Copyright 2001 ITAR-TASS News Agency
March 10, 2001,
Embassy in Nairobi asks for help in rescuing Russian sailors.
BYLINE: By Andrei Polyakov
The Russian embassy in Nairobi on Saturday presented a diplomatic note to the Kenyan Foreign Ministry in connection with the captivity of two ships with Russian sailors aboard in a Somalian port.
The document requests the ministry to provide assistance to the Russian embassy in obtaining additional information about the fate of the hostages and to take steps to free them.
The embassy is also trying to clarify the situation via its channels.
So far all information about the sailors is limited to a note obtained by Kenyan fishing authorities. It tells of 23 Kenyans and eight Russians taken hostage by one of the Somalian armed groups. The hostages are complaining about bad food and lack of medical attention.
The embassy does not rule out that the captured sailors may be not Russians but citizens of one of the ex-Soviet republics. In Africa people from the former Soviet Union are still called Russians.
Itar-Tass's attempts to get in touch with East African Fishing Company, which represents the interests of the crews of the seized ships Horizon-1 and Horizon-2 in Kenya, failed. There has been no response from the Mombasa seaport authorities either.
The situation is complicated by the fact that it is still unclear which group seized the ships. In addition to dozens of large armed groups, there are hundred of small ones in Somalia. They pursue no political goals and commit robberies. The transitional government created in Somalia at the end of last year has no influence in the south of the country.
An embassy official told Itar-Tass by telephone that the embassy "is taking all the necessary efforts to help Russian fishermen who have been taken hostage in the south of Somalia by an armed group".
The embassy received the information about the captivity of the fishermen from local mass media on Friday.
Embassy personnel is now trying to verify these reports. If they prove to be correct, the embassy will take necessary measures.
The difficulty is that Russia has no diplomatic missions in Somalia and the political situation in the country is very complex, he said.
Similar steps are being taken by the Russian embassies in other countries around Somalia.
On March 9, two fishing vessels belonging to East African Fishing Company and flying the Belizean flag were seized by an armed group in the south of Somalia. There were eight Russians and 10 Kenyans aboard the ships, according to a note obtained by Kenyan fishing authorities.
It says that the fishermen need medical attention and food.
A Russian Foreign Ministry official told Itar-Tass on Saturday that the circumstances of the incident are not completely clear. Russian diplomats are studying the situation, and if they confirm this information, urgent measures will be taken to free the fishermen.
Agence France Presse
March 9, 2001
Somali warlords say they'll block policing of Mogadishu
Armed factions opposed to a transitional government in Somalia have put their militias on alert to thwart attempts by the new administration to effectively police the capital Mogadishu, a faction leader said Friday.
Somalia's interim President, Abdulkassim Salat Hassan, on Thursday ordered his police to enforce law and order in the city within 48 hours, disarming gunmen, removing illegal roadblocks and arresting anyone who resisted.
But the armed groups, which do not recognise the authority of the interim government, said they will fight back.
"Our militiamen are on alert to combat planned aggression by the STG (Somali Transitional Government)," said Mohamed Diriye Elmi, the acting chairman of the United Somali Congress/Somali National Alliance faction headed by Osman Hassan Ali "Atto".
Atto's militiamen, along with those loyal to warlords Musa Sudi Yalahow and Hussein Mohamed Aidid, fired anti-aircraft guns into the air in south Mogadishu at midnight, residents said.
They were apparently testing the weapons ready for any confrontation with the government forces if they tried to enter their areas.
"The war-thirsty STG is interested in renewing bloodshed in Mogadishu. It should be responsible for the consequences," Elmi warned.
Said transitional government's Interior Minister Dahir Sheik Mohamed 'Dayah': "The directive of the president will be implemented and no force in Mogadishu can sabotage operations to restore peace in the lawless Somali capital."
He said 2,500 police would be deployed in the streets of the shattered capital. Many members of the new force were recruited from among militia forces.
"The police will arrest any person who does not respect the laws of the land," Dayah told AFP on Friday.
Yalahow's armed faction, which controls parts of south and north Mogadishu, said it was ready to fire on any police officer who entered its territory.
