Somaliland News archives

That Freedom Shall not Perish

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Source: Jamhuuriya Online, Aug 18 2003

It is time to re-examine global policy towards Somaliland

PRESS RELEASE -SOMALILAND FORUM

The young Republic of Somaliland reclaimed its sovereignty in 1991 and Withdrew from the defunct union with Somalia. Incredibly, this infant but Promising country has not been recognized by any other nation.
    We, the Somaliland Forum, an organization that represents the Somaliland Diaspora, are calling on the international community, once again, to review Its approach and policy toward this East African state. We would like to impress on the international community, and bring to its attention, the enormous achievements this young nation has achieved without any outside assistance.
    There is little doubt that the Republic of Somaliland is THE most democratic Country in the Horn of Africa. Last year, the people of Somaliland went to the polls to vote in competitive presidential elections between 3 parties. A Ballot won by the incumbent president of UDUB party by a mere 210 votes. International Observers including the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR,) and South African monitors, attested to the free and fair conduct of the election. It came as little surprise then that the respected think tank International Crisis Group published in July a report titled: Somaliland: Alternatives to Independence' (www.crisisweb.org) The report addressed the importance of recognizing Somaliland by stating: "The question confronting the international community is no longer whether Somaliland should be recognized as an independent state, but whether there remain any viable alternatives." It continues: "The solution for the time being may be to grant Somaliland some kind of increased international profile without formal recognition -- such as observer status at the UN, African Union and the regional Inter-Governmental Authority in Development (IGAD). "This could help to prepare the ground for eventual negotiations between Somaliland and Somalia," according to John Prendergast, ICG's Special Advisor on Africa.
    The Somaliland Forum fully and absolutely concurs with the ICG's statements. We strongly believe that the international community has for too long ignored the Republic of Somaliland and can no longer continue to do so.
    Therefore, we call on the international community, especially on the United States of America and The European Union, to take the lead on this issue and grant the Republic of Somaliland diplomatic recognition. This would advance Nation-building in what has long been a troubled part of the world and strengthen the democratization process in Somaliland.

Source: Jamhuuriya Online, Aug 18 2003

More Parent care can lower fail, absentee levels- Education DG

A stronger parent - school cooperation can significantly reduce the number of students who either fail or drop out of final secondary and primary exams, says Abdel Rahman Mohmed Maal, Director General of Education, following the official release of Grade VIII and form IV exams results on August 12.
    "We still need to forge a more effective relationship with parents to significantly lower fail and absentee percentages", he said.
    Out of a total number of students of 4111 who sat for the form IV Secondary exams and the Intermediate leaving examinations for the 2002-2003 scholastic year, 947 have either failed or absented themselves from collecting their exams roll numbers.
    This number translated to a percent figure is a staggering 32% for the lesser-numbered (1056), out of whom 20% (214) failed, and another 12% (125) did not claim their places at the nine exam centres ear-marked for Secondary exam entrants from 13 schools across 5 Somaliland regions.
    On the other hand, out of a possible peak number of 3378 students from 51 upper primary schools across the 6 regions of the country, 6% (198) flunked the final test, where 12% (410) did not quite make the pass grades.
    "Even though the ministry is, on the whole, far from pleased by the 32% fail level of total students sitting for this year's secondary and intermediate exams, I am personally more troubled by, again, the 32% who have either failed or did not at exam posts to qualify for their general secondary education certificates", Director Maal said.
    Viewed against the plans the Ministry have put into effect for this scholastic year to stamp out cheating, weak invigilating system and other major flaws that characterized a legacy inherited from past years, the DG said, the results were far more encouraging, far more fairer than could have been the case handled otherwise.
    "Next year and the years to follow", he said "a student and his/her parents would be better prepared, more confident on a system of exams where a student would only be entitled to an aggregate score he or she had worked out on own merit, steam".
    Director General Maal, understandably, gave the corps of Ministry invigilators, educations inspectors and police details stationed at the exam venues full credit for ensuring a smooth, hitch-free passage of a major event.
    "If not so, no amount of preparations or design of procedures could have been implemented", he said.
    "To all the forces who have undertaken and executed this difficult assignment, I send my warmest felicitations, that of the Minister, the Assistant Minister and that of the whole ministry and parents", he said.
    Tables 1 and 2, below, show, respectively, the results of the 2002-2003 Secondary and upper primary leaving exams.

Source: Jamhuuriya Online, Aug 18 2003

How Somaliland could become self-sufficient'

With population of less then four million people, Somaliland can easily become self-sufficient provided its national leaders have both the political will as well as the determination to transform the national economy. Currently, the country imports almost all of its consumer goods from outside. In return, we only export livestock and its byproducts, which creates huge trade deficit and unfavorable balance of payment. So far, the government does not seem to have any solution for this problem.
In his speech during the inauguration of the recently concluded Syrian exhibition in Hargeisa, the Minister of Commerce and Industry, Eng. M. Hashi Elmi, purposed to business community to export salt in order to balance out imports. Few days later, the Vice President, Ahmed Yusuf Yassin, repeated the same proposal in his address to graduates of Awdal University. Exporting salt is not a solution to our widespread unemployment and souring imports. However, it seems as if that is all UDUB-led government has to offer for Somaliland's economic problems.

Producing Consumer Goods Locally
Today many Third Wold countries such as India, Mexico, and Sri Lanka have industries that produce their consumer goods locally. Likewise, Somaliland can produce consumer goods not only for its consumers but also for that of the entire Horn of Africa in order to exploit the economies of scale. By doing so, the country will be in a position to create jobs for hundreds of thousands of its unemployed people. Moreover, Somaliland will save more hard currency, which it would have otherwise used for imports. Furthermore, the government will collect more revenue in the form of corporate, payroll, value-added and sales taxes.

Setting up Small and Large Scale Industries
To locally produce our consumer goods, we need to transform our businesses from traditional import-export-oriented to manufactured-oriented. This requires pooling resources for the establishment of corporate businesses. Instead of running individualized business, investors will then have the opportunity to own shares of different companies.

The Problem of Raising Capital
    Establishing manufacturing industries sometimes requires huge capital. The businesses willing to set-up such industries can raise the needed capital by either:
    1. Selling shares or
    2. Joining forces with foreign companies or both.

1) Somaliland Stock Exchange: The Equity Market
A stock market is a place where shares of companies are traded. The market enables investors that have personal needs to sell their shares without jeopardizing the viability of any company. For instance, when one shareholder sells his shares, a buyer replaces him in shareholding and that leaves the company intact. Only handfuls of businessmen can set-up a stock marker by acting its board of directors while appointing management and brokers under the regulatory oversight of a public sector authority such as the U.S.'s Securities and Exchange Commission.

2) Joint Venture with Foreign Companies
Local businesses should look for opportunities to attract foreign companies for joint venture. Where this is not possible, still local companies can purchase franchises. Foreign companies and international corporations provide much needed investment, capital and technological know-how.

The Role of the government
    In any market economy, the public sector facilitates the smooth functioning of the private sector and plays no role of producing goods and services unless where there is a market failure. We do not want Somaliland government to own or operate commercial and investment banks, airlines or manufacturing industries. The government should merely create a conducive environment in which businesses can flourish. Specifically, the government should:
    a) Offer tax holidays for businesses willing to set-up manufacturing industries for a period of five, ten or fifteen years depending on the scale and the profitability of that industry.
    b) Adapt protectionism economic policies aimed at deterring import of locally produced goods. This can be achieved by levying heavy import duty on any goods that is locally produced.
    c) Establish a regulatory corporate authority. This body should not be another layer of bureaucracy but an authority that promotes corporate businesses.
    d) Remove the Chamber of Commerce and Industry under the control of Ministry of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry should not be a public entity. Rather, it should be a body that represents the business community.

Abdillahi Hussein Daud, Minneapolis, MN, USA (Abdhdaud@yahoo.com)

Agence France Presse, August 17, 2003/DATELINE: ADDIS ABABA, Aug 17

EU to undertake study of Ethiopia-Somaliland road corridor: official

The European Union (EU) is undertaking a feasibility study on its plan to rehabilitate a road linking the northwestern breakaway republic of Somaliland to Ethiopia, an EU official said on Sunday.

"The study covers 887 kilometres (550 miles) of road network from Somaliland's Berbera port to the Ethiopian border town of Togwechale," EU official Pascal Joanne told reporters.

He said French consultancy firm, Louis Berger, which started the study nine months ago, is to submit its findings to the European Union in two months and will form the basis for the EU's approval to release funds for the second phase, Joanne added. "The commission will come up with a decision to advance the project into feasibility and designing stage, based on preliminary assessments made by Louis Berger," Joanne said.

Berger is already holding consultations with Ethiopian and Somaliland authorities to integrate their views on the actual situation of the corridor and its future prospects of being used to handle part of Ethiopia's import-export cargo.

Deputy EU delegation head in Ethiopia, Jean-Pierre Pierard, said the Berbera Corridor Infrastructure Programme was part of a strategy to relieve the congested port of Djibouti.

The EU last week shipped 15,000 tonnes of relief food supplies to Ethiopia's hungry through Berbera port in Somalia's northwest breakaway republic of Somaliland and more than 100,000 tonnes of food are expected to be shipped through the same route in the next weeks, relief and government officials said on Friday.

Agence France Press, August 17, 2003

EU to undertake study of Ethiopia-Somaliland road corridor: official

DATELINE: ADDIS ABABA -- The European Union (EU) is undertaking a feasibility study on its plan to rehabilitate a road linking the northwestern breakaway republic of Somaliland to Ethiopia, an EU official said on Sunday.

"The study covers 887 kilometres (550 miles) of road network from Somaliland's Berbera port to the Ethiopian border town of Togwechale," EU official Pascal Joanne told reporters.

"The commission will come up with a decision to advance the project into feasibility and designing stage, based on preliminary assessments made by Louis Berger," Joanne said.

Deputy EU delegation head in Ethiopia, Jean-Pierre Pierard, said the Berbera Corridor Infrastructure Programme was part of a strategy to relieve the congested port of Djibouti.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

Puzzling Statement by Ethiopian Information Minister

The UN funded and owned news agency IRIN quoted Ethiopian Minister of Information Bereket Simon as insisting that the region's [Somaliland's] future lies in a united Somalia.

According to IRIN, Ethiopia "has rejected calls by Somaliland for international recognition".

The IRIN article was released yesterday. However, due to IRIN's history of negative and biased reporting about Somaliland, the article should be read with a grain of salt. Although IRIN used the word "rejected", the Ethiopian Information minister only spoke about the wishes of the Ethiopian government and not about policy, still the news is disturbing.

Mr. Simon's statement has already dismayed many Somalilanders. It is understood that Ethiopia has been under pressure lately by Qassim Salad and other anti-Ethiopian elements in the former Italian Somalia, but local observers believe that Ethiopia's answer shouldn't be to alienate a true friend.

The information minister's reply is puzzling given the special relationship between Ethiopia and Somaliland, and the fact that it was made while Somaliland's president and a high delegation were guests of the Ethiopian government.

The Ethiopian information minister's statement is just the latest indication of serious shortcomings in Somaliland's foreign policy.

Instead of making new friends, Somaliland is in danger of losing old ones. A big part of the problem is that Somaliland has not made strong and well-planned efforts to reach out to the world to make its case. Peculiarly enough, Somaliland's delegations abroad never hold press conferences, even in friendly Ethiopia, to explain their case. Ms Edna is an exception, but she is only one person.

The way Somaliland's ministry of Information operates is also scandalous to say the least. The ministry follows the old-style of releasing raw, clumsy propaganda intended to promote or defend the government. Somaliland's public shows a lot of skepticism toward the government's media due to its poor credibility. With the exception of IRIN, the ministry has failed to develop links with the foreign media to attract them into covering big newsworthy events in Somaliland. Not a single foreign TV network arrived in Somaliland to cover the country's two electoral exercises.

Although Somaliland's cause is not popular among Arab governments, yet the ministry of Information could have built contacts in the Arab media. There is no reason why Somaliland doesn't build bridges with the independent media such as Al Jazeera. If Darman could get Al Jazeera's attention, why not Somaliland' Moreover, unlike Somalia, there is an Arabic press in Somaliland which means there are enough people who understand Arabic, which in turn should make it easier to engage Arab media and audiences.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

Ethiopian Information Minister Says Somaliland Future Lies Within A United Somalia

ADDIS ABABA, 8 Aug 2003 (IRIN) - Ethiopia has rejected calls by the breakaway republic of Somaliland for international recognition by insisting that the region's future lies within a united Somalia. Information Minister Bereket Simon told IRIN that while Somalis will decide their own future, Ethiopia's interests lie in unifying the war-ravaged state.

His comments came as Dahir Riyale Kahin, president of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, held talks in Addis Ababa with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and key Ethiopian officials. The talks, according to Bereket, focused on two areas - latest developments in Somaliland and security issues surrounding the common border with Ethiopia. Members of the Somaliland delegation have not made any public announcements.

Bereket also dismissed claims that the five-day visit by the Somaliland delegation, which also includes the foreign minister Edna Adan Ismail, undermined the Somali peace talks currently underway in Kenya. The Somaliland authorities have refused to attend the conference, saying it has nothing to do with them.

Bereket said he remained optimistic about the Nairobi-based talks, as long as the rival factions stayed at the negotiating table. "We think they will find a possible way out of the current situation through dialogue and continuous engagement - that is the only way out," he said.

"We don't see walk-outs from such meetings as solutions, nor resorting to armed intimidation," he added. The president of Somalia's Transitional National Government (TNG) Abdiqassim Salad Hassan walked out of the talks last week saying they were heading towards the "dismemberment" of Somalia.

Bereket also dismissed claims that Ethiopia was "meddling" in the talks. "Ethiopia cannot serve as the scapegoat for the failures that he [Abdiqassim] has executed in that meeting." "If you are asking me about the wishes of Ethiopia, it is that we would like to see a united Somalia living peacefully, being led by a responsible state," Bereket stated.

"That is our wish and we will try to the best of our capacity to assist our Somali brothers to achieve this objective - but that remains their task and depends on how they act." "Whether this dream can come true or not is the work of the Somali brothers and sisters," he added.

"The best way forward is continuing the dialogue and reaching agreement based on the accommodation of the interests of different sectors of Somali people."

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

NOVIB Ordered Out Of Somaliland

Hargeisa (SL Times) - The well know Dutch INGO NOVIB has been ordered to leave Somaliland. The order was issued on Wednesday by Somaliland minister of Planning Mr. Ahmed Haji Dahir.

NOVIB has been working with four major partner NGOs in Somaliland, namely, Candlelight, HAVOYOCO, NAGAAD and Samo-Talis. The minister of Planning has informed the 4 organizations of the government's decision to expel 7 non-Somalilanders who recently arrived in Hargeisa to participate in a NOVIB sponsored meeting that was being held at Maansoor Hotel.

Mr. Ahmed Haji Dahir stated that the government also decided to ban NOVIB from working in Somaliland. He attributed the decision to what he called NOVIB's involvement in politically motivated anti-Somaliland activities.

At least 5 of the deportees are from Somalia while the remaining two are a Kenyan (Murtaza Jaffer, NOVIB's project coordinator) and a Dutch national. The Somalis were put on a Mugadisho bound plane on Friday. The rest are expected to leave Hargeisa today.

A Somali Civil Society Symposium held in Hargeisa in Feb 2003 and sponsored by NOVIB had attracted the participation of around 300 delegates, said at the time to represent civil society activists in Somaliland and Somalia. Most of the participants however came from Somalia.

4 NGOs Blame Jamhuuriya For Misleading Report On Meeting With NOVIB

Hargeysa (SL Times) - The four non-governmental organizations of Candlelight, NAGAAD, HAVOYOCO and Samo-Talis, in a press statement issued Thursday, refuted the accuracy of a press report published by Jamhuuriya newspaper on Aug 7, 2003. The report said something to the effect that a meeting sponsored by the Dutch international NGO, NOVIB has been underway at Maansoor Hotel in Hargeisa for several days with the aim of unifying civil society organizations in Somaliland and Somalia under a single umbrella organization.

The 4 NGOs said the purpose of the meeting was entirely different from what has been reported by Jamhuuriya, adding that the real aim of the gathering at Maansoor Hotel was for a number of NOVIB partners working on Educational projects in Somaliland and Somalia to exchange information on their experiences in the field. They also said the other objective of the meeting was to train civil society activists from these organizations on monitoring and evaluation skills. "Before publishing its story, the newspaper should have verified it with the participants or organizers of the meeting itself but the truth is that they haven't done so," the statement said.

The four Somaliland NGOs described Jamhuuriya's news report on the meeting as a grossly misleading and inaccurate piece of information based on hearsay. The organizations demanded that the newspaper retract and correct its story.

Noting that an increasing number of international organizations are now encouraged by Somaliland's peace and stability to come here, either to work with Somaliland partners or sponsor international conferences, the NGOs have called upon the media to observe journalistic ethics.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003/source:Reuters.com, Aug 07 2003

EYEWITNESS, Somaliland Needs Strong Social Services

Nick Sireau, the communications manager for the U.K.-based Catholic Institute for International Relations, visited Somaliland last month and found evidence that the territory - still not recognized as an independent state by any other country - needs help building strong institutions if it is to survive.

The people of Somaliland -- a breakaway region of northwest Somalia -- have suffered for years, first under colonialism, when Somalia was divided between the French, British and Italians, then under Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in the 1970s and 1980s. They continued to suffer during the civil war that tore Somalia apart from 1988 to 1991, and just when they thought peace and freedom were theirs, after Somaliland declared independence in 1991, the new country descended into chaos in 1994 as opposing factions took up arms.

Today peace appears to be here to stay. The refugees are back from camps in Ethiopia. Land mines have been cleared from the most populated areas. Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, is once again a bustling city where business is thriving. Two universities have been set up: one in Hargeisa and one near Borama, about 50 miles to the west. Many local non-governmental organisations are working to promote development and human rights. Crucially, municipal elections last December and presidential elections in May this year went ahead peacefully and were said to be free and fair by election observers. Somaliland has achieved all this with little outside help. The international community tends to ignore it -- it has not been recognised by any other country as an independent state -- although a recent visit by a delegation from the British government shows that interest is increasing.

In Somaliland, I visited partner projects and development workers of the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR).

CIIR has been working in Somaliland since 1995 through its skillshare programme, International Cooperation for Development.

Among the few international NGOs working in Somaliland, CIIR has one of the most developed programmes, thanks to support from two U.K.-based organisations, Comic Relief and the Community Fund. But we realise that long-term development is only possible if civil society and government institutions are strong.

In order to achieve this four key areas of development need particular attention.

First, the capacity of local NGOs needs to be strengthened. CIIR currently places development workers with local organisations to help them develop their resources and skills.

I had the opportunity to visit one such NGO, called Nagaad, which means "peaceful resting place" in Somali.

Nagaad is an umbrella organisation for the host of women's NGOs that provide services such as health care, education, environmental training, assistance to returnees, microcredit and food support.

It is based in a small building in Hargeisa that was built by the women themselves and testifies to the crucial role women are playing in rebuilding their country.

Second, the country needs to put in place an HIV/AIDS strategy. A survey carried out in 1999 estimated that the HIV/AIDS infection rate was around one percent of those surveyed. Yet HIV/AIDS remains a sensitive topic in Somaliland, where Islam and traditional values are strong.

The HIV/AIDS workers I met try to work within the culture to promote education about the virus, particularly among young people.

They meet religious leaders, teachers and parents first to ensure that everyone is working together before they start instructing youth about HIV/AIDS.

Third, the country needs a structured health system.

I was encouraged to find a development worker from Nepal, Ram Sedhain, had helped set up a health management information system to ensure information and figures about health flow from the community level to the top ministry level.

Finally, education needs to be improved.

Somaliland's youth have been called the "lost generation" because the wars have meant that many could not attend school, let alone university.

I visited an institution four miles out from Borama, called Amoud University.

It was set up in 1998 and teaches medicine, business administration and teacher training to 360 students.

Unfortunately, many of the students plan to leave the country when they finish their course.

There are just not enough jobs for them in Somaliland. Although the economy is doing better than it has for years, there's little major investment.

Everything in Somaliland is being rebuilt from scratch.

It is hard, but it means that with initiative, efficiency, skill and motivation, new structures can be put in place that are sustainable and help bring lasting peace to a nation that has suffered too long.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

International Crisis Group Report On Somaliland Democratization And Its Discontents, Part II

C. INTERLUDE: DICTATORSHIP AND CIVIL WAR
Somali President Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke was assassinated by a disgruntled policeman on 15 October 1969, and less than a week later the military staged a coup d''tat under the leadership of General Mohamed Siyaad Barre. Many Somalis were hopeful that the military takeover would represent an improvement over the decrepit civilian administration, which had become spoiled by corruption and nepotism.

The military also embraced a "Greater Somalia" policy of political and military irredentism, which had lapsed in the late 1960s, reviving some of the popular enthusiasm that had underpinned the original union between north and south.

The honeymoon was short lived. The regime's disastrous defeat in the 1977-78 Ogaden War with Ethiopia, its dependence on select branches of the Darod clan for political support, and its increasingly brutal character all contributed to public disillusionment. An attempted coup by Majerteen officers from the northeast of the country triggered brutal government reprisals around the town of Gaalka'yo and led to the formation of the first Somali opposition group, the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF). But disaffection with the military regime was felt most keenly in the former British Somaliland: public expenditure in the northwest compared unfavorably with other regions (less than 7 per cent of development assistance was allocated to the north), and the government's economic policies seemed to be aimed at curbing the influence of the wealthy Isaaq trading community.

In the aftermath of the Ogaden War, approximately a quarter of a million refugees had been settled in the northwest by the Somali government, with the assistance of UNHCR. Most were ethnic Somalis from the Ogaden branch of the Darod clan, although some were members of the Oromo and other Ethiopian ethnic groups. For several years, traditional competition between the Isaaq and the Ogaden for pasture and water in the southern Haud had been aggravated by the Somali government's provision of arms, ammunition and training to the Ogaden fighters of the Western Somali Liberation Front. Although intended for use against the Ethiopian government, this military assistance was often directed instead against Isaaq civilians in the Haud. Government favoritism towards the Ogaden refugees, who enjoyed preferential access to social services (provided by UNHCR and its Somali government counterpart, the National Refugee Commission), business licenses and government posts, further fuelled Isaaq grievances.

In 1981, a group of mainly Isaaq exiles meeting in London declared the formation of the Somali National Movement (SNM), an armed movement dedicated to the overthrow of the Barre regime. The SNM initially tried to cast itself as an alliance of opposition figures from different clans, but its core membership and constituency was principally Isaaq. The SNM established its first bases in Ethiopia in 1982, and by 1983 it had established itself as an effective guerrilla force in the northwest. In response, government pressure on the Isaaq population, whom it deemed sympathetic to the SNM, took the form of "extreme and systematic repression". Summary arrests, extrajudicial executions, rape, confiscation of private property and `disappearances' all became commonplace as the government sought to deprive the SNM of the support of the Isaaq public. The government also enlisted the support of the non-Isaaq clans of the northwest, attempting - with only partial success - to exploit traditional kinship affiliations.

In 1988, following a meeting in Djibouti between Siyaad Barre and his Ethiopian counterpart, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Ethiopian government instructed the SNM to cease operations in Somalia and withdraw its forces from the border areas. The SNM, fearing the collapse of its long insurgency, instead attacked the major northern towns of Hargeysa and Burco, triggering the onset of full-scale civil war in the northwest. The government response was fierce: artillery and aircraft bombed the major towns into rubble and forced the displacement of roughly half a million refugees across the border into Ethiopia. Isaaq dwellings were systematically destroyed, while their settlements and water points were extensively mined.

The formation in 1989 (with SNM support) of the southern Somali factions, the Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM) and the United Somali Congress (USC), provided the SNM with allies and helped to relieve some of the pressure on its fighters. In January 1991, as USC advances in and around Mogadishu forced Barre to abandon the capital, the SNM staged its final offensive in the northwest.

The remaining government forces disintegrated and fled, and the vestiges of civil administration collapsed.
D. THE REPUBLIC OF SOMALILAND

Within months of the SNM victory, Somaliland appeared in its third incarnation. On 18 May 1991, a self-proclaimed independent Republic of Somaliland was announced. Since then, it has followed a very different trajectory from southern Somalia. While the collapse of the Siyaad Barre regime plunged the south into civil war and the kind of institutional vacuum that has since come to epitomize the notion of "state failure", Somaliland embarked on a period of increasing political stabilization and economic growth. Since 1991, roughly half a million people have returned to their homes, and tens of thousands of dwellings and businesses have been rebuilt from rubble. The majority of militia have been demobilized or incorporated into national armed forces and tens of thousands of mines and unexploded munitions have been removed from the ground.

Somaliland's social services are in less admirable shape, being heavily dependent on external support. With the help of Western donors, the United Nations and international NGOs, the government has been able to restore rudimentary education and health care services throughout much of Somaliland. All such funding, however, is channeled through international aid agencies since donors are unable to provide assistance directly to a government they do not recognize. Arab and Islamic donors have also played a part in Somaliland's reconstruction, though their funds are by-and-large directed towards the development of a parallel social service system, outside of the government. Most people, however, still depend on private service providers, such as medical clinics, pharmacies and private schools, which have mushroomed without standardization or regulation.

Overall, foreign aid has played a minor part in Somaliland's reconstruction. The figures of the Somalia Aid Co-ordinating Body (the Nairobibased body that co-ordinates assistance to Somalia in the absence of a recognized government) are imprecise, but suggest that less than 20 per cent of that donor aid is directed towards Somaliland, or roughly U.S.$30 million in 2002. Moreover, this figure does not show the high proportion of donor funding that is spent on overhead, Nairobi offices or international personnel. Probably less than half the total volume of aid is actually spent on the ground. The real engine of Somaliland's recovery has been neither the government, nor international assistance, but rather the private sector. Livestock, much of it raised in southern Somalia and eastern Ethiopia, is the backbone of the Somaliland economy, accounting for roughly 90 per cent of export earnings or U.S.$175 million per year. Since 1998, however, a Saudi ban on Somali livestock has severely depressed the livestock trade. The proceeds of the livestock trade are generally used to purchase foodstuffs and luxury items for import, an unknown proportion of which is destined for Ethiopia as both legitimate trade and contraband.

The Somaliland economy is also fuelled by the estimated U.S.$200 million that arrives each year from Somalilanders abroad via hawaala money transfer agents. These remittances are almost entirely destined for private households and have played a vital role in the physical reconstruction of family homes and businesses - a critical function given the scale of devastation visited upon major towns like Hargeysa and Burco during the civil war. Since no international banks are present in Somaliland, the hawaala have come to offer a growing range of financial services, including interest-free accounts, cheque-cashing facilities and business loans. The government's own accomplishments (basic civil administration across roughly 80 per cent of the territory, reasonably disciplined army and police forces and a relatively stable currency), although impressive achievements on a budget of roughly U.S.$20 million per year are, in absolute terms, quite modest. Since 2001, Somaliland has introduced a new and potentially decisive dimension to its quest for statehood: democratization. In May 2001, a new constitution establishing a multi-party electoral system was approved by plebiscite. Local (municipal) elections followed in December 2002 and a fiercely contested presidential election was held in April 2003. With only parliamentary elections remaining until Somaliland's transition to multiparty democracy is formally complete, international interest in this would-be state has grown perceptibly.
III. GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRATISATION

After more than a century of colonial administration, civilian misrule and military dictatorship, the people of Somaliland are yearning for freedom, justice and representative government. The problem is that Somaliland - like the rest of Somalia - has little experience of democratic rule. Political leaders have instead seemed intent on resuscitating centralized, patrimonial systems of political authority. The behavior of the political elite often smacks of arrogance and paternalism; the rule of law is weak, corruption is endemic and nepotism still pervades political and administrative appointments.

Civil society remains underdeveloped, and the Somaliland public remains by-and-large a passive "taker of government policy - not its maker".

Such constraints have conspired to make Somaliland's pursuit of democracy a long, uphill struggle - a struggle all the more remarkable for its domestic, as opposed to donor driven, origins. Donors have been reluctant to provide even token support for Somaliland's democratic project on the grounds that it might be construed as support for the territory's independence. Ironically, Somaliland's international isolation - past and present - has made a positive contribution to its political evolution. Benign neglect under British rule, and the decidedly less benign neglect of the Barre regime, left the territory's traditions of "pastoral democracy" intact, conferring a vital degree of legitimacy and accountability upon the SNM and subsequent Somaliland administrations. The SNM's failure to obtain significant international sponsorship during the 1980s obliged the movement to develop a popular support base. Present day Somaliland's administrative arrangements are consciously modeled on the small, cost-efficient exemplar of the British colonial administration, reflecting the government's minute revenue stream and its extremely limited opportunities to incur debt.

It is unclear whether Somaliland's unique political system has evolved towards democracy because of the territory's poverty, historical neglect and international isolation, or in spite of them. Yet there is no denying that over the past decade, Somaliland has made significant progress towards a pluralistic political system, a free and critical press, rule of law, and an environment conducive to the respect and promotion of human rights.

Historically, Somaliland's democratization process has unfolded in three phases: the first, which began with the cessation of hostilities, witnessed the establishment of an administration led by a clanbased military faction (the SNM); the second phase involved the transfer of power from the factional government to a more inclusive civil administration; and the third began with a constitutional referendum, which paved the way for multiparty elections.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

Drug: The Double Edged Knife (Part 18)

By: Mohamed H. Dahir, Chairman Pharmaceutical Association of Somaliland
Mouthwash: is it good for anything'

An area in which the advertising industry has managed to play upon our fears is with the mouthwashes. By now we are spending alot of money every year to ward off horrible halitosis. But do those familiar names like Oraldine, Tantum Verde or Citrolin really prevent bad breath' Bad breath, like indigestion, is merely a catch-all phrase for a symptom common to many varied and different problems. A normal, healthy mouth will not have an offensive odor, though it is true almost everyone experiences a furry, scuzzy mouth upon arising. This is typical and will disappear rapidly with talking or after breakfast since it is due to the oral inactivity of sleeping, a period of time when bacteria can act freely on food particles. While it is true that your mouth is loaded with germs (a normal adult probably has around ten million bugs in every drop of saliva), that is the way it supposed to be.

While still a baby you accumulate benign forms of streptococci, diphloccocci, and spirochetes, as well as other exotic varieties of bacteria. But this flora and fauna is important in keeping everything in balance, and without some of them this equilibrium could become upset. Any disturbance of our natural germ population could leave us more sensitive to invading microorganisms. Mouthwashes do upset our normal, resident flora. More important, however, is the question, "Does the random killing of oral bacteria with gargles really prevent halitosis'" well, in the first place there is no way you are going to kill even a fraction of the hundreds of millions of germs in your mouth and throat with a couple of gargles. Even if you killed a large fraction of the bugs, five deep breaths or one good kiss would probably replace in spades anything you might think you had accomplished. But even more important, bad breath does not result from ordinary mouth bacteria. Assuming that your halitosis is not a result of your insecure imagination, it might be due to poor dental hygiene.

Brushing and flossing your teeth will do wonders. If it is not something this simple, then an infection is a likely bet. It might originate deep within the throat, or be as superficial as canker sore. A tooth which is decaying or abscessed will also produce an unpleasant smell. Even certain conditions such as diabetes, lung, or liver disease could result in a distinctive odor. Therefore it is obvious that a mouthwash will do little to correct the underlying condition and at best will only superficially and temporarily change or "freshen" the breath. The other major cause of bad breath comes from eating those delicious meals that contain gobs of garlic and onion. We must confess that every one of us has a preference for salads with raw onions. Will a little Oraldene do anything to calm my dragon mouth' No. the "sweet" smell of garlic does not come from any residual odor lingering in your mouth or throat. From there it circulates all through your body, reaching your lungs, where it is exhaled with each breath you would have to stop breathing in order to really block out the odor, and that is a bit drastic. So skip the mouth wash. A stick of chewing gum or a mint will probably do more to mask the smell that all the breath listerine in Georgia. One remote possibility is that parsley root eaten before and after consumption of garlic will quickly diminish the offensive odor. And don't fall into the trap of believing that "breath freshener mints" will in any way relieve a chronic condition. There is only one thing to do: go see a dentist or a doctor and find out what the underlying condition is that has produced the odor. An abscess or gum disease is a serious situation, which should not go untreated. Bad breath may be your early warning system.

How about sore throats' Surely something as bad-tasting a listering must be good for a sore throat even if it doesn't do anything for bad breath' Wrong again. In the first place, the infection responsible for your sore throat is in such a location that a brief gargle will not amount to much. Even if you bathe the affected tissue for many minutes, you could not kill the bugs responsible. Most sore throats are due to virus infections, which will respond neither to antibiotics nor to mouthwashes. For those sore throats that are due to bacteria, only an antibiotic administered in tablet for or by infection will benefit the affected area. And the only wy anyone can determine whether your sore throat is viral or bacterial in origin is by a throat culture. This is very important for severe, long-lasting infections since the possibility of a strep throat (an infection caused by Group A beta hemolystic strstreptoccus) is dangerous and demands penicillin treatment in order to prevent rheumatic fever or heart or kidney damage. Symptomatic treatment.

To be continued next week.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003/Source: Anna Johnson, 26 June - 2 July (Cairo Times)

"Cruel And Useless": Countries need to move beyond legal tools to societal attitudes to combat female circumcision

On an average day, nearly 6,000 girls are circumcised in Africa, Pope Shenouda III, the Coptic Church's patriarch of Alexandria, declared on 21 June, during a conference in Cairo aimed at the prevention of female genital mutilation (FGM).

"We must stop decisively this detrimental phenomenon," Shenouda said. "This tradition has no religious or ethical basis. It is a tragedy, and we have to do a lot to stop it."

