As any experienced business traveller knows, when planning a trip to a new destination the first click of the mouse should take you to the UK’s Foreign Office Travel Advisory website. If the destination under examination is Somalia, the advice that appears on the screen is not encouraging.
“We advise against all travel to Somalia,” the FO states. “There is a high threat to western… interests from terrorism in Somalia. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers. There is ongoing serious violence between opposing factions.”
“Westerners and those working for western organisations have been targeted in the past and this threat is ongoing. On 14 October two people working with the NGO Save the Children Fund were kidnapped in the town of Adado, near the Ethiopian border. Two French nationals were kidnapped from a hotel in Mogadishu on 14 July 2009. On 26 November 2008 one Briton and one Spaniard were kidnapped from Bosasso. One Briton and one Kenyan were kidnapped in the southern region of Juba on 1 April 2008.”
What really is happening in Somalia?
With its strategic location covering 3,300 miles of coastline around the Horn of Africa, Somalia is perfectly positioned to facilitate trade between eastern Africa and both Europe, through the Suez Canal, and Asia.
Unfortunately, its position also made it a prime location for both the US and the Soviet Union to monitor and control activity in northern Africa and the Middle East during the years of the Cold War.
So Somalia became a pawn in the political ambitions of the super powers, providing, in the process, one of the world’s clearest examples of the dangers of poorly managed foreign aid.
From the early 1970s economic and military assistance was pouring in to the country to such an extent that by the mid-1980s it is estimated the total foreign development assistance accounted for over fifty percent of the country’s GNP. This easy money enabled the government of the day to create a huge civil service based on patronage and fund a large armed force, using it to crush any political opposition.
With the collapse of the Cold War, Somalia’s strategic importance to its earlier benefactors diminished, as did the funding. By 1990, foreign aid had ceased almost entirely and in 1991, unable to continue paying for its support, the government collapsed. At this point, the northern province of Somaliland, the former British Somaliland Protectorate, withdrew from the union and reasserted its independence. It has since succeeded in building itself into a functioning democracy.
The rest of the country, however, descended into more than fifteen years of bloody civil war as the clans that traditionally dominate Somali life battled with each other for control of the country’s declining base of economic assets.
Rebuilding from ruin
It is believed that Somalia actually has sufficient natural resources to sustain its economy, but lacks the investment funds to develop them. According to a report in The East African, as of 2007, the national debt stood at $3.3bn, 81 percent of which is in arrears. Prospects for paying this debt are slim; the international community is still reluctant to step in to help a country without government or rule of law, and the formal banking community is virtually non-existent. Today, the largest source of foreign exchange in the country is remittances which account for up to 40 percent of the income of urban households. Even this economic lifeline is in jeopardy, however, as the absence of a formal banking system means the remittances flow through a network of unregulated companies, attracting the nervous attention of anti-terrorism investigators.
The current generation of Somali warlords who have become dependent on extortion rackets and piracy for their livelihood are now finding it difficult to be persuaded to let their power base go in favour of the political settlement favoured by foreign agencies. According to some observers, the road to peace and reconstruction is more likely to be led by economic rather than political initiatives.
“Evidence suggests that the international donor community, along with most Somali politicians, have their priorities wrong,” according to a report by Conciliation Resources, an international NGO which seeks to influence government peacemaking policies. “They have put their intellects and their energies and their resources into finding political solutions first, which is always the most difficult thing for Somalis to achieve; and not enough energy and resources into building on what Somalis do best – that is responding to economic opportunities.”
There is evidence of a strong business community in Somalia despite the continuing internal strife. In its analysis of the current situation, Conciliation Resources notes that since 2000, Somali entrepreneurs have moved away from profiteering in the ‘war economy’ and begun to diversify into construction, trade with local neighbours in Africa, and investment in finance, transport and information technology. A 2007 survey showed that Somalia ranked 16th out of 41 African countries in the number of mobile phone users and 11th in the number of internet users.
Once the Somali people have a taste of prosperity, the theory goes, they will demand better government and legal structures within which to build a secure future. There is considerable talent for rebuilding these structures residing in the Somali diaspora who escaped the years of civil war. Many of their children have grown up and been educated in the west and are keen to apply their more cosmopolitan outlook to the rebuilding of their ravaged country. Concern remains, however, that on returning to the country this new generation will be quickly reclaimed by and subsumed into the clans that have remained behind. Furthermore, the issue of repatriating the lands grabbed by the warlords during the 80s and 90s will continue to cause friction for any new government.
Fighting for control
What the businessmen of Somalia want is a safe and stable environment in which to operate. Since the collapse of the last functioning government in 1991, many businessmen began to fund their own judicial system based on Islamic law to help protect their business interests. Eventually these largely clan-dominated ‘courts’ allied themselves to form the Union of Islamist Courts (ICU). As more and more people turned to the Islamic courts, the ICU came to rival the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), formed in 2004 and enjoying the backing of the United Nations, the African Union and the United States, but lacking authority on the domestic front.
To the Western world, this development was viewed with fear and suspicion, but to native Somalis struggling to survive in a society rife with petty crime and terrorised by warlords, the Islamic courts were a welcome break in the cycle of violence. Even those who are wary of Islamic extremism were relieved to have an institution that was strong
enough to impose order and re-establish vital health, education and transportation services.
The chairman of the union was a moderate named Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who had studied law in Libya and worked as a secondary school geography teacher. However, there were other leaders within the ICU that had known connections to more militant Islamic groups, and this was enough to reinstate Somalia’s status as a strategic battleground within the region. The ICU was known to be receiving arms and funding from Eritrean Islamic groups, while the TFG was supported by the USA through Ethiopia.
In 2007 the ICU was driven out of the capital, Mogadishu, and the group splintered into several factions. One of the more militant groups, Al-Shabaab, continued the struggle for dominance of Somalia and managed to drive the Ethiopian troops out of the country by early 2009. In order to strengthen itself against these more radical Islamic fighters, the TFG formed an alliance with the remaining ICU groups and Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was elected President in January 2009.
Sadly for the people of this devastated country, this is not the end of the warfare. The two militant groups in opposition to the recognised government are now fighting each other for dominance. Some observers are suggesting that, aware that their continued violence is losing the hearts and minds of the Somali people, the militants are now exporting that violence to the outside world in a bid to goad the West into intervening, an act which would serve to re-unite the warring clans against a common enemy.
Meanwhile, the country is all but shattered. The World Food Programme partially suspended operations in January 2010 due to threats and attacks on aid workers. Most light industry has been looted and its machinery sold for scrap. The 21st September resignation of Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke exposed more rifts within the transitional government, and the violence continues.
But the spirit of enterprise continues to lurk under the surface. In 2006 when the Islamic Courts had gained control and begun to re-establish the infrastructure of peace, foreign investors from Egypt, India and China began pouring in to set up businesses and establish trading relationships with their home countries. As one entrepreneur commented, “Somalia can develop into another Dubai. They have good weather, living is cheap and there are a lot of business opportunities.”