"The so called police should not go beyond the limits of guarding the self-appointed STG members. If the misguided police cross their line of duty ... it is up to them, they will be facing our bullets," said Omar Mohamed Mohamud "Finish", who was speaking on Yalahow's behalf.
Aidid, Yalahow, Atto and several other principal warlords opposed to Salat's administration are currently attending their own "peace talks" in Ethiopia.
"Salat is trying to gain advantage in the absence of our faction leaders. He did not know the factions and their fighters are in Mogadishu," Finish said.
The Financial Times, March 9, 2001 p14
Controlling Somali airspace on a wing and a prayer: Incidents are rare despite the absence of high-tech aids, writesMark Turner. (MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA) Mark Turner.
Byline: MARK TURNER
Joe Brunswig, who runs Somalia's airspace, hasa problem with goats. "There was a Kingair landing in Hargeisa at the same time as a herdsman was driving his goats across the airstrip," he explains with a grin. "Now, the Kingair didn't suffer much damage, but a goat got killed and it led to complaints.
"Then the minister told me that he had reimbursed the cost of the goat at double the market price. I said: 'No. Don't do that - we'll have all the herdsmen driving their goats across the airstrip now.' "
For Mr Brunswig - a man who keeps a copy of Edgar Guest's poem "It couldn't be done" on his wall - such tribulations are the spice of life.
But he is something of an exceptional air traffic controller. From a small white-walled and red-tiled house not far from the UN headquarters in Nairobi, Mr Brunswig and his team are responsible for the safety of 1,600 aircraft a month as they cross an imploded state in semi-permanent conflict.
That includes such big commercial carriers as Emirates, Kenya Airways and Air France, heading to the Indian Ocean across an airspace larger than that of Kenya. An Airbus can take almost three hours to cross its longest axis, which extends well into the ocean.
But there are no radar screens in the control room, just plastic holders moved on and off a grid to show which flights are on which routes. While neighbouring Ethiopia and Seychelles provide full air traffic control, Somalia provides only "flight information services" over the radio - leaving the pilot in ultimate control when there are potential conflicts.
Nevertheless, Trevor Fox, who heads the International Air Transport Association (Iata) office in Nairobi and collects the fees for the service, says he is satisfied with safety. "Flight information services are common throughout Africa; radar is very much the exception," he says. "There are very few incidents with Somalia: last year there were none at all. From our point of view this has been a very unusual but highly successful operation."
The UN's Civil Aviation Caretaker Authority for Somalia (Cacas) was set up in 1996, when it took over from the main UN and US operations that entered, then abandoned, Somalia in 1995.
It started with a United Nations grant of Dollars 2.8m, but now it has to cover its annual Dollars 2.5m costs through payments from the airlines that use its services. It is a tight squeeze, says Mr Brunswig.
Somalia's air traffic infrastructure collapsed with the general breakdown of the state that followed the overthrow of Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, almost 10 years ago. Runways are in a mess, there are almost no decent ground facilities, and only two airstrips have fire engines. In some parts, aircraft frequently come under fire.
In the meantime, plans to transfer Cacas back to Mogadishu (once an international airport, now closed) are on hold.
"Initially we were very ambitious," says Mr Brunswig. "We wanted to hand over to the Somali government, but in an external evaluation last year the advice was to forget it for the time being."
But Mr Brunswig sees some reasons for optimism. He cites the example of Berbera, whose 4km runway was built by the US as a stand-by for their space shuttle programme, and where Dallo (Somalia's largest airline) recently set up headquarters.
Meanwhile, Hargeisa, with 3,000 passengers a month, has great potential - if only the right investor can be convinced to back it. "I have been in talks with private businessmen, and they have the right attitude," Mr Brunswig says. But have there been any commitments? "Promises," he answers, "but no cheques."
UNESCO Courier, Feb 2001 p16
WHEN THE STATE FAILS a survival guide. (Brief Article)
KEN MENKHAUS.
BENEATH THE SURFACE OF PAPER STATES
The map of the world is dotted with growing "grey areas"--places where might is right and poverty is extreme. In these areas the state imposes its will, fleeces its subjects or simply ceases to exist. A lack of political will and dire economic hardship help explain its absence. In many cases, the state is such a recent phenomenon that its construction is unfinished. Fierce conflict in Colombia over what the state should do, for instance, has stunted its growth (pp. 18-20).
