Somaliland: Somalia's Oasis of Peace Seeks Status of a Nation - New York Times
The New York Times, November 26
By IAN FISHER
URAO, Somalia -- It has been nearly nine years since the people
of northwest Somalia gathered here to declare themselves separate
from the chaos of the rest of their country. They created a government.
They rebuilt their villages and businesses. A young veterinarian named
Mohammed Nur Arale saw enough peace recently to invest in a luxury
unknown in this town since 1988: a gas station with a pump that actually
works.
"The mentality of the people is not the same," he said. "Now everyone
has put down their arms. Everyone was just fed up with all of it."
The self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland has become one of Africa's
fledgling success stories -- but a success the outside world has been
reluctant to help because no one is quite sure what to do with it.
Somaliland presents a quandary because it wants to be recognized as an
independent nation. Its people argue that this would acknowledge their
land as an island of peace separate from Somalia, a country so lawless
that Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary-general, recently referred to it as a
"black hole."
African leaders hold few notions as sacred as the usually arbitrary
borders drawn by and inherited from their European colonial rulers,
because those frontiers define their power. But in this case, if Somaliland
-- whose desired borders exactly mirror those of an old British
protectorate -- becomes independent, what might happen to the borders
of Nigeria, whose vast territory is riven by ethnic and religious
differences? Or to Congo, Sudan and Angola, where competing factions
and countries have exploited civil wars to carve fiefs that are essentially
self-contained states?
Is Africa to go the way of the old Yugoslavia, or Indonesia, where
violence and strivings for independence have redrawn frontiers and led to
new states?
And so, with another round of peace talks on the whole of Somalia
scheduled to begin this month, Somaliland is caught in what its foreign
minister calls a "twilight zone," in which it exists in nearly every way as its
own state, but survives on a mere trickle of foreign aid and cannot get
access to international loans or banks.
The rest of the world, and the United States in particular, has done its
best to forget Somalia since 1993. That year, 24 peacekeepers were
killed in an ambush in June and, four months later, 18 U.S. servicemen
died in a battle in Mogadishu during the U.N. effort to bring food and
stability to a starving Somalia.
The United States, which had entered Somalia with great fanfare in 1992,
proclaiming this the sort of intervention that would define the new world
order that was supposed to follow the Cold War, pulled out soon after
those killings. So did the United Nations. Outside help dried up to nearly
nothing. And Somalia became a symbol for anarchy, the disaster of
misplaced foreign aid -- and an example of how costly it can be for the
West to intervene in conflicts it does not understand.
Now, a new consensus has begun to emerge among many outside
nations and certainly among Somalis themselves: Something needs to be
done.
Certainly, that is the view of people in Somaliland, from businessmen like
Mohammed Ahmed Barji, who trades in television sets, generators and
mopeds and must load up suitcases with up to $50,000 in cash to go on
buying trips abroad, to its president, Mohammed Ibrahim Egal, who says
simply: "We want to be let in from the cold."
"After nine years we feel frozen," Egal, 69, a big man with a gray goatee,
said in an interview. "Today it is a question of pride sustaining them," he
said of the 2 million people of Somaliland. "But it may not be that way in
five years. How much longer will they be able to be sustained by pride
but on an empty stomach?"
For the outside world, there is another motive to attempt to restore
something resembling order to Somalia, which has been without a central
government since 1991, when the dictatorship of Siad Barre was
overthrown after 22 years of misrule and an interminable civil war. The
warlords and militias -- though substantially weakened -- continue to
block peace.
In this power vacuum, diplomats and other experts say, Somalia is
becoming a center for Islamic fundamentalism, for the smuggling of arms
and drugs and the export of terrorism. Parts of the bombs that exploded
in August 1998 at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania reportedly
passed through Somalia, as did the bombings' suspected mastermind,
Osama bin Laden, supposedly sometime later.
"We share the concerns that this place is in a state of chaos and is
definitely a breeding ground for all kinds of trouble," said one U.S.
official.
That is exactly how the rest of Somalia is viewed by the people of
Somaliland, who consider themselves different from the south.