Shenouda was one of several guest speakers, including first lady Suzanne Mubarak, who addressed delegates from 28 African and Arab countries as well as representatives from Europe and North America during the conference. Though each country faces varying rates of FGM-from as low as 18 percent of women in Tanzania to more than 90 percent in Somalia and Egypt-each are searching for ways to combat and eradicate FGM.

"FGM is cruel and useless," said European Parliament member Emma Bonino of Italy. "The time has come to say as you do here in Egypt, khalas."

By definition, female circumcision, or FGM, is the removal or alteration of female genitalia. It varies in severity from partial removal of the clitoris to complete removal of the clitoris and adjoining labia as well as the joining of both sides of the vulva together across the vagina. According to the World Health Organization, 120 to 130 million women worldwide are circumcised and approximately 2 million girls annually receive the operation. A majority of these girls, including Egyptian girls, receive the milder forms of FGM.

Though human rights advocates and medical experts have been arguing for years that FGM not only causes severe physical harm but psychological damage as well, many of the 28 mostly African countries where FGM is prevalent have been unable to significantly reduce their rate of FGM, despite a significant number of existing anti-female circumcision laws.

Conference organizers and participants hope the three-day conference, which brought experts from around the world together to coordinate and share legal and grassroots efforts, will begin to bridge the gaps between human rights, the law and deep-rooted traditions.

"There has been progress these past few days," said Fitnat Adjetey from the Ghana-based African Women Lawyers Association. "What's left is literacy and getting the community aware. There's a law, and now there's a need to change."

As part of the European Commission-funded conference, delegates and organizers approved the Cairo Declaration on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation, a document they worked on over the three days. Included in the declaration are recommendations focusing on gender equality, legislation, children's rights and criminal law. Though the declaration does not explicitly say what each country must do to eliminate FGM, it describes general provisions that should be reviewed. The declaration suggests that governments should formulate strategies and programs to enforce existing anti-FGM laws, that religious leaders should be informed on the negative impact of FGM and those who support ending it should be incorporated into outreach strategies, that medical practitioners who perform FGM should face maximum criminal penalties and should have their licenses revoked, and that women and girls should have legal remedies available, such as the right to bring civil action to seek compensation or protect themselves from undergoing FGM.

Despite the declaration's emphasis on the legal side of FGM, conference participants recognized that without community advocacy and awareness that focuses on empowering women, the anti-FGM laws will not necessarily deter families from having their daughters undergo circumcision.

"We're here today to tackle legislation and legal tools," Mubarak said in her address. "Yet a law is not enough and will not be the solution. We have to learn to implement the law."

For example, Egypt outlawed FGM in 1997. But recent statistics suggest that 97 percent of married women are circumcised, though the rate sinks to 86 percent among women aged 13 to 19. Furthermore, similar statistics say there is still a 75 percent acceptance of FGM amongst families who have young daughters. Though these numbers are lower for girls who have one or more parent who has received a secondary education, the rate is still one of the highest amongst countries with FGM.

Activists say that not only is the law not being enforced, many families still believe FGM is not violent and is necessary to maintain the chastity and marriage eligibility of their daughters. Though religious leaders in Egypt have spoken out against FGM, including Shenouda and the grand sheikh of Al Azhar, Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi-who both agreed at the conference the FGM does not have a religious basis-many Egyptians still believe FGM is their religious duty. Yemen, Djibouti, Egypt, Somalia and Sudan are the only predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that practice FGM. The only way then to combat FGM is at the family and community level, the activists say.

"The practice is illegal in Egypt but prevalent in communities," said Moushira Khattab, secretary general of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood in Egypt. "The compliance to FGM laws ends up in the family, so that's where we need to target our efforts."

Khattab said the council is now embarking on a new campaign to make 60 villages free of FGM in Egypt by 2006. As part of the campaign, the council is working with 12 other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to bring awareness of the dangers of FGM to the grassroots level. Community, governmental, civil and religious leaders will work alongside NGOs to enhance community awareness and advocacy. Regular meetings will be held in the villages and girls and their families will be taught not only about circumcision but about other relevant empowerment issues.

Khattab said she hopes the campaign will be successful in changing people's thoughts about FGM and this change will spread to other villages and areas of Egypt.

Other countries and regions of Africa have initiated similar programs, including Tanzania, which is launching an intensive national educational media campaign, and the Inter-Africa Committee, which is starting a similar Zero Tolerance to FGM campaign in countries such as Ethiopia.

In addition to local and national campaigns, the conference plans to spread its declaration and desire to eliminate FGM worldwide. In addition to delivering the Cairo Declaration to heads of state, national parliaments, the Africa Union, the Arab League and the European Union, representatives plan to deliver the document to the United Nations in New York this fall.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003 Editorial: The Way Forward for Somaliland-Ethiopian Relations When two liberation movements took power separately in Somaliland and Ethiopia in 1991, the centuries-old hostilities that hitherto held the two countries apart came to a sudden end and a new era seemed to have dawned on the peoples of both nations. But to put matters in their correct historical perspective, for many Somalilanders, peace with Ethiopia was considered a strategic objective long before the fall of Barre's dictatorship in Jan 1991. Credit for introducing this culture of peace early on among Somalilanders should, of course, go to the SNM.

Though nearly a decade has passed since the SNM was in power, its peace and open-door economic policy was followed by all successive Somaliland governments since 1993. The current friendly relations between Somaliland and Ethiopia stand in stark contrast to the past when the two countries were sworn enemies. Despite the fact that both sides have come a long way in the transition from being foes to becoming friends, much more needs to be done in order to develop these bilateral ties to full maturity. Regrettably, the emerging Somaliland-Ethiopian relations seem to place emphasis only on one issue: security of border areas. There has been little effort, if any, to explore other spheres that could benefit both sides, such as trade and investment.

In a post-Sept 11 world, nobody should question the importance of security to the interests and well being of people on either side of the border, the region or even beyond, however even a good level of security cooperation will be hard to sustain in the long term unless reinforced by constructive engagements at the socio-economic and political fronts. The way forward for Somaliland-Ethiopian relations is to stress cooperation at least in potential economic sectors that will produce maximum benefits for the peoples of both countries. As a first step, it will be necessary to remove all kind of barriers impeding the free flow of trade between the two countries. Somaliland with an economy much less than Ethiopia's and with no access to bilateral or multilateral aid, has no restrictions against Ethiopian entrepreneurs bringing goods into Somaliland, a policy that puts this country in a relatively huge trade deficit with its partner. Still, leaders of the two countries need to come up with policies that encourage and not constrain the enterprising spirit of business communities.

Ethiopia should not make its policy toward Somaliland hostage to those so-called politicians from the former Italian colony of Somalia who ritually accuse Addis Ababa of trying to dismember the already defunct "Somali Republic". Because such accusations are politically convenient for those who make them, they will always make those accusations, regardless of what Ethiopia does. Ethiopian leaders know, and we know, that it's the people of Somaliland who fought for reinstating the independence of their country long before the EPRDF assumed power in Ethiopia. And since neither Ethiopia nor Somaliland can escape the fact that they will always be neighbors, the interests of both countries dictate that full diplomatic relations be established between them without any further delay.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

A Glance At Issues

A mere casual glance at recent and ancient history, in the field of global politics, reveals that leaders who surround themselves with unscrupulous individuals, suffer as a consequence. Somalilanders need not look beyond the hated regime of Said Barre, where the abuses of executive power and the protection of incompetent ministers and abuses of the public purse where prevalent. In the aftermath of our first real taste of democracy, which has been denied to us for so long, we all hope and pray that our first elected administration serves us well. However I am concerned that our first fully democratic administration may have already forgotten the single most important principle in a democracy: that good governance is based on public support and confidence.

Indeed the unnecessary delay in the parliamentary elections does nothing to further public confidence. The parliamentary elections will give us the opportunity to utilize the new breed of young, educated and talented professional Somalilanders. For further evidence of this new professional spirit of the Somaliland public, one only needs to recall that it was they who preserved the peace during hard times. Also through their entrepreneurial spirit they have made this country what it is today. Where there was dereliction and destruction at the time of liberation, there are new business venture and building developments today. Shops are full of goods, from all corners of the globe. New specialized schools have opened up on almost all street corners of Hargeisa. Again all of these remarkable achievements have been achieved as a result of the hard work and dedication of our great Somaliland public.

Another strong concern of mine is the state of our judiciary. In order to preserve its independence, which is crucial, I believe a number of reforms need to be carried out to ensure that we have a modern, transparent, and independent legal branch. I was extremely pleased to hear about the hundreds of recruits who recently volunteered for service within our law enforcements agencies. Again, this shows the great national sprit of our people. But as with the judiciary, reforms are needed also within the police. Sufficient training and resources must as a matter of urgency be channeled towards our law enforcement agencies. Also I believe it is high time for a review to be conducted into the remuneration of our brave law enforcement officers.

Finally, having been informed by a reliable source that our national port of Berbera requires urgent repairs, I was shocked to learn that no funds had been set-aside for that purpose. This is despite the fact that the port of Berbera is our link to the outside world and a source of huge income for our government. It is quite obvious that the current operational structure of the port has failed, and as a matter of our survival, urge full public debate on the matter. There are a number of options that we can explore; each has their own merits, such as appointing a board of directors to manage the port, turning the port management over to the local government, or as in the case of Dubai and Djibouti tendering the management out to a private company to assure revenue maximization and the smooth running of the port.

Hassan Aw Liban, Hargeisa, Somaliland.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003/By Abdullahi Hussein Daud

Somaliland's Road To Self-Sufficiency

Somalilanders of all walks of life have a common desire: all want their country to be independent, not only politically, but also economically. In other words, all would like to see a self-reliant Somaliland. Theoretically, the elected government has the responsibility to turn people's dreams into reality, but is the government up to the task' What should the role of opposition parties and concerned citizens be'

In Somaliland, the Ministry of Planning has the responsibility to set the nation's short and long-term economic development plans. These plans address questions pertaining to the state and the outlook of our national economy in three, five or ten year's time. When sound economic plans are put in place and implemented, one can predict the direction and degree of the national economic progress. Even when a country is unable to achieve its economic goals due to problems beyond its control, it can always ask others for help. However, it is a completely different story when a country does not have any vision to reach its long-term self-sufficiency goals. This is exactly the case for Somaliland. In a ceremony in which he was transferring his post, the former Somaliland's Planning Minister, Mr. Afi, was quoted as saying by a section of the press that the ministry's main responsibility was to register and regulate NGOs. This means Somaliland entrusted its destiny with foreign NGOs and specialized UN agencies. In today's Somaliland, the NGOs and U.N. agencies support, among other things, almost all hospitals, schools, roads and water supply projects. One may ask then: what is the use of our three dozen ministers' Well, the ministers are there to inaugurate UN sponsored conferences, and to unveil plaques of new schools and hospitals built by foreign humanitarian agencies. Like a beggar who is adding up his sadaqa collections at the end of his long day, Somaliland's former Education Minister, Yusuf A. Dualeh, proudly counted, in the last day of his office, the number of schools built by UN agencies during his tenure.

From government ministers to peasant farmers, we have become a nation dependent on assistance. On the upper limit of Somaliland's economic ladder, the cabinet members, and other high-ranking government officials spend big junk of their time recommending their relatives and friends to vacant U.N. and NGOs positions. Other less influential government figures fight over such issue as to who will rent his bungalow or Land Cruisers to those agencies. On the other extreme of the economic ladder, poor farmers in Aw-Barkhadle and elsewhere wait for years for an irrigation engine from NGOs. There is, however, a cost to pay for being a free rider. The biggest cost, for instance, is to swallow your national pride when begging others for assistance. Look at the situation in our public schools. What kind of nation we are when we cannot develop textbooks that reflect our national ideology for our children' The prescribed textbooks in Somaliland do not mention the word `Somaliland'. Why' Since the development and printing of these books are funded by UN agencies, the word `Somaliland' has been willfully omitted. The textbooks that our children read everyday don't contain the name of their country because the UN doesn't recognize Somaliland. The UN is subjecting us to the same humiliation that was meted out to the then America's African slaves who were denied the right to use their own names.
Where are we headed for'

The ruling party, UDUB, miserably and repeatedly failed to turn the economic conditions of the country around, despite having numerous opportunities to introduce real changes. Other than exploiting clan politics, bribing opponents and going after opposition parties, UDUB has no vision to lead the country out of the current economic dependence. The party thinks that it can yet fool the nation by its false promises. President Riyale and his followers should know that they can fool some people for sometime, but they cannot fool all the people all the time. Since cheating in election results is no longer an option, the ruling party must show the people why they should vote for its candidates in the coming parliamentary elections.

However, the problem does not lie with the ruling party alone. The opposition parties have no vision either to challenge UDUB's modus operandi. In the last elections, KULMIYE party missed a golden opportunity by wasting its time and resources on highlighting past liberation struggles, and dancing around the SNM glory, instead of presenting a viable economic policy for Somaliland's economic liberalization and development. The opposition parties must come up with a solution to the country's economic problems, if they have any hope of gaining a lion's share of parliamentary seats for the forthcoming legislative election.
A non-partisan think-tank

Apart from political parties, non-partisan think tanks have a major role to play in transforming country's economic outlook. Just like the way Dr. Hussein Bulhan's Somaliland Academy of Peace and Development has assisted the country in its democratization journey, the country is desperately in need of another think tank that can help it progress towards self-sufficiency. To have credibility, think tanks must remain non-partisan in the country's infant stage of democratization and economic development.

Abdullahi Hussein Daud, Minneapolis, MN, USA,abdhdaud@yahoo.com

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

Signing The Dotted Lines Could Be Costly

By Geleh Ali Gulaid

The new Rayale administration was swayed into accepting deported refugees back in to Somaliland. The poorest country in the world, with a high unemployment rate, un-transparent fiscal budget and inadequate health care system, has accepted the return of refugees from Britain without compensation. This unrecognized country with a poor economy and no prospects for improvement, in the near future, has accepted more than it could handle.

As we all know, the people of Somaliland were not as fortunate as the southern Somalis, who were rescued by the planeloads, and resettled in thriving cities with open arms, and considerable assistance. Unlike the people of Somalia, Somalilanders who sought asylum in the western countries went through deplorable processes in which they were stripped off their pride, property and humanity. Indeed they have sacrificed everything for a better future for themselves and their children, and this administration has managed to derail their efforts and hopes.

The few questions I have are: Shouldn't the government consulted and engaged the public and the refugee's themselves' Whey didn't the parliament debate this critical issue' What happened to the democratic principles that are enshrined in the constitution and the unity that has resurrected the people of Somaliland from the death and destruction that they were subjected to'

Thanks to the ministry of rehabilitation, reconstruction and resettlement for its arrogance and deciding by itself an issue that concerns all Somalilanders. Before they start agreeing to and signing the dotted lines, they need to provide the public with a framework for policy supported by a well-thought and socially appropriate measures. There needs to be an engagement from all parties, including the stakeholders- the public. Somaliland's public officials should not think of themselves as all-knowing. We can't afford to allow any group or party to have a monopoly over ideas and solutions that concern the nation as a whole. The government has not initiated a single program or fund for the families that the Mujahidiin left behind, conveniently forgetting that the Mujahidiin are the ones who fought, bled and died for this nation. Rather, the government is trying to appease the British. The Somaliland government needs to prioritize its responsibilities. Before signing this agreement, the refugees were a British burden. But now they are Somaliland's burden. I just hope they received enough financial inducement to bear the burden.

Somalilanders need a government that is transparent, inclusive and open in its policy formulation. What is necessary for our success is a genuine and informed partnership. Only from this partnership can the goals of development and progress for all be attained. And only from those collaborative efforts can we forge a common destiny.

Geleh Ali Gulaid, Ohio state university, geleh@aol.com

http://www.thebody.com/cdc/news_updates_archive/2003/jun19_03/somaliland_donor.html HIV/AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, and Tuberculosis Prevention News Update June 19, 2003 News Briefs Somaliland Appeals for Donor Aid to Fight Poverty, AIDS Agence France Presse 06.19.03 The breakaway republic of Somaliland in northwest Somalia on Thursday asked the international community for help in fighting HIV/AIDS and poverty. "Somaliland is committed to efforts to alleviate poverty and to fight HIV/AIDS epidemic, but we lack a helping hand from donors," said Somaliland's Finance Minister Hussein Ali Duale "Awil" on Thursday. The republic broke away from Somalia in May 1991, five months after dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and went into exile. However, it has yet to be recognized by the international community, despite having developed some tools of statehood, including a currency, penal code and flag. "We are appealing to international donors for aid to fight poverty and AIDS scourges, as our meager budget is insufficient to pay salaries to the government employees, as well as build schools, hospitals and finance other development projects of our rural nomadic community," said Awil, adding that his ministry will soon unveil major development projects on HIV/AIDS, poverty and rural school construction.

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

Borama Water Agency, Privatization Is A Realistic Approach

A process is going on to privatize the Borama water agency, but there are loopholes within the system itself, and unless those doubts are cleared, the consumers would not be pleased. The department has to be privatized with a board of directors, shares and complete company rules. Opportunity must be given likewise to any group of people who are competent enough to take over the department. Though the selection of the group has already been made on the basis of financial capacity only and with no other criteria being followed, I think one important criteria was forgotten, as far as the quality of the shareholders are concerned, and that is the trust and prestige these people hold among the public or society in order to avoid friction between the consumers and the shareholders in the future.

Unfortunately, the shareholders are complaining that they do not have documented information regarding what is being done and what is left for the donor agency to complete. It is important for the shareholders to identify the costs and achievements that are resulting from project activities: both the effects and the impact. If there are discrepancies between actual and planned progress, corrective action needs to be taken. Otherwise, nobody would know the fate of the project and shareholders will be kept in the blind. Moreover, the system requires mapping in order to know new connections that should be made, and the pressure as well as the topography, which is very important to the adequate distribution of water for the whole town. On the basis of this information, one could determine the number of reservoirs and pipes needed, as well as the pricing of the water, the cost of production and delivery of a unit quantity of water includes investment to expand the system, tax, operation, and maintenance costs and above all the profitability of the company. Also, the cost should be affordable even by the poorest sections of the society.

Before the actual handing over of the department to the company, the water needs of the town has to be calculated and the future system musts meet the requirements including daily water demand fluctuations for the town and immediate surroundings. There is also the problem of over-staffing which puts the cost-effectiveness of the enterprise in jeopardy. The new water organization must recruit only the number of staff it needs, and this should be done on a professional basis.

If the above issues are not addressed properly, the project's ability to achieve sustainability and deliver water services will be compromised.
Abdirahman Ibrahim (Aleel), dharaaryonis@hotmail.com

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

The Wisdom Somaliland Is Missing

By Ahmed Saeed
Somaliland tried to govern itself and seek recognition, but after more than a decade, people are still sceptical and uncertain about where they are heading. Nothing good shows up from nowhere. One thing is for sure: Somaliland needs a different type of governance. Is it not time to question ourselves, why nothing is happening' Regardless who is in the government and the large number of Ministers, unwise policies and lack of expertise continue to haunt us. If we alone (Somalilanders) can not, and shall not for sure, be able to establish reasonable, modern governance in Somaliland, then why don't we admit our ignorance and seek help from the outside world, by asking them to lend us experts to work with every Ministry for a limited period of time; so we may learn from them how to run a country. I am not trying to be rude and do not mean to offend anyone, but so far, Somaliland's governments, past and present, are failures.

Our option is to employ white experts for each and every Ministry. For instance, instead of 50 Somali ministers, only 15 Somali skilled Ministers plus 15 non-Somali experts will put us on the map and will bring us some great benefits. This far-fetched idea would even enhance our chances of recognition.

Though no one has the right or the power to force his/her opinion upon Somaliland, the truth can be debated in all circles. Let those who disagree share their views in public.

For those who want to email me in private, and share their views, here is my email address: gollis@sympatico.ca, Ahmed Saeed, Ottawa, Canada

Source: Somaliland Times, No. 81, Aug 15, 2003

Somaliland's Government Repeats the Same Mistake

By Abdirahman Ahmed Shunuf

Voluntary repatriation is an area of growing interest to major donors and the UNHCR, as the stated "best solution" to the growing refugee population worldwide. Higher profile programmes such as UN sponsored returnees to Namibia and Bosnia serve to emphasize the apparent viability of this new policy direction in international refugee management. However, there is mounting evidence that donor managed repatriations, coordinated as they are by governments and associations of governments, are not always in concert with, nor reflective of, the desires of refugees themselves. At the same time, there are some circumstances that fall entirely outside the criteria for major donor involvement in repatriation.

There are three formal requirements for sponsoring repatriation articulated by the UNHCR executive committee. They are: that the return should be truly voluntary in nature; the refugees be allowed to return to their place of origin and ideally their original homes; and that there must be clear and unequivocal agreement between the government of the host country and the government of the country of origin, both on the modalities of the movement and the conditions of reception (UNHCR 1985f). Somaliland's repatriation is an excellent example of the failure of the international community and the Somaliland government to address the three formal requirements for sponsoring repatriation.

The first failure: Given that many refugee generating situations arise from "internal wars" between governments and organized insurgent movements, for example, (Somali National Movement's war for national liberation which led to the victory of the movement and the rebirth of Somaliland) and given the fact that Somaliland is not yet recognized by the international community, the strict government -to- government context which these criteria stipulate does not adequately account for all repatriation. Therefore, governments and other multilateral institutions lack the legal bases to act independently, unless Somaliland is recognized or given an observer status. (See for example, the recent ICG report 28 July 2003).

The recent agreement between Somaliland and Britain to repatriate Somaliland refugees is, therefore illegal, because the agreement occurred entirely outside donor generated refugee protocols, mentioned above.

The Second Failure: The second formal requirement for sponsoring repatriation is that the return should be truly voluntary in nature. The new Somaliland foreign minister Mrs. Edna Aden expressed the willingness of Somaliland refugees in Britain to return voluntarily to their homeland, in a major speech to the parliament last week. While the foreign minister was busy trying to win votes for her first major foreign policy bill, one of her strong supporters was non other than the current minister of reconstruction, rehabilitation and resettlement Mr. Abdillahi Hussein Iman (Dirawal) who was previously the key player in a similar repatriation agreement between the Governments of Somaliland and Denmark in 1998. This agreement was unfortunately a major foreign policy disaster for both nations, because the 7.8 Million-Dollar Denmark repatriation program was known as the forced repatriation program rather than a voluntary repatriation.

What follows is a newspaper account of the events of 1998 forced refugees repatriation from Denmark. "In the middle of last week and this week, five Somaliland refugees were brought to Hargeisa airport. They included three women and two children. The Republican came to know after an interview with two of the women who arrived at Hargeisa airport on the fourteenth April 1998, that Denmark was responsible for what these two women called "A Forced repatriation". (April 18, 1998 The Republican).

Explaining the in-human conditions that these people suffered, Sahra Mohamed Ali says, "you know, I had a medical report, explaining that I was suffering from a throat problem and that my baby was also not allowed any food that had milk products. The baby was also on medication. I was not allowed to purchase any medicine for my baby and myself. They did not allow me to take my belongings, including clothes, shoes, etc. I had no money either. When I arrived at the airport, Somaliland government officials came to me to meet us, I tried to explain my situation, but to no avail, they in fact laughed at us and thought it was funny. We were thrown to the Airport terminal like dogs with no money and shelter". The Somaliland government denied any hand in the mishandling of the refugees. The Minister of Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement, Mr. Abdillahi Hussein Iman who incidentally still holds the same post said at that time, "Our agreement with Denmark stipulated that we will be informed on when the deportations will take place, but the Danish government didn't inform us and therefore had begun deporting refugees without our knowledge". (April 18, 1998 The Republican).

In Conclusion, "Those Who Don't Learn From History Are Doomed To Repeat It".

Agence France Presse, August 15, 2003

EU ships food aid to Ethiopia through Somaliland port of Berbera

The European Union (EU) has for the first time shipped its food aid to Ethiopia through Berbera port in Somalia's breakaway republic of Somaliland, relief and government officials said on Friday. "Some 15,000 tonnes of relief food have already arrived and more than 100,000 tonnes more will have arrived by next Monday, all through the port of Berbera," the officials, who asked not to be named, said.

Somaliland's foreign minister Dahir Kahin, who visited Ethiopia recently, confirmed the move to use Berbera, saying: "A lot of food aid is coming to Ethiopia through the port of Berbera."

"Security is not a problem in the region and 15,000 tonnes have arrived in Ethiopia without any a hitch -- a testimony for the credibility and confidence on the security situation," Kahin said.

Ethiopia had never used any ports in former Somalia, as it used its own ports of Massawa and Assab until Eritrea attained independence.

The use of the Eritrean port of Assab stopped when the two countries went to war between 1998-2000, effectively making Ethiopia landlocked.

Before Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia a decade ago, Ethiopia relied completely on the ports of Massawa and Assab and could never think of using any ports in Somalia, with which it has gone to war several times.

But things have changed since with the overthrow in Somalia of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, which led to Somalia's northwest region declaring itself the independent republic of Somaliland five months later.

Ethiopia is the only country that has recognised Somaliland and currently has air links and a diplomatic presence in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-declared republic.

Shipments to Ethiopia also pass through the port of Djibouti, but it is usually congested.

Ethiopia has also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with neighbouring Sudan for the use of its Red Sea ports and roads connecting the two countries are currently under construction, the officials said.

BBC Monitoring Reports, August 13, 2003/published by Somaliland Net web site on 12 August

SOUTH AFRICAN PAPER SAYS FOREIGN MINISTRY IN FAVOUR OF SOMALILAND'S RECOGNITION

Having vacated the chair of the African Union, South Africa is now freer to step out of line on controversial issues on the continent.

The case is growing for the country to do this on one of the prickliest matters: Somaliland. The former British colony is seeking recognition as an entity free from its paralysed southern neighbour, Somalia.

Law advisers from the South African Department of Foreign Affairs support Somaliland's argument for independence. "It is undeniable that Somaliland does indeed qualify for statehood, and it is incumbent upon the international community to recognize it," read the report that was recently commissioned by Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini- Zuma. The government's lawyers agree that "any efforts to deny or delay would not only put the international community at the risk of ignoring the most stable region in the Horn (of Africa), it would impose untold hardship upon the people of Somaliland due to the denial of foreign assistance that recognition entails."

Somaliland stands accused by the AU of the cardinal sin of secession. Absolute recognition of colonial boundaries, logical and historical reality notwithstanding, was a preoccupation of the AU's predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

The OAU feared that if ever this can of worms were opened, it would lead to incessant border wars. This does not apply in the case of Somaliland, which broke an inequitable and eventually genocidal union with Somalia 12 years ago without claiming a centimetre more than the territory it had at independence in 1960.

The South African law advisers address this issue too. "The interest of world peace and stability require that, where possible, the division or fragmentation of existing states should be managed peacefully and by negotiation. But where this is not possible, as is the case with Somalia, international law accepts that the interests of justice may prevail over the principle of territorial integrity," they say.

The document on Dlamini-Zuma's desk was supported this week by the assertion from the Brussels-based think tank, the International Crisis Group (ICG), that Somaliland's demand for recognition presents the international community with stark choices. "The question confronting the international community is no longer whether Somaliland should be recognized as an independent state, but whether there remain any viable alternatives," the ICG report says.

It says that the international community could either "develop pragmatic responses to Somaliland's demand for self-determination or continue to insist upon the increasingly abstract notion of the unity and territorial integrity of the Somali Republic."

It warns that the latter course is likely to lead to a new round of civil war in Somalia.

The ICG says an international fact-finding mission should visit Somaliland to assess the situation and "recommend policy options." It also calls on the AU to grant Somaliland "observer status pending a final decision on its international status."

Dlamini-Zuma knows South Africa's decision will be key to the rest of the continent's action. Earlier this year she invited a Somaliland ministerial delegation to South Africa and she has sent senior officials there.

South African businessmen, including Mvelaphanda's Tokyo Sexwale, recently visited Somaliland, which offers interesting mineral resources and, more importantly, the political stability in which to exploit them.

The country's democratically elected President, Dahir Riyale Kahin, this week reiterated his refusal to join the stuttering peace process. His Information Minister, Abdullahi Muhammad Du'ale, said Somaliland would welcome any peace deal between the parties "in the former Italian Somalia", but noted that "this has nothing to do with Somaliland."

Du'ale was reacting to media reports that a Kenyan government delegation was on its way to Somaliland to try to convince it to attend the talks in Nairobi. He said any Kenyan delegation to Somaliland was welcome "so long as they are coming to discuss bilateral issues and ways of developing bilateral relations."

He warned, however, that Somaliland "will not entertain any delegation whose objective is to bring us into these talks. Such a mission will not be welcome, and they should not waste their time."

BBC Monitoring International Reports. August 12, 2003/Source: The Somaliland Times web site, Hargeysa, in English 24 Jul 03 ) BBC Monitoring

ISLAND OFF SOMALILAND COAST STRUCK BY WARPLANES ON 20 JULY - PAPER REPORTS

On 24 July, the web site of The Somaliland Times reported an attack on the island of Eibaat and posted a commentary on the incident, which has not been widely reported by other Somali media.

The report said: "Explosions were heard on Sunday (20 July) at Somaliland's island of Eibaat (northern Somalia), about 10 km northwest of Seylac. The explosions were caused by an air strike carried out by US warplanes, sources in Seylac said. However there was some confusion as to the real identity of the military aircraft that carried out the bombing. Military forces belonging to France and the US-led coalition against terrorism have troops stationed in nearby Djibouti. "Eibaat is located in an area declared s a marine protected zone. The area has a unique eco-system with a diversity of species and an outstandingly beautiful marine environment including one of the most admirable coral formations in the world." In its commentary, The Somaliland Times said: "Despite initial press reports that it was US warplanes that bombed Somaliland's Eibaat Island (about 10 km off the coast of Seylac town, northern Somalia) last Sunday (20 July), the Somaliland government apparently has not until now been able to confirm the identity of the aircraft that were involved in the attack. This is understandable since Somaliland does not have the capability to detect whether its airspace has been violated, let alone the ability to identify the aircraft flying over its territory. But since Eibaat is located within the proximity of an area heavily guarded by American military, there are good reasons to believe that the warplanes that carried out the bombing were US owned."

"It is of course true that the US is not the only power in the area that has the capability to make an air strike on Eibaat. The French also have such capabilities. But it was the US that has, for the last month, been engaged in intensive joint military exercises in the area, involving units from the three branches of their armed forces deployed in the wider region. Regardless of whoever was responsible for the attack on Eibaat, Somaliland's territorial integrity has been violated and its marine resources damaged by outside military forces. What is disturbing to many Somalilanders is that not only their territory has been violated, but they are unable to establish whom they should hold accountable'"

"The Somaliland public has also been dismayed with the government's slow and inadequate response to the incident. Nobody expected the government to take retaliatory measures, simply because Somaliland does not have the military ability to challenge the powerful western forces stationed at its northwestern borders. Nor would have it been wise for the government to issue a barrage of condemnations. Though the US and France have not yet recognized Somaliland, the American government does not oppose the right of Somalilanders to exercise their self-determination. What is needed now is for the Somaliland government to accelerate its investigation and diplomatic contacts in order to find out the truth about what happened at Eibaat. The people of Somaliland hope that American diplomats and military officials stationed in the region will cooperate with the Somaliland government in its endeavour to solve the mysterious attack on Eibaat Island."

BBC Worldwide Monitoring, August 15, 2003/SOURCE: The Reporter web site, Addis Ababa, in English 13 Aug 03

Ethiopia: EU's relief food arrives via Somaliland's port

The first shipment of 15,000 metric tonnes of EU food aid destined for Ethiopia has arrived at the Berbera port of Somaliland and is already being transported to Ethiopia by road since Monday 11 August , the foreign minister of Somaliland told The Reporter Saturday.

In an exclusive interview she gave, Ms Dahir Kahin Rayale, the foreign minister name and post as published said, "There is a lot of food aid that is coming to Ethiopia from the port of Berbera and right now the first ship will finish discharging its cargo food aid on Monday."

A total of 100,000 metric tons of food will arrive in Ethiopia from the Berbera Port between now and November. Speaking of the non-existence of security problems at the border, she said, "The first 15,000 metric tonnes of food aid came from Berbera to Ethiopia and not a single truck or a single sack was lost," adding that this has created "credibility and confidence" for future cooperation between the two countries.

"We offer Ethiopia the port of Berbera for its exports. We offer the goodwill and friendship of the people and government of Somaliland and I think we have a very good chance of establishing very good economic cooperation," the foreign minister stated.

Ms Rayale was here the whole of last week as part of a high-level Somaliland delegation that included the country's president, Dahir Rayaleh Kahin. The president held talks with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on bilateral relations in general and on the use of the Berbera corridor for Ethiopia's imports and exports in particular.

The foreign minister said that the visit was made to "strengthen even more the good relations we have with Ethiopia," adding, "we discussed with Prime Minister Meles how we can launch the Berbera corridor project for trade between the two countries and how we can jointly go about convincing the European Union to finance and finalize the project" that connects the port of Berbera to the borders of Ethiopia.

The Berbera corridor project, estimated to cost little over 60m US dollars, is designed to bring the Somaliland airports of Berbera and Hargeysa and the roads linking it to Ethiopia up to internationally approved levels. The port of Berbera particularly has gained attention with some 40m US dollars earmarked for its expansion.

BBC Worldwide Monitoring, August 15, 2003/SOURCE: Seifenebelbal, Addis Ababa, in Amharic 15 Aug 03 Ethiopian paper foresees Djibouti anger over use of Somaliland port Ethiopia, which is being accused by Somali factions of interfering in the internal affairs of the country with the intention to destabilize it, has started using the Somaliland port of Berbera, it has been learnt.

Ethiopia, which had been using the port of Djibouti, has turned its face towards Somaliland, and it is quite evident that Djibouti would not be happy with it. So far, some 15,000 metric tonnes of food has arrived in the country via Somaliland.