This power failure gives free rein to organized crime (pp. 36-37). But these grey areas are not always disaster-stricken. By tapping their sole remaining assets -- their know-how, traditions, age-old power structures and above all their determination--these neglected peoples have learnt to pull together. They have brought basic order to their surroundings and created simple services. Over time they have seized authority from distant governments. If these two players could pool their strengths, a strong and law-governed state might rapidly emerge (p. 18).
We turn the spotlight on these self-governing organizations, placing them in their historical and social contexts. The journey takes us to Somalia, where a cornucopia of such groups could bode a national renaissance (pp. 21-23), to Congo (ex-Zaire), where the breakdown of the state is coupled with civil war (pp. 24-26), to the slums of Port-au-Prince (Haiti) and Guatemala City (pp. 27-29 and pp. 30-32), and finally, to the valleys of Afghanistan.
On paper, the world is governed by sovereign states, each exercising exclusive control within its own territory. In reality, millions of people live in a political vacuum in which the state exercises little or no meaningful authority. This "sans Etat" condition includes ungoverned urban slums, forgotten rural communities, and, most dramatically, the growing zones of state collapse.
Observers rightfully point to this trend with alarm. They cite the spread of "chaos" as a global security threat--a breeding ground for lawlessness, organized crime, warlordism, humanitarian crises, and unchecked disease. Indeed, this crisis of governance is an underlying source of much of the misery of underdevelopment and violent crime that many of the world's poorest people endure.
Fortunately, the communities living in these zones of state retrenchment are not passive. Their towns and neighbourhoods are usually far from anarchic. From rural Somalia to the urban slums of Haiti, these stateless communities are devising innovative ways to organize themselves to provide a variety of basic services. The most ambitious of these spontaneous forms of self-governance even conduct quasi-diplomatic relations with the external world. International development agencies know this well-local polities have become important partners at the grassroots level where the state is unable or unwilling to exercise authority.
This trend poses a broader historical question. Is the retrenchment and even collapse of some states a temporary phenomenon related to the end of the Cold War, or is it the beginning of the end of the era of state-centric global politics itself? It has often been argued that sovereign states were an inappropriate, western imposition on the colonized world. What we are now witnessing, these critics add, are local communities shrugging off this failing colonial legacy, remaking polities and indigenous systems of governance which better match local realities and meet local needs. Others add that the forces of globalization are also accelerating the erosion of state authority and sovereignty.
Does this imply that the state is actually being replaced by these institutions of self-governance? Here one must proceed with caution. In most cases, they are very limited and fragile institutions, located in slums and war zones. Second, despite its irrelevance as a functional polity in some parts of the world, the state is likely to remain with us for a very long time. It remains the cornerstone of the current international political system; international organizations and law are state-centered, and personal travel documents are state-based. The world at large is simply not equipped formally to interact with and recognize alternative polities. The irony, then, is that for some of the world's people, the state is simultaneously irrelevant and indispensable.
Instead, we are witnessing a trend toward a two-tiered system of political life in parts of the Third World. On one level, there will be "paper states"--thin, formal, and weak juridical structures--which will continue to lay claim to a sovereignty they cannot actually exercise, but which the international community requires and will continue to recognize.
Beneath the surface of the paper state, a second tier of political life--a messy, fluid, innovative, often informal mosaic of local polities--will continue to evolve, and will provide at least some of the public goods which communities desire. They will include local non-governmental organizations, religious movements, neighbourhood groups, business associations, clans and mafia, and will often draw extensively on international resources. The challenge to the external world will be learning to work constructively with this increasingly complex political development in some Third World settings.
PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT DAVIDSON COLLEGE (U.S.)
UNESCO Courier, Feb 2001 p21
Money rules in Mogadishu. (Somalia)
HASSAN BARISE.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2001 UNESCO
How does a country Live without a government for ten years? In the Somali capital, self-made businessmen with the help of unsparing Islamic courts are trying to prove that they have more might than the warlords
Flash back ten years, when dictator Siad Bane fled the Somali capital hidden in a tank: left at the mercy of rival factions, Mogadishu fell into violence and anarchy. Until the return of a shaky transitional national government in early 2001, it has endured without the shadow of a regime, and yet...
