Somalia: Country of camels, bananas, clans and guns

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Xabashooow
Posts: 139
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2005 9:20 am

Somalia: Country of camels, bananas, clans and guns

Post by Xabashooow »

Somalia - The Country


It's tough running a country whose only natural resources are camels, bananas, frankincense, spiny lobster tails, shark fins, kidnapped aid workers and pirated yachts-a country which generates its tax revenue from roadblocks, license plates, pirate-collected port duties and whatever spare change is left in the sand.

Up north in breakaway Somaliland things have been pretty calm, save for the fallout from the Ethiopia/Eritrea war. The eastern half of this tiny area is called Sanaag and is controlled by a clan that does not agree with Mohammed Ibrahim Egal's presidential ambitions. Self-elected Egal has put the lid on his half of Somalia-called Somaliland. The country of Somaliland (not to be confused with Somalia or Disneyland) prints its own money in Britain, has a funky homemade flag (it may humor our readers to know that the Somali flag is based on the blue UN flag) and is protected by a ragtag army of about 15,000 kids and unemployed qat junkies. The main airport is closed (so what?), and its ill-defined border with Ethiopia to the south is a free-fire zone ruled by reject extras from a Mad Max movie.

Heavily armed clans dodge land mines in the rocky wastelands in their technicals, rusty tanks and camels. Its main exports are goats, sheep and camels to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Oh, I suppose we should mention that Somalia's 1700-mile coast has great beaches. Foreign yachtsmen from Europe are occasionally invited for a little beach blanket bingo as they putter on by off the coast.

Somalia (like most blown-to-hell countries) was actually a pretty cool place about 1,000 years ago. Known in ancient times as Punt (an appropriate political strategy these days), it was the home of the Queen of Sheba, spices, and traded with China and other Arab nations. Today Somalia is an arid, high-speed cross between Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, Mad Max and a '60s drugs 'n' biker movie, or maybe more like Star Wars' wasted brown planet of Tatooine without the colorful bar scene. If you like looking on the sunny side, there is a web site titled "Visit the Somali Republic, the Jewel of the Indian Ocean. The Cross Roads of Africa . . . The Gum of the Sea Ways, The Real Paradise for the Hunter, The Country of Peace, Culture and Stability." The site lures tourists with phrases like "Mogadiscio, with its stable climate, is a paradise for the tourist." A quick peek at the airlines, however, lists a subsidiary of BOAC, an airline name that has been defunct for about 20 years. Oh well, maybe you should postpone your trip for the next century when they have the annual clan get-togethers on the streets of Mog.

The syrupy home-spun web hype forgets to mention that Somalia's clans have been drilling holes in each other ever since the first Somalis decided to marry someone other than their sister. How long will this clan-banging go on? Well, until they run out of bullets and somebody ties down every rock in this parched, godforsaken country. Recently, the clans have cloaked themselves with high-falutin political names so that it sounds more like a church gathering than a street fight. Names such as the Somali Salvation Democratic Front or the Somalia National Alliance may conjure up visions of crew-cutted, white-shirted, apple-cheeked kids riding around tree-lined neighborhoods with Korans, but that is far from accurate. These clans are more likely to be scrawny, bug-eyed (from chewing qat), flip-flopped kids who charge around the shattered 100-degree-plus streets in smashed-up Toyota pickup trucks featuring jury-rigged, welded .50-caliber or anti-tank guns stolen from Uncle Sam's cache. Since a good living in Somalia is $3 a day, we figure the kids are allowed to roar around drunk or stoned and shoot off a few armor-piecing rounds at each other. To be fair, some Somali sources describe the young drug-whacked kids as militiamen, "unpaid volunteers who fight, not on orders but out of desire to defend their communities." They conclude by saying, "A well-organized civilian militia, protected by the right to keep and bear arms, is still the most effective protection for the security of a free state." Uh, yeah, and I'll take that shiny new watch you're wearing in the name of freedom and security.

But before we dive into the players, you must know that there are really three equally lawless Somalias.

The dodgy Republic of Somaliland in the northwest with the capital of Hargeisa; Somali, the land that makes up the long southern coastal section and the home of the Digila and more agrarian Rahanweyne clans; and the northeast with Bosaso as its hub. The capital of the south is the hotly contested city of Mogadishu. To further complicate the divisions, Djibouti is actually half-Somali. Beirut was easy to figure out compared to Somalia. The breakaway republics are not recognized by any international body, although perhaps they should be.

Only the southern part makes the news-that section of Siad Barre's defunct Somali Republic which was formerly Italian Somaliland. The south is simply lawless territory inhabited by nomadic Somalis and ruled by clans. The northern part, formerly British Somaliland, misses the headlines and is sometimes portrayed as considerably more peaceful. Unlike the south, the north has had something of a government-the government of Somaliland-since the fall of Barre's republic, and even, at times, a head-of-state.

Yet overall, it's been an orgy of blood feuds in Somalia. After the rebel United Somali Congress (USC) captured Mogadishu during the last week of 1990 and toppled Barre's despotic regime (although it at least was a regime), Somalia watched its last government-or anything resembling it-go down the drain. Siad fled and the USC installed Ali Mahdi Mohamed as temporary president. But the USC was marred by internal bickering and bloodshed within its ranks, and from them rose General Mohamed Farah Aideed. Aideed and Ali Mahdi signed a UN-bullied peace agreement in March 1992, but it broke down as perhaps a million Somalis fled the country's famine and clan warfare. Soldiers looted UN food supplies the world body was unable to protect.

Enter the United States and Operation Restore Hope. Eighteen hundred American marines landed in Mogadishu on December 9, 1992, the first of nearly 30,000 troops to arrive here with the mission of restoring some semblance of order. (Hussein Aideed, the general's son, was one of the U.S. Marines.) Aideed and Ali Mahdi grudgingly shook hands.

On January 11, 1993, a general cease-fire was agreed to. But it, like the dozens before it, hadn't a prayer. After Somalis became accustomed to the strange aliens called Americans, they decided to off a couple and even dragged one corpse through the streets of Mogadishu. CNN got it all on tape and the Pentagon, not wanting any more bad publicity and angry mothers, brought the boys home. U.S. efforts to bring Aideed down were like a Philadelphia SWAT team attack: they kept turning the wrong house into Swiss cheese. So Uncle Sammy washed his hands of the whole Somali affair in November 1993. With the Americans gone, Somalis were again permitted to resume killing, raping and maiming each other. Only this time they had more UN leftover toys to play with.

The only bright spot was the May '97 peace accord between Aideed (currently the self-proclaimed president of Somalia) and his chief rival, Ossan Hassan Ali Ato's Rahanweyne Resistance Army (RRA). Fighting still goes on between other clans.


Sylvester and Elvis

The Islamic Court in north Mogadishu, the closest thing resembling an administrative body since the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, has warned that clean-shaven men had better grow beards-in the Islamic tradition-or suffer the consequences. The court's leader, Sheikh Ali Sheikh Mohamed, brought a clean-shaven youngster before a gathering of faithful and ordered the crowd to boo at the kid. "Those who shave like Elvis Presley, Sylvester Stallone and the U.S. Marines will not go unpunished," Ali Sheikh proclaimed.

The youngster was decidedly sans Elvis' sideburns, being barely old enough to sport a tuft of pubic hair, much less a cascade of ZZ Top whiskers. But prepubescent teenagers and secular governments aside, it's Gillette and Schick that have to be worried the most about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.
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