Although there was fear that the relief food might not reach the needy due to the current instability in the area, the Ethiopian foreign minister has said that the whole consignment has reached its destination safely.

Until next Hidar November some 100,000 metric tonnes of relief food secured from the EU will enter through the Somaliland port of Berbera, it has also been learnt that Ethiopia's imports will enter through the same port. Passage omitted .

BBC Monitoring Reports, August 13, 2003/published by Somaliland Net web site on 12 August

SOUTH AFRICAN PAPER SAYS FOREIGN MINISTRY IN FAVOUR OF SOMALILAND'S RECOGNITION

Having vacated the chair of the African Union, South Africa is now freer to step out of line on controversial issues on the continent.

The South African law advisers address this issue too.

"The interest of world peace and stability require that, where possible, the division or fragmentation of existing states should be managed peacefully and by negotiation. But where this is not possible, as is the case with Somalia, international law accepts that the interests of justice may prevail over the principle of territorial integrity," they say.

"The question confronting the international community is no longer whether Somaliland should be recognized as an independent state, but whether there remain any viable alternatives," the ICG report says.

It warns that the latter course is likely to lead to a new round of civil war in Somalia.

He warned, however, that Somaliland "will not entertain any delegation whose objective is to bring us into these talks. Such a mission will not be welcome, and they should not waste their time."

BBC Monitoring Reports, August 12, 2003/Source: Somaliland Net web site in English 12 Aug 03) BBC Monitoring

ISLAND OFF SOMALILAND COAST STRUCK BY WARPLANES ON 20 JULY - PAPER REPORTS

On 24 July, the web site of The Somaliland Times reported an attack on the island of Eibaat and posted a commentary on the incident, which has not been widely reported by other Somali media.

BBC Monitoring Reports, August 8, 2003/Source: Jamhuuriya web site, Hargeysa, in Somali 8 Aug 03 ) BBC Monitoring

SOMALILAND GOVERNMENT ORDERS DUTCH NGO TO CEASE OPERATIONS

Somaliland's minister of national planning, Ahmad H Dahir Elmi, yesterday issued a statement banning an international aid agency NOVIB (Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation) to operate in Somaliland. The minister sent a copy of the letter to local agencies in Somaliland that are in partnership with NOVIB. These include Nagaad, HAYOVYOCO, Candlelight and COSONGO (expansions untraced). Mr Elmi detailed why NOVIB was banned, saying the agency was involved in acts which were against the sovereignty of Somaliland. He also mentioned in his letter that the Ministry of National Planning was responsible for programmes and development projects that were to be implemented in Somaliland. The minister ordered local agencies to stop all programmes sponsored by NOVIB in Mansoor Hotel as of 7 August 2003.

The minister specifically ordered Nagad and Candlelight local agencies to immediately expel NOVIB expatriate members whom they brought in the country.

NOVIB began in 2002 by doing research, collecting data as well as conducting awareness programme in the former Somali Republic by assigning some people opposed to the Republic of Somaliland. NOVIB called the project "Mapping Somali Civil Society." Secondly, experts 80 per cent of whom were from Southern Somalia were invited to Nairobi by NOVIB to make assessment on Somali Civil Society. The total number of organizations said to be able to do this work were up to 500 organizations. Unfortunately, Somaliland was allotted only 80 organizations, while Mogadishu was given twice that number.

The so-called research by NOVIB was, in fact, inimical to the sovereignty of Somaliland. Somaliland's civic society rejected to have cooperation with those in Somalia in a NOVIB-sponsored meeting held at Mansoor hotel. In that meeting, civil society groups in Somaliland said development funds intended for the former Somali Republic should be shared between civil society groups representing Somaliland and Somalia (Passage omitted). Source: UNICEF, 6 Aug 2003

UNICEF Somalia Review Jul 2003

Peace talks in crucial phase...
As well, local authorities in the Northwest Zone, or 'Somaliland', reiterated their position that they will not participate in the process but would be ready to engage in dialogue with Somalia, if a legitimate representative government was successfully established.

Local support for peace talks...

In Mogadishu, renowned Somali poet Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame, alias Hadrawi, launched a march for peace. Named the "Hadrawi Peace Rally", it is an initiative by Somali artists in support of peace. The concept of the march has extended to other towns including Kismayo and has been warmly received by residents.

Political and security update...

Somaliland leader Dahir Rayale Kahin appointed a new cabinet comprising 25 ministers, five state ministers and 12 vice ministers. The appointments are subject to the approval of Somaliland's House of Representatives. In Puntland, differences were reported between leader Abdullahi Yusuf and his deputy Mohamed Abdi Hashi over a cabinet reshuffle.

Throughout the month, the regions of Somaliland and Puntland were relatively stable.

Health programme update...

Five-day training workshops to provide management skills for members of 21 regional health boards were conducted in Borama, Gebilay and Berbera towns of Awdal, Galbeed and Sahil regions respectively.

UNICEF, in collaboration with Somaliland health authorities, organized a week long training workshop for community health workers (CHWs) in Las Anod, Sool region. The training sought to enhance the skills of CHWs in providing proper case diagnosis, treatment and provision of health education. Treatment protocols and registers in the Somali language were provided to participants. A second training session spanning three weeks was carried out in Las Anod for 12 participants working out of health posts. The participants received copies of treatment protocols in Somali while the health posts were provided with basic furniture, medical instruments and supplies. An Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) package has also been translated into Somali and is ready for use.

The second round of Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI activities took place in Somaliland from 11-16 July. In Puntland, EPI activities were carried out in Allula, Bargal, Burtinle, Bossaso Dangorayo, Gardo, Galkayo, Garowe and Qandala towns during the last week of May 2003.

A two-day workshop on social mobilization for EPI was conducted in Burao, Somaliland. The workshop drew some 30 participants, among them religious leaders, health workers and local leaders. The workshop aimed at dispelling myths and clarifying the importance and benefits of vaccines.

Some 20 Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) were trained at the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in Hargeisa, Somaliland. UNICEF also provided practical training in the Central Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Centre in Burao. The training was undertaken in collaboration with local authorities and trainers in the region. One aim of the training was to facilitate the establishment of a referral system between the TBAs and the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital and two Maternal Child Health (MCH) centres in Burao.

Nutrition programme update...

During the month, UNICEF conducted integrated interventions to curb the effects of drought and malnutrition in the Sool plateau of Sanaag and Sool regions. The interventions included the provision of supplementary feeding for malnourished children and immunization of children under five years against the six childhood killer diseases including measles, tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus.

A week's training was held in Sheikh town, Sahil region of Somaliland for 10 community health workers. Among other issues, the training focussed on child growth and development, infant and young child feeding and maternal nutrition. The purpose of the training was to enhance the role of community health workers in identifying and dealing with the nutrition problems. In Puntland, Health and Nutrition messages were disseminated through local media - Radio Midnimo and Radio Galkayo and both the Yool and Yamasyka newspapers. UNICEF supports this dissemination through agreements with respective media outlets that run until February 2004.

Gender update...

The appointment by Somaliland leader Dahir Rayale Kahin of women to head two important posts in the local administration was one of the highlights of the reporting period.

In Somaliland, local authorities and other local women's leaders organized a meeting on gender issues attended by religious leaders, members of parliament and intellectuals. At the meeting, the women emphasized their right to more representation in local leadership as stipulated in Islamic religion.

Their proposals have lead to healthy but heated debate among various groups in society with views aired in local media.

Water and Environmental Sanitation update...

In Somaliland, a company to run the Borama Water Supply System was formed and a board elected. The Boon Water Supply Project was meanwhile completed and officially commissioned.

In Somaliland, hygiene promotion materials were developed and translated into the Somali language.

Education highlights...

Some 212 teachers and head-teachers from primary schools in Togdheer, Hargeisa and Awdal regions of Somaliland attended an 18-day refresher training workshop in Borama focussing on the new curriculum. So far, nearly 2,200 teachers in Somaliland have been trained in the new education curriculum covering science, mathematics, social studies and the Somali language. In addition, they have been trained in issues related to gender, Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) and HIV/AIDS. The teachers trained in July were the last group to attend Phase I of the in-service teacher training. UNICEF will support all teachers that have attended Phase I to attend Phase II next year and Phase III in 2005. Following the completion of all phases, the Somaliland health authorities will issue certificates to the teachers.

Youth...

Construction and rehabilitation of six primary schools and three playgrounds in Somaliland is nearing completion. Three of the schools and the playgrounds are in Hargeisa. About 25 schools, playgrounds and resource centres will be rehabilitated or constructed before the end of 2003. In 2002, there was no new intake in almost all primary schools in major towns in Somaliland because of limited space.

HIV/AIDS prevention and control...

The first issue of KOOR, a youth magazine that focuses on HIV/AIDS issues, was released in July. Some 2,050 copies were printed and distributed to youth in schools, private and public institutions, as well as relevant administration offices, including health, education, information, family affairs and social development. Copies of the magazine were also sent to Puntland for distribution there.

Some 90 teachers were sensitized on basic facts about HIV/AIDS during two workshops in Hargeisa.

Robert Kihara, Assistant Communication Officer e-mail: rkihara@unicef.org OR Julia Spry-Leverton, Communication Officer Tel: 254-2-623958/ 623950/ 623862/ 623959/ 350410 Fax: 254-2-520640/ 623965

For further information on UNICEF, visit its website at http://www.unicef.org/

BBC News, 6 August, 2003, 22:49 GMT 23:49 UK

Somaliland leads charge for African women

Ms Ismail is one of Africa's most pro-active minister

The foreign minister of the Somaliland has told the BBC she believes a number of Africa's problems would be eased if there were more women leaders on the continent. Edna Adan Ismail said much of Africa's suffering, especially that stemming from military conflict, would be eased if women were at the top and allowed to approach the issues from their own perspective.

"I think more social areas would be better developed if women were in more decision-making positions because these are the areas that really touch women and their families and their children," Ms Ismail told BBC World Service's Africa Live. programme.

She said more women leaders would lead to an emphasis on health, education, sanitation and water on the continent.

"I think that there would be more tolerance, there would be less violent military movements," she said.

"Certainly problems would be solved by diplomatic channels rather than by seeking a military solution.

"There would be fewer military coup d'etats and military takeovers.

"I think the world would be a much better place."

The foreign minister of the breakaway republic of Somaliland is well known in her country, having been married to the late President Mohammed Egal.

'Great bounds'

Meanwhile Kenya's shadow labour minister Orie Rogo Manduli described the increased involvement of women in the political process as "completely and absolutely overdue".

"All candidates promise a rosy future, but when elected to office another story emerges", Elias Abdi, US

Can women solve Africa's problems'

"It is only when political parties start to take their women more seriously, and give their women greater responsibility and participation in the parties, that the parties will really mean anything," she said.

"In this country, Kenya, a party that has done that in a very small measure has leapt great bounds and done very well.

"It is obvious now that Africa needs women at the top."

She said she felt the time was approaching when there would be a massive influx of women into top government positions throughout Africa.

"Women have been ready - they have been ready forever," she said.

"This time round we want it, and we are demanding that we are given the opportunity to run things."

Advice and support

One of those who has been already tipped to go into power in the future is nine-year-old Chine Mwanere - speaker at the Nigerian children's parliament.

Miss Mwanere, who has gained a reputation as an accomplished speaker despite her young age, added her voice to the campaign to see more women in power.

"We can see that in most countries in Africa, women are beginning to attain a higher level of education in all types of endeavour," she said.

"Secondly we can see the majority of the people in the population are women.

"They are the drawers of water, collectors of firewood, protectors of the environment - they are the mothers of the children and wives of the husbands.

"Therefore they are the pillars of the family and pillars of the nation."

She said women's' networking skills would be immeasurably useful in positions of responsibility.

BBC Monitoring Reports, August 8, 2003/Source: Jamhuuriya web site, Hargeysa, in Somali 8 Aug 03 ) BBC Monitoring SOMALILAND GOVERNMENT ORDERS DUTCH NGO TO CEASE OPERATIONS Somaliland's minister of national planning, Ahmad H Dahir Elmi, yesterday issued a statement banning an international aid agency NOVIB (Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation) to operate in Somaliland. The minister sent a copy of the letter to local agencies in Somaliland that are in partnership with NOVIB. These include Nagaad, HAYOVYOCO, Candlelight and COSONGO (expansions untraced). Mr Elmi detailed why NOVIB was banned, saying the agency was involved in acts which were against the sovereignty of Somaliland. He also mentioned in his letter that the Ministry of National Planning was responsible for programmes and development projects that were to be implemented in Somaliland. The minister ordered local agencies to stop all programmes sponsored by NOVIB in Mansoor Hotel as of 7 August 2003.

The minister specifically ordered Nagad and Candlelight local agencies to immediately expel NOVIB expatriate members whom they brought in the country.

Africa News, August 4, 2003/BYLINE: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

Somalia; Puntland Denies Interfering in Somaliland's Affairs

The authorities in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia, have dismissed accusations by the neighbouring self-declared republic of Somaliland that they are interfering in Somaliland's internal affairs.

A statement issued by the Somaliland authorities on Monday warned Puntland's leader Col Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad to stay away from the disputed regions of Sool and Sanaag. "We will not tolerate his threats against parts of Sool and Sanaag regions," it said, adding that Abdullahi Yusuf "will bear full responsibility for the consequences" of his actions.

But Dahir Mire Jibril, a spokesman for Abdullahi Yusuf, told IRIN that Puntland "does not consider Sool and Sanaag as part of Somaliland".

"Sool and Sanaag are part and parcel of Puntland, and the people there do not consider themselves part of Somaliland," he stressed.

Dahir added that the recent elections in Somaliland "during which no voting took place in either region, are proof of that".

He warned the Somaliland authorities "not to foment instability in these stable regions".

Both Somaliland and Puntland claim the two regions, which geographically fall within the borders of the former British Somaliland, but where most of the resident clans are associated with Puntland.

Africa News, August 4, 2003/BYLINE: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

Somalia; Somaliland Rejects Attempts to Bring It Into Peace Talks

The authorities in the Somaliland in northwestern Somalia have reiterated their rejection of attempts to bring them into the ongoing Somali reconciliation talks in Kenya.

According to a statement issued on Sunday by the office of the region's president, Dahir Riyale Kahin, Somaliland is not a party to the Somali peace talks.

And the Somaliland information minister, Abdillahi Muhammad Du'ale, told IRIN on Monday that Somaliland would welcome any peace deal between the parties "in the former Italian Somalia", but noted that "this has nothing to do with Somaliland". The statement described as "a surprise" comments by Kenya's Ambassador Bethwel Kiplagat, who is chairing the peace conference, that the talks concern the whole of Somalia. The draft charter includes Somaliland within the boundaries of Somalia.

However, the Somaliland regional government's statement said Somaliland's borders were those it inherited from the British, and "are recognised by the African Union and the UN".

The information minister, who was reacting to media reports that a Kenyan government delegation was on its way to Somaliland to try and convince it to attend the Nairobi talks, told IRIN that any Kenyan delegation to Somaliland was welcome "so long as they are coming to discuss bilateral issues and ways of developing bilateral relations".

He warned, however, that Somaliland "will not entertain any delegation whose objective is to bring us into these talks".

"Such a mission will not be welcome, and they should not waste their time," he stressed. "We have made our position very clear on numerous occasions and it is well known to IGAD [Inter-Governmental Authority on Development] and the international community."

The Somaliland statement also warned Col Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad, president of the neighbouring self-declared autonomous region of Puntland to stop interfering in Somaliland affairs.

"We will not tolerate his threats against parts of Sool and Sanaag regions," it said, adding that Abdullahi Yusuf "will bear full responsibility for the consequences" of his actions.

Both Somaliland and Puntland claim the two regions, which geographically fall within the borders of the former British Somaliland, but where most of the resident clans are associated with Puntland.

BBC Monitoring Reports, August 4, 2003/Source: HornAfrik Online text web site, Mogadishu, in Somali 4 Aug 03) BBC Monitoring

KENYAN OFFICIAL SAID TO OFFER SOMALILAND "FINAL INVITATION" TO SOMALI PEACE TALKS

Kenya's assistance minister for foreign affairs (Joab Omino) is expected to leave for Somaliland soon in a bid to convince the authority there to attend the ongoing Somali peace talks in Kenya.(passage omitted)

Mr Omino attended the peace conference (in Nairobi's Mbagathi suburb) and expressed his optimism on the formation of a new (Somali) government following the peace and reconciliation conference.

The chairman of the peace talks, (Ambassador Bethwel) Kiplagat, said a delegation headed by Mr Omino, will visit Hargeysa (Somaliland's administrative HQ) as urgently as possible. The delegation will offer Somaliland a final invitation letter (after its rejection of the previously ones) to take part in the peace conference in Kenya.

BBC Monitoring Reports, July 30, 2003/Source: Somaliland Net web site in English 29 Jul 03) BBC Monitoring

BRUSSELS-BASED THINK TANK SAYS RECOGNITION OF SOMALILAND ONLY VIABLE OPTION

The demand of the Somaliland for recognition presents the international community with stark choices, says a report released this week by the Brussels-based think-tank, the International Crisis Group (ICG).

The question confronting the international community is no longer whether Somaliland should be recognized as an independent state, but whether there remain any viable alternatives," the report said. It added that the international community could either "develop pragmatic responses to Somaliland's demand for self-determination or continue to insist upon the increasingly abstract notion of the unity and territorial integrity of the Somali Republic. "It warned that the latter course was likely to lead to a new round of civil war in Somalia.

Somaliland, a former British protectorate, declared unilateral independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991, but has received no international recognition.

The ICG report made a number of recommendations, including the dispatch of an international fact-finding mission to assess the Somaliland issue and "to recommend policy options." It also called on the African Union to consider a legal review of the territory's case and grant it "observer status pending a final decision on its international status."

(Full report available at:- http://www.crisisweb.org/ )

Source: http://www.crisisweb.org//library/documents/report_archive/A401067_28072003.pdf

Somaliland: Democratisation and Its Discontents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Recent developments have made the choice faced by the international community considerably clearer: develop pragmatic responses to Somaliland's demand for self-determination or continue to insist upon the increasingly abstract notion of the unity and territorial integrity of the Somali Republic - a course of action almost certain to open a new chapter in the Somali civil war.

Somaliland's presidential election of 14 April 2003 was a milestone in the self-declared, unrecognised republic's process of democratisation. Nearly half a million voters cast ballots in one of the closest polls ever conducted in the region: when the last votes had been counted and the results announced on 19 April, the incumbent president, Dahir Rayale Kahin, had won by only 80 votes.

A former British protectorate in the Horn of Africa, Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of the Somali Republic in May 1991, following the collapse of the military regime in Mogadishu. Although unrecognised by any country, Somaliland has followed a very different trajectory from the rest of the "failed state" of Somalia, embarking on a process of internally driven political, economic and social reconstruction. Somaliland's democratic transition began in May 2001 with a plebiscite on a new constitution that introduced a multiparty electoral system, and continued in December 2002 with local elections that were widely described as open and transparent. The final stage of the process - legislative elections - is scheduled to take place by early 2005.

The electoral process has met with widespread approval from domestic and international observers alike, but has not been without problems. The enlistment of government resources and personnel in support of the ruling party's campaign, the disqualification of numerous ballot boxes due to procedural errors, reports of government harassment and intimidation of opposition supporters in the aftermath of the election, and the opposition's initial refusal to accept defeat all marred an otherwise promising democratic exercise.

The next phase of the democratic transition will be the most critical: until opposition parties are able to contest parliamentary seats, Somaliland will function as a de facto one party state. Somaliland's international partners can play a key role in assisting the National Electoral Commission to convene legislative elections with the least possible delay, while ensuring a level playing field. Constitutional and judicial reforms may also be required to ensure the integrity of the democratic process over the long-term.

Somaliland's increasingly credible claims to statehood present the international community with a thorny diplomatic dilemma at a time when southern Somali leaders are meeting under the auspices of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) with the aim of establishing a new Somali government. Recognition of Somaliland, although under consideration by a growing number of African and Western governments, is still vigorously resisted by many members of both the African Union (AU) and the Arab League on the grounds that the unity and territorial integrity of member states is sacrosanct. Furthermore, the creation of a new Somali government emerging from the IGAD process that claims jurisdiction over Somaliland threatens to open a new phase in the Somali conflict.

Diplomatic hopes for a negotiated settlement between Somaliland and a future Somali government, however, are unlikely to bear fruit. A hypothetical dialogue on Somali unity would have to overcome mutually exclusive preconditions for talks, divergent visions of what a reunited Somali state might look like and incompatible institutional arrangements. Failing a negotiated settlement, any attempt to coerce Somaliland back to the Somali fold would entail a bitter and probably futile conflict. The question now confronting the international community is no longer whether Somaliland should be recognised as an independent state, but whether there remain any viable alternatives.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Somaliland Government:

- Demonstrate a genuine commitment to pluralism by releasing remaining political detainees and reinstating any government employees dismissed from their jobs for political reasons.
- Withdraw the proposed press law and invite the independent media to assist in drafting legislation more conducive to the development of independent yet responsible media..
- Conclude the formal transition to a multiparty political system with the least possible delay, by setting the date of parliamentary elections within less than twelve months..
- Introduce legislation providing for reasonable subsidies to all official political parties on an equitable basis..
- Demonstrate a commitment to human rights by investigating past abuses, taking corrective action against those responsible and introducing new measures to strengthen the protection of human rights..
- Initiate an independent review of the constitution, with particular attention to the three-party ceiling..
- Undertake a comprehensive review of the electoral law, based on lessons learned..
- Introduce legislation to strengthen the electoral process, including penalties for infractions of the electoral law. .
- Commission an independent judicial review, with a view to introducing reforms strengthening both the capacity of the judiciary and its independence from political influence.
To Donor Governments:

- Provide party building training and financial assistance to all three official parties in order to prepare them for legislative elections..
- Offer technical and financial assistance to the National Electoral Commission in order to remedy problems encountered during local and presidential elections, and to assist in the design and implementation of an appropriate voter registration system..
- Assist the government with other reforms intended to advance the process of democratisation..
- Increase support for social and economic development in order to enhance the 'peace dividend' and preclude public disillusionment with the democratisation process..
- Explore options for providing Somaliland with access to direct bilateral and multilateral financial assistance pending a resolution of the territory's legal status.

To the United Nations, African Union and IGAD:

Adopt a more open-minded approach to the question of Somaliland's ultimate status, in particular by:

- dispatching fact-finding missions to assess the current situation and to recommend policy options, with leadership taken by either the AU's Peace and Security Council or the presidential troika (currently South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia) in view of the serious divisions within IGAD;.
- taking Somaliland's demands under formal consideration, including a legal review of the territory's case vis-a-vis the current AU charter; and .
- granting Somaliland observer status pending a final decision on its international status.
Nairobi/Brussels, 28 July 2003

Africa News, August 4, 2003/BYLINE: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

Somalia; Puntland Denies Interfering in Somaliland's Affairs

But Dahir Mire Jibril, a spokesman for Abdullahi Yusuf, told IRIN that Puntland "does not consider Sool and Sanaag as part of Somaliland".

"Sool and Sanaag are part and parcel of Puntland, and the people there do not consider themselves part of Somaliland," he stressed.

Dahir added that the recent elections in Somaliland "during which no voting took place in either region, are proof of that".

He warned the Somaliland authorities "not to foment instability in these stable regions".

Both Somaliland and Puntland claim the two regions, which geographically fall within the borders of the former British Somaliland, but where most of the resident clans are associated with Puntland.

Africa News, August 4, 2003/BYLINE: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

Somalia; Somaliland Rejects Attempts to Bring It Into Peace Talks

The authorities in the Somaliland in northwestern Somalia have reiterated their rejection of attempts to bring them into the ongoing Somali reconciliation talks in Kenya.

According to a statement issued on Sunday by the office of the region's president, Dahir Riyale Kahin, Somaliland is not a party to the Somali peace talks.

However, the Somaliland regional government's statement said Somaliland's borders were those it inherited from the British, and "are recognised by the African Union and the UN".

He warned, however, that Somaliland "will not entertain any delegation whose objective is to bring us into these talks". "Such a mission will not be welcome, and they should not waste their time," he stressed. "We have made our position very clear on numerous occasions and it is well known to IGAD [Inter-Governmental Authority on Development] and the international community."

The Somaliland statement also warned Col Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad, president of the neighbouring self-declared autonomous region of Puntland to stop interfering in Somaliland affairs. "We will not tolerate his threats against parts of Sool and Sanaag regions," it said, adding that Abdullahi Yusuf "will bear full responsibility for the consequences" of his actions.

Both Somaliland and Puntland claim the two regions, which geographically fall within the borders of the former British Somaliland, but where most of the resident clans are associated with Puntland.

BBC Monitoring Reports, August 4, 2003/Source: HornAfrik Online text web site, Mogadishu, in Somali 4 Aug 03 ) BBC Monitoring

KENYAN OFFICIAL SAID TO OFFER SOMALILAND "FINAL INVITATION" TO SOMALI PEACE TALKS

Mr Omino attended the peace conference (in Nairobi's Mbagathi suburb) and expressed his optimism on the formation of a new (Somali) government following the peace and reconciliation conference.

BBC Worldwide Monitoring, July 30, 2003/SOURCE: Radio Hargeysa in Somali 1700 gmt 29 Jul 03

Somaliland: Ethiopian, EU delegation tours Berbera port

A delegation comprising Ethiopians and EU officials today returned to Hargeysa, after a short visit to Berbera northwestern Somalia. The delegation was accompanied by Somaliland Ministry of Roads officials. The delegation comprising Ethiopian roads and customs officials and EU officials have toured Berbera port, fuel storage facilities and Berbera Airport. They were excited to see a ship carrying food for Ethiopia and other materials for EU sponsored projects, including EU-sponsored reconstruction of Hargeysa-Berbera road, that was being off loaded from the ship to lorries at the port. Passage omitted

BBC Worldwide Monitoring, July 30, 2003/SOURCE: Somaliland Net web site in English 29 Jul 03

Brussels-based think tank says recognition of Somaliland only viable option

The question confronting the international community is no longer whether Somaliland should be recognized as an independent state, but whether there remain any viable alternatives," the report said.

It added that the international community could either "develop pragmatic responses to Somaliland's demand for self-determination or continue to insist upon the increasingly abstract notion of the unity and territorial integrity of the Somali Republic. "It warned that the latter course was likely to lead to a new round of civil war in Somalia.

Somaliland, a former British protectorate, declared unilateral independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991, but has received no international recognition.

Full report available at:- http:www.crisisweb.org

SOMALIA: Programme on the Somaliland issue

31 March, 2003. MUSIC

MIC: Welcome to this programme, produced by the Nairobi-based radio service of IRIN. IRIN, the humanitarian news agency of the United Nations.

As peace talks for Somalia continue near Nairobi, Kenya, many participants are demanding that the Somaliland be persuaded to come.

Somaliland, a former British protectorate, declared independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 after the collapse of the Siad Barre regime, but has not been internationally recognized. In the last decade it has moved away from conflict, while the rest of Somalia was locked in civil strife.

Somaliland is still striving for international recognition and has so far refused all invitations to the peace conference.

In this programme, we will be looking at opinions on the Somaliland issue, both from the Nairobi peace conference and from Hargeisa.

MUSIC: SHORT TRANSITION

MIC: The Mogadishu based Transitional National Government, TNG, is one of the groups calling for Somaliland to come to the conference.

Asha Ahmed Abdalla, is a minister in the TNG..

ASHA1

Somaliland always says Somalia is trying to dominate us, but so as to avoid that we want delegates from the North to come here and participate, including the administration, civil society and elders. Because we believe Somali unity is necessary. It's very important that they should come here and participate. Our brothers in Somaliland know that they cannot be independent economically, and because of their small population.

MIC: The so-called Group of Eight and the autonomous region of Puntland also take a similar stance on this issue. IRIN spoke to Mohammed Dirie Elmi, a spokesman for the G8, and to Arda Ahmed Mumin, a member of the Puntland delegation.

We say Somaliland has to participate in this conference as part of Somalia. And we believe that it is very important. Every group or every administration in the country has to come to this conference. The last meeting we had with the chairman of the conference, we talked about this issue. As this is a reconciliation conference for Somalia, we should call our brothers in the northern regions they call Somaliland, to come to this conference.

PUNTLAND

Somalia cannot be divided, it is a small nation and the people are brothers, with the same culture, language and religion. I'm requesting all Somali participants to finish the conference as soon as possible, and to call their brothers in Somaliland to participate.

MIC: But Somaliland's Information Minister Abdillahi Mohamed Duale told IRIN that Somaliland will not come.

ABDILLAHI1: We've been hearing these calls and as you know, I have reacted. Somaliland's position is clear. First, Somaliland is not part of those who are in negotiations, and will never be part of that. We in Somaliland are praying for our Somali brothers to have peace, but we are not part of that and we have nothing to do with the South at all.

MIC: Ordinary Somalilanders seem to share this view. Eid Ahmed is a taxi driver working in Hargeisa.

TAXI DRIVER

That's a dream, it's impossible that Somalia and Somaliland should just come together. Everyone that tries to put Somalia and Somaliland together will fail. Because these southern people have a lot of problems. I was one of the youngest SNM fighters, we know what Somalia did to us and we will never forget it. They massacred us. We cannot easily forget and I don't think we'll go back to Somalia.

MIC: Professor Gerard Prunier is head of the French centre for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, author of articles on Somalia and researcher on the region for the last 30 years. Here is what he had to say on the issue.

PRUNIER1 (VOICEOVER): I can fully sympathize with the Somalilanders. You don't want to get in bed with somebody who has leprosy, and when they look at their southern brothers they are horrified. I mean, Somaliland is at peace, if you except its little quarrel about Sool and Sanaag between them and Puntland, which I hope should not be allowed to degenerate and could be solved bilaterally between the two entities. The people in Somaliland are doing pretty well for themselves, with very limited means, very hard conditions. They're really making the best of a difficult situation. Why would they accept to join into any kind of compact with the south, which is in total upheaval and which has not even begun to chart a course of where they're going' It wouldn't make any sense.

JINGLE

MIC: Not all the delegates to the Nairobi peace conference take the same stance. Indeed, the TNG delegation is split on this, as well as other issues.

Mohamed Warsame Ali, member of a TNG splinter group, told IRIN how he sees the issue.

WARSAME`1: The only solution I see is for the south to get a government. The north already got a government. Without international support, without United Nations support they set up their own administration and restored law and order. The south has not managed to do this, even with the support of the whole world. We say this conference has to set up something for the south first, and then they can be brought together to talk. Then we will have either one Somali government or two.

MIC: Hersi Hurre Du'ale, known as Alanside or "Flag Carrier", is an elder attending the conference. He was a member of the Somali Youth League that fought for independence, and is a staunch Somali patriot. But Alanside told IRIN it is not yet time for Somalia and Somaliland to talk about getting together .

ALANSIDE: Those people who are saying Somaliland has to be brought here to the conference, I think they are totally wrong. The only solution in this conference has to be for the South. The southern people have to negotiate first. This call for Somaliland to come is just a kind of excuse. Somaliland has to be set free, and southerners have to negotiate among themselves first. When the two regions are both at peace, they will have to come together and agree how they can join in a federal system.

MIC: Ambassador Bethwel Kiplagat of Kenya is chairman of the IGAD technical committee piloting the peace talks. IRIN asked him what he plans to do about Somaliland.

KIPLAGAT 1 (VOICEOVER): We would like to see a united Somalia, but since they have been through really many problems, one needs to approach this problem very sensitively, very carefully, focussed, without antagonizing either side or jeopardizing the future. If the international community said unless you come we will do the following, that might even affect the process that is taking place here.

MIC: But Kiplagat said efforts to bring Somaliland on board would continue.

KIPLAGAT 2 (VOICEOVER): And in fact, on the list of the delegates, we have reserved a number of seats for Somaliland, for the administration there. Now there were contestations, some of the delegates here say why do you do that, you are dividing us. I told them this is to show that this process is for the whole of Somalia. We want them to come in when they are ready. If they are not, their seats are here.

MUSIC TRANSITION

MIC: Campaigning is now in full swing for Somaliland's first multiparty presidential elections. This follows local elections last December which passed off peacefully. The authorities hope that if the elections are perceived as free and fair, Somaliland will finally win international recognition

Ahmed Muhammad "Silaanyo" is one of two opposition candidates challenging the current president Dahir Riyale Kahin. He told IRIN he would also make international recognition a priority.

SILAANYO: When we declared independence from Somalia, everyone was surprised. Somalia, the BBC and others were angry, they continued to refer to us as the northwest. But now we have unofficial recognition. The world deals with us, they are here, they are also helping us with the elections, and they have respect for us. So the situation has changed. Our position is that the people in Somalia are our brothers, we love them, we pray to Allah to give them peace and stability, for the peace talks to succeed. As they are our brothers, we do not wish any harm on them. But this issue of them wanting us to come to the peace talks, it's not good for them to say that. When people hear that call, they are surprised, because Somalis haven't managed to solve their own problems. Somalilanders want their independence, and it is not negotiable.

MIC: So, with or without international recognition, could Somaliland join Somalia sometime in the future' IRIN put the question to Horn of Africa researcher Professor Prunier.

PRUNIER 2 (VOICEOVER): It would not be like in 1960, like "you give us everything and we take the rest". It would be a dialogue among equals, where people enter into a consensus type of compact. And I think that in the long run yes. I will even go further: The whole nation of greater Somalia, done with guns and the way Siad Barre wanted to do it, will never work. But is it so crazy' I don't believe very much in a Somali state now, or even not at all, but the Somali nation has a very strong existence. So if they solve the problem of the state in ten or fifteen years, then the question of equating that state with the boundaries of the nation will occur.

MIC: And Somaliland Information Minister Duale did not appear to rule out some kind of future arrangement.