Since the days of colonialism -- when the Somali people were divided
into five different states -- Somaliland has had its own history: Until 1960,
it was a British protectorate. Although it united with the Italian Somali
colony four days after independence, creating modern Somalia,
Somaliland was never happy with the arrangement.
So in 1991, after Barre fell, a group of elders, intellectuals and other
leaders came to this town to create the independent Somaliland republic.
Progress was slow -- two civil wars were fought since then -- but over
time the clan militias disarmed. The people created an unusual parliament,
mixing democracy with the traditional leadership of elders and clans.
And Somaliland has largely been blessed with peace.
"There was fighting five years ago and lots of banditry," said Muhammad
Ahmed, 34, who calls out prayers in the biggest mosque in Hargeysa.
"But it has completely changed. It's like the difference between the
ground and the sky."
Ahmed Abdi Edan, 30, said he could never find work during the years of
war. But in 1995 he got a job as an English teacher in Hargeysa.
"I really do think it is peace that let me find a job," he said. "Without
peace you cannot live."
On a recent day, he was wandering around downtown Hargeysa -- still
littered with what is left of the buildings bombed by the Barre government
in 1988 -- to do a little investing: He was buying up U.S. currency in the
hope that it will rise against the Somaliland shilling.
That entrepreneurial spirit is perhaps the greatest strength of the
Somalilanders, half of whom still live as nomads with their camels and
goats.
In a few years, businessmen there have created one of the cheapest
telephone systems in Africa: International calls are $1.50 a minute in the
day and only 80 cents at night. Traders are working to export
frankincense and myrrh, and exploration has begun for oil and
gemstones.
But the success of Somaliland rests on a shaky foundation. Its greatest
accomplishment is undoubtedly peace, though the price is high: Over 70
percent of the national budget (itself only $20 million) goes to maintaining
a huge army and police force -- composed of former militia members
who have agreed not to fight each other in return for their jobs.
That leaves nothing for education, health or roads. Many Somalis are
thus becoming impatient with Egal and his government.
"Of course they can do more," said Hussein Egeh, a 59-year-old
livestock trader who fled Somalia 20 years ago but has returned to do
business because of the peace in Somaliland. "What is a government for?
When you have peace you don't just sit back."
Moreover, many in Somaliland distrust Egal, fearing that he may
compromise on Somaliland's independence -- and may, as many foreign
powers have urged him to do, find a way to reunite with the south.
"That will be the end of him, if he says we're going to the south," said
Ismail Hirsi, a 30-year-old street businessman who changes as much
$1,000 a day, money sent from Somalis living abroad. "He can't do that."
Egal argues that the answer to Somaliland's problems lies in recognition
from other nations, which would open the floodgates for foreign aid and
borrowing. As it stands, the United Nations and European Union are the
biggest investors in Somaliland's recovery, but the money is "peanuts," as
one European aid worker put it.
On a recent trip abroad, Egal and his ministers argued their case with
senior officials in Italy, Libya and the United States. They received lots of
sympathy but little success. The international community, Somaliland
leaders say, has promised a peace dividend for parts of Somalia that find
stability. But without recognition, Somaliland has been unable to get
money from institutions like the World Bank or the International
Monetary Fund.
"They are very generous in dishing out promises," the foreign minister,
Mahmoud Saleh Nour, said. "But very stingy in delivering."
Both Annan and American officials have discussed a kind of compromise
-- a special status, similar to the West Bank or Kosovo, that would allow
Somaliland to gain loans and more aid from outside nations without full
recognition. But that seems unlikely to happen as long as a new peace
initiative, led by the neighboring nation of Djibouti, still holds promise.
This initiative is different from previous efforts because it is looking for
leadership in the south, not among the warlords, but from elders,
intellectuals and women's groups as well as businessmen and religious
leaders. Still, few experts hold much hope that even after nearly a decade
of anarchy Somalia is ready to find peace -- or that Somaliland will go
along.
And if these talks do not find answers, many experts say, it may finally be
time to think seriously about the question of recognizing Somaliland. If
Somaliland is not rewarded for its accomplishments, they ask, what
incentive does the rest of Somalia -- and African countries beyond --
have for finding its own brand of peace?
"If this thing fails," a European diplomat said, "it means that the
international community has to go to some completely different approach
to Somalia."
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