford.
The country has broken into zones. Only the self-proclaimed Somaliland and Puntland autonomy has been achieved so far.
Remarkably, a national economy still axists and internal flourishes. Businessmen, linked by satellite telephones or radios, move food and other goods around, across all political boundaries. The same men are bankers and brokers. They export camels, sheep and goats and import guns, medicines and "khat" the mild amphetamine leaf chewed by Somalis.
The Somali shilling is still in use and, with no government to print more, it retains its value as the notes blacken and disintegtate. Other currencies circulate, and exchange rates remain surprisingly stable nationwide.
For a country cut off from the rest of the world and wiht no national gavernment, this may be the best Somalia can do on its own.
A fresh attempt to bring Somalis together "not the one in Carta" would give them onother opportunity to make speechs and snub each other. Anyway Somalis talk as much as they fight, and plenty of of informal networks allow them to meet, chew khat and argue. If there is a peace formula, it will not go for begging for lack of communication between the factions. The problem is finding it, and creating national structure to suit Somalia's peculiar society. |