ABDILLAHI 2 :As Somaliland, we have solved our problems. When they set up something, when they have a democracy like us, we can come together and talk as two different countries.

MIC: That was Somaliland Information Minister Abdillahi Duale, ending this programme on Somalia and the Somaliland. This programme was brought to you by the radio service of IRIN... IRIN, the humanitarian news agency of the United Nations. The programme was produced with support from the European Commission and the government of Switzerland. MUSIC.

Barnaamij Ku Saabsan Arinta Somaliland. Qoraalka Soomaaliga. Maarso 2003

MIC: Kusoo dhawaada Dhageystayaal Barnaamijkan oo uu idiin soo gudbinayo Raadiyaha IRIN ee Wakaalada Wararka Bini'aadanimada u qaabilsan Qaramada midoobay oo xaruuntiisu ay tahay magaalada Nairobi. Iyadoo wada hadalka nabada Soomaaliya uu ka soconayo Magaalada Nairobi ee dalka Kenya, ayaa qaar badan oo ka mid ah dadka ka qeybgalaya shirka waxa ay dalbanayaan in Maamulka la magac baxday Somaliland laga dhaadhacsiiyo in shirka ay kasoo qeybgasho. Somaliland oo ah gobol uu horey u gumeysan jiray Ingisiiska, waxa ay ku dhawaaqday sanadkii 1991 markii ay dhacday Dawladii Maxamed Siyaad Bare inay ka madax banaan tahay Soomaaliya inteeda kale. Inkastoo aysan helin aqoonsi caalami ah hadana tobankii sano ee ugu danbeeyey wax khilaaf ah kama jirin deegaankaasi, halka Soomaaliya inteeda kale ay ku dhexjirtay dagaal sokeeye. Somaliland waxa weli ay raadineysaa inay hesho aqoonsi caalami ah, waxaana ilaa iyo haatan ay ku gacan seyrtay kasoo qeybgalka shirka dib u heshiisiinta Soomaalida. Barnaamijkan waxaanu ku eegi doonaa fikradaha kala gedisan ee ku saabsan arinta Somaliland, ee ay kala qabaan dhinacyada Shirka Nabada ee ka soconaya Nairobi iyo Hageysa.

MIC: Dawlada KMG ah ee Soomaaliya oo fadhigeedu yahay Magaalada Muqdisho, waxa ay ka mid tahay qeybaha ku baaqaya in Somaliland shirka Dib u heshiisiinta ay kasoo qeyb gasho. Asha Ahmed Abdalla, waxa ay wasiir ka tahay Dawalada KMG ah ee Soomaaliya... ASHA1: Anagu waxaan rabnaa Waqooyi waxay tiraahdaa had iyo jeer, anaka Somalia Domination baanu qabnaa waa nalaga badsadaa, marka si aanay u dhihin waa nalaga badsaday baanu rabnaa ergooyinka waqooyi completely inay kasoo qeybgalaan, icluding maxaa la yiraahdaa maamulka, kuwa maamulka sheeganaya civil society, odoyaasha waayo anagu waxaan believe-sanahay midnimada Soomaaliyeed waa muqadas inay shirkan kasoo qeybgalaan waa muhiim, waana ogyihiin walaalahay inaanay go'I Karin economically baanay u gi'I Karin, population ahaan baanay u go'I Karin.

MIC: Kooxda Hogaamiyeyaasha ah ee lagu magacaabo G8 iyo Ismaamul goboleedka Puntland ayaa iyaguna aragti taa la mid ah ka taagan arinta Somaliland. IRIN waxa ay la hadashay Mohammed Dirie Elmi, oo afhayeen u ah kooxda Hogaamiyeyaasha G8 la isku yiraahdo, iyo Arda Ahmed Mumin, oo xubin ka ah Ergada Puntland ee shirka ka qeybgalaya . G8 : Waxaanu qabnaa inay Somaliland kasoo qeyb gasho magacaa guud iyadoo qadarinaysa, marka inay tahay lagama maarmaan ayaan qabnaa in group weliba, ama koox weliba ama maamul kasta ee ka jira dalka inuu kasoo qeybgalo oo shirkaan yimaado. Hada shirkii ugu danbeeyey ee aan la yeelanay shir gudoonka gudoomiyaha shirka waanu kala hadalnay issue-gaa ajandahaa isaga ah in shirku maadaama magacaa uu xamilan yahay ama uu wataa ay tahay shirkii dib u heshiisiinta qaran ee Soomaaliya in loogu yeero walaalaheena gobolada waqooyi ama iminka la magac baxay Somaliland inay kasoo qeybgalaan shirka.

PUNTLAND (Track 4): Anigu taa waxaan u arkaa waxaan dhici Karin, sababtoo ah Soomaaliya waa wadan yar, mana kala go'I karo, waana dad wada dhashay, isku diin ah isku luuqad ah oo isku baahan. Waxaan ka codsan lahaa dhamaan Soomaalida inay heshiiyaan, iskuna yimaadaan Soomaalilandna ay ka qeybgasho.

MIC: Laakiin Wasiirka Warfaafinta Somaliland Abdillahi Mohamed Duale ayaa IRIN u sheegay in Somaliland aanay shirka kasoo qeyb galayn.

ABDILLAHI1: Waanu maqlaynay dee baryahaan koley wararkaan irirna waad maqasheen ayaan filayaa, Somaliland mowqifkeeda mar walba wuxuu ahaa cadaan kaasoo. Kow Somaliland marnaba ma ahayn qeyb dadkan la heshiisiinayo, kana noqon meyso, walaalahayaga heshiiska lala rabo, Somaliland wey u duceyneysaa, laakiin anagu qeyb kama nihin, anaga wax hawl ah oo nooga yaalo koonfur haba yaraatee ma jirto.

MIC: Dadka caadiga ah ee Reer Somaliland ayaa iyaguna u muuqda in fikradaasi ay la qabaan. Ciid Jaciiroow Ahmed waa Dareewal Taxi oo ka shaqeeya Magaalada Hargeisa.

TAXI DRIVER: "Taasi waxaan u arkaa wax riyo ah, oo mala awaal ah, lagu riyoonayo unbaan u arkaa Somalia iyo Somaliland waa baabacadaa oo aanay timo kasoo baxayn inay dib isugu noqdaan, lamina fili karo cid kasta oo istiraahda Somalia iyo Somaliland isku darna waa cid ku guuldareysanaysa, waxay tahay dadkan dhibaato badan baa lasoo gaarsiiyey intaa aan kuu sheegayo anigoo sidaa ugu yaraa dadkii SNM-ta ka mid ah dhibaatadii ay nasoo gaarsiiyeen Soomaaliya weligeed dad ilaabi kara marnaba ma nihin, wixii musaqbalkayagii aan u luminay inaanu si yar u ilawno oo Soomaaliyadii iyo koonfurtii nagu soo duushay ee na xasuuqday ilama ahan in lagu noqonayo oo aanu ku noqoneyno marnaba waa waxaanan dhici karayn"

JINGLE' MIC: Professor Gerard Prunier waa madaxa Xaruunta Faransiiska ee cilmi baarista Ethiopia ee ku taala Magaalada Addis Ababa, waxyaabo badan ayuu ka qoray Soomaaliya, waxaana Cilmi baaris uu ku sameeyay gobolka sodonkii sano ee ugu danbeeyey, hadaba waa kan waxa uu ka yiri arintan .

PRUNIER1 (VOICEOVER): Si wayn ayaan ula dhacsanahay dadka reer Soomaaliland. Ma doonaysid inaad qof sariir la seexato qof qaba cudurka juudanka. marka ay fiiriyaan walaalahooda koofureed way ka naxaan. Waxaan ka wadaa soomaaliland waa nabad, marka laga reebo muranka yar ee la xiriira gobolada Sool iyo Sanaag ee u dhexeeya iyaga iyo puntland, kaasoo ay ila tahay inuusan xaalada ka sii darayn, oo ay xallin karaan labada dhinac si wadajir ah. Dadka soomalilland waxa ay sameeyeen wax naftooda u wanaagsan oo aad ugu xadaysan, xaalad aad u adag, xaqiiqdii waxay sameeynayaan wax aad ugu wanaagsann xilliga adag, maxay u oggolaan la'yihiin inay ku biiraan qaab kasta oo ay isugu imaan karaanba walaalahooda koonfureed, kuwaasoo dhibaato ba'an ku jira, isla markaana xittaa aan wali billaabin nidaam maamul, taasina wax macno ah ma samaynayso.

MIC: Ergada ka qeybgalaysa shirka dib u heshiisiinta Soomaaliya dhamaantood isku aragti kama aha arinta Somaliland, Wafdiga Dawlada KMG ah ayaa ku kala qeybsan arintan iyo kuwo kale. Mohamed Warsame Ali, waa xubin ka mid koox ka go'day Ergada Dawlada KMG ah ee shirka ka qeybgalaysa, waxaa IRIN uu uga waramay sida uu u arko arintan.

WARSAME`1: Waxaan xal u arkaa in Koonfurna dawlad loo dhiso, waqooyina already dawladiisu iyadoon international community-gu caawin, iyadoon United nation-ku caawin ayay dawlad sameysteen maamul jira reinforcement of law and order, koonfur iyadoo aduunkoo dhan invest-gareeyey waxba wey sameysan weyday, waxaanu leenahay shirkan wax koonfureed halagu dhiso, iyadoon midna la ictiraafin labada miis hala isugu keeno hala wada hadal siiyo ama dawlad Soomaaliyeed hala helo ama labada dawladood soomaaliyeed hala helo.

MIC: Hersi Hurre Du'ale, oo loo yaqaan calanside, waxa uu ka mid yahay odoyaasha ka qeybgalaya shirka. Waxaa uu xubin ka ahaan jiray Ururkii dhalinyarada Soomaaliyeed ee SYL ee usoo halgamay xoriyada, waana oday Soomaaliyeed oo wadani ah, laakiin Calanside waxa uu IRIN u sheegay in aan weli la gaarin xilli laga wada hadlo in Somalia iyo Somaliland la isku keeno.

ALANSIDE: Dadka halkaan leh soomaaliland shirka hala keeno anigu waxaan u arkayaa xirsi ahaan dad totally qaldan Inay yihiin. Xal waxaa noqon kara oo kaliya, halkan shirkaan halagu magacaabo shir koonfureed inuu yahay, heshiisiiyo koonfur hala heshiisiiyo, hala iska dhaafo Waqooyi hala keeno iyo marmarsiiyaha geedka lugta lagu maranaayo, marka la iska dhaafo ee tan la heshiisiiyo ee ay tani heshiiskeedu dhammaado, labada gobo iyagoo nabad ah ha, oo tana nabada tahay taasina nabad tahay ha isku yimaadeen, fedelarka system-key ay isku raacayaan oo kaliya haka wada hadleen.

MIC: Danjire Bethwel Kiplagat waa Gudoomiyaha gudiga farsmada shirka ee IGAD ee dhexdhexaadinaya wada hadalka Soomaalida. IRIN ayaa weydiisay waxa uu qorsheynayo inuu ka yeelo Somaliland.

KIPLAGAT 1 (VOICEOVER): Waxaanu jeclaan lahayn inaanu aragno soomaali mid ah, laakiin Maadaama ya dhibaatooyin badan soo mareen, waxaa loo baahan yahay in la saaro dhibka jiro ee dhabta ah si taxadar leh, oo deagn diiraddana la saaro, iyadoo aan laga xanaajinayn dhinacna, khatarna aan la galinayan mustaqbalka soomaalida, haddii ay bulshada caalamku t?raahdo illaa aad ka timaaddo waxaanu samayn doonnaa waxyaabahan, taasoo xittaa ay suurtogal tahay inay dhaawacdo geeddi socodkan halkan ka soconaya

MIC: Laakiin Kiplagat waxa uu sheegayaa in dadaalka lagu doonayo in Somaliland shirka looga soo qeybgeliyo uu sii soconayo.

KIPLAGAT 2 (VOICEOVER): Xaqiiqdii liiska wufuudda shirka, waxaanu u reebnay kuraastoodii Gobolada waqooyi galbeed ee Somaliland, maamulka halkaasi ka jira Kuraas baanu u reebnay, waxaa hadda jirta mucaaradad ay wufuudda shirka qaarkood leeyihiin, maxaad taas u samaysay, waad nakala qaybinaysaa, waxaan u sheegay tani ay wanaagsan tahay si aanu u tusno in hannaankani uu yahay mid soomaali oo dhan ah, waanu doonaynaa inay yimaadaan markii ay diyaar noqdaan, haddii aysan diyaar ahayna kuraastoodii wali halkan way uga bannaan tahay

MIC: Ololaha Doorashooyinka Madaxtinimada ee hanaanka xisbiyada badan oo ah markii ugu horeysay ayaa ka soconaya Somaliland, kuwaasi oo daba socda doorashooyinkii hoose ee deegaanka oo si nabadgalyo ah ku dhacay bishii December ee sanadkii hore. Maamulku waxa uu rajeynayaa in hadii doorashooyinkaasi loo arko kuwo si madax banaan ku dhaca, ay ugu danbeynta Somaliland ku guuleysan doonto inay hesho Aqoonsi caalami ah. Ahmed Muhammad "Silaanyo" waxa uu ka mid yahay labada musharax ee mucaaradka ah ee la tartamaya Madaxweynaha xilligan Dahir Riyale Kahin. Siilaanyo waxa uu u sheegay IRIN in muhiimada uu siin doono aqoonsi caalami ah inay helaan.

SILAANYO: Horta Somaliland marba walba marxalad bay soo maraysay, waqti lagu qosqosli jiray baa jirtay, marka Somaliland ay tiraahdo Soomaaliland baa nala yiraahdaa gooni baan isku taagnay, marbaa jirtay aan magaca Somaliland gebigiisaba afka la soo marin jirin oo dunidu ka xanaaqi jirtay Jamciyada quruumaha iyo BBC, marba magacyaal kale loo bixin jiray oo la oran jiray northwest, waqooyi gelabeed, oo la oran jiray magacyo ceynkaas ah so called Somaliland ay oran jireen BBC, waxaasi oo dhan waa laga soo gudbay dunida maanta ictiraaf aanu rasmi ahayn baanu ka heysanaa, caalamku wuu nala wada deal-gareeyaa, wuu nala shaqeystaa, wuu nala joogaa, doorashooyinkan waa nagala caawiyaa caalamku maanta ixtiraam iyo qadarin weyn bey noo leeyihiin.

MIC: Hadaba, hadii ay helaan aqoonsi caalami ah iyo hadii aysan helin, Somaliland ma ku biiri doontaa Soomaaliya mustaqbalka, IRIN waxa ay su'aashaasi weydiisay Professor Prunier oo baaritaan ku sameeya arrimaha geeska Afrika.

PRUNIER 2 (VOICEOVER): Ma noqon doonto sidii lixdankii oo kale, sida wax kasta na sii anaguna inta hartay ayaan qadaanay, waxay noqon doontaa wada hadal qaybsi is la'eg, halkaasoo dadku ay isugu imaandoonaan awood qaybsi, waxaan u malaynayaa inay taasi tahay waddo dheer haa, waana u ku tagi doonaa qaran somaaliyeed oo xoog badan, laakiin ma soconeyso qori, sidii Siyaad Barre uu doonayay, laakiinse miyeysan waali ahayn. Si aad ah uma rumaysni in soomaaliya ay hadda tahay qaran, ama gabi ahaanba, laakiin qaranka soomaliyeed waxa uu leeyahay jiritaan xoogan, sidaasi daraadeed haddii ay xalliyaan dhibaatada qaranka toban ama shan iyo taban sannadood, ka dibna su'aasha la xiriirta xuduudaha qaranka way imaaneysaa

MIC: Laakiin Wasiirka Warfaafinta Somaliland Abdullahi Mohamed Du'ale uma muuqda inuu leeyahay macquul maha in mustaqbalka wax lagu heshiiyo .

ABDILLAHI 2: Anaga Somaliland waan dhameynay hawshayadii waan noo dhamaatay, iyaga markay wax noqdaan ee ay isu tagaa ee ay wax sameystaan, dimuquraadiyad sameystaan ee sidayada oo kale ay noqdaan, markaa anagoo laba qaran ah ayaanu wada hadlaynaa, laba qaran oo taagan sida carabaha.

MIC: Kaasina waxa uu ahaa Wasiirka Warfaafinta Maamulka Somaliland Abdillahi Mohamed Duale, oo aanu kusoo gabagabeyneyno Barnaamijkan aanu ku eegeynay arinta Soomaaliya iyo maamulka la magac baxay Somaliland. Barnaamijkan waxaa idiin soo gudbiyay Raadiyaha IRIN ee wakaalada wararka bini'aadanimada u qaabilsan Qaramada Midoobay, Barnaamijkan soo saasristiisa waxaa gacan ka geystay Midawga reer Yurub iyo Dawlada Switzerland.

Walta Information Center, Nov 10, 2002

Post Egal Somaliland: Opportunities, Ambitions, and Constraints

By Adam Musse Jibrl

7 An American pressure group, Freedom House, has argued: That free and fair elections were possible to organize only in six countries in Africa; South Africa, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia, Mali, and Benin (Democracy.. in Africa. The Economist. January 12-18, 2002).
Well, if Western style of democracy reflects the absolute truth in relation to African realities, then the theory of relativity in science has no room here in Africa.

In spite of this, Somaliland has democratic institutions of its own, not entirely based on the Western models, nor pure traditional institutions, but a mixture of the two. On the basis of which we are hopping that free and fair elections will relatively be successful.

The comparative stability Somaliland has been enjoying for the last decade that followed the collapse of the dictatorial regime of the Siyaad Barre, was due to inborn democratic values, whose roots are closely connected to both before and post colonial stages of our history.

From the British colonial rule we inherited; clean and efficient administration, strong but tiny in size of Anglo-Saxon minded technocratic class, and clan-based traditional system intact. Which, were greatly damaged in later times by the Mafia oriented political values of the ruling classes of the South, but which managed to resist and revive.

From Armed struggle to Reconciliation Conferences:

During the armed struggle led by the Somali National Movement, SNM, organizational patterns have worked well and were practiced democratically. These democratic organizational norms emanate from deep-rooted culture of our society, which proved to be sustainable and consistence, particularly during difficult years of struggle against one of the most inhuman dictatorship Africa had ever experienced, the Siyad Barre regime, which was fairly comparable with Nazism.

Unlike the other anti-Siyad Barre political movements of the South, SNM political and military viability was entirely based on three main pillars:

1) Financial, physical, and mental contribution of its people. 2) Was totally independent from any foreign influences, in relation to its internal and external policies. 3) It had a unique internal democracy. For instance, in five out of the six congresses that were taking place, in the period between 1981 to 1991, the leadership has been changed peacefully and democratically, which came as a result of the democratic culture of traditional and modern systems the organization had strictly been practicing.

Worthy to mention here too, is the fact that many foreign and Somali observers were constantly criticizing SNM democratic system as predominantly a "primitive democracy", which was inspired by clan values. Actually, the clan values, or say, traditional dimension of its democracy has played a major role that contributed to SNM to become different and victorious.

One of the most important factor that made SNM viable as an organization was that its ruling body consisted, not only, of the political elite but also of council of elders (Guruti) which was the true representative of the clan and sub-clan communities within the Issqs family. But which was enlarged after the liberation to include the entire Somaliland communities.

Thanks to this Council of elders, the Guruti, the peace and state building processes had rationally been handled, in spite of periods of crisis experienced from 199I-2, and then 1994-6.

In fact, the major tools for conflict resolution and its management were through clan conferences. Which were conducted on different levels and mandates, led by the Guruti. The highest level of which have been the All-Somaliland Communities Conferences: Burao, Borame and Hargeisa grand Peace and reconciliation conferences constituted the basis of the entire Somaliland achievements.

From Egal to Rayale:

The late M.I. Egal, was, not only, a president, but a great statesman, a man whose contributions to the struggle for independence as a leader of the popular movement, the Somali National League SNL in 1960th, that spearheaded the struggle, were remarkably remembered by many generations of Somalilanders. That is why he was unanimously elected in the Borame Conference for the post of the president of Somaliland, a post he held 33 years ago.

His resumption of the presidency has added to the process of the reemergence of the Somaliland State, not only, an element of maturity and wisdom, but largely an element of legitimacy, in his capacity as the president of internationally recognized state of Somaliland in 1960. And thus, his role was conceived as "the history that repeats itself", with new challenges and new hopes.

The period from 1993-2002, of his two terms as president was a time of continuous struggle against great challenges that Somaliland had been confronting from many fronts, local, regional and international levels. In this period of time, his main focus and in fact the principal area of his achievements had been the building of viable national institutions with reasonable degree of representation.

I strongly believe that had it not been for the historical dimension of his leadership and statesmanship such remarkable progress in peace and state building could not be easy or even possible. At that time, Somaliland has been facing economic hardships, as a result of the Arab sanction of the Somali livestock, the back-bone of the country's economy, an issue which is largely believed to be politically motivated by the ruling quarters of some Arab countries.

Somaliland had also confronted and still confronts many other pressures and conspiracies from around. And as a result of the heavy economic burden and constraints, it was not an easy task to solve the diverse political, security and social problems. But, nevertheless he made his exceptional contribution in making the institutions of the country running and developing, by containing contradictions, particularly those related to the centralization, decentralization, and participation and their relation to constitutionality issues. Which theoretically have been attractive but practically difficult when it comes to perfect implementation of the ideals, which represent the high hopes perceived by people, who have suffered 21 years of military dictatorship.

The fact that Somaliland has decided to step-up the process of transformation from the clan-based system to multi-party elections was seen as spectacular move, but an ambitious project. Which many of us have shown worries and saw the move as a high-risk attempt to step over the stages of historical development, however, the idea has vigorously been accepted by the majority of population. The referendum on the provisional constitution has put to end a long political controversy over `which way to go' from here, after the transitional period has virtually came to an end, and new phase of multi party based western oriented democracy was to begin. Two critical issues have resolutely been decided at the ballot boxes, where over 97% of the voters have consented:-

1) The Somaliland independence and, 2) Multi party elections as the main political course.

The formation of the UDUB organization, under the leadership of the late President Egal. Which was founded in June 2001 (only one month after the referendum), was seen by the radical wing of the opposition as a threat to their ambitions. New conflict was instigated to disturb the process and break down the impulse of the consensus generated by the referendum. And severely complicated the relationship between the government and the opposition, in general and that of Mr. Suleyman Gal's political group, ASAD, and the government in particular.

This argument was obviously a part and parcel of the main and fundamental issue of `which way to go' from here. In other words, should Somaliland continue embarking upon the Clan-based political System which predominantly was built on traditional Somali way of consensus, or should it take an abrupt and radical shift towards Western multi party democracy or was a mixture of both the best choice'''

In line with the constitution, the government had decided to go ahead, and further accelerated the process of multi party elections, while Asad political group has refused to buy the idea.

Possibility of confrontation and political unrest and even civil war was believed by many quarters to be an open option.

Worthy to notice here too, is the fact that the disagreements and disputes between the government and the Asad organization over the political issues have been too personalized, a problem that has been developing into some sort of incurable political malignance.

The sudden and unexpected death of the President, a renowned heavyweight political figure, left a gap in leadership, which was seen as great challenge that ought to be tackled. It was a real national tragedy, but which has generated a new and unprecedented momentum of national consensus for all Somaliland people, from Lasaanod to Borame, on the general national issues, included those which have previously been source of disagreement.

The rift of the political differences had drastically been narrowed. The two legislative national councils, the House of Representatives and the Council of the Elders have elected a new president. And his vice was unanimously approved by the two Houses of the Parliament, that was, in fact a clear expression of the general mood of the people in the country.

The Asad political group and its leader, Suleyman Mohamed Adan, Gal, and other politicians who had previously been strongly opposing the multi party elections, And who were refusing to register their organization as legal political organization, have now came to join the main stream of the seven political organizations, to become the number 8. Mr. Ahmed M. Mohamoud (Silaanyo) has also formed his political party Kulmiye, and the mandated National Commission gave legal status to his party.

All these developments combined signified only one thing, that the option of the multi party elections overwhelmingly overcame the Shir-Beeleed designs, as a result the controversies over the main issue "where to go from here" have satisfactorily been resolved. All are now ready to participate in `free and fair elections, which, if satisfactorily realized will certainly put Somaliland in the list of the `limited number' of the African democracies.

This will open up extraordinary opportunities for Somaliland to avoid political unrest and to create favorable environment for the reconstruction of the New Somaliland.

http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/. Christian Aid,04.03

Training nurses and traditional birth attendants in Somaliland

'I want to help the poor people and I want to help my country.' says 19-year-old Deeqa Mohammed Mohammoud who is in her third year of nursing training at Edna Adan's Maternity Hospital in the Somaliland.

Supported by Christian Aid, Edna Adan trains young women to become nurses and midwives in Hargeisa, where the government nursing college was destroyed by bombs during Somaliland's civil war between 1988 and 1991.

Female genital mutilation is practised on 98 per cent of Somali women, causing serious complications in childbirth. Edna Adan also trains traditional birth attendants to combine cultural practice with modern techniques for the safe delivery and care of babies. More information from Amnesty International.

'A typical day, if I am working on a morning shift, starts at 6am. The shift ends at 12pm when I go home for lunch, say my prayers and have a rest. Then I study from 4pm until 11pm, with a break for some food,' says Deeqa.

'I have delivered four babies so far. I felt so happy when I did it for the first time. But I have also seen babies born with spina bifida, witnessed miscarriages, and women who have died in childbirth. I encourage myself to cope with it but it is very difficult.'

One woman that Deeqa was able to help is Hamsa Hassam Hussein. Twenty-eight-year old Hamsa already has four children. She arrived at the hospital after being in labour for five days. The doctor at Edna's hospital managed to induce the baby and he was born quickly and with little pain. If Hamsa had had her child at home she and her baby would almost certainly have died.

Deeqa recognises one of the reasons why the health needs in Somaliland are so great.

'The war has destroyed all our resources. All the doctors and nurses went abroad during the war. Young people fled to the countryside where they did not get a good education. Now that we are at peace my dream for Somaliland is for it to become recognised by the UN,' she says.

http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/. Christian Aid,04.03

Environmentally friendly bees in Somaliland.

Christian Aid partner Candlelight for Health and Education trains farmers in bee keeping to earn a living and protect the environment.

Bee keeping has been practised for many years in Somaliland. However, traditional methods of smoking the bees away from the honey involved using blazing torches that set the whole tree on fire. Now the landscape is scarred with the dead remains of scalded trees.

In the village of Haraf, outside Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, Abdullahi Mohammed and his wife Mariam Yosef, have a thriving honey farm. They started traditional bee keeping nearly two years ago with only one hive. In November 2002 Abdullahi and Mariam were offered training by Candlelight. Now they have 35 hives and help train others in the village.

'Before my training I knew very little about bee keeping. I did not know when to harvest, how to care for the bees and how to use the by-products such as beeswax. I used to get stung all the time and I would burn trees. The honey was not good quality - it was very watery' said Abdullahi. Candlelight gives each trainee protective clothing, two hives and a smoker that releases only a little smoke to calm the bees when the honey is collected. Abdullahi also learnt how to make his own traditional hives from mud, sticks and rope.

'I'm producing 50 per cent more honey now and the quality is much better. I harvest it in June and November, and produce about 60 kilos a year. A kilo of honey with the comb costs $10. It is in such demand that people come to me to buy it. I do not even need to take it to town. With that $10 I can buy enough rice or sugar to last for months. It will help me support my mother and we want to start a family.'

Abdullahi helps others learn this lucrative trade and is the team leader for the bee-keeping training in his village. He hopes to start making candles and shoe polish with the beeswax. 'Honey has so many qualities. It is good for the throat, digestion, the skin. The possibilities are endless.' he said.

The War-torn Societies Project in Somaliland

1999-10-22

Mike Crawley

The town of Hargeisa in northwest Somalia does not fit the image that is typically portrayed of this war-ravaged country. While clan-based militias fight raging gun battles and all forms of government have collapsed in southern Somalia, things are different here in the capital of the self-declared but internationally unrecognized Republic of Somaliland.

Men sit at sidewalk tea shops talking or listening to the radio, women hunt for bargains on gold jewellery, business people carry mobile phones, and the only visible guns are in the hands of the president's bodyguards. Although Hargeisa was flattened by the former dictator Siad Barre's bombing raids, the people have reconstructed their town and rebuilt peace.

WSP goals

One agency trying to play a role in this recovery process is the War-torn Societies Project (WSP) - an initiative established by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies, with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and 27 other donors. WSP's mandate is to help societies emerging from conflict identify the problems they face and develop solutions in the form of policy options.

Since 1995, WSP staff have completed projects in Guatemala, Eritrea, and Mozambique. Funded in part by IDRC, the Somali program was launched in 1997, beginning in the northeastern 'state' of Puntland and spreading to the northwest in 1998. In Somaliland, WSP works in partnership with the Somaliland Centre for Peace and Development (SCPD). "Our goal is to influence policy makers in the government and the international community," says Mohamed Abdi Mohamud, SCPD Administrator in Hargeisa.

Participatory action research

The WSP Somali program is based on participatory action research. In recent months, a five-person research team (including one female member) has travelled across Somaliland asking questions around five themes - politics, economics, social rebuilding, gender issues, and culture - in order to sketch a 'self-portrait' of the region. The WSP research technique "is very productive here because the society is an oral society," says Mohamud. "The team has managed to get quite a lot of feedback from the field trips. The challenging part is how to absorb it all."

Among the preliminary findings, the researchers are hearing that people are concerned about issues like regional equity, the process of decentralization, and popular participation in the decision making process. This fall, the team's research report will be translated into Somali and presented to working-group sessions representing the government, elders, the private sector, and key people from the regions. Participants will discuss whether the portrait is an accurate one and try to achieve consensus on a final document by the end of 1999.

Rebuilding tool

But the point of this exercise is not just to conduct research for its own sake. The ultimate goal is to use research as a rebuilding tool - a bridge that transmits the aspirations of the community to decision makers. The WSP/SCPD team believes that its work will indirectly contribute to reconciliation by de-politicizing divisive issues.

Toward this end, the team strives to develop and maintain good relations with key figures in society. That's why the strength of geographical and clan ties in Somaliland had to be considered when hiring researchers. The WSP's broad-based research team helps ensure that the views of each region are fairly represented and gives the project local credibility.

Unique environment

For the War-torn Societies Project, the Somali territories represent a unique environment: the world's only collapsed state. "The degree and scope of the disintegration of the former Somali Republic was probably without parallel," notes an interim report on this project, adding that the country provides "a formidable, perhaps decisive testing ground" for the WSP methodology.

According to Matt Bryden, the WSP Somali Program Coordinator, the fledgling administration in Somaliland faces major challenges: it is financially strapped, as little international assistance flows toward an unrecognized government and the scope for tax revenue is limited. He explains that the Somaliland economy is almost totally dependent on livestock exports to Saudi Arabia, which were banned for 18 months until May 1999 because of concerns about Rift Valley fever.

Supportive populace

"The authorities must battle for every dollar of revenue," stresses Bryden. Meanwhile, the administration spends 70 per cent of its budget on the security forces as a way of employing demobilized militiamen. Despite this, the peaceful streets of Hargeisa suggest that the people generally support their leaders' efforts at creating a government out of nothing. "It is a state in the making," he concludes.

Mike Crawley is a Canadian journalist who visited Somalia for the Gemini News Service on a fellowship funded by IDRC. (Photo: M. Crawley)

Resource Person: Matt Bryden, WSP Somali Program Coordinator, c/o UNRISD, Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland; Tel: (254-2) 449128 (Nairobi, Kenya); Email: Bryden@unrisd.org

http://www.vad-ev.de/papers/zierau.pdf

Politics and Economy in Nation-building Processes: Somaliland Republic

Paper presented by Tabea Zierau (University of Hanover), VAD 2002

Several weeks after the Somali state collapsed in 1991, the Northwestern region declared independence. Somaliland Republic has reasserted the separate existence it had as the colony of British Somaliland before independence and union with the former Italian Somalia in 1960. While in Southern Somalia the restauration of peace is still a long way, the Somaliland people created a state from the combination of traditional elders councils and a modern parliamentary system. In Somaliland, peace between hostil clans is given a real perspective. Observers appreciate the political system as a Somali innovation, the country is considered as greatest example for endogenous post-war peace-building. However, the international community is restrained to any acknowledgement. Far away from a legal recognition, the political future of the "quasi"-state Somaliland is doubtful. The international community is trying to suppress the decentralizing processes at the Horn of Africa and stakes on to the restauration of a centralized state in Somalia.

Why did Somaliland declare independence from Somalia' And why does it hold on to independence' I do not believe in a so called "ethnic" conflict in Somalia: The civil war in Somalia is a social conflict, its roots date back several decades. The secession of Somaliland does not mean a growing ethnicity of the Northwestern Somali people. Behind nation-building processes you can often find hidden interests. Which social groups profited from the declaration of independence' The economic decay of the Somali state during the 1980s led to political repression and to an informalization of Somali economy - some call it "shadow economy". The political turn of Siyaad Barre at the beginning of the 80s - from communist to capitalist ideology - went aside with his attempt to deprive the counter-hegemonic elites from their power in Northern Somalia. Because of the nationalization of the most important markets there, the Northern Somali opposition party ,Somali National Movement" (SNM) got great financial assistance from the export traders who were impeded in their economic activities. This paper argues that the declaration of Somaliland Republic, as a counter-hegemonic project, is a direct result of the formation of elites during the commercialization of pastoralism under British colonial rule. The separation of Mogadishu and the long-term limitation of the Somaliland state-power are both in the very interest of the dominating traders. To secure these economic interests, great activity is seen to keep state-power marginal. Mainactors in Somaliland are holding on to independence, knowing that international community nowadays favours the model of the European nation-state. Donors are only attracted by state-like structures - even though it is nothing but a fa?ade.