It may be a ransacked, ravaged and divided city where few public buildings still stand, but Mogadishu does not live severed from the rest of the world. Four airline companies run by local entrepreneurs mainly service Arab countries. More than 15 small Cessna airplanes fly in daily from Kenya, carrying khat, the narcotic leaves widely chewed in Somalia.
The natural port of El-Ma'an, about 30 kilometres northeast of Mogadishu, employs more than 4,000 people, while the telecommunications sector has created some 3,000 jobs. Goats, sheep and camels are shipped to Arabian countries, bringing in the hard currency needed to import rice, sugar, cooking oil and clothes.
Ironically, Bekara market in the city's business centre is one of the best stocked in East Africa. Children hawk over 20 newspapers, including half a dozen poorly printed dailies rarely running more than six pages.
Crowds can be seen exchanging currencies, both international and local. And money seems blind to factional wars: north and south Mogadishu have their own currencies, as does the breakaway Somaliland Republic, but all can be exchanged and converted. Transactions are made orally and exchange rates set according to the imports and exports of the day: when thousands of heads of livestock are exported against dollars, the green note's value automatically drops.
Once a thriving Indian Ocean port, Mogadishu has renewed its former vocation to become a business kingdom unrestrained by any government or regulation, commanding a top-notch communications network and a one-million-strong diaspora that has proven a lifeline for a country where a succession of foreign-brokered negotiations has floundered more than a dozen times in the past decade.
At the height of the civil war in the early 1990s, when armed militia blocked travel while looting, killing and raping, necessity proved once again to be the mother of invention. Very high frequency (VHF) radios left behind by the fleeing regime were seized by enterprising youngsters, who helped inhabitants contact their relatives elsewhere in the country.
From gunmen to battle wagons: the price of security
As famine spread across this nation of pastoralists, they set up the "halawad" remittance system, permitting money to be transferred at six percent interest from countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. In 1995, the doomed UN Restore Hope operation in Somalia left behind state-of-the-art communication facilities. Since then, several telecommunication companies have cropped up in the city, offering dollar-a-minute phone calls--the cheapest rates in Africa--to just about anywhere in the world, along with fax and e-mail facilities.
While insecurity and regular deadly skirmishes have forced most investors to flee, local businessmen are doing their best to prove that they can call the shots. In the early days of the civil war, they hired gunmen from their own clans for protection, then boosted their forces by creating large militias whom they pay and feed. To travel across the city's different zones, each under the control of rival factions, they jumped over clan barriers by pooling some of their money. They equipped themselves with battle wagons to carry their commodities from the seaports to the city centre. And they are just about the only ones who created jobs, reducing the ranks of the unemployed so readily recruited by roving armed gangs. At the helm of the city's three FM radio stations, they also have a hold over information. Each station has its own political agenda, but all have proven valuable allies to NGOs, who regularly use airtime to broadcast messages on health and other matters of daily survival.
More recently, this new business elite has turned to another force that has filled the law and order vacuum over the past years: Islamic clerics and courts. According to one of the capital's leading businessmen, the cost of maintaining security had become such that "we had to change our methods." Militiamen in the service of Islamic courts have undoubtedly made the capital a safer place, closing down dozens of checkpoints set up by warring factions, cleaning the roads of garbage and earning the trust of people traumatized by years of violence. Each family contributes money--and if they cannot afford to, a son--towards their neighbourhood's security. Businessmen have worked on uniting the Islamic courts to create one giant security organization for the capital. As such, Sharia law, with its merciless treatment of crime, robbery and adultery (sentences range from executions to stoning and chopping of hands and legs), has been introduced with little opposition. Only the warlords who feel their influence undermined have lashed out at the clerics, accusing them of bringing Islamic fundamentalism into the land.
Security aside, Islamic groups have filled a political and social void, from food distribution to healthcare. Local organizations funded with money from Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have reopened some 30 schools in the capital following the same syllabus as in the donor country. The 22 NGOs operating in the city--several of which are run by women--have also become influential players. These organizations played a critical role in campaigning for the Djibouti-backed peace talks in 2000 (see box) that led to the election of a president and 245 MPs, including 25 women, a record number in the country's political history, at a time when Islamic law holds sway over growing numbers.
