How one man lifted Somalia's economy

[dhagdhag]

IT WAS 1994. Somalia, where it was my fate at that time to be U.S. ambassador and special envoy, had hit rock bottom politically and economically.



Its last government had been forced out of power in January, 1991, after considerable bloody fighting. What passed for order in the country was assured, more or less, by some 18,000 United Nations forces, including troops from Pakistan, India, Egypt, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. President Clinton had withdrawn the Americans after the "Black Hawk Down" incident in Mogadishu in 1993.

The Somalis themselves were divided into competing groups, lined up in their inimitable fashion on the basis of clan, sub-clan, and sub-sub-clan, with warlords, virtually all heavily armed, torn between the competing joys of hunting each other and hunting us - the Americans, the international forces.

Needless to say, economic activity in Somalia, apart from efforts to subsist on farming, herding, and grabbing humanitarian food aid supplies, had ground down to zero. My primary preoccupation as U.S. ambassador was trying to make peace among the warring groups. Secondarily, however, I could not be unaware of the economic collapse of the place, the misery of its people, and the drastic lack of prospects for the future.

Into my office one day walked a middle-aged businessman in a suit, the managing director of Dole Food in the Middle East. He was a naturalized American, the son of an Iranian diplomat. He introduced himself as Mehrdad Radseresht and said he was there to talk with me about the possibility of reviving Somali banana cultivation and exports. In Somalia's pre-chaotic period, the country had exported bananas and camels - a story for another day - and not much else. Its bananas were good - small and sweet - much appreciated in Italy and the Persian Gulf countries.

We talked about pre-conditions to his doing that. These included hiring reliable bodyguards, so the warlords wouldn't be able to shake him down, take him hostage, or kill him. It also included close work with the banana farmers, putting their fields back into cultivation after the years of inactivity that had been dictated by the war. They needed to have their irrigation ditches dug out and to be provided seedlings, fertilizer, and tools to start with. Then, later, he would have to bring a ship in to haul the bananas out.

Mehrdad said that none of that sounded like something he couldn't do. He didn't blink an eye when I said he would need shooters. He made a particular point of the value and the importance to him personally, as well as to Dole, of putting the Somali banana farmers back on their feet for the long haul.

When he left, I thought, "Hmm, maybe," and went back to trying to get the warlords to talk to each other. Incidentally, I failed in that effort; 10 years later they are still at swords' points.

Mehrdad came back after some time and said that, not only did he have Somalis growing bananas again, he had also found that some of them had kept working despite the war. He had bought a shipload's worth, which were now ready to go. Given that he was an American representing an American company, would I attend a ceremony he was organizing to celebrate the first loading? Would I? Wow!

Before I folded my hand on Somalia in 1995, I mentioned one other possibility to Mehrdad for reviving part of the Somali economy. This, too, could be done with some imagination, courage, and solid entrepreneurship, even though Somalia as a whole remained entirely nonfunctional, politically and economically.

Somalia has Africa's longest coastline, nearly 2,000 miles on the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden. Fishing off it was entirely uncontrolled and returned at that time virtually no revenue to Somalis and certainly no taxes or other benefits to the country off whose shores the fish were being caught. Mehrdad and I figured out together a system that could be put in place that would put money into the pockets of Somali fishermen, eventually employ people who would process the fish, and which could put tax receipts in the hands of a Somali government that possibly one day could use the money for then nonexistent schools, clinics, roads, and other public services.

Last week Mehrdad called me from San Francisco. He and his wife and 11-year-old son Sam were returning to the gulf through Philadelphia. I suggested he make a stop in Pittsburgh to catch up. He did. He liked the place, even though we don't grow bananas and the fish in our three rivers don't jump much.

The fishing enterprise off Somalia had worked out. Some 100 Somali fishermen are benefiting from it. One of Somalia's governments, Puntland, licenses the fishing and gets revenue from it. Mehrdad is now seeking to sell fresh fish and bananas to U.S. forces based in nearby Djibouti, where he has a port concession, with the idea of expanding sales to other U.S. forces in the area, in Kuwait and Iraq.

He was very modest about what he had done in the past decade, and was very careful to tell me that Somali fishermen and farmers and their families were making money from his enterprises in the area. This is a man with courage, imagination, and a sharp eye for spotting a promising business opportunity. He is also an example of the best kind of American businessman - one who never loses sight of the well-being of the producers.

May the Mehrdads of this world be fruitful and multiply. America needs them.

Dan Simpson, a retired diplomat, is a member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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[Mrs Musika man]

Was it Abdullahi Yusuf?

[paidmonk]

^ that was my first guess.