Decay of state institutions and structural adjustment programs lead to the formation of parallel markets. This "informal" sector helps the little man to survive but also it is used by elites to enhance their prestige and monetary wealth. Many argue that in Africa nowadays only the informal sector grants endogenous economic development. It is expected that from this economy comes the power to rebuild the state. However, believing that civil society is splitted of the state is a european myth: In Somaliland it is obvious that economic mainactors are those disappointed state elites that saw no opportunity to profit from the state system. They concentrated on the parallel economy to reap the benefits from these structures in a fully deregulated economy of a new state Somaliland.

For nowadays, the economy of Somaliland is completely deregulated despite of state institutions that were rebuilt after independence. Informal economic activities are not seen as illegal but are "legitimate informal" - to say it with Patrick Chabal. The former president of Somaliland who died at the beginning of this month, Maxamed Xaaji Ibrahim Igaal, introduced a national currency and a national bank. However, mainactors do not trust Somaliland financial policy: National and international companies prefer to change money on the parallel market. The government`s attempts to support the national financial system failed. An example: In 1995, the government tried to support Somaliland-Shilling by sanctioning foreign exchange operations and by fixing the exchange rate, which caused strong public protest. Many traders threatened the government with moving there activities to Puntland in Eastern Somalia, where there are no restrictions for export trade. Even though the parliament dropped this unpopular decree in 1996, the economy is still very suspicious to state policy. Economic mainactors blame the government for extreme inflation in 1996 as well. For the state tried to compensate enormous budgetary deficite by printing money. The budget of Somaliland state totals round about 30 million US$. This amounts only to 60 percent of actual expenditures. One reason is that the administration of Somaliland sees itself confronted with great difficulties in taxing its nomadic population, like all of its Somali predecessors.

Shortly after the Somali state collapsed in 1991, Berbera port in Somaliland was reopened. There it turned out that foreign trade relations could be reactivated quickly, which confirms Somaliland economy`s orientation on trade. Export of livestock is still the biggest part of export volume. But cultivation and trade of khat is the upcoming business: Since the late 60s, livestock trade via Berbera port increased constantly. Close to arab markets, livestock prices were high. In 1978, about 80 percent of livestock exports left the country through Berbera port. After the port reopened in 1991, this trend continued. Today, Somaliland export traders are successful in controlling the majority of all Somalia`s livestock exports. Northern Somali descendants of the first national elite are gaining from the state Somaliland, because independence pushed them from periphery to core of power. So the export traders have their own state now. No more rivals, no more fear of Mogadishu`s hegemony. It is easy to put the government under pressure: The traders` menace of turning their activities out of Somaliland which means to minimize the state`s tax earnings, is sufficient to keep state power marginal.

Khat is a mild narcotic, mainly cultivated in the highlands of Ethiopia. Its active substance evaporates within days. The increasing consumption at the Horn of Africa and in Yemen makes the cultivation and trade a boom industry - explicitly in Somaliland, which will be shown. Khat chewing is a relatively new phenomenon in Somaliland. It started along with urbanisation and rise of an indigenous elite under British colonial rule. Improvement of transportation led to an increase of consumption of the down-settled young urbans. ,Nowadays, it seems that everybody is chewing khat all day, everyday." (Nair 1999) Few wholesalers make a large profit from khat, but increasing consumption means a serious danger for society and national economy. Chewing khat is an expensive activity: It is estimated that the costs of chewing amount to 1500 US$ per year - same as the per capita income. Some argue that chewing khat slows down the productivity and that it leads to an erosion of working morale. I do not believe this is true, for it is obvious that consumption raises with unemployment figures.

Whether you damn the chewing of khat or call it the ,food of the holy man": there is no doubt that the narcotic`s trade is one of the most productive economic sectors in Somaliland. This is proved by an UNDP research in 1997. Khat is not criminalized in Somaliland, the administration imposes even a tax on its import. But taxes on khat are lower then any taxes levied on luxuary goods in similar states. UNDP recommends therefore a higher taxation which may be difficult in reality. The wholesalers are members of the clan Habr Awal which is quiet successful in controlling the government. This lobby is setting limits to the power of the state. Now, what is exactly the role of Somaliland state' Let us think of the European ideal: There, the state guarantees its citizen`s legal protection. The monopoly on the use of force means protection against personalized power. Its sovereignty means security for economic actors. The internationally recognized nation-state is a fund-raiser who provides access to the markets. The division of the ruler`s person and the institution of his rule means that all citizens are equal in law and equally good.

Such concept of the state is pure fiction in Somaliland. The state is not institutionalized at all, nor does it claim the monopoly on the use of force and full control of its territory. The power of the president is fully legitimated inside the country. But he does not enjoy any reputation beyond the borders of Somaliland. But not only missing international acknowledgment weakens the state. Its power is to be marginal, its legitimacy comes from a combination of clientelism and lineagedominated organisation, basing on networks. This clientelistic system favours a weak state who has no administrative control of its territory. Somaliland state is completely privatised: The political class favours its clients in taxing, assigning goods, placing of public orders. And the clients make available money for demobilization. But the most important role of the state in Somaliland is to maintain an unequal access to the market. Economic tensions have an clan dimension here: The clan next to Igaal, Habr Awal, keeps control over Berbera port and khattrade. And the clans of Garxajis and Habr Jeclo control the most important parts of livestock trade. Trade in Somaliland is such a profitable business, because the administration is used to maintain the balance of the clans` economic power.

Trutz von Trotha once said that in Africa, places of power are always places of petitioners (Trotha 1991). But in Somaliland you can notice the opposite: High government officials only draw symbolic salaries. The real income are donations of members of their own clan. The donors know very well that the addressees are obliged to reply to the donation. In return for it, the officials speak up in parliament for their friends` tax exemption or turn a blind eye on wildlife trophy traffic. So in Somaliland, few economic tycoons are interested in building a state system whose power is easy to control. This behaviour does not encourage the state`s consolidation but weakens it on a long-term basis. For the donation cements given inequalities between the different clans. In fact, a national identity or even a polity cannot be constructed because the conditions of reproduction do not belong to the state`s abilities. In Somaliland, it is a small and influential part of the society who captures the state and not the opposite. One last example which makes quite clear the interdependence of economy and politics in Somaliland: A big success for the wholesalers of former president Igaal`s clan Habr Awal is a change of the main trade route for khat. Every day, ten tons of Khat leave Ethiopia for the Arab peninsula. When Somaliland was still a part of Somalia, the narcotic with destination Yemen was always shipped in Djibouti. Nowadays, Berbera port is taking the neighbor`s place. For in the quasi-state Somaliland, taxes and duties are lower, and legislation here is more vague then in Djibouti.

The question now is whether a state like Somaliland can claim its independence on a long-term basis. Will Somaliland ever be a full member of the international community' The construction of national institutions and the nearly successful demobilization, the creation of democratic structures like parliament and national elders council make Somaliland look like a stable and secure partner. The government wants to show that the country is ready for international donors. The lack of international interest is hard for Somaliland. There are many reasons for this worldwide indifference. I want to mention two of them:

Somalia is still a full member of the United Nations, even though its membership is suspended for the moment. As long as there is no government in Mogadishu that accepts Somaliland as independent, there won`t be any international recognition. Today, there is only little hope that the actual provisionary government of Mogadishu will move in this direction. Abdoulkassim Salat Hassan, interims president of Somalia, is fully accepted by international community. He won`t let Somaliland go its own way, because Mogadishu needs its tax revenues. In fact, the independent status of Somaliland and the hope for a long-term solution of the Somali conflict which could be a somehow federal state system, is sacrificed in favour of an ad hoc installed provisionary government which certifies for the world that African borders are sacrosanct.

Besides, the international community still favours the European model of the nation-state. There is a great fear in Europe and the United States of so called "failed states". The world faces them with suspicion and helplessness, it rejects endogenous political developments as processes of "retraditionalization" who do not fit with modernity. Time will tell, if the world will one day accept human political systems and societies that differ from the European model.

Source: Azizah 10/31/2002 V.2; N.3 p. 52

Somalia's Queen of Green

by Ulen, Eisa

Large, wild animals prowled in the very places where Fatima Jibrell played as a child. Living the life typical of nomadic Somali girls fifty years ago, she judiciously avoided the tall grasses around her family's camp, especially at night, and occasionally she stayed indoors all day. "My childhood," the now 54 year-old environmental activist explains, "[was in a] land where we camped and had lions, leopards and cheetahs as part of daily life."

That land has changed drastically. After many years of living abroad, Jibrell returned to her land -- to dust and to deforestation. Drought, war and greed had depleted Somalia of the once-abundant acacia plants, a fixture of the nation's landscape and environment, which were now being stripped and burned to make coal. This burning produced a spark that lit Jibrell's own flame of passion. She became determined to power a new generation of Somalis dedicated to preserving the ecological quality of their homeland.

Jibrell's dedication and resolve is beginning to make an impact. More people now know about the necessity of preserving Somalia's natural resources and last April, Jibrell gained recognition for her work with the Horn of Africa Relief and Development Organization. The prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize is the environmentalist's equivalent of the Pulitzer and comes with a no-strings-attached cash award of $125,000. It is given annually to environmental heroes in six geographical areas: Africa, Asia, Europe, Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. This year one of the honored recipients is an outstanding determined Muslim woman -- Fatima Jibrell.

Following her own path is nothing new for Jibrell. Her childhood was in a Somalia under colonial rule. Known as British Somaliland at the time, education there for girls stopped at the junior high level. Jibrell's father lived in the US and sent for his intellectually gifted daughter. Her mother did not join the family in America because, Jibrell explains, "She was a devout Muslim and refused to move somewhere she could not hear the adhan."

After graduating from Temple University High School in Philadelphia, Jibrell returned to Somalia to attend business school in Mogadishu, start her own family and work for the Treasury Department in the Ministry of Finance. In the 1970s, her husband moved the family to Syria where she studied English literature at the University of Damascus. She returned to the US with her family in 1982, settling in northern Virginia and earning her undergraduate degree in English literature at the University of the District of Columbia. Additionally, she obtained a master's of social work from the University of Connecticut and eventually became an American citizen.

Although her schooling has served her well as Director of the Horn of Africa Relief and Development Organization, which she founded in 1991, it is the wisdom of the ancients that Jibrell relies on in her work. With this wisdom, she has constructed an activist spirit dedicated to peace, women's issues, and living in harmony with the natural world. The rainfall effectiveness techniques she employs enable nomadic communities to retain their ancestral power. "Indigenous knowledge was lost that we had to reclaim, package and give back to the nomads," she explains.

One example of this knowledge is a simple technique that balances people with the world where they live. By gathering the plentiful rocks along the Somali landscape, nomadic families build crop dams. When rain falls, it collects in these dams instead of running off. The naturally occurring seeds drink in nutrients from the now-moist earth and new life grows. Further demonstrating wisdom, Jibrell and her staff insist on training nomadic communities to restore the environment with available resources, instead of spending money to buy water for families.

In times of drought when the resources dry up, Horn Relief simply loans families 15 dollars each to buy their own water. The families pay the money back, either with cash, with livestock or by building crop dams for other families. The relationship is symbiotic: when a family rehabilitates the land on which they've camped, Horn Relief buys them a male camel, which they can use to move and, Allah willing, help rehabilitate even more Somali land. From her office in Buran Village, the nomadic center of Somalia that lies between Puntland and Somaliland, Jibrell's work ripples like a pebble thrown into a pond, replenishing the future of an entire nation.

It was the perilous future of this nation that brought different Somali clans together -- for the first time since the Civil War -- in 1996 to organize around the issue of their rapidly changing natural environment. Jibrell helped form the Resource Management/Somali Network at that historical planning meeting and her organizing work accelerated afterwards. With a focus on the nomadic environment (70% of Somalia's population is nomadic), and with drought a key issue in a land where it rains only a week or so, for 15-30 minutes each day once a year, Jibrell conducted a study and personal pilgrimage where she "traced [her] ancestral footsteps." The results of her study and journey led to a decision by the Resource Management/Somali Network to carefully examine rainfall effectiveness.

For her journey, Jibrell traveled from the coast to the mountains and from plateaus to the savanna grasslands, bearing witness to the ways her homeland had changed, in part as a result of the devastating affects of war. With such dramatic changes, even her own children have difficulty connecting to the ways Jibrell once lived on Somali land.

With the extinction of the lions, she has dedicated her life to reversing the trend towards further loss and more death. "I always say I don't like cats," she laughs, "because they remind me of lions." She may joke about cats, but she is serious about the loss of lions and the irreversible effects of desertification. "How long will it take for Somalia to be called a desert and no one will live here'" she admonishes. "Our environment is holistic. People are a part of the environment." Jibrell celebrates Somalia as an integral part of the worldwide environment and cautions that if just one part of the Earth sinks, the devastation affects everyone, everywhere else.

Fueled by her passion, Jibrell has triumphed over many obstacles and challenges and her work has produced viable changes. When she organized a peace march to heighten awareness of the "charcoal wars," it resulted in a ban in the export of charcoal from the Puntland area of Somalia, thus ceasing the destructive logging of the acacia trees there. International model Iman, commented on her fellow countrywoman's work with admiration. "Fatima Jibrell has used her fearless voice and energy to help change the world, and is one of those special people who has made a serious, profound and necessary impact in Somalia. By choosing to be an advocate for the environment and working on behalf of the powerless and innocent people of Somalia, she faces severe circumstances on such a dangerous level that we cannot even comprehend in the western world. I am so proud that someone from my native country has been honored by receiving a Goldman Award, and I know that this prestigious prize will help Jibrell continue her crusade."

Along with her environmental work, Jibrell also trains young people in healthcare, disease prevention, leadership, organizational and research skills and constituency building. Her international staff of about 30 workers has had much success with pastoral youth. In the past ten years, the staff has developed literacy programs that run from seven o'clock in the morning, until seven at night every day of the week except Friday.

While many of the boys come into the program with some schooling, the girls often arrive unable to even hold a pen. However, with the rigorous schedule of literacy training they receive in the organization's solar-lit library, many girls go on to pass entrance exams at the community college in Buran Village. In six villages, Horn of Africa is helping the residents to develop their own literacy programs. The students in these programs learn about their own environment, "not Big Ben," Jibrell proudly proclaims. They study the acacia tree, marine life and, perhaps most important, the culture of the school environment. Jibrell encourages students to challenge their teachers and to be more active learners. She aims to inspire confidence so that the students begin to think on their own and can respond to their teachers with verve.

Ultimately, Fatima Jibrell's goal is to institutionalize these kinds of self-perpetuating programs. With an annual budget of approximately $200,000 -- compared to budgets of $1 million or more for other organizations -- Horn of Africa Relief and Development stretches each dollar to its fullest potential. The $125,000 Goldman Prize Jibrell has earned will help to strengthen the bright flame of environmental wisdom and preservation she has ignited in her country. Some of that money will pay for Jibrell's travel to do advocacy work in places like Nairobi, Kenya and other democratic countries; nations where the voices of the people carl have a real impact on leadership and the direction of natural resources. However, Jibrell is "not too interested in building the organization but [rather] in using the organization to improve the lives of Somalis." Not wanting to create the bureaucracy of the large, well-known relief institutions, Jibrell "doesn't want the organization to live for itself. It's a tool for the people's way of life to be protected." Refreshingly, her long-term goal is for Horn Relief to not exist at all. Her goal is to shift people away from dependency and their chase for funding dollars. "The faster we lose those jobs, the better," she exclaims. Hoping that Somalia will be, once again, environmentally sound and self-sufficient, Jibrell says, "If we don't need the tool, that means we have achieved [our goal.] I can find another job."

To achieve that altruistic goal, Jibrell has much more work to do -- and she must awaken the world to the Somali situation. In some areas, young Somalis continue to burn the old-growth acacia trees to produce charcoal and earn fast money by selling the coal for exportation, now mostly to the United Arab Emirates. Both civil unrest in Somalia and fears of Rift Valley Fever (whose existence is in dispute) have disrupted trade. Without the ability to sell livestock abroad, especially to Saudi Arabia, overgrazing farm animals devour the precious little vegetation Somalia has left. Although Somalia forms a peninsula between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, the nation lacks the tools and technology to make use of its aquatic resources. Ironically, as more Somalis gain knowledge of the marine environment, illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste threatens the delicate ecology of the waters surrounding their country.

Fatima Jibrell calls on citizens -- especially those who consider themselves citizens of the world -- to affect more empowering environmental change. "World citizens must join us and add their voices to ours." Horn Relief needs skilled people to come to Somalia to help develop research and education on a variety of ecological issues including transportation infrastructure, solar lighting and cooking techniques, a better understanding of wind energy and marine skills. Those of us unable to lend a hand in person can offer assistance from our own homes. Pressuring foreign nations to stop creating a market for coal seems to be an effective way to stop young people from burning the acacia. Likewise, we can petition international fishing corporations to stop destroying the nets of poor, native fishermen. Neighboring countries must belay their fears of disease and begin to trade and buy Somali livestock again.

According to Jibrell, we can all implore the international community to live more holistically, in harmony with one another. As a peace activist and environmentalist, Jibrell views military straggles in Somalia as resource-based conflicts. "When there's enough to eat and share, when there's decent housing, when there's healthcare and education, anybody who wants to take a gun and create a militia would have a lot of questions in front of him." Better, more plentiful resources provide a safer world community.

The struggle to uplift one people lifts us all. As Fatima Jibrell explains, "The task before us is to engage the needs of the Somali people." Her reflections regarding responsibility in the region around Somalia apply to the entire world: "[We] have a responsibility as neighbors, as Muslims, as countries that have traded since historical times -- but mostly as citizens that share one air."

Women: Personal is Political Local is Global - Helsinki, Finland - 1998 12/10/1998

Human Rights & Ecological Health

by Ahmed, Zeinab H. Ayan

Facts and Requirement

Before I discuss in detail the importance of Ecology to man kind, I would like to borrow the exact definition of the term "Human Ecology" The branch of Sociology that is concerned with studying the relationship between human groups and their physical and Social environment. So when we talk of ecology, we can't totally forget the word environment. In deeper terms, we talk of cleaner environment; environmental protection, industrial wastes, depleted eco- system and depleted forest. Do you ever really sense anything important in these terms', have you ever imagined the role you can play in the actual implementation of these words'

So, Ecology is very vital and also our environment is exceptionally important. How do we talk of the seriousness of these terms yet many of us remain indifferent of what is happening in our surroundings. What we are all sure is that no other organism causes damage to the environment other than man. Ironically man is the weakest organism who needs the protection and safe guarding of the very environment she/he is destroying.

Current environmental situation:- World-wide

Today's Global environmental situation is one which can cause terror in the minds of those who care and understand it's meaning. I would like to remind every one of us, as human kind that majority of our world leaders just pay a lip- service in the actual protection of our environment. I wish to stress once again that there is real madness just going on world-wide where the trend is destruction and rush for hollow richness. I feel saddened by the rush to fell large forest trees and use them for economic enrichment of few individuals. All over the world especially developing countries like Africa, environmental degradation through forest destruction is alarming and on the increase.

Environmental Effects in Somalia: Lower Jubba and North- East of Somlia through Charcoal Burning

Among the major disasters in Somalia are: (a)* The forest destruction through commercial charcoal burning (b)* The Export of rare species of wildlife e.g. hyenas, lions, wolves and rare birds and Somali monkey (c)* The discard of toxins and toxic waste in Somalia waters

A lucrative deal is going on between charcoal traders in Somalia and some Arab rich individuals. Without authorities to check this heinous crime against humanity these individual rich merchants get away with the destruction of the volatile forests in these regions. Having visited these regions I was shocked and bitterly angered by the scale of charcoal been exported from these regions. Why have the charcoal burners and the illegal exporters targeted these two regions' Because these regions are a home to large trees some of which are rare in the other parts of the country. Among these trees are: Acacia-(thorn-tree), Qurac, Galool, fulay, and Adaad-geri-(named after the Giraffe) and fruit trees like: Qoolati, waraday, qansah, damal, and others. Today these large trees are a prey to greedy individual traders who employ displaced local farmer herdsmen who lost their livestock during the prolonged civil war. This situation has exasperated the poverty condition and has given new advantage to these merchants of doom in these tropical regions. So far, no agency has attempted to rectify this dangerous situation. Some of these trees are valued in Somalia and it was culturally a taboo to fell them. These trees usually offer fruits to the wild-life species like the monkey and exotic birds.

The report on the Somali Ocean especially in the Lower Juba is not also very pleasing. A research has indicated that large number of unknown ships are stationing themselves at the Coastal zones only leaving at dawn only to return at dusk. Many fishermen reported that these ships carry-out trawling work at the coast of Somalia - deleting the ocean. A high death of sea -cucumbers and other smaller marine life has been observed. strengthening the already assumed suspicion of industrial or nuclear chemical waste seemingly dumped in the shores. So man kind contributes most of the damage to the eco-system through unwarranted over-fishing, forest depletion, poaching of wild-life and industrial waste being dumped into the un- guarded coastal zones of the developing nations.

As women and children are those who are mostly effected by the environmental disasters, Somali Professionals like Fatima Jibrell, Managing Director of Horn of Africa Relief and Dev. Org. who is always concerned about the environmental and human issues has been doing a lot of campaign in and out of Somalia. Fatima is also the Coordinator of Resource Managment Somalia Network an Umbrella organisation in Somalia who are supported by NOVIB of Netherlands. She has sent alarms verbally and in writing to International Organizations: UN, EU, OAU and IGAD to take generous measurments about environmental disasters in Somalia but she hasn't got positive reactions yet for this issue.

My point of view is, for this conference to have a working channel be established and a forum be created to press for viable action against environment degradation. I feel the awareness has been created already, we need action, action, action to force the world community leaders to categorically enforce the existing laws against environmental abuse.

Efforts to consolidate peace in Somaliland followed a path widely divergent from that of southern Somalia. After Barre's ouster, the Isaaq-led SNM retreated to Somaliland, and was not involved in the inter-clan violence in the south. In an effort to alleviate fears of SNM retaliation among clans residing in Somaliland associated with the Barre regime, as well as the belief that the Isaaq would attempt to seize complete control of the northwest regions, non-Isaaq clans were allowed to participate in the April-May 1991 conference held at Burao, at which Somaliland declared its independence from Somalia (Farah 1996).

Somaliland was not immune to violence, however. Beginning in January 1992, two traditionally rival Isaaq clans, the Habar Yonis and Habar Jeclo, battled for control of Burao; shortly thereafter, the Habar Yonis and `Iisa Muusa became involved in a violent struggle for Berbera. However, without assistance from the United Nations (which had very little presence in Somaliland), this conflict was resolved via a "bottom up" approach, viz. by a Council of Elders (guurti) meeting at a peace conference held in Sheekh by the traditional means of xeer. Later conflicts over access to land, grazing, and water rights within the Isaaq clan-family and between the Dulbahante and Warsangeli clans were resolved in the same manner. Because these peace conferences were initiated by the clans themselves, and not the UN, they were able to continue as long as necessary in order to resolve the disputes, sometimes lasting as long as four months.

At the January-May 1993 Borama Conference, a 150 member National Guurti appointed a new Somaliland government in 1993, headed by new President Muhammed Ibrahim Egal (the last Prime Minister of Somalia's civilian government), to replace the transitional SNM government that had been installed at the time of secession. The Borama Conference also produced a National Charter, which was to act as Somaliland's constitution for two years. The Charter called for the establishment of an independent central bank and judiciary, and created a bicameral legislature consisting of an elected lower house (the Assembly of Representatives) and a non-elected upper house (the Assembly of Elders). The elders' peace-making role was formally institutionalized in this document, stating that the Assembly of Elders was "to encourage and safeguard peace [and] creating or enforcing existing codes of conduct (xeer) among the clans" (Bradbury 1997, 22). This was an attempt to integrate traditional and modern forms of government, one of the stated goals of the SNM since its founding in 1980. After the achievement of this goal, the SNM essentially became defunct.

At a conference held at Hargeisa between October 1996 and March 1997, Egal was re-elected for an additional five years by a Shir Beeleedka (Congress of Clans), comprised of the national Guurti and 150 additional delegates chosen by their clans. A new provisional constitution was approved, which required the government to hold a nationwide referendum on its ratification within three years.15 The Hargeisa Conference was also able to end a two year war between the Habar Gerhajis sub-clan and Egal's Habar Awal sub-clan that was precipitated by the selection of Egal as President in 1993. Since the resolution of this war, no other meaningful conflict between lineage groups has taken place in Somaliland.

IV. Summary and Conclusion

This paper has been an initial effort in the attempt to gain a better understanding of the divergent paths followed by Somalia and Somaliland during the past decade. The comparative case study above was an attempt to show that the effects of centralization varied in Somaliland and Somalia, and have diminished Somalia's ability to utilize xeer as a means of conflict resolution and state-building.

The Italian administration inculcated the values of a Western-style centralized government to the Somali urban elite created by the administration's economic modernization policies, while the British placed much less emphasis on both modernization and the creation of a system of highly centralized national governance. During the civilian regime, the southern urban elite, whose commitment to the concept of xeer had already been diminished due to the abandonment of clan-ties, dominated the Italian-style central government, and soon became a predatory `state class', using their government positions for personal gain to the detriment of the Somali people. The underrepresentation of northern politicians in the upper levels of the central government during this time meant that few northerners were part of the predatory state apparatus. In the era of the Barre regime, the brutal repression of the Isaaq, the north's predominate clanfamily, only served to strengthen northerners' commitment to xeer, as the Isaaq rallied around the SNM, which was founded with the express purpose of creating a national government based on xeer principles. Conversely, Barre's tactic of rewarding (primarily southern-based) clans loyal to the regime created a new predatory state class in the south.

However, due in large part to their leaders' lack of a long-term plan for a post-Barre Somalia, armed clan factions repressed by Barre also became caught up in the struggle for personal economic gain, vying for control of what little was left of the state. After the collapse of the state, the resilience of xeer in Somaliland, coupled with the absence of international intervention, allowed the SNM to utilize a xeer-based "bottom-up" approach to reconciliation and the building of state capacity. Conversely, the "top-down" approach imposed upon southern Somalia by the UN and other international actors only served to legitimize the warlords allowed to take part in the reconciliation conferences, and eradicated any possibility of a xeer-based reconciliation effort by refusing to recognize clan elders as a legitimate indigenous peace-keeping force. The fact that a number of the members of Somalia's Transitional National Government16 were also members of the Barre regime reveals the difficulty of purging Somali politics of the former predatory state class.

I plan to carry out a much more detailed examination of traditional institutions of governance in Somalia and Somaliland in the future, as this comparative case study is admittedly guilty of oversimplifying the reality facing Somalis and Somalilanders. The value attached to xeer by Somalis and Somalilanders has likely been affected by a number of other factors, including, inter alia, the pan-Somalism that played a major role in Somali politics from mid-colonial period until the defeat of Somalia by Ethiopia in the 1977-78 Ogaden War; Cold War geopolitics; the current manipulation of Somali politics by its neighboring countries (most notably Ethiopia); the commercialization of the pastoral economy; ecological degradation; the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the region; and globalization. Xeer has acted as means to pattern person-to-person relationships among Somalis in the Horn of Africa for centuries, and has allowed them to face the many contingencies of pastoral nomadic life. It is therefore essential to examine the ways in which xeer and the tradition of "pastoral democracy" have been affected by these events and processes, for as Vincent Ostrom reminds us, "Person-to-person, citizento- citizen relationships are what life in democratic societies is all about" (Ostrom 1997, 3).

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Ostrom, Vincent. 1999a. "Cryptoimperialism, Predatory States, and Self-Governance," in Michael D. McGinnis (ed.), Polycentric Governance and Development: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Ostrom, Vincent. 1999b. "Problems of Cognition as a Challenge to Policy Analysts and Democratic Societies," in Michael D. McGinnis (ed.), Polycentric Governance and Development: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Shivakumar, Sujai. 1998. "ActionAid-Somaliland: Programme Review-Institutional Analysis." Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University. Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1990 [1835]. Democracy in America: Volume I. New York: Vintage Classics.

Tripodi, Paolo. 1999. The Colonial Legacy in Somalia. New York: St. Martin's Press. Wunsch, James S. 1990. "Centralization and Development in Post-Independence Africa," in James S. Wunsch and Dele Olowu (eds.), The Failure of the Centralized State: Institutions and Self-Governance in Africa. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

http://www.delken.cec.eu.int/en/publications/Report%20on%20Somaliland%20Local%20Elections%20held%20on%2015.12.02.doc EUROPEAN UNION DELEGATION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSIONIN THE REPUBLIC OF KENYA Head of Delegation

Report on the Somaliland Local Elections held on 15 December 2002

1 Introduction

The primary objective of the EC's Somalia Country Strategy Paper (and Cotonou Agreement) is to support the move towards the establishment of democracy and good governance in Somalia. In much of the country this is still a long way off, however in Somaliland the period of transition and the movement towards elected administrations is now well under way.

Somaliland (SL) is in a process of transition from a traditional system of governance with a Parliament and executive being appointed by traditional leaders who represent clanic groupings to a more democratic system. The traditional system was centred on large clan conferences selecting leaders and providing the mandate for government. In early June 2001 the people of SL voted in a referendum on a new constitution. The constitution was overwhelmingly accepted, with the first public vote to have taken place in Somalia for 35 years, setting a valuable precedent.

The referendum was conducted almost entirely without external assistance and clearly had shortfalls. Elections are a much more complex, and within fragile post conflict societies, can result in renewed conflict. On this basis and in line with the July EU Council Conclusions on Somalia, the EC joined forces with other donors in order to initiate activities to assist this transition to democracy.

The EC fielded a short consultancy to look into the feasibility of electoral support, assisting the Somaliland Electoral Commission (SEC) in drawing up together a work plan to guide their future activities. The positive feedback from this initial consultancy highly encouraged the fielding of a project. At the same time many of the consultant's recommendations were adopted by the SEC and the election date notably changed from the 27th of October to the 15th December to accommodate the necessary work.

1.1 The process

The local elections would generate elected Councillors who in turn will appoint Mayors for the 23 districts. The importance of these elections is that the currently registered political organizations would compete at this level to become political parties. To do so, parties must solicit at least 20% of the votes in four of the six regions; the first three organizations with the highest percentages of votes would become parties eligible to contest presidential elections. These difficult selection criteria were designed to prevent clan-dominated parties. It can be assumed that any organisation meeting these criteria can be seen as cross-clan supported.

The most formidable challenge facing the electoral commission was the registration of voters. There was an absolute minimum chance to do this in time given the absence of any form of registration of citizens at regional level, the distribution of people over large rural areas and beyond the borders of Somaliland and indeed Somalia (criteria being born in Somaliland or of Somaliland parents).

In addition, there are various problems facing political organisations hoping to enter the competition where time was a crucial factor. Chief of these being little or no experience in setting-up parties, and more dangerously, no funds or guidance in fund raising, which expose the situation to possible external manipulation.

1.4 Profile of the Somaliland Electoral Commission (SEC).

Under the constitution of Somaliland and the electoral law for the presidential and District elections, the SEC is in theory an independent body, which is responsible for the organisation and running of elections.

The SEC comprises 7 members, selected in the following manner:3 by the President, 2 by the upper House of Elders (Gurti) and 2 by opposition parties.

The composition of the SEC was then authorised by a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the Gurti. The seven members are employed each with a salary of $300 per month. In addition there are five administrative staff, each of whom was selected by the civil service commission. None are former government employees. The team are all well motivated for the task, with one of the commission members being a woman.

1.5 Local elections

It was anticipated that counsellors for the 23 districts are elected (Mayors are subsequently elected by the counsellors), with the districts divided into five categories, depending on their populations. This has been done as follows:

In the capital Hargeisa, 25 individuals were to be elected; in category A (primary urban centres), 21 individuals; in category B, 17 individuals; in category C, 13; in category D, 9.

It became clear, given the prevailing security violations in Sool region (disputed with neighbouring Puntland) and the District of Buhodley that elections could not be conducted in all 23 districts. The decision to cancel elections in three districts was taken by SEC and is commendable.

2 Lead up to Election Day

Riyale (the current president of Somaliland) went out of his way in his pre-election speech, 13/12/02, to differentiate "parties from the nation", this in response to criticisms levelled against elements of his own party UDUB who continued to use the trappings of office to campaign. The vice president issued a directive at this time for all administration vehicles to be turned over to the electoral commission to further facilitate the running of the local elections.

2.1 Transparency of SEC accounting and government contribution.

The arrangements for accountability within the SEC were limited and accounting basic, yet donors required sound accounting practices and this requirement was considerably enhanced by the TAM.

Simple cash flow problems were encountered, particularly as the project worked on a reimbursable basis. This worked, but limited the ability of the project to become fully engaged to the level originally anticipated, resulting in an anticipated under spending (to be confirmed in detail in the final financial report by GTZ). In order to enable smooth running on election day and to ensure the project could remain engaged to the level anticipated, a 50% advance was agreed for election day costs. However the point was emphasized that these are their elections and it is the duty of the administration to ensure sufficient funds are available. In terms of management the SEC contracted an external auditor to perform a review of their accounts.

2.2 New management structure

The TAM had put in place a management structure, to take on the majority of work; this unit reported directly to the SEC, but worked under the guidance of the expatriate team. There were difficulties as SEC members did not respect the line of command and often dealt with the field directly, which at times caused misunderstandings. However, by being in place much of the day-to-day practical work was sufficiently covered.

The management unit gave a presentation on the preparations, which were in place, and the activity plans for the actual day of elections. The presentation was of good quality and clearly demonstrated that the TAM had been able to instil a decent level of understanding. It is worth mentioning that through the project 3,200 election workers have been trained, 400 domestic observers and basic but effective civic education has been conducted.