It is one of the many ironies in this city of 1.5 million where business, Islamic chiefs and NGOs jostle to maintain an extremely fragile order, Will these groups continue to put their weight behind reconciliation? Will the arrival of the new president Abdiquassim Salad Hassam, a member of the Hawiye, Mogadishu's dominant clan, lay arms to rest? All is far from won. Riots over fake currency notes, fuel shortages and spiralling price hikes recently rocked the business district. Several new government representatives have been assassinated. Refugees who have fled drought and war in other parts of the country are crowded into makeshift huts and shell-pocked government buildings. Electricity comes from small generators, water from household tanks or donkey-drawn carts. Although criticized for pillaging the country's natural resources and paying little heed to the needy, the business community is anxious to take a stand. It has already offered to bankroll the demobilization of some 20,000 militia members--a move that is, of course, good for business.
SOMALI JOURNALIST BASED IN MOGADISHU
TIMELINE
1960: The independent Somali Republic comes into being.
1969: General Mohammed Siad Barre takes power in a coup, suspends the Constitution and forms a Supreme Revolutionary Council to administer the country along Marxist lines.
July 1977: Somalia declares war on Ethiopia in the disputed Ogaden region. The Somali government announces the withdrawal of its forces from the region in 1978.
1991: Barre flees Mogadishu in the face of armed opposition. Civil war breaks out between rival warlords.
May 1991: Self-styled Somaliland Republic in the north of the country declares independence.
December 1992-March 1995: A UN force led by the U.S. tries to establish peace and ensure the supply of aid to victims of drought and war. This intervention fails and UN troops pull out in 1995.
July 1998: Autonomy is declared for the north-eastern province of Puntland.
March 2000: Reconciliation talks begin in Arta, Djibouti. For the first time, a wide range of civil society groups are represented. In August, a transitional national assembly is elected based on clan representation.
MOHAMED ABDI [*]: "A UNIQUE INDIGENOUS PROCESS IS AT WORK"
Somalia is the archetypal "failed state" in UN speak. Not without reason: it's the only country in the world where there has been no national state, even on paper, since 1991. No national government, no civil servants, central bank or public services-starting with a police force and a judiciary. Not even nationality in the legal sense, since a Somali passport, which anyone can buy for $30, isn't recognized anywhere in the world.
What's more, the country is divided into three areas--Somaliland in the northwest, Puntland in the northeast, and the southern zone, which is still at war. In Mogadishu, or rather in the part of the city it controls--the new transitional national government operates from a few hotel rooms paid for by local businessmen. Born in August 2000 at a peace conference in Arta, in neighbouring Djibouti, the government isn't recognized by any Western powers, even though many of them have given it "encouragement." It's also opposed by the rulers of Somaliland and Puntland and resisted by those who have plunged the country into chaos--the warlords and their militias.
Armed battles take a daily toll of victims. Despite recent improvements in the situation, 400,000 Somalis don't have enough to eat. About 150,000 have been forced from their homes by floods and a cholera epidemic has broken out.
Yet relative peace and stability have reigned for several years in Somaliland and Puntland. Mogadishu is also returning to normal. A nation seems to be rebuilding itself and a new kind of state emerging through a unique process: indigenous, self-sufficient, from the bottom up, from the local to the national.
A dozen attempts by the Arab League, Egypt and Ethiopia failed to bring reconciliation and reunification to Somalia because they sought to reimpose a classic state [from top down] and to reach an agreement between the warlords.
The building blocks of Somali society are clans, divided up into a multitude of sub-clans. The key institution is the shir, a meeting of clan chiefs, who sometimes have to confer for months before reaching agreement. It was a series of shirs, gradually extended to include clan families, that produced an independent authority in Somaliland, with its own police, army, courts, civil servants, currency and free press.
The economy functions there, with minimal foreign aid, and is buoyed by a new generation of businessmen that the tiny state relies upon to provide public services. The shirs managed to neutralize, indeed eliminate the warlords by playing "civilians" off against "military" people. Most importantly, the government authorities have won acceptance because their laws are based on common law, and increasingly on Koranic law. They also never imposed themselves on the clans. Instead, the government stems from them and strictly respects their power balance.