It is questionable if the unit will remain in place for the coming elections in 2003 as the SEC claim they do not have a sufficient budget for the work. The TAM strongly advised that this is addressed urgently.

2.3 Number of voting days

It was planned to conduct only one voting day, however, the TAM stated that statistically it was highly unlikely that all voters would be able to vote in such a limited time. The electoral law states that one-day only was possible. It was agreed in a meeting with all political parities that one-day would be maintained, despite the constraints.

2.4 Registration

Attempting registration showed the frailties of the voter card system. Registration was only done in urban areas, with around 330,000 people being registered. The figures are not yet compiled and there were clear irregularities in the process. These were recognized and lessons have been learnt from the process. On polling day all people were allowed to vote irrespective of whether they had a registration card or not (and then marked with indelible ink), this was the only feasible solution given the circumstances.

2.5 Security

It was recognised that security deteriorated in Sool region and as a result elections were cancelled in 2 of the 4 districts and Buhodley District. 2,283 police provided security on polling day and to escort and collect sensitive materials to all the voting locations (ballot boxes, sheets and indelible ink).

3 Election day

All polling stations opened at 7.00 am and were to close at 6.00 p.m. During the day it became apparent in the primary urban areas that closure at 6.00 would not be possible, leading to a decision for polling stations to remain open until 12.00 or until lines of voters were finished. However in reality most stations were closed by 8.00 pm as the voters were no longer lining up or ballot papers were completed (although in several cases re-supply was provided from strategic reserve stocks).

In no cases did any of the internationals that visited polling stations witness any violence, systematic fraud, open campaigning or blatant organizational and logistics failure. In total over 100 polling stations, in Burao, Sheik, Berbera, Hargeisa, Gabiley, Kalabyd, Erigavo, Boroma, Togwagale and many villages in-between were visited by internationals.

In all polling stations visited, police were present, orderly lines maintained, ballot papers, boxes and indelible ink were present. The atmosphere was highly positive and the majority of adults voted. Many interviews were conducted, and without exception voters were happy with the way they had been treated. Understanding of the process was relatively high in urban centres, reflecting the focus of the civic education activities, however in rural areas not all people actually understood why they were voting, with a number thinking it was the presidential elections.

3.1 Polling station staff.

Without exception every staff member interviewed had received two days training, allowing basic principles and mode of operation to be functional. There were some clear shortfalls, but in the opinion of all internationals present these were not manipulations of the process but a reflection of Somali culture and the limited knowledge within society of the democratic process. Only in one polling station visited was there any discontent of the process - a result of several voters attempting to vote twice. They were however discovered - in itself a reflection of the fact that the process was functional.

3.2 Observers

In every station visited the contesting parties had representatives observing the process. These representatives remained in place for the whole day. Again, when asked they all felt the process was functional and accountable.

In around 35 - 40% of stations domestic observers were present from COSONGO and NAGAD (the main local NGO umbrella agencies). These observers had received one day's training organised by the project. In a number of cases they were clearly well informed, in others not.

Cases of both the party and domestic observers becoming actively engaged in organising the election day were reported. This was, in all cases, harmless but is a contravention of normal election procedure.

3.3 Secrecy of the vote

The biggest weakness observed was the fact that secrecy of vote was not functional. This was clearly a reflection of reality. The majority of voters are illiterate. Political parties are known by their names, but not so much by their logo. This meant that people were totally confused by the ballot papers. People seemed more than willing to express who they were going to vote for if this was "required" to speed the process. This reflects on the general understanding of what the elections were all about but, as the results below illustrate, people did vote for all the parties running so overt coercion does not appear an issue. The ballot papers were then completed by the election staff or the representative of the selected party. If voters were literate they were permitted to vote behind curtains.

3.4 Eligibility to vote

As the registration process was only partially conducted cards were not utilised as the price of submission. Essentially everyone who wanted to vote was allowed. In no cases (except for the under age) was anyone turned back. In all cases those who had voted were marked with indelible ink, which was not possible to remove.

3.5 Role of Media

ICD/CIIR provided journalist training specifically in relation to the elections. The training was conducted in a 3 day workshop and was partially funded by the project as well as ActionAid and PENHA. Radio, TV and print journalists were given training, building on the journalist training conducted by the BBC in 2001 (EC funded).

It appears that the overall output was a success, with media of all types trying to present an unbiased view. The example of Radio Hargeisa on election day was outstanding with Journalists keeping a running commentary on the day's events, with constant reminders for people to be peaceful and calm. At many polling stations the radio was being broadcast to those waiting in line. All Somalis interviewed in Hargeisa were impressed by the radio coverage.

In addition, two documentaries for local consumption will be produced of the lead-up to the elections and the events of the day. These were partially funded by the project and will provide useful civic education tools in the future.

3.6 Participation of Women

Women's participation was impressive. At each polling station large numbers of women were present, while around 20% of staff working were women. The percentage of women voters was much higher in the afternoon (primarily reflecting women's higher work load and the fact that many men chew Quat after lunch). The number of women candidates does appear to be very limited, however hard facts on this are not available, with only single figures being reported to have been included on party lists of candidates.

3.7 Review of polling day

A meeting was conducted on the 17th in which all internationals who were directly or indirectly involved in the events of the day met. In all cases each group reported positively on the day's proceedings, being impressed with the level of organisation and commitment shown by all involved.

4 Election results

The results took longer than anticipated to be compiled. Counting was scheduled to take place at each polling station. This did not happen, partially due to security concerns and simple problems of no lighting. At the same time the counting process employed was painfully slow. There is a need to review the procedure and ensure that each polling station is of a sufficient size, in a safe area and has simple things such as lighting, water and toilets.

It is interesting to note UDUB, the party of the present regime, polled more than half the votes cast only in one region: Awdal, the home of current President Riyale. UDUB's showing in the Sahil region is a surprise to some since Kulmiye, the party of the the leading opposition candidate for the presidency Silanyo, was expected to have a stronger showing here as he brought back members of the (younger) diaspora to take on the incumbents.

There is an east-west drift with UDUB growing weaker as you move eastward. This was expected but is not so dramatic as to give cause for concern with power blocks opening along clanic lines.

During the referendum it is reported that 1.18 million votes were cast. These were at the time estimated to be highly inflated figures. The table below demonstrates a variance of over 700,000. It is true to say that an estimated 70% of eligible voters cast their vote during the local elections, which would give a voting population (all over 16) of around 628,000; even if 50% managed to vote (low estimate) the voting population would be in the region 880,000 or slightly higher since elections were not conducted in every district. Based on these figures Somaliland's population could be very vaguely estimated at around 1.7 - 1.8 million (taking 50% under the age of 16 and a voter turnout of 50% with some allowance for non voting districts).

5 Lessons learnt

How the political future of the three parties will go forward will be of note and requires further work on the development of party politics (something USAID started to develop through the International Republican Institute). In a more sophisticated system we could be looking at transferable voting or other such techniques. Presently we wait to see how personalities look to deliver what support they have to the surviving three parties. The system must look at whether the losing organisations can stay in existence and work in the local government systems.

Questions now have to be raised as to the ability of the newly incumbent local councils to take forward issues of local government. The understanding regarding the role of these elections is also reflected in people's ability to take forward local issues and develop the community/government linkages required to draw out issue-based politics in the future. There is a clear need for training so as those elected actually understand their own responsibilities.

The domestic observers group was a welcome addition, but as demonstrated by the report produced by COSONGO the product is of questionable quality. It would be unreasonable to expect a high quality result, given the fact that observers were only given one day's training and only very limited financial recourses were made available. There is clearly potential for much more comprehensive work in this area, building on the limited, but positive, success achieved to date.

A longer term problem remains in that district boundaries are not clearly demarcated resulting in the closure of one polling station. Although not a major problem at this moment, it will present difficulties, which will grow as the democratic system progresses.

There continues to be a need for voter and civic education, particularly in rural areas where radio coverage does not reach. This in conjunction with the high percentage of illiteracy needs to be taken into account for planning of future elections. Without tackling these problems it is unlikely voter secrecy will be achieved.

In urban areas it was clear that the number of polling stations or period of voting (only one day) was not sufficient, with significant voters turned away, while others were forced to stand in line for hours at a time. Since these were the first elections for the vast majority of the populace, they have not presented a disincentive to democracy, however it is highly unlikely that the same level of motivation will remain in place in the future unless the problems are tackled.

6 Conclusion

It is clear that the process was of as high a quality as is realistic within the prevailing environment. It is highly unlikely this would have been achieved without donor support and technical assistance.

The electoral commission released a communiqu? on 16/12/02 which is both bold and open - Item three, for example, states "The early realisation, by the Commission members, of their multiple shortcomings and their subsequent bold stance to seek advice......"Such an attitude is noteworthy as donors engaged to bring in the GTZ team.

It was emphasized that if the SEC expect to receive assistance for the next election phase they will need to clearly prepare requests and have them circulated in the near future. This is a priority. It was also made clear that the EC would not consider further funding beyond the existing project (a point made from the outset of EC dialogue with concerned parties).

The Government will provide a high level of resources to the presidential elections (now scheduled to be held on 30 March 2003) simply because they are considered more important and will be watched closely by the international community. These elections are constitutionally supposed to take place by February, however it is likely that March or April will be the date recommended by SEC and approved by Parliament.

Many of the lessons learnt and experience passed on by the TAM will provide a basis against which future elections can be organised. Sadly it is unlikely that the same level of discipline and organisation will be possible without external and impartial advice being on hand.

The combined support provided to the elections in many respects was the highest profile project undertaken to date in Somaliland, and yet the most risky. It is a commendable success to the project team and the Electoral Commission that the local elections passed off without incident (possibly one of the most peaceful elections in Africa for the past 20 years). The project has clearly paved the way to helping with the growth of democracy in Somalia. It is however only one small step and considerable support is required for the future, in terms of leaders training, civic education and continued advice and assistance.

http://www.lesnouvelles.org/P10_magazine/15_grandentretien/15038_dahirrayalekahin2eng.html

Somaliland. From the rebuilding of a nation to its recognition

Dahir Rayale Kahin, Pr?sident of Somaliland : ? 97% of the Somaliland's people does not want to be united anymore with Somalia. Nobody can change our will. ?

This small country has good relations with its neighbours. ? With Ethiopia and with Djibouti ?, excepted some custom problems. Ignored by the international community and by a great part of Africa, Somaliland does not receive any bilateral assistance. ? Nothing at all. From any country. ? Even the assistance of the WFP, despite the drought in the coastal areas. Only the international NGO give an assistance in ? the maintenance of schools or in other minor projects. [.] The best help from foreign [the rebuilding of destroyed bridges] came from the EU. ?

INTERVIEW BY ROBERT WIREN

The President of Somaliland, Mr. Dahir Rayale Kahin, was vice-president, when M. Ibrahim Egal, the former President, died, six months ago. He assumes the presidential fonctions, according to the Constitution, adopted in 2001. The Constitution of Somaliland inludes now the election of the institutions, from local to national levels. It will be the first time that towns and rural districts will have elected concils.

Concerning the local elections, planned for the 15th of December, this year, six parties have been registred. Then, after these elections, three parties only, that have obtained at least 20% of the votes could propose a candidate at the presidential election and candidates at the legislatives elections, planned fo r February/March 2003. Estimate calendar.

[Special corespondent, Hargeisa, December 6th 2002]

Les nouvelles d'Addis. - Mr President, your country has to face two major problems, the absence of recognition and the economy hampered by the ban on cattle exports enforced by your traditional buyers like Saudi Arabia. Dahir Rayale Kahin . - The recognition, I think, we have received it in 1960. Unluckily we have joined with our brothers in the south. But that unification has failed after 10 years. And it was not signed. There was an agreement to be signed between Somaliland and Somalia in 1960 and to be ratified by the two Parliaments. It was called the Act of Union. That Act of Union was never signed for that 30 years. So our union was a mainly illegal marriage, I can say. Now we are rebuilding our nation and we have regained our recognition of 1960. We have built our country without any help from the international community. We have made government, stability and peace. And full administration of the government.

The ban of Saudi Arabia : it is not the first time that they make a ban. It is about the fourth time. Every time they say that there are some diseases among our animals. But there is no disease. We eat meat every day. We would have died if there would be any disease among our cattle. But now they have written in their newspapers that they are ready to lift the ban. We have contacts with an international company, SGS, based in Switzerland and we are preparing to get international certification with the help of this company. I hope we shall overcome in the next future the ban imposed by Saudi Arabia.

LNA. - Would you say that this ban was not only based on a health problem but that there was an hidden agenda ' DRK. - I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. But they say there is a Rift Valley Fever. RVF happened between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. It did not happen here. But they decided a ban on all the Horn of Africa, completely. Not only on Somaliland. Even the OIE (1) in Paris has made tests on our animals and it was certified that there is no disease. But we need an international certification accepted by the Saudis. So the company SGS will fill the gap I think.

LNA. - About the refusal to recognize officially your country, the reason often given that borders in Africa should remained untouched for ever sounds like a pretext. Thus, in your opinion, what is the real reason that Head of States who have seen what you have achieved, are so shy and do not accept that Somaliland exists and has the right to be recognized ' DRK. - I don't know. Three important countries know that Somaliland was a country that has obtained independence. These are France, Italy and the United Kingdom. We have been granted our independence from the UK. France was in Djibouti and French know that we have taken our independence. Italy was administrating the other part of Somalia. Italians know that we had a government. And we have international boundaries that we inherited from the colonial powers. We have an Anglo-Italian treaty fixing our boundary between us and Somalia, an Anglo-Ethiopian treaty, an Anglo-French agreement. All these treaties have demarcated the boundaries of Somaliland. So our case is a solid one.

LNA. - Your case is similar to the one of Eritrea.

DRK. - No, no, we have even a better case. Eritrea did not take its independence in 1960, but we did.

LNA. - Do you think that the countries you have quoted and some others are waiting because they don't want to be the first to recognize your country ' They just wait that somebody else will take the step. DRK. - That is what they say every time but it is a lame excuse, I think. I have told some Europeans who visited me : why are you so shy '

LNA. - Donc la n ne peut durer Then, the only solution for you is it just to wait that they become more aware that this situation cannot last '

DRK. - Yes. But as for every nation, the determination lies in the will of the people. And this people of Somaliland has proved by referendum, 97 % of it, that Somaliland wants to be alone and not be united anymore with Somalia. So nobody can change our will. And we shall be standing for ever to get our recognition.

LNA. - I understand that. We just have talked about some European countries but what about your African brothers. Are some of them more sympathetic to you '

DRK. - We can mention Ethiopia, South Africa and some others. One day they will recognize us.

LNA. - What is the state of your relations with your neighbour countries '

DRK. - Our neighbours are Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia with whom we have united once. Now we have good relations with Ethiopia and with Djibouti also.

LNA. - Good relations '

DRK. - Yes.

LNA. - You have no problem of trade '

DRK. - We trade, we make business.

LNA. - Ethiopia has taken steps recently along the border to prevent some goods coming from Somaliland to enter. Is that true '

DRK. - Yes, Ethiopian authorities have taken some customs arrangements. I think that we will overcome this problem.I have sent our Minister of Commerce to Ethiopia and I hope it will be settled. It is temporary. A lot of goods have never gone through Ethiopian customs and they want to adjust this problem.

LNA. - So this new step of the Ethiopian authorities should not affect too much your trade '

DRK. - It has an effect. But the problem will be settled. Our Minister has been in Ethiopia and our partners promised that they would solve the question.

LNA. - Do you receive bilateral help from any country of the world '

DRK. - No. Nothing from any country.

LNA. - Do you then receive assistance from international organisations '

DRK. - Some of them, like NGOs are present. For instance, they take part in the maintenance of schools or in other minor projects. What they do is better than nothing. And they deal it to local NGOs mainly.

LNA. - Does the European Union give a better share to you than to south Somalia '

DRK. - I don't think. They have rebuilt our bridges that were destroyed. That is the best help that we have received from any country. It came from the EU.

LNA. - About the situation in the Horn of Africa. You are in peace. But it may happen that external tensions spill over to your country. Do you have the means to defend yourself since your budget is very modest '

DRK. - We shall try our best up to the maximum to defend our security although we do not have a big capacity.

LNA. - You have an armed force '

DRK. - Yes, we have an army, police and military.

LNA. - Is your country hit by the drought as it is happening in some other parts of the Horn '

DRK. - Yes, we have a lot of drought in the coastal areas. Cattle are dying and the people are starving. And still we did not have any help from the international community. Even from the World Food Program. We have asked the WFP to make a survey in the coastal areas where the drought is lasting for the last three years. Many times we had drought in our country and we did not receive any help from the international community.

LNA. - Will you stand for the next presidential election '

DRK. - Yes I will stand.

LNA. - Your Constitution being implemented, do you think the newly elected President of Somaliland, yourself or an other candidate, should take an initiative sending an envoy to all African countries to say : look what has happened. How can you refuse to recognize us '

DRK. - Even now, we have communications with many African countries. But we shall have an aggressive policy after the election to gain our recognition from different countries.

LNA. - Before being recognized, Yasser Arafat had a representative in the United Nations. Do you have such a kind of representative '

DRK. - Yasser Arafat had "de facto" recognition. We do not even have "de facto" recognition. So we cannot go to the UN.

LNA. - But when you have a delegation, like you have in Ethiopia or in some other countries, it is a "de facto" recognition. Is not it '

DRK. - Yes, some countries like Ethiopia have accepted a delegation and we have representatives in some places in Europe. Even in France we have an honorary Consul. It is a Frenchman.

LNA. - Thank you, Mr. President.

c Les nouvelles d'Addis (LNA) 2003. - http://www.lesnouvelles.org - Les nouvelles d'Addis, le seul journal d'informations g?n?rales exclusivement d?di? ? l'?thiopie et ? la corne de l'Afrique. Bimestriel. Publi? en fran?ais. Politique, ?conomie, culture, soci?t?, communaut?.

Source: http://www.alliancesforafrica.org/Bulletin4PCIA/YusufFarahSomaliland.doc.

Roots of Reconciliation: Local Level Peace Processes in Somaliland

Dr Ahmed Yusuf Farah

Paper Presented at the All-Africa Conference on African Principles of Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 8-12th November 1999

The former head of state, Mohamed Siad Barre, fled the city of Mogadishu in January 1991, leaving the capital and much of Somalia in the hands of competing armed military who rapidly established clan fiefdoms in areas dominated by their social groups. Strife and fragmentation have continued ever since. The dismemberment of Somalia has been most pronounced in Mogadishu itself, where hostile warlords divided the city in to two at the time of the study in 1993. Fragmentation of the city has increased since 1993 with the city now divided into more than three parts controlled by rival factions.

There have been, and continue to be, serious efforts by Somalis to bring about reconciliation in Mogadishu and other parts of the country. Peacemaking initiatives in the north, however, in the self-proclaimed 'Republic of Somaliland' have been relatively successful compared with the rest of Somalia. The severity of the government assault on this area before Barre's departure and the disruptive legacy of the 1977-78 war with Ethiopia, have thrown the clans of 'Somaliland' back on their cultural and institutional resources to tackle the disorder that prevailed after January 1991.1 A key to the visible progress in the north has been the spontaneous adoption by the general public of a 'bottom-up' approach to the restoration of peace and stability, involving representative authorities and institutional at all levels of society in 'Somaliland'.

Close ties with the elders, and experience of working with them and through them in reconstruction and rehabilitation in Erigavo district, led ACTIONAID to commission this study in the belief that it would give a fuller account of clan and lineage mechanisms in Somaliland as well as helping to identify those aspects of local peacemaking that deserve further support there and elsewhere in Somalia.

The Role of Traditional Leaders Under Siad Barre

Under Siad Barre, a system of divide and rule, formulated and implemented by the centralised state, undermined the ability of traditional leaders in Somalia to settle local disputes and keep the peace. Through a system of incentives, Barre drew many such leaders into the regime, just as colonialism has wooed them in the past. However this association with the regime diminished their standing among their own communities. The Barre government meanwhile, sought to impose homogenous modernity on the culture of clan and lineage. References to one's clan or common ancestor were strenuously discouraged. The regime officially outlawed one of the key traditional judicial instruments in Somalia: the collective compensation, known as dia, by lineage groups in case of misconduct by their members. By the mid 1970s the regime claimed that it has abolished the clan system throughout Somalia.

It is not clear to what extent the traditional elders are acting with equal responsibility in the south. A report of land tenure in the Juba and Shabelle regions of the South, for example, emphasises how some clan elders have enriched themselves by asserting title to land traditionally held by minority groups. Others hold documents issued by Barre's government which they claim proves their entitlement. This study suggests that, until the land issue is resolved at the local level, an equivalent peacemaking process can not begin satisfactorily.2

Evolution of Clan Structures

The findings of ACTIONAID's study in the north suggests that, during the civil war, the authority of clan elders was actually strengthened. The guerrillas who fought Barre's despotic regime were drawn from northern sub-clans and clan militias within the Somali National Movement. This returned traditional figures to prominence. Their influence was already apparent by the time ACTIONAID began working in the north.

This research confirms that, in a period of turmoil and uncertainty and in the absence of legitimate institutions, clans and sub-clans have had recourse to their own traditional structures. Particular emphasis has been given to the appointment of sultans - a special political office, sanctioned by religion. At the time of the study there were more twice the number of sultans in 'Somaliland' than at independence in 1960. This study also finds that lineage elders who led smaller units with the clans are live and well despite a period of eclipses under Barre's regime. The return to tried and tested systems of governance has enabled Somalis in the north to break the momentum of war and opportunistic plunder. This research has found that the mediating authority of Akils, or heads of dia-paying lineage groups - an office abolished in the early 1970s - is now firmly re-established and that its functions have expanded into the vacuum left by the collapse of the Barre centralised administration.

All clans in Somaliland and some of the larger sub-clans now have their own Supreme Council of Elders, known as guurti. These fulfil a dual role as legislative and executive, with responsibility for everyday questions arising within the clans and also for arbitration between different clans. In April 1992 for instance, the Gadabursi clan, whose celebrated dynasty of Sultans was disrupted during the 1950s, reinstated its paramount head, or Ugaas, and sent a peace delegation to reconcile inter-clan warring within the family of Isaq clans. The elders called for an assembly that would deliberate on the restoration of peace and on proposals for the future.

While north and south alike are plagued by freelance banditry, the goal so international recognition gives added impetus to a genuine and popular wish for peace. Somaliland moreover, is spared the existence of influential warlords locked in a desperation struggle of power this has been a major obstacle of peace in the south. It is also clear that the concentration of aid resources in one place (Mogadishu in the south) has been a potent stimulus to conflict.

Progress to Peace

The mechanisms for establishing peace depend on joint community committees formed at local level, empowered to implement agreements reached by Councils of Elders. Another local authority known as the 'committee which uproots unwanted weeds from the field is responsible for dealing with banditry and minor disturbances. This localised approach to peacemaking began with a series of inter-clan reconciliation conferences in 1991 and gradually advanced to district, regional and 'national' levels. The authorisation of agreements at peace conferences is given by clan elders, but other traditional leaders - politicians, military offices and particularly religious men and poets - have played a crucial role in the peace process.

Religious figures, such as sheikhs and wadaads, or Islamic scholars, take their duties as peacemakers seriously. Their authority is based on the esteem in which they are held as spiritual leaders, as distinct from Akils and sultans, whose status is more secular. Spiritual leaders are seen as ideal and neutral arbiters with allegiance to universal Islamic values that transcend clan loyalties. They do not settle disputes themselves or sit in judgement. This is the work of elders in council. Instead, their task is to encourage rivals to make peace. To this end, independent delegations of renowned holy men have taken part in all the major peace initiatives between previously hostile clans in Somaliland.

Poetry, which is the most celebrated and respected art form in Somalia, has been marshalled to the cause of peacemaking. Through metaphor and allusion, an oral poetry can tap the richest reserves of Somali discourse; it is widely understood and enjoyed and like the mass media in the west, it has the power to influence opinion. This study has found that in major clan reconciliation such as the meeting of the Eastern Habar Yonis and the Dhulbahante at Dararweyne in 1992, distinguished national poets recited poems advocating peace at the inaugural and closing ceremonies.

Role of Women

Women have also played a significant part in peacemaking. After marriage, a woman retains her kinship ties with her father's group and ' even though they are often denied ' the property rights that these entail. The dual kinship role conferred has often existed across two neighbouring but warring clans, with the result that women have suffered unduly in Somalia's upheaval. It has also meant that women have taken on a new and active function as ambassadors between rival groups the groups they married into and the group they were born into. This is a function of their traditional role in systems of exchange.

Often, at the height of the civil war, women provided the only means of communication between rival clans, since their status allowed them to cross clan boundaries. Twenty-four days after the Dhulbahante council of elders failed to appear at the agreed site for the first peace forum, the Habar Yonis, with whom they were supposed to meet, sent a delegation of kinsmen born of Dhulbahante women, who persuaded suspicious maternal relatives among the Habar Yonis to attend.

Traditionally, women were exchanged to seal a peace treaty between the parties. A daughter was offered as a sign of trust and honour to mark the pact between giver and receiver. Likewise, when blood has been shed, Somalis regard the gift of a marriageable partner as material and symbolic compensation for the loss of life. This study finds that such traditions have persisted in Somaliland and have strengthened some of the major peace agreements, including that of the Habar Yonis and the Isa Musa, each clan providing 50 eligible women for the other.

Modern technology has also been instrumental in the relative stability of Somaliland. In the past, radio communication was the monopoly of the government and international organisations. Recently, however, the elders of several bitterly embattled clans in 'Somaliland' have remained in constant radio contact during periods of tension, and radio links have provided vital channels for negotiation.

Declaration of Peace Conference between Eastern Habar Yonis and Warsangeli at Jideli, 5-9 November 1992

'In line with Jideli peace conference, Eastern Habar Yonis and Warsangeli clans call jointly for peaceful and harmonious co-existence between all the clans inhabiting Sanaag region. The present mutual agreement does not aim to create an alliance than can threaten the interests of other parties in the region. In contrast, it prohibits the formation of alliances of more than one clan against any party. This contract has been sealed by a binding oath, undertaken by 30 guurti from each clan.

How the Peace Conferences Have Worked

In November 1992, some 400 delegates representing the Eastern Habar Yonis and the Warsangeli met at Jideli. By the end of the conference they had agreed that each clan would be responsible for maintaining law and order in its own territory. A joint local committee of 30 members would be responsible for settling conflicts according to the terms laid down at conference. If more rain fell in the land of one clan, the guest community attracted by the pasture would be responsible for the protection of the lives and livestock of the host community.

Elders have also decreed that responsibility for paying damages for the actions of armed groups should be directly shouldered by the families of persistent offenders, rather than, as normal, being extended to the whole dia-paying group. If an armed robber is unable to pay compensation, the burden falls upon his father and brothers. There are many instances of crimes committed by younger men being dealt with by clan elders. In some cases their own kin has executed offenders.

The various inter-clan peace conferences in the north of Somalia culminated in the Boroma national conference at which a national ('Somaliland') peace charter was agreed and basic provisions for law and order were formulated. Following the collapse of the SNM regime, the elders appointed a new government. This was politically the most telling achievement to date of northern local level clan democracy. The Boroma conference received international support, but all of the other successful clan conferences in the north have been financed by community self-help, in marked contrast to the high profile UN forums in the south of the country and abroad, which have failed to produce a plausible settlement. Perhaps this accounts for the caution expressed by the Easter Alliance Elders in Garadag in 1992 against a unilateral UN military intervention in the north 'without the consent of the leaders of the local clans.'

Regulations agreed at a Special Conference between the Warsangeli and Eastern Habar Jelo at Shimbirale, 8-18 November 1992

With effect from 18 August any property stolen or looted should be returned immediately. Anybody who suffers injury cannot take revenge on the clans of the criminal but will seek payment from the individual responsible or from his immediate sub-clan.

Those who suffer casualties should take no revenge measures themselves but inform the standing committee on peace. If they take steps by way of revenge, they will be treated as bandits. The standing committee on peace will use the services of the peace forces when needed. Anyone killed or injured while involved in acts of banditry will be treated as a dead donkey and should be denied any rights.

Any sub-clans engaged in acts of banditry which cause death or material loss should pay whatever damage they have caused. In addition, they will pay a bond of 100 female camels. This bond will be made over to the joint administration of the two sides, for common use.

Next steps

The efforts of clan leaders in northern Somalia over the past two years to bring about peace have raised popular hopes for positive change. The moral status and customary skills of the elders are a vital component in tackling the many problems that prevail in Somaliland. The participation of lineage leaders enables the representation of local groups in the administration to be balanced, ensures the equitable distribution of political and economic resource and allows more effective demobilisation of armed groups. This participation must not be allowed to be marginalised as modern state and professional infrastructure develops. The task of reconstructing basic services should start at the district level rather than from the top downwards. This approach is attuned by the decentralised system of governance, which is enshrined in the interim national charter for 'Somaliland' formulated by elders at the Boroma conference.

But the traditional structures on their own are not a complete panacea for the problems that are faced. Traditional peacemaking is sturdy, but it is also slow and cumbersome and will always benefit from logistical assistance. The initiatives in the north need to be supported. Such external support, however, needs to recognise the sensitivity of the recovery process. While much has been achieved in terms of restraining freelance banditry and inter-clan strife, the security situation remains delicate, which in turn suggests pitfalls for any hasty attempts at a programme of comprehensive reconstruction. For the time being, external assistance must supplement rather than overwhelm the kinds of local grassroots initiatives that already exist. To do so it will have to be timely and discerning and acknowledge the progress which an alliances of popular will and traditional leadership has already achieved in northern Somalia.

Conclusions

The traditional systems of governance examined in this study rely primarily on the moral authority of lineage and clan leaders. The power of such systems to prevent the occurrence of crime and violence remains limited. Northern elders describe their functions as upholders of law and order in such modest terms as dab demin, literally 'fire extinguishing'. The guarantees that these systems attempt to provide should not be under-estimated however. They are the basis of an emerging stability in the north. Their success depends on the support and trust of pastoral communities, which can only be won by anchoring the peace effort firmly within the existing social order.

It is now common for the herds of different clans to graze together in common border areas. This is remarkable progress, but it is largely unknown outside 'Somaliland'. Successes of this kind have come about despite, not because of, outside intervention in Somali. They provide ample evidence of the effectiveness of peace initiatives by and through institutions that have survived more than 20 years of harsh centralised government and a bitter civil war.

It is not the intention of this study to give tacit support to the ideal of a sovereign 'Somaliland' or to disparage peace efforts in the rest of Somalia. ACTIONAID simply believes that there are valuable lessons to be learned from the successes within 'Somaliland' and hopes to see support for traditional peacekeeping mechanisms in other parts of the country, beyond the notional 'Somaliland' border, where a state of harmony also prevails.

In the troubled south, meanwhile, the UN has facilitated peace moves outside Mogadishu (1992-1995) and also promoted the formation of local and district councils. But on the basis of this study in the north, ACTIONAID is bound to say that such initiatives can only win popular backing and work effectively if they take into account the dynamics and aspirations of people at all levels of the community, including minority groups in the south. Here the full representation and co-operation of traditional local leaders is crucial.

The Institutionalisation of the Guurti and their Controversial Role in the Resolving the Second Round of Fighting in Somaliland (1994-1996)

Somaliland adopted a system of governance that is anchored to the pervasive clan-based political culture of the predominantly nomadic northern Somali society. In this system 'national conferences' attended by representatives of local clan, shir beeleed, played a central role to political decision-making and in peacemaking. This inclusive and participatory approach to peace and governance allowed for the development of broad-based administrations in Somaliland.

In the prolonged transition (1991-1997), there evolved in Somaliland a culture of locally based reconciliation processes. The Somaliland guurti (supreme council of lineage leaders) have played a critical role in securing internal stability and in the development of institutions of governance. The first part of this summary discussed a series of peace conferences spontaneously organised by the Somaliland guurti over a period of two years, which successfully resolved the first round of fighting in Somaliland (1992-1993).

'Egaals' properly elected government was greeted with a brief period of stability that provided a window of opportunity for privately driven socio-economic reconstruction to flourish in the war-devastated administrative and commercial centres in 'Somaliland'. This brief lull was reversed by the eruption of a second round of fighting between government forces (a coalition of non-Gar'hajis clans) and disaffected Gar'hajis military over the control of Hargeysa airport in November 1994, the fighting spread to the second largest town, Burro, in March 1995.

The second cycle of fighting dragged on much longer than the first. It spontaneously died down without a formal agreement between the warring parties during the third shir beeleeed in Hargeysa between October 1996 and February 1997. The causes of the second round of fighting are as diffuse as those suggested for the first cycle of violence, ranging from unresolved issues of power-sharing among the Isaaq clans to competitions over Somaliland's resources (trade and currency), and historical animosities between Isaaq clans as well divisions within the SNM.

The institutionalisation of the guurti as the House of Elders in the two-chamber legislature in Egaal's successive administrations rewarded their good work in Somaliland during the troubled first SNM administration (1991-1993). But the new status of the guurti as salaried civil servants cost them their perceived neutrality and moral authority, central elements in the traditional method of reconciliation in Somali society. With a vested interest in the survival of the government, the guurti utterly failed to settle peacefully the second cycle of fighting between their paymasters (the government) and the Garhajis opposition. The politicisation of the guurti undermined an important local peacemaking instrument and allowed the fighting to drag on much longer than the first cycle of fighting.

The Peace Committee for Somaliland3

The instability of the guurti to dispense their constitutionally mandated role of peacemaking and conflict resolution, as well as the polarisation of the warring parties, made inevitable the intervention of a third party. The externally based Peace Committee for Somaliland did raise suspicions in both camps of the warring parties, which hampered its effort to mediate between the government and the opposition and restore stability. Nevertheless, the grassroots work of the committee succeeded in placing the issue of peace back on the agenda and facilitated a successful inter-clan reconciliation in the Bura'ao region. A similar process of inter-clan reconciliation sponsored by the Peace Committee in the Hargeysa area failed to materialise due to government's predisposition to settle the dispute on its own terms.

http://www.awdal.com/ar2000/whither.html

Whither Somaliland

Comments on a Self-Portrait: Rebuilding from the Ruins by Frank Douglas Heath heathfdn@sierra.net

A recent publication of the Somaliland Centre for Peace and Development, A Self-Portrait of Somaliland: Rebuilding from the Ruins,* describes what happens when a profoundly tribal society tries to introduce democracy. It describes the mixed, hybrid type of government that was created for Somaliland and shows that it functions badly. Haphazard growth of offices, bloated staff, multiple layers of taxation, surcharges, scanty public services, widespread nepotism, and corruption are all identified in Self-Portrait.

Is it possible to remedy these malfunctions by giving the politicians more money and more power' That approach risks aggravating the present situation. Antagonism between politicians and traditional leaders would surely intensify. In these comments, therefore, we shall first analyze and evaluate each of the two political systems that went into the making of Somaliland's hybrid government. That analysis will tell us whether it is at all possible to mix democracy into the clan system. If it is not, then attempts to remedy the abysmal performance of the present hybrid government through reform will be futile. An alternative will be essential. We shall examine such an alternative.

Two Political Systems

A Deputy Speaker of Somaliland's parliament told the authors of Self-Portrait, "We need to come up with a system that accommodates one man one vote, but allows every community (beel) to be represented. So far, no one has come up with such a formula."

The Speaker was alluding to two different ways of collective decision-making, one using majority rule and the other consensus. Majority rule is typical in a democracy, whereas consensus is most commonly found in a kritarchy. Democracy, the type of centralized government favored in Europe and America, was invented by the Greeks some twenty-six centuries ago. As is true of all centralized government, its laws are contrived by politicians. Kritarchy, a term composed of the Greek words kriteis (judge) and arch_ (principle), is much older than centralized government. Its laws are derived from the customary conduct of the population. Customary law generally reflects the laws of social conduct inherent in human nature. One can therefore say that democracy is based on political law whereas kritarchy is based on natural law.

Somalis are familiar with both systems. Before being colonized, the Somalis based their society on respect for their customary law. The traditional political system of the Somalis is a near-kritarchy. In 1960, however, the colonial powers pushed Somalis to adopt democracy. That system created such a chaotic situation that few were unhappy when, nine years later, a dictator stepped in to clean things up. Eventually, however, the Somalis became disillusioned with dictatorship as well. In 1991 they dismantled their European-style government altogether and went back to their traditional political system based on respect for the customary law.

While democracy and kritarchy each has its supporters, most Somalis prefer their customary laws and institutions, which they call xeer. In their experience, the xeer constitutes the heart of the Somali nation. They believe that without the xeer the Somali nation would fall apart, lose its identity, forgo its solidarity, forfeit its civilization, relinquish its culture. The xeer is the cord holding the house of the Somali people together. Indeed, it is thanks to their customary law that the traditional political system of the Somalis took the form of a kritarchy, not a democracy.

A few Somalis, for the most part politicians, dislike the xeer. They prefer democracy. They do so for different reasons. For some it is merely nostalgia for the "good old days" when they had democracy. Conveniently, they have forgotten the mess that democracy created during the 1960-1969 period. Certain of them claim the United Nations will not recognize their republic unless it becomes a democracy. That view is mistaken. The UN recognizes the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanates of Oman and Brunei, none of which is a democracy. Still other Somali politicians favor democracy because they want to share in the financial aid that rich democracies seem to 'give' to poor ones. They refuse to see that most such aid is a means of establishing and maintaining control. Some of the more prominent politicians favor democracy because it offers them an opportunity to rule over their own clansmen, or over other clans. Lastly, various foreign governments, international government agencies, and some opportunistic business enterprises are urging Somalis to opt for the democratic system because they expect to make its operators subservient to their own objectives.

Kritarchy

Kritarchy is utterly different than democracy. Under kritarchy, there are no politicians to establish rules and limit other people's freedoms. Anyone who respects the natural rights of others is free to govern himself. He is free to pursue his own objectives with his own means. Kritarchy is the political system that respects customary law, particularly the right of private property and freedom of contract. It embraces the rule of law including the principles by which judges first establish the facts of the disputes brought before them and then resolve those disputes.

One basic feature of kritarchy is that the judicial, police and law-generating powers are dispersed among the population. Any person is free to establish a court of justice or a police force. The activities of judges and policemen are coordinated by the competitive market process rather than by a supreme court and police minister. The laws of a kritarchy are not contrived, but are discovered by judges in the course of resolving conflicts that come before them.

A society cannot exist without principles and rules to handle the problems of knowledge, self-interest and abuse of power. That kritarchy offers the best arrangements for coping with these three eternal problems is well shown by Professor Randy E. Barnett in his book The Structure of Liberty, Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998). Barnett argues that only when individuals are secure in their property and free to make contracts can they make the best use of their resources. For then they have available to them not only what they alone know or what is common knowledge, much of which is dispersed in society and comes in the form of prices, but also knowledge they can obtain contractually from neighbors, experts and others in the community. Kritarchy also minimizes partiality in the courts and abuses of power by leaving everyone free to contract with the court of justice and police force of his choice. Therefore, the more nearly a society resembles a kritarchy, the better its people are able to pursue happiness, peace and prosperity.

Democracy

Democracy belongs to the European tradition of government, a tradition that, because of its authoritarian nature, is altogether alien to traditional Somali culture. Democracy became popular in Europe because it promised to be less authoritarian than the prevailing monarchies of the time. It promised to dilute the awesome power of a centralized government by having several teams of politicians periodically compete for possession of it. The problem is that, however the contest turns out, democracy still leaves the population divided into two groups, those who command and those who must obey. By contrast, few of the traditional political systems of Africa were authoritarian to begin with.

Democratic governments dispose of truly awesome powers over the population. While these powers are supposed to be used to defend every person's right to life, liberty and property, the truth of the matter is that they are regularly used to restrict those very rights. Politicians do this with impunity by first establishing a monopoly over the country's policing powers. That monopoly enables them to control the legislative process and the courts of justice. With such control, the politicians can phrase their commands as 'laws' -- rules that have judicial approval and appear to be popularly mandated. With the backing of these 'laws,' politicians can curtail almost any right or freedom they wish. Indeed, democratic 'law' sets the stage for what sometimes is called the "tyranny of the majority" but really is the "tyranny of the politicians."

As a rule, the citizens in a democracy offer little resistance to such tyranny. Usually they hope that the next team of politicians will correct the mistakes made by the present team. But democracy's device for replacing bad politicians with good ones is rarely effective. It is often rendered ineffective by the development of a two-party system with rival political programs that are more or less alike. In this way, the two teams simply take turns in plundering the nation. Other well-known ways of defeating popular choice include tinkering with the registration of voters, limiting the casting of votes, improper counting procedures, and campaign finance rules that benefit incumbents to the detriment of challengers. A myriad of measures develops to perpetuate the illusion that democracy represents the will of the people, hiding the fact that powerful interests really control the political process.

It might be supposed that democratic elections would work tolerably well in a society where political parties dealt with fundamental issues and offered real choices. However, these two conditions are rarely fulfilled since most voters ignore political programs, focusing on the personality of the candidates. As a result, politicians enjoy a wide freedom of action without any concern that the voting population will recall them.

Incompatibility of Democracy with a Clan System

In one situation in particular, popular elections will always be ineffective. That is where the population is made up of various close-knit ethnic groups such as clans, tribes or tight racial, linguistic or religious communities. In that situation, regardless of issues or even of personalities, voters cast their ballot for the party to which all people of their given ethnicity 'belong. Accordingly the most numerous ethnic group will command the government. The less numerous groups will be powerless to change government policy through the voting process. Their only alternatives will be to join a coalition, secede, or seize power and establish a dictatorship. For that matter, almost any action by opposition parties will serve as a pretext for the ruling party itself to establish a dictatorship.

Efforts to prohibit ethnic political parties have proved futile. Citizens always find ways to express their ethnic loyalties, and politicians always are tempted to politicize those loyalties. There is no economically feasible way that an ethnically neutral party can win the support of the various ethnic communities.

It is equally futile to introduce federalism, regional autonomy, or decentralization, or to limit the number of parties. These devices may have some value when the population is homogeneous, but they are useless where the population is divided into close-knit ethnic groups. All they can possibly do is postpone the inevitable moment when a dictatorship will be established. Professors Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth Shepsle have clearly demonstrated this in their book Politics in Plural Societies: a Theory of Democratic Instability (Columbus, Ohio: Merrill 1972). Their analysis supports the conclusion that the adoption of democracy in Somaliland would produce two undesirable results:

It would divide the nation into two groups, those who command and those who are forced to obey. Because the electoral device could not work, democracy would inevitably degrade into dictatorship. As a matter of fact, democracy has been unable even to make a start in Somaliland because the clansmen employed by the government see themselves neither as servants of the nation nor as assistants to its ministers. They describe their job as kursi bu haista (I own a chair) and maximize that chair for the benefit of their family and clan. Knowing that government can forbid anything, they spare no effort in exploiting that nuisance value. When someone of their own clan asks for a permit they give it free of charge, but all others must pay dearly. This practice is known among European nations as abuse of power and corruption. Not so among the Somalis, where it is called hawl fudeydin (that which makes the job easy).

Somalis have found a way around this problem by bringing their elders along. This procedure originated as follows. When two Somalis who belong to different clans meet each other for the first time, the situation is called hor imaad, a military term that denotes enmity. That changes when elders accompany both parties. In that case there is the guarantee that if an injustice is committed it can be promptly redressed. Indeed, only when, at the first meeting, the elders are present can a basis for cooperation be established for commerce, marriage, the resolution of a conflict or whatever. So a Somali who seeks a service from the government will ask the particular civil servant to bring his elders along. A deal can then be worked out whereby the civil servants of both clans are obliged to render equal services to each other's members without charging a fee.

This system works across the whole line of government activities, including the duties of policemen. Self-Portrait quotes the mayor of Erigabo who confirms: "If someone refuses to pay tax, we can't arrest him or her, because that might divide the police along clan lines." A Somali policeman wishing to arrest a suspect belonging to another clan must first seek permission of the elders of that clan. He can obtain that permission only if his own elders accompany him. Likewise, a clansman can only be brought before a court of justice if one of his elders is a part of that court. Similarly, the verdict of a government court can be enforced only if rendered in accordance with the procedural and substantive laws of the clan of the convicted person.

"Bizarre Thing"

The name that the Somalis give to western-style government is waxan, which means "the thing." This nuance of vocabulary shows that there is no place in their mind for a centralized, monopolized government. They do understand, of course, the three main functions of a clan, to wit that it recognizes and protects their rights, that it renders justice when an injustice has been committed, and that it provides social security. Western-style governments in Africa claim to offer the same three services. Judging by results, however, they fail in all three areas. Primarily they engage in plundering the population. Therefore they stand in ill repute. Calling such governments "a thing" is actually a very polite term. Many Somalis say they are devices for "rendering moral what is immoral and legal what is illegal" (xalaleinta xaramta iyo xeerdarada).

To sum up, it is irrational to suppose that democracy could ever function in Somaliland. The chief reason is that it would divide the population into a small group of powerful rulers and a large group of powerless citizens. In an egalitarian society like that of the Somalis, such a division is totally unacceptable. In Somali political culture, power always remains with the people. If it is ever delegated to an executive committee (fulinta gudiida), it is only for a very specific purpose, with an explicit instruction from the collective that made the decision, for a short time period, and with ample guarantees that the executive will respect the customary law. These four conditions ensure that no person will put himself above the law--that no politician will put himself above another Somali and order him around.

Creating a Hybrid System

Given that democracy is unworkable in Somaliland and certainly incompatible with its culture, politicians, wanting a centralized government, promote the idea of "adapting democracy to the local situation." But they never concede any of democracy's basic features, namely, that it must always allow its operators to: (a) monopolize the country's policing powers. (b) monopolize the country's judicial powers. (c) monopolize the country's 'law'-making powers. (d) organize popular elections to create the illusion that the people control these powers.

None of these four features is compatible with the Somali political culture, according to which all government powers must remain dispersed among the entire population. Dispersal implies competition, the opposite of monopoly, and indeed, according to Somali law, every Somali is free to perform services of government. Some people specialize in such services. They are called odayaal (arbiters, judges). Somali law holds that every person shall at all times be free to appoint the judge of his choice. That guarantees competition among judges. Competition, in turn, helps to guarantee that people get the service they want, for the lowest possible price.

Mixing competition with monopoly is like mixing water with fire. The mixture degenerates into a steaming mess. Ignoring this difficulty, however, politicians propose doing just that. One class of proposals for a mixed government stresses the importance of political parties. But what will these parties be used for' Political parties are only necessary when all the powers of government have been transferred to the happy few. A population that accepts political parties implicitly admits and accepts that: (a) political power is no longer with the people, (b) protecting life, liberty and property is the monopoly of the politicians, (c) customary law is no longer valid, and (d) customary institutions are no longer operational.

Another class of proposals for a mixed government stresses the importance of 'the rule by law.' No word is said about what kind of law. What the politicians have in mind is to impose laws of their own devising and give them priority over the customary law.

Still another way the politicians propose to establish a mixed government is by putting some of the traditional leaders in parliament. Democratic parliaments, however, tend to legitimize whatever the government is doing. Such parliaments would mainly serve to put the population to sleep by putting feathers in the hats of the traditional leaders.

Politicians who propose these various forms of mixed government pretend that they are introducing new, even daring, political systems. In reality, such schemes could only paralyze and destroy the traditional system of governance. A government based on hybrid rules and hybrid institutions would quickly fall apart into as many sub-groups as there are ethnic communities. These sub-groups would use their political powers arbitrarily, creating chaos in the process.

These attempts at hybrid government would also generate conflict between the politicians, on the one hand, and the ethnic leaders and entrepreneurs on the other. Politicians already accuse ethnic leaders of encouraging the clans to sabotage the democracy whereas, in reality, the clansmen simply conduct themselves as they have done since time immemorial. They accuse entrepreneurs of corrupting government employees whereas, in reality, the entrepreneurs are simply protecting themselves against attempts of the government to extort money from them.

A mistake many politicians make is to think that clans are merely families. In reality, a clan is a complex political, legal and social system enabling Somalis to live together with a high degree of harmony. These hybrid governments are gradually but surely destroying the traditional structures, undermining respect for the customary laws and institutions and belittling the many good things the communities achieved through those institutions. Consequently, the traditional leaders despise the proponents of Western-style government and all the more so when these pose as saviors of the nation.

Entrepreneurs are the real creators of wealth in any country. They voluntarily use the inventions and savings of some people to produce goods and services for other people. They are the real civil servants of the nation. A successful entrepreneur is someone who rightly guesses what goods and services people will want. He risks his time and reputation and his own and other people's money to serve his fellow human beings. When people are free to invent, save and produce, taking risks for which they alone are responsible, everyone prospers. Entrepreneurs see African democracies constantly restricting that freedom. They see politicians everywhere putting obstacles on the road to their nation's prosperity. Consequently entrepreneurs in Africa, like the traditional leaders, have nothing but contempt for the democratic politicians.

In short, it makes no difference whether the plan is to introduce democracy wholly or only in part. In a clan-based society, it will inevitably generate poverty, hate, chaos and, eventually, dictatorship.

Republic of Somaliland

Those who met at the 1993 Grand Borama Conference chose to create a government for Somaliland that would be a mix of the indigenous political system and a foreign state system. They entrusted the implementation of this project to a small group of politicians who would work under the supervision of a committee of 25 traditional leaders. In doing so, however, they made three big mistakes. They did not consider whether it was even possible to mix these two political systems. They chose politicians who had neither skills for the job nor any intention to do as they were instructed. And lastly, they established no procedure for correcting or removing those politicians in the event they botched their assignment.

From its inception, this hybrid government deviated from the course that the Conference members had set out:

Harmony: Rather than promoting harmony and cooperation among the clans, the new government embraced policies that engendered animosity and distrust. It gave itself vast powers of taxation and regulation which led to jealousy and fear. Within a year, civil war broke out. Some of the rebels felt excluded from the newly created powers, while others feared that the new powers would supersede those of the clans. The armed rebellion paused in 1997, but the conflict has not really been settled. Self-Portrait rightly warns that "throughout the country... peace remains fragile," and "perceived regional disparities are the most widely held form of grievance, and potentially one of the most troublesome."

Administration: Instead of working in harmony with the clans, the new government put itself above them and created an administration that went immediately out of control. All Somaliland needed was a small administration to conduct foreign policy and take care of defense. Had it limited itself to those two tasks while working in close cooperation with clan leaders, the new government might have done something useful. Instead, it created a vast array of ministries employing 25,000 civil and military servants. Today almost all of its revenue is being spent on salaries and debt service. Despite this, salaries are minuscule and no money is left for training. Corruption prevails, and the Somaliland shilling has inflated by more than a thousand percent.

Development: Instead of encouraging economic development, the new government scared off both local and foreign investors. Provided it recognizes and protects property rights, a poor country can become rich by attracting and cooperating with foreign investors. The new government, however, showed no understanding either of property rights or of investors. It displayed its ignorance through a foolish Foreign Investment Law and inept day-to-day dealings with both local and foreign investors. Dictatorial decrees interfere with even the simplest currency exchange transactions.

Unity: The new government ignored the wishes of the people to unify the Somali nation and adopted policies leading to further splitting of the nation. By seeking United Nations recognition, it showed its willingness to recognize the political borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti, something all Somalis contest. The correct policy for preserving the independence of the Somali clans is to establish a Confederation of Somali Peoples. Any two or three Somali clans could start such a confederation. Establishing industrial freeports attractive to foreign investors would then greatly stimulate the economy of the Confederation's members. Such an economic stimulus would motivate other Somali clans in the Horn of Africa to participate.

Support: Instead of soliciting support for a mixed form of government, the new government set out to abolish the indigenous structure and establish a pure democracy. Had the politicians been interested in making the new, mixed government work, they would have given veto powers to the supervisory committee of traditional leaders. No such powers were given, however, and consequently the traditionalists never had any influence on the Republic. Instead, the new government surrounded itself with people who were ready to abolish all of the customary laws and institutions -- people ready even to establish a dictatorship in order to introduce democracy.

An Appropriate Political System: Confederation of Clans

The Grand Borama Conference intended the experiment with a hybrid government to last no longer than two years. However, it has now been going on for eight years. Everyone appears to agree that the experiment failed, since everyone is looking for alternatives. Three options are presently being discussed: (1) a purely democratic, European-style government, (2) a different form of hybrid government, and (3) a solely clan-based government.

Self-Portrait alludes to the proper choice by quoting a spokesman for the Warsangeli suldaan, who asked, "If clan is indispensable, why should we not base our functional structures on it and use it for our reconstruction and development'" He implied that these structures should be founded on the customary law. His question calls for an analysis of the customary law as well as of the traditional Somali political system.

Customary Law and Politics

The Law

The Somali customary laws constitute a legal system (xeer) based on six principles: (1) The law is separate from politics and religion. (2) The law has a built-in method for its own development. (3) There is a plurality of jurisdictions and norms. (4) Those who govern must themselves abide by the law. (5) The law originates in the reason and conscience of everyone in the community. (6) Judges are specialists with their own methods for analyzing the law.

The first of these principles, independence of law from politics and religion, merits a brief comment. During the past four centuries, many states have separated religion from government and benefited as a result. On the other hand, separation of law from government is rare. Yet in fields other than law, independence from government has had immense success. A single example is the communications system called the Internet. Until 1973, that system was monopolized by the United States military. It had relatively few users. When the military relinquished its monopoly, however, parallel systems arose in the private sector. These developed rapidly, alongside university and governmental networks, until no one owned the system. As with language, everyone was free to use and enhance it. Soon, the Internet started growing at an exponential rate. No one can be denied access to it, and everyone is free to offer improvements. Open market systems facilitate the spontaneous development of order without hierarchy or dictatorial authority.

Likewise, the Somali legal system is without any owner. No one controls it, and everybody has access to it. No politician can control the xeer and subordinate it to his or her interests. The xeer constantly develops and improves, despite the fact that nobody in particular is in charge of its improvement. Whoever comes up with an innovation that suits the diverse interests of the community will find his innovation accepted and put to use.

The xeer has a fairly complete set of institutions for adjudicating and enforcing the law. It also contains rules of procedure that guarantee a fair trial. Insurance obligations make it certain that victims of an injustice will be compensated. As for substantive law, the xeer recognizes in principle every person's right to life, liberty and property. It is true that there are some short-comings in the present Somali law, but the same can be said of every other legal system in the world. By leaving the xeer free to develop, these shortcomings may be remedied in time. The xeer contains procedures for this purpose. The Somali legal system has therefore all the makings for becoming one of the finest legal systems of the world. All it needs to achieve this status is exposure to the daily hustle-bustle of the market place of ideas, goods and services in the context of the world economy.

Politics

The political system of the Somalis consists of a large number of clan-based assemblies (shir). These meet whenever a political problem arises. Examples are drought, the search for new grazing lands, the need for a new school, the wish to prevent a conflict with another clan, and the election of a ceremonial chief (ugas). Decisions of these political assemblies must be compatible with the customary law. To ensure compatibility, the Somalis require that every member of the assembly agree with the proposed decision. This requirement is known as "consensus."

Politicians are not allowed to make laws, not even tax laws--since taxation would be considered a violation of property rights. So public services can only be supplied by private enterprise. This principle is based on great wisdom. One only has to look at other African nations to realize this. Their governments have vast powers to levy taxes. They use these powers arbitrarily and make no serious effort to provide public services in return. They use their powers primarily to plunder the nation. As a result, life in most parts of Africa is "nasty, brutish and short."

For all of these reasons we must conclude that the political and legal system best suited to the Somali nation is its own traditional system based on the customary law. This system on the whole protects the life, liberty and property of the people. It is well established and respected. Its main problem is not that it has weaknesses, but that the promoters of centralized government have constantly interfered with it.

Opponents of the Clan System

Many Somali politicians oppose the clan system. Self-Portrait voices this sentiment by stating that "kinship politics provide fertile soil for patronage, corruption, nepotism and clientelism, while stifling the emergence of issue-based politics, meritocracy and professionalism." However, it is not the clan system that produces all these calamities, but the democracy that politicians are trying to put in its place. Democracy puts awesome powers into the hands of a few clansmen, turning the clans into monsters that try to devour each other. This would not happen if the clans were left alone. Within their traditional political system, the clans are perfectly capable of maintaining law and order (xeer) so that there can be peace and prosperity (nabad iyo ano).

Had the politicians had the interests of the Somali nation at heart, they would not have tried, with a stroke of the pen, to abolish the political and cultural system that took a millennium to shape. Neither would they have tried to mix the traditional governing approach with a foreign system. Instead, they would have sought to improve the traditional structure by strengthening the procedures already in place for this purpose.

The irony of the politicians' effort to displace traditional government with democracy is that that very effort has resulted in a tightening of clan loyalties. Somalis look at democracy as the enemy of freedom and equality. Clan law offers an excellent defense against attacks on these fundamental values. Somalis therefore will do everything to strengthen their clan system when confronted with democratic features like political parties, tax laws, and the regulation of peaceful conduct.

Blinded by their desire for power, the politicians do not see that if the clan system is left alone, its least desirable aspects will soon disappear. Such happy modification of the clan system cannot occur, however, while it is being condemned and reviled, but only when it is accepted and embraced. One result of embracing the clan system will be that the business environment will become conducive to the growth of independent insurance companies. The important services that clans now provide in insuring against liability and calamity will devolve upon these independent companies. Much litigation and many of the present protections against disaster will thus be brought under the economic process of the free market, with attendant innovations and cost reduction. As a result, individuals will depend less on their clan for support. Loyalty to clan and culture will become independent of each person's pursuit of prosperity, allowing real improvements in the clan system to take place.

A standard politician's criticism of the traditional system is that it is incapable of modern administration. In plain language, the politicians insist that public services such as schools, hospitals, and roads cannot be provided by the traditional Somali political system. That criticism dissolves under the splendid light of the market economy. Because the free market process allocates resources better than any government mechanism, the private sector can provide better schools, better health care, and more useful roads. There are no community services that are not best rendered by private enterprise.

At least three factors account for the superiority of the private sector. First, governments lack the information needed to render effective service. The necessary information is dispersed among the population, who are best able to pursue their interests through the free market process of price seeking, quality seeking, and choice seeking behaviors.

Second, governments waste enormous wealth by funding services through taxation. For every shilling that is collected in taxes, five to seven shillings are destroyed, wasted, or prevented from being created (see James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, Economic Freedom of the World, 1997 Annual Report, Fraser Institute, Vancouver, Canada).

Third, in the process of rendering public services, governments demand certain behaviors while forbidding others. Such orders are hard to tolerate. They are made even less tolerable by their poor results. Most people respect the rights of others and regret the government ordering them about. A common result of this is that people cooperate in tricking the government and evading its orders. Tax avoidance and evasion, black markets for exchanges forbidden by government, and open flaunting of both mandatory and prohibited behavior creates an environment that is not conducive to the effective rendering of public services.

For every so-called public service that can be imagined, instances can be found somewhere in the world of it being supplied by private enterprise, to the great satisfaction of its users. Critics of private enterprise usually shrug this off because they have so many other grudges. They maintain, for instance, that the market has weaknesses that must be corrected by government. They say nothing about the weaknesses of government, which is much more fraught with defects than the market. Critics of private enterprise also maintain that democratic governments are needed to defend the poor against the rich. However, this hypothesis has never been substantiated. Democracy tends to benefit those who are politically organized at the expense of those who are less well organized. Indeed, democracy offers some the opportunity to be parasites on all others. The lucky ones in the democratic wheel of fortune are those who pay the right price to the right politicians. Under democracy, those with the least ability to pay suffer most.

When politicians field all these arguments against the clan system, it is not really the clans but the customary law they want to destroy, for they correctly perceive customary law as an obstacle on their road to consolidating power over their countrymen. Under democratic law, they can set themselves apart with concepts of sovereign immunity, executive privilege, and constitutional authority, distorting the very system they extol. Customary law, on the other hand, holds political leaders accountable to the same laws as everyone else, with even higher penalties for misconduct. Indeed, the compensation they are required to pay for a misdeed is more than others would have to pay. The leader who steals must pay his victim not only compensation for what was stolen, but an additional amount because he flaunted the very rules he was supposed to uphold.

Precedents for Confederation

The traditional way that African tribes and clans form a nation is by confederating. This practice is not limited to Africa. Examples of successful confederations include the United Arab Emirates and the confederated cantons of Switzerland. Even countries that have become mired in the difficulties and contradictions of democracy often owe much of their success to features of confederation that were embedded in their initial configuration. The United States was originally organized under a set of articles of confederation that included many of the principles that work so well in the Emirates and Switzerland. Where these principles survive, people prosper.

The concept of confederation acknowledges that populations that are ethnically, culturally, or linguistically diverse cannot be expected to thrive under a single, central government. In the Swiss canton system, the principle of one man, one vote is replaced by one man, many votes. Every Swiss person expresses his political authority in a local community, in a canton or region, and in the nation as a whole. An enormous diversity of political approaches are used in the dozens of cantons and half-cantons, and even more diversity is available in the hundreds of different communities. This diversity doesn't promote chaos, but instead promotes best solutions. Essential to making it work is the freedom of movement that allows people to quit communities and cantons with ineffective policies and move to neighboring towns and regions that are organized more to their liking.

Switzerland is enormously prosperous despite its small population, few mineral resources, and extremely rugged terrain. The history of its system of cooperating cantons with extremely limited central authority arose not in recent years, but in the first glimmerings of the Renaissance around 1290 AD. The unsophisticated and much more tribal Swiss of that era recognized the opportunity for competing cantons to cooperate in mutual defense.

Even though the different cantons of Switzerland have different languages, different religious traditions, and vastly different cultures, they are nonetheless able to cooperate successfully. They do so by vesting power in the individual, in the community, in the region, and in the nation, in that order. The individual militia members are armed against both tyranny within the country and potential enemies outside. The communities are organized according to principles that work locally and therefore may differ enormously from town to town. The various communities decide how the limited powers of the confederate government will be used. In short, the Swiss have severely limited the powers of their government.

A similar set of ideas underpins the United Arab Emirates. Each emirate has local authority over matters of economics and law. The emirates cooperate for foreign policy and defense. By limiting central authority to minimal functions, enormous efficiencies are obtained. These real world examples show that the principles of decentralized authority work not only in theory, but also in practice.

Implementation

Somaliland basically has three options. It can pursue dictatorship, democracy, or kritarchy. If it wishes to prosper, however, it must stop experimenting with hybrid political systems and choose a political system that suits the Somali way of life.

A decision in favor of kritarchy would imply abandoning the present provisional constitution as well as plans for establishing political parties. A good way of dismantling the present hybrid government would be to let each clan take care of the government's rights, obligations and belongings that it finds on its territory. In this way, no sudden changes occur and continuity of useful operations is assured.

In the mind of Somalis, independence does not mean that each clan will live on a political island. The clans have long observed a set of rules that enable them to deal with one another in a civilized manner, just as most of the hundreds of nations in the world respect certain rules of international law when dealing one with another. An essential rule of the Somali political system is that every person has an inalienable right to move freely throughout the Somali-speaking realm. This rule, which had such a beneficial effect on the Swiss nation, lets the individual person vote with his feet, moving his family to places with different policies and opportunities.

Eventually, an assembly of elders (shir) should be formed to establish a Confederation of Somali Peoples. Such a confederation should explicitly honor the sovereignty of each participating clan and pledge respect for its customary laws. Most of Somaliland's clans will surely agree to become its initial members. Gradually others will join, including those located in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. These clans will become interested as soon as Somaliland's economy starts to develop. Many foreign and local investors have already expressed interest in establishing business ventures in Somaliland. They do not want to begin, however, while there remains a hybrid government. They are waiting for the moment when the customary law once again will rule supreme.

The founding charter of a Somali confederation should avoid the term "territory." The Confederation should be a political organization without a territory, somewhat like the United Nations. In that way, the central governments of Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti will not perceive the Confederation as a threat to the integrity of their territories. The Confederation need not worry about negotiating free movement across the borders of these countries. Even the most powerful central government cannot prevent migrating economic actors from crossing its borders. Business people are usually very skilled, and in any event more motivated than the politicians, to promote the free movement of ideas, people, and merchandise. They will be much more effective than politicians in removing obstacles to free trade in the cross-border economy.

Foreign governments and their international agencies should leave the Somalis alone. By trying to establish a consolidated federal state among the Somalis they promote the continuing impoverishment of the Somali people. It took two thousand years for more than three dozen European nations to form a union, which even today is the subject of mass protests and demonstrations. It would be folly indeed for European politicians to insist on the consolidation of five dozen Somali clans within one decade. They have no moral authority whatever to teach the Somalis how to live, in view of the history of total warfare, mass exterminations, and brutality in Europe in the twentieth century alone. Even were we to concede that the European approach to political union works in Europe, it would stretch credulity to suppose that it could be applied overnight in an altogether different cultural setting.

Conclusion

The authors of Self-Portrait have made it abundantly clear that Somalis are deeply attached to their traditional form of government. In addition, they show beyond any doubt that the hybrid government formed in 1993 has gone totally out of control. They did not endeavor to find the causes for these two phenomena, but left that task to their readers. The present memorandum has endeavored to seek and find those causes.

We have found that the people of Somaliland value their traditional political, legal and social system not because it is based on kinship, but because its rules are based on custom rather than on political whim. The strength of Somali law derives from two features in particular. One is that it recognizes every person's right to life, liberty, and property. The other is that it offers politicians no opportunity to influence the law. It is worth noting that it was under this legal system that the Somali nation became one of the most numerous in Africa.

Kinship will always remain a vital factor in the life of individuals. However, its prominence in social, legal, and political structures will diminish over time, as more effective approaches become available. The day will come when Somalis will entrust most of their legal affairs to independent insurance companies. As a result, their dependence on clans to insure against liability and calamity will diminish. On the other hand, their high regard for their customary laws and institutions is bound to grow without limit. Already today, Somalis consider their customary law system to be vital to the cohesion, prosperity and well being of their society.

As for Somaliland's hybrid government, we found that it failed because the Grand Borama Conference attempted to mix two contrasting systems, a command society and a free society. As a practical matter, consolidated power cannot be stopped halfway. When a politician is given one finger, he takes the whole hand. He is like a camel in a sandstorm. If the camel puts his nose in your tent and finds the wind is not blowing in there, the rest of him will follow.

The difficulties arising from this hybrid system were not foreseen, and no blame should attach to its failure. As problems became apparent, people tried to reverse course, but with limited success. Learning from the mistakes of the past is the source of wisdom.

The decision to create a hybrid system was fully in keeping with all the other government-building experiments the Somali nation has had to suffer through since the end of World War II. What all of these experiments had in common was that they all ignored the rules of social conduct inherent in human nature, the principles known collectively as "the customary law." The consequence of that fatal oversight was that the politicians destroyed their nation. The lesson to be learned from this is that for any nation-building effort in Somaliland to be effective, it must not attempt to create a central government. It must strengthen the customary law system so that natural rights are more respected and the rule of law becomes fully operational.

Self-Portrait correctly observes that whatever wealth was created during the past eight years was created by private enterprise. It indicates that much more wealth would have been created had the government followed more sensible policies. If Somaliland is to move forward into freedom and prosperity, it must put a stop to all efforts to establish a democratic government, which can only further disrupt property rights and frustrate entrepreneurial incentive. The people of Somaliland must give their full support to the traditional system that is already in place and that has evolved over the centuries. In this system, control vests primarily in the individual, secondarily in his jilib (sub-clan), thirdly in his clan, and finally in the cluster of clans now called Somaliland. This cluster of clans could now take the form of a limited confederation whose only activity would be to conduct foreign policy and coordinate military defense. In such a system, each individual speaks for himself, defends himself and his family, and exercises authority over his own interests. Each clan speaks for itself and exercises authority over its interests. Each village or town attends to the common needs of the clans residing there. Each region attends only to the common needs of its clans, towns or villages.

Only in this way will the people of Somaliland be able to come into full technological, scientific, economic, and cultural participation in the world. They need only follow their own traditions and allow those traditions room to grow. Peace, prosperity and stability will follow from a decentralized approach as morning follows the dawn.

When Somaliland has revitalized its traditional structure, it will begin to develop. Its customary laws and institutions will become more prominent, its economy will start growing, and the political relations among its clans will become more structured. By achieving these objectives for themselves, the people of Somaliland will set the stage for peace and prosperity throughout the entire Somali nation.

*A Self-Portrait of Somaliland: Rebuilding from the Ruins is an 87 page report published in December, 1999 by the Somaliland Centre for Peace and Development. The Centre is an offshoot of the War-torn Societies Project, which came to Somalia in 1995 under the auspices of the Geneva-based UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD). The text of the report can be found here.

http://www.ennonline.net/fex/12/rs6.html

Remittances and their economic impact in post-war Somaliland

Published paper1

An enduring difficulty of assessing needs amongst certain emergency affected populations has been uncertainty about whether the affected population are sent income from relations abroad or living in other parts of the country (remittances), and if so, how much. It is extremely difficult to quantify or monitor remittances as sources, and channels are diverse with cash flows often taking place in the 'black' economy.

A recent study in Somaliland has thrown some light on this subject. The study examined the role of remittances provided by a large global diaspora of migrant workers and refugees in post-war Somaliland. Field work was conducted in 1998/9 and examined trends in the size, source, and means of remittance transfer as well as the use of remittances, their role in livelihoods and in the country's economic recovery. Sample households were randomly selected from a list of recipients obtained from telephone and money transfer companies. A semi-structured questionnaire was used. Data was also obtained through detailed interviews with leading money transfer agencies on the amount of money that goes through these channels and details of individual transfers.

Estimating remittances in Somaliland is problematic for a number of reasons. First, remittances are transferred in a number of forms and through different channels. They can be cash in kind, e.g. cars, furniture, jewellery, clothing or electronic goods and they can also be channelled through trusted merchants or hand carried by migrants when they visit home. Secondly, there is no data available on the global numbers of migrants and refugees from Somaliland. Third, Hawaalado (money transfer companies) who are responsible for a significant part of transfers, sometimes deliberately under-report the size of the flows for fear of government interference in the form of taxes or new regulations.

Remittances originate mainly from migrant labour in the Gulf and more recently an exodus of refugees to the West. The growth of telecommunications in Somaliland and of remittance agencies has greatly facilitated the transfer of money. The study found that the value of remittances is estimated at some US$ 500 million annually - around four times the value of livestock exports. In fact the livestock export ban by Saudi Arabia in 1998 in response to the Rift Valley fever outbreak in Kenya and southern Somalia was predicted to lead to a collapse in international trade and market exchange. It was feared that the shortage of hard currency needed to finance imports would spell disaster for the country. The ban lasted 14 months and the number of animals exported from Somaliland fell sharply from 2.9 million in 1997 to just over 1 million in 1998. However, this failed to affect the volume of imports mainly because remittances financed the entire import bill.

The study found that the average annual remittance received by households was $4,170 and that there were approximately 120,000 recipient households throughout the country - roughly one third of the population. These estimates of remittances are consistent with other studies and transfers to countries such as Eritrea and Sudan with similar migrant populations. However, it is important to note that the distribution of annual transfers is highly skewed due to large sums of money received by a relatively small proportion of households.

It appears that remittances are heavily concentrated in urban centres. While the majority of households in Hargeisa rely on remittances for their livelihoods, less than 5 percent of rural households receive money transfers from abroad. It is particularly less important in pastoral households. For agro-pastoralists internal remittances from migrant workers in urban areas are more important than international ones. Because of recent changes in the demographic structure of migrants, an increasing proportion of those receiving this kind of income are women.

The effect of remittances on households has been considerable in providing secure livelihoods. The study found that in urban areas many people had a high standard of living due to remittances. However, there is evidence to show that remittances have increased income inequality. Migrant workers and refugees generally come from better-off families who could afford the relatively high investment costs involved in sending someone abroad. The going rate for an employment visa and ticket to the Gulf is about $3000 while a ticket and travel documents to Europe or North America cost roughly $5000. Therefore it is mainly those families who can afford to invest in migration that receive remittances.

One of the conclusions of the study was that these large capital flows have contributed to rapid economic recovery in post-war Somaliland and the development of a dynamic private sector.

1 Remittances and their Economic Impact in Post-war Somaliland (2000) Ismail. I. Ahmed. Disasters, 2000, 24 (4), pp 380-389.

http://www.vetaid.org/contents/somaliland.htm

Somaliland

A country whose pastoralists face increasing exclusion from rangelands traditionally used for livestock grazing, Somaliland also has a civil war legacy and is affected by drought.. The legacy of this division is a country with very few resources, still heavily dependent on livestock for its economy. Refugees are continuing to return from neighbouring Ethiopia, many of whom have lost everything and have no means to restart their lives. The government cannot provide the support services the people need to look after the livestock they have.

VETAID has been working in Somaliland for the past five years though the current programme has been running since late 1997. The programme has three main projects as outlined below, namely the Pastoralist Project; the Agro-Pastoral project and the Advocacy and Networking project.

Pastoral project

This part of the programme is working in the driest areas of Somaliland where extensive pastoralism is practiced mainly with sheep, goats and camels and some cattle. In these areas, the project has provided training and a basic start up kit of veterinary drugs and equipment, to male and female community animal health workers. Alongside this, herder information and animal treatment days have been run to provide direct information to herders, particularly on the correct use of veterinary drugs. Also, training and advice has been provided to members of private veterinary associations with the aim of encouraging them to provide an advice and drugs sales service to the trained community animal health workers.

Agro pastoral development project

This project is working in the areas of Somaliland where there is slightly more rain and some rain-fed agriculture is practiced. The work of this project is similar to that of the pastoral project but in addition to the work outlined above, in the agro-pastoral areas, VETAID has been involved in a number of agricultural initiatives. These have included training a number of demonstration farmers how to use donkeys for draught power (to improve the timeliness of cultivation when it rains) and introducing the growing of fodder crops for animals and leguminous crops for human consumption. Also, the project has provided training, both to demonstration farmers and through open days for farmers, on use of manures and other agricultural inputs. Women extension workers have been trained to provide training to pastoralist women on a range of topics including dairy hygiene and cooking using introduced leguminous crops.

Advocacy and Networking project

In addition to the above two projects and to strengthen the sustainability of their work, the programme has also been involved in networking with the Ministry of Livestock, local NGOs and other international NGOs. VETAID has developed good links with the Ministry of Livestock and has had input to the initial drafting of legislation to legitimise the role of community animal health workers and veterinary associations. VETAID has facilitated workshops between the Ministry of Livestock and Vet Associations to try and improve relationships and look at the development of an improved system for licencing vet associations to sell drugs though considerable work still needs to be done to achieve this. VETAID has also organised a workshop on the sensitive issue of land enclosures (people illegally enclosing land for fodder production with the knock on effect of blocking pastoralists from accessing traditional dry season grazing land) to encourage dialogue between the government, pastoralists and land owners to resolve this issue. Work on both these issues (legislation recognising community animal health workers and vet associations and the land enclosures issue) is on-going.

Participative Pastoral Development Programme

This project encompasses three different but related components; animal health, development of suitable cropping practices within the system, and pastoral research, networking and advocacy. Again the project works with a large number of local partner organisations to ensure that the effects of the project can be sustained in the future.

The project assists partner veterinary groups and the Ministry of Livestock Forestry and Range to provide animal health services. Communities also select interested people for training as Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs), and in conjunction with the partner veterinary groups the project provides training for them.

The project has links with an existing Ministry of Agriculture and Extension project in agro pastoral areas. Again in these areas the project works in conjunction partner veterinary groups to provide training for CAHWs. There is also training for women's groups on smallholder dairy development, forage development and nutrition for both dairy and draught cattle.

Through two local partners, the project is carrying out field studies on: (a)the role of women in livestock development (b) pastoral ethnoveterinary practices and indigenous knowledge (c) pastoral coping strategies (d) changes in range ecology (e) and degradation and resource use (f) alternative pastoral livelihoods.

The knowledge gained through these studies will be shared through all the partner organisations and at workshops and seminars and in publications, to help inform future development initiatives.

The future

Somaliland will continue to have development needs for some time to come. The country receives less foreign aid than it could because of its lack of recognition by foreign powers. As one of the few countries in the world where a significant proportion of the population are totally dependent upon livestock, and in which the livestock sector is a major contributor to the economy, Somaliland is one of the countries in which VETAID will continue to have work to do for years to come.

http://www.mideastmiscellany.org/Somaliland.htm

Somaliland: Isolated from the Rest of the World; United Nations Still Refuses to Recognize This Independant and Peaceful Country

From: Lib?ration (Paris), no. 6234 (1 June 2002), p. 9

Although it flies its own flag and has its own government and currency, Somaliland, officially, does not exist. Indeed, since its declaration of independence in 1991, the United Nations has refused to recognize this arid territory of 3 million people, separated de facto from the rest of Somalia. For ten years Somaliland, however, has been claiming its own right to existence. A new step was taken, yesterday, with the organization of a constitutionnal referendum on the issue of the country's independence.

Constitution

The result of the poll should not surprise anybody: an overwhelming majority of Somalilanders approve of adopting the 1997 Provisional Constitution, the initial article of which proclaims independence. The referendum is expected to result in a vote to condone the rejection of any reunification with the South, namely with the "official" Somalia, which is notorious for its never-ending wars and for its track record of leading United Nations' peace missions there to failure.

It is a weird situation that while weapons still rule in Mogadiscio, the ruined capital of devastated Somalia, by contrast it is peace that prevails in Hargueisa, Somaliland's "capital," where the police forces no longer even carry weapons and where some 150,000 civil servants are regularly paid monthly by a State deprived of any external aid, only because it yet lacks international recognition. "It is an aberration. The country has succeeded in imposing an indigenous democratic system, and one feels more secure here than in many other African countries. It is a poor country, but nobody is starving," explains Hugues Laurenge, who led an exploratory mission for Handicap International last fall.

But the U.N. organization has it own stubborn "principles." All of the U.N.'s efforts focus primarily on the reclamation of the supposedly "real" Somalia, against the will of the people involved, if necessary. No less than thirteen peace conferences have been held there since 1991; the last one led to instituting, in August 2000, a National Transitional Government (N.T.G.). Contrary to the "cold shoulder" that they turn to Muhammad Ibrahim Egal, the Somalilander President since 1993, the international authorities welcome the Somalian N.T.G.'s President, Abdoulkassim Salet Hassan. For all that, he rules, at best , only over Somalia's capital, Mogadiscio, while, since 1998, another territory, the Puntland, has declared itself autonomous. Secessionist temptations are very frequent in the region, but Somaliland itself can be said to have prevailed by already having been separated during the area's colonial period. During those colonial years the territory was a British protectorate, Somalia, by contrast, having fallen to Italy's annexation of it.

Divisions

The two former colonies then were unified, after independence, in July 1960. This made for a twenty year "wedding" of the two until, in the early 1980s, Dictator Siad Barr? bloodily crushed Somaliland's growing opposition. In 1998, massive bombings came to cause between 35,000 and 50,000 deaths. The memory of these killings remains very vivid, to the extent that Somalilanders did not appreciate seeing appointed to the head of the Somalian N.T.G. (in 2000), the very man who, at the time of the Hargueisha bombings, had been the Minister of Internal Affairs. According to the Somalilanders' President, who refuses to negotiate with Modigascio, the present situation constitutes a new provocation. For all that, will the referendum permit the voice of Somaliland itself to be heard' As Hugues Laurenge ruefully remarks, "This is an ignored and isolated country."

Maria Malgardis, Trans. by Alain L?tourneau, Sudbury, Ont., as ed. by Gerald Parker, Montr?al

Source: SOMALIA WATCH, 31 Aug 2001 Position of the Republic of Somaliland On the Djibouti Peace Initiative on Somalia Date :[10 Mar 2000]

1. Introductory note

On 1 July 1960 two separate and sovereign territories - Somaliland (a former British Protectorate) and Somalia (the former Italian Somalia) formed a political union that was officially named the Somali Republic. The Somali Republic, as such, became a member of the United Nations, the OAU, and a host of other intergovernmental organizations and was registered under that title.

The official title of the union did not last long, as had been the case of other constitutional arrangements that were intended to safeguard the interests of Somaliland. Taking advantage of their majority, the representatives of Somalia lost little time in dropping the official nomenclature of the union and replacing it with the name of their own territory - Somalia. The change was entirely political. Its objective was the complete absorption of the territory and people of Somaliland into Somalia, and the subsequent eradication of all traces of Somaliland from the map. This move was not publicized at the time, and it was done without the knowledge and consent of the other party of the union, namely Somaliland.

The political and diplomatic ramifications of this unilateral change in nomenclature did not become apparent until after Somaliland had successfully overthrown the brutal rule of Siyad Barre in 1990, and declared a few months later Somaliland's withdrawal from its union with Somalia. When Somaliland representatives attempted to establish contacts with the United Nations and other members of the international community, they were told that their country was part and parcel of Somalia, and that the United Nations could not accept any change that would affect the unity and territorial integrity of the State of Somalia. The resultant confusion that has followed the misreading of Somalia's true identity has been detrimental to the inherent rights and interests of Somaliland and its people.

The international community should be aware of a number of important historical facts pertaining to Somaliland's political development, viz. The achievement of independence on June 26, 1960, its subsequent union on July 1, 1960 with Somalia (ex-Italian Somalia) as two equal partners, its long years of struggle for liberation from the union, its eventual victory in December 1990 and its withdrawal from the union in 1991. Somaliland has reverted to the status ante quo 26 June, 1960, and is determined to maintain that status until a more attractive political alternative acceptable to the people of Somaliland can be found.

2. Somaliland's position on the Djibouti Initiative

Somaliland appreciates that the Djibouti Initiative was inspired by the speech of the UN Secretary General and that the Initiative was launched as a possible measure to help Somalia recover from its current chaos and anarchy.

Somaliland is not opposed to the Djibouti Initiative despite its many shortcomings which it could have helped to remedy had it been consulted adequately and sincerely. Hasty and inadequate organizational arrangements for an extremely complex problem, coupled with Djibouti's quest for advance endorsement of its plan of implementation even before the invitees from Somalia have even met to discuss the proposal outlined therein, may well be a recipe for failure.

Somaliland objections to the Djibouti Initiative arise from the fact that it ignores the political status of the country. Moreover, Somaliland is aware that some elements ostensibly supporting the Initiative is attempting to draft Somaliland into a reconciliation conference which is of no direct concern to Somaliland, and in which Somaliland has no role to play. There is no party or grouping in Somalia to which Somaliland needs to be reconciled.

Somaliland is aware that the same elements are mischievously exploiting the opportunity given to them by the Djibouti Initiative to undermine the success that has attended Somaliland's efforts at nation-building and at re-establishing a peaceful and stable state. Somaliland will resist to the utmost any attempt to drag it into the quagmire of the anarchy and chaos that characterizes current conditions in Somalia.

Somaliland will have a role to play when inhabitants themselves solve Somalia's problems, and some form of central authority has been firmly established in that country. Somaliland would be prepared to make contact with the new Somalia authorities to discuss, as equal partners, a future relationship appropriate for the welfare of the people of the two countries.

Somaliland has achieved through a series of nationwide conferences (Berbera and Burao in 1991, Sheikh in 1992 and Borama in 1993) peace, internal stability, a democratic system of parliamentary government, an independent judiciary and the development of a private sector where free enterprise reigns supreme. This promising situation has been achieved without any help, aid or assistance from the international community.

Somaliland has already achieved for itself what the Djibouti Initiative is attempting to do for Somalia, only that Somaliland has done it much better than what is being proposed and has done it successfully.

Somaliland has accomplished a lasting peace between all sections of the population; it has established peaceful cooperation with its neighbors, and it has put in place a democratic governance which is effectively running the country with the consent of the governed.

Somaliland simply asks that its achievements should not be sabotaged or threatened by a proposal which seeks to draft Somaliland into a scheme which runs contrary to its interests and in which it will take no part.

Somaliland, in summary, will not be involved with the Djibouti Initiative and, consequently, will not participate in any of the deliberations outlined in its plan of implementation. This position has been confirmed by Somaliland's House of Representatives and by the public at large.

President, Republic Of Somaliland

Mohamed H. Ibrahim Egal

Why the Body Shop goes shopping in Somaliland A ban on cattle has forced the self-declared republic to turn to other natural resources. By Danna Harman Special to The Christian Science Monitor

When the first traffic light appeared in this sandy small town six months ago, some people did not know how to react. Some didn't realize they had to stop; others were confused about when to go. "It was good training for us nomadic types," says former camel herder Ali Moussa Hassan, as he screeches to a halt beside the plaque marking the light's unveiling. "We knew nothing about such new ways of life."

These days, the nomads - as well as the rest of the self-declared state of Somaliland - are at another kind of crossroads.

A livestock ban imposed last September by the Gulf States on much of the region - because of a disease cows carry - has decimated the main source of livelihood for most here. Sheepherders and cattle traders face tough times. Everyone, meanwhile, is looking for a new job.

"We hope the ban will be used as an opportunity to diversify the economy," says Gerry McCarthy, director of Progressive Interventions (PI), an Irish group working to develop the private sector in Somaliland. "Granted, there are some impediments to investment ... like not being a recognized country and not having either a central bank or commercial law," he says, without a twinge of irony. "But that really should not stop us trying."

A breakaway state from the Republic of Somalia - and still not officially recognized by the international community - the local infrastructure and economy of Somaliland were destroyed during the civil wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

What is striking about Somaliland today, however, is not what is missing - which is plenty - but what exists. This self-declared administration, in stark contrast to Somalia itself, seems to be starting to pull itself together.

Teams are exploding leftover landmines around the airport; murals adorn the shelled facades of buildings, the soccer stadium has been rebuilt, the mosque fixed up, and a maternity hospital is going up on the former execution grounds.

The self-declared government, led by Mohammad Egal, has the trappings of a state. Money is printed, visas issued, license plates molded, and ministries created.

Several new projects are showing promise.

Working hand in hand with the Chamber of Commerce, Progressive Interventions has encouraged and helped locals look at the natural resources available in Somaliland and develop them into small and medium businesses.

Shukri Ismail, for example, runs the Asli Mills company, which produces henna and qasil-based products - hair dyes, conditioners, and body cleansers - for domestic and foreign markets. The England-based Body Shop recently struck a deal with the company, and last year purchased six tons of the products.

When it was founded in 1998, Asli mills employed 60 henna and qasil leaf pickers. Today, it has some 400 on the payroll. Last year, Aslia made a $30,000 profit; the company opened a second store and a wholesale outlet shop.

While Mr. Ismail is the local success story to date, budding businesswoman Amina Rodol says the next big thing is frankincense. Somaliland and the surrounding area have long been famous for the pure and ancient perfume base; however, its economic potential has never been fully tapped. There are today an estimated 11,000 locals collecting frankincense resin from the Somaliland highlands and selling it to Saudi Arabia or Europe. But they make only a pittance, even as the market for frankincense grows worldwide.

In an effort to cut out some of the middlemen and add value to the product before it leaves Somaliland, PI has put out an investors' guide to distilling and marketing frankincense, and plans to import distillation equipment to the region. Ms. Rodol, the first to take advantage of the assistance, has put her life savings into a new range of beauty products based on the product.

John and Mike Weston, meanwhile, father and son gem dealers from South Africa, see the future for Somaliland differently - in ruby red and sapphire blue. In Hargeysa at the invitation of PI to give a three-week course on gem mining, identification, cutting, and marketing, the Westons say that the precious stones could potentially bring in tens of thousands of dollars to the economy and create jobs for more than 5,000 people.

"Somaliland is part of the Mozambique belt, which is well known to be gem-rich," says John. "But people here don't even have the most rudimentary mining skills ... it's just goat herders picking up gems on the surface." If the collectors could learn to mine deeper into the ground - without breaking the gems - differentiate between the different types of rocks and grade and market them, argues John, they would be in business. "Gems are a negotiable currency," he says. "No one will have a problem with this not being a country. You could sell anywhere."

But despite the new directions being talked about, many in Somaliland remain pessimistic. "My whole way of life has disappeared," says nomad Hassan Mohammad, counting out his worry beads. "I used to sell about 150 sheep and 20 cattle per year. Now we don't sell anything.... I really don't know much about Frankincense or any of that. It's not easy for me."

Source: The Nation, April 4, 2002 Letter From Somaliland by George Packer

The sun was dropping behind the stony hills along the Ethiopian border, and the muezzin was calling the faithful of Borama to the day's fourth prayer. A moment before, the town had seemed empty; suddenly, in the dying light, Somali men materialized from all sides on their way to the mosque. I fell in with a young man, who greeted me in the Somali way that's so aggressively welcoming as to seem like a hostile challenge.

"Are you going to pray'" he asked.

"No, to watch."

His brow furrowed in consternation. "I want you to become a Muslim and go to paradise. It's the best place."

I asked how I should proceed.

"Read the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet," he advised me. "Then, take a bath. Then, pray." He wanted to know where I was from and what I was doing in his country. I said that I had come from America to learn about Islam.

The young man stopped in his tracks. "I think you are looking for terrorists."

Borama lies in the northwestern highlands of what used to be Somalia. Since 1991, when Somalia collapsed in civil war, the region's clans have maintained relative peace and established a weak but functioning central government of an independent republic that calls itself Somaliland--an entity that the rest of the world has steadily refused to recognize. I went there looking for fundamentalism, not terrorism. What I found at the very least complicated the American idea of who "they" are. The Islamists I met turned out to be a group of earnest, right-living strivers, many of whom would have been at home in Orem, Utah. Their turn to Islam has less to do with rejecting the West than with wanting to join the modern world.

Ten years ago, armed Islamic extremists of a group called al-Itihaad, which recently turned up on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations connected to Al Qaeda, tried to unify Somalia by force in the name of Allah. They set up a training camp in an abandoned high school called Amoud, a collection of sunbaked stone buildings just a few kilometers down a rugged dirt road and across a dry riverbed from Borama. But in Somalia clan trumps everything, including Islam, and local elders soon forced al-Itihaad to leave. Over the following decade, al-Itihaad was defeated again and again, and today it no longer exists in Somaliland. Meanwhile, Amoud now houses Somaliland's first university, founded in 1997 with considerable help from Somalis living in North America and supplied by American schools and publishers. One afternoon during Ramadan, Ahmed Hashi Abib, Amoud's vice president, gave me a tour of the empty grounds.

"The university was built by Americans, and we are very grateful," he said as we walked around the rocky campus where goats were nibbling on thorn bushes. Rooms where Islamic militants once trained now hold 70,000 almost entirely American books. It still looks like a rough and bare-bones undertaking, but given the utter devastation of Somaliland just ten years ago, Amoud is an achievement. The meaning of the tour seemed clear, but in case I missed it, Abib, a cheerful, bespectacled man with a rich didactic voice, was ready to spell it out. "I think it's good for the United States to nurture places that were once a threat. Where there is no threat, you apply certain policies that transform places into a threat. That's what we want America to avoid," he said. "If you want to measure how strong Islamic extremism is by measuring the number of mosques and the number of women wearing the veil, that would be a wrong measure. If American satellites could somehow count these things, they would have a very wrong measure. There's nothing behind it, absolutely nothing behind it. Even the ones who wear the veil drink alcohol, go to sleep with men and hide their identity." He concluded, without irony, "We hope this place will become the Mecca for education all over Somalia."

I sat in on a social science class taught by a Canadian-trained scholar named Ahmed Mah, nicknamed Mubarak, who had come back to his homeland from Toronto with the latest theories about dominant discourses. I noticed that of the five young women in the room, two were wearing the niqab, the veil that covers everything but the eyes. These were the first I'd seen in Somaliland, and it was strange to find them here, at the university, in a class on "Social Deviance and Social Control." Somali women, who are famous for their beauty, traditionally cover their hair in a loose, brightly colored silk scarf from India called a shalma, whose function seems to be attraction at least as much as concealment. The more rural and uneducated the woman, the more likely she is to veil herself lightly or not at all. The drab, nunnish niqab and hijab--the veil that wraps tight under the chin--are new styles among urban girls, high school and university students, nurses in training, teachers. Some young women picked up the habit in the Gulf countries where their fathers held menial jobs; others saw it on CNN and the Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera. In Somaliland, puritanical Arab women's dress is a sign of Islamic sophistication, a globalization of "correct" Islam from the Arab countries outward.

But for an hour at Amoud, the young women discussed whether their veils might be a socially constructed tool of the dominant discourse. After class, I met with a small group of bright, ambitious, strictly Islamic students. I asked what kind of Muslims they considered themselves to be. The answer that came back was "new Muslims." By this they meant new in Somalia. In terms of faith and practice, they wanted to be as old as the Koran and the Prophet. "The Islamic revival is nothing else but the Somali people using the correct way," said a large-eyed, goateed young man named Ahmed. "The former Somali scholars didn't apply the basic teachings." He meant the Sufist sheiks, the old men with hennaed beards who worship saints and practice a kind of spiritual magic. "They took culture and turned it into religion," said Kadra, a young woman whose accent betrayed that she had grown up in Canada. "So what people believe now is the true religion." A boy named Ridwaan said, "Before 1990, I never saw a woman wearing a veil. Even some girls in my class didn't cover their hair." "And it is written in Holy Koran." exclaimed Hassan, holding his copy aloft.

The young people were against music and dancing, but they welcomed the culture and technology of the West as long as it didn't violate their religion ("sexy" films were a particular worry). They longed for Islamic law to be instituted in Somaliland, but there was disagreement about the relationship between Islam and democracy. Ahmed saw them as compatible; for Hassan, democracy was a product of Western culture, and "Islam is higher, so they cannot go together." Above all, they wanted education, as much as possible--religious and secular, for women as well as men. This was what it meant to be "new" Muslims. I said that in some Western countries education seems to have made the public less religious. Weren't they afraid of the same thing happening here' "Would you say it's education, or freedom'" Kadra countered. "Religion limits freedom, because if there is a lot of freedom people would forget God and get into a lot of things such as alcohol, drugs and intercourse." I told them that I'd always assumed young people everywhere wanted more freedom. "We want the freedom," said Ahmed. "Inside Islam."

All at once, the students got up to leave. The muezzin was summoning them to 3 o'clock prayer.

Americans have come to believe that the religious revival across the vast Muslim world represents a rejection of modern civilization. But in Somaliland, it's driven by all the pressures of modern life. It thrives in the swollen new towns, where refugees are thrown together in a disorienting mix of clans. Its followers include small-scale entrepreneurs, telecommunications company employees, high school and university students, nurses in training, private schoolteachers--the small, striving middle class that's the only reliable engine of development in a destitute country. Those with satellite television watch both CNN in English and Al Jazeera in Arabic without a sense of contradiction. Each network brings news from a world they want to join. No one talks about having to choose between the two. The Somali brand of Islamic fundamentalism, which initially took a violent form, now answers the almost existential need of a generation that came of age in a failed country. What identity is available to them' Somalia no longer exists here. Somaliland is a wish in which the world shows no interest. At their back, the continent to which they belong offers an image of unrelieved misery. The West is still a tempting, threatening rumor. The nomad world is at once too harsh and too sensuous, the religion of their fathers superstitious and corrupted. The young Somalis who have turned to Islam long for a life that's correct, austere and purposeful. With their cerebral devotion to the Word, their estrangement from the communal consolations of pastoral life, their insistence on a direct relationship with Allah, their capitalist ethic, Somali fundamentalists reminded me of nothing so much as the Reformation Protestants who rejected the corrupt ways of the Church and became modern by going back to the written source of indisputable truth. In short, they are people with whom Americans can do business--which is exactly what they want from us.

If armed Islamic extremism resurfaces in Somaliland, it might well appear first in Burao, in the rugged highlands east of the capital, Hargeisa. Burao is the last city under the Somaliland government's authority--beyond it, one enters the rule of the clans. And Burao itself has the feel of a dusty, tough frontier town. An outsider draws longer and harder stares than elsewhere, and I was warned not to walk around by myself--a German had had his throat cut the year before. Al-Itihaad set up a major base here in the early 1990s, recruiting several thousand fighters who participated in a failed attempt to take power in Bosaso and were subsequently expelled to the south by clan elders. Their leader in Burao was even obliged to pay blood compensation of a hundred camels to a family who'd lost a son in the battle for Bosaso. I went to Burao to meet a hardware dealer named Nureddin Dualle, who had been described by a friend as "a clean, straightforward fundamentalist."

Nur is 35 years old, a tall, soft-spoken man with a beard, glasses and an earnest smile. In 1992 he started a small newspaper in Burao, and when that failed he went to Pakistan to earn an MBA, even spending a few months working for an Islamic relief group in Afghanistan. The effect of those experiences, he said, was to make him more broad-minded and more determined to succeed in business. When he returned to Burao, he opened a hardware store with a small group of family members as shareholders; now he owns another shop, in Hargeisa, importing most of his supplies from Gulf countries. As we drove around Burao's thronging, unpaved streets in Nur's pickup truck, the substance of his commentary wasn't religion but economics.

Unemployment in Burao is 95 percent, he said, pointing to the rows and rows of men idly drinking tea by the road and waiting for the sun to go down so they could chew khat, the stimulant shrub that makes life bearable for large numbers of Somalis. Every morning a hundred people came to his shop to ask for food. Somalis who had returned from overseas used their savings to set up stores, but no one could afford to buy anything, and inflation had rendered the Somaliland shilling almost worthless against the dollar. His hardware business was severely disrupted when the Bush Administration froze the foreign assets of the al-Barakaat telecommunications and financial services company on suspicion of funding Al Qaeda. Faith, Nur said, provided solace to the desperate, but what Burao needed most was business.

We stopped in the middle of a street. Nur leaned out his window to speak to a narrow-eyed man in his 30s who was wearing a white skullcap, a white robe and a red-checked shawl. As Nur spoke, the man's eyes shifted over and fixed mine with a look of almost venomous suspicion. Somehow Nur persuaded the man, a sheik named Sharif Abokor, to meet with us the next day.

The window of my small hotel room looked directly across the street on a mosque, and the amplified muezzin seemed to thunder all night long. A meal of boiled camel deep-fried in ghee wasn't sitting well, and in my weakened state I hallucinated slightly--at 4 am it sounded like the voice of Allah in my ear, exhorting me to pray before it was too late. I thought about chaos and death, and it was suddenly a little easier to imagine myself a Somali. Nur had told me: "Allah will ask you, 'What did you do for the time I gave you'' I'll say I prayed, I fasted, I gave to the poor. So one goes to the hell and one goes to the heaven. I want to be one of those who goes to the heaven."

In the morning Nur and the sheik were waiting in Nur's small office, behind a stockroom crammed with plumbing fixtures and boxes of floor tiles. The sheik wasted no time getting to the point. "We are real Muslims, but we are not terrorists," he said. "We did not know the meaning of Al Qaeda until we heard it on the BBC. They are far away from us. We live in East Africa." I asked about al-Itihaad's presence in Burao in the early 1990s. Nur, who had been running his newspaper at the time, said the lesson of the extremists' failure was that "the people of Somalia don't really believe Islam, they believe in tribalism. There is something deeper than Islam that the people believe. Even some sheiks, the fanatics, if there is a fight they will go to the tribe."

"The wars were a power struggle," Sharif said. "They were outside Islam--they were wrong. Allah promised us if we don't fight we will get peace and prosperity. We have peace. We are waiting for the rest--here, or in paradise." The sheik, who said that he was unemployed, readily accepted the name fundamentalist. But he sketched a picture of Islam that was almost as tolerant as Unitarianism. Beards and veils were not the point, he said; compulsion was alien to Islam, and Western knowledge was welcome; the point was to obey God.

When I had finished asking my questions, the sheik began to interview me. What did I think about the United States putting Somalia on its list of terrorist countries' Was killing civilians in Afghanistan democratic' Had I ever written anything against US foreign policy' Did I have any information on whether the United States was coming here or not' I knew what was coming next. "What religion do you follow'" When I said that I was a nonbeliever, the sheik was momentarily speechless. "Why don't you have faith in Allah' Who created humanity' Who created this pen'" He stared at me the way he had when he first saw me with Nur. "Even the Christians are better than you." Nur seemed slightly embarrassed by this judgment. Before I left, he took from his desk a paperback, written by a Pakistani, called Islamic Faith and Practice, and urged me to read it. Then he asked if I could put him in touch with an American hardware exporter.

On the way back to Hargeisa, my two traveling companions asked how the encounter had gone. I said that I had liked Nur very much, and that the sheik had perhaps not been entirely candid. They asked the sheik's name. When I told them, they exchanged a smile. The sheik, it turned out, wasn't unemployed; he's an agent for a money-transfer operation, a fact he might have concealed to avoid confusion with al-Barakaat. But there was more. "In 1992 he was one of the most active in al-Itihaad, mobilizing, recruiting. He was number four or five in the Burao organization. And Nur gave them support, financial and moral. The newspaper was a cover. You were talking to their nucleus."

Perhaps Somalis like Nur and the Amoud students have a radical, long-term strategy to Islamize their country--or perhaps not. For now they're Somaliland's best chance to create something other than endless war out of the ruins, and as we descended the escarpment toward the Indian Ocean I found myself wishing Nur's hardware business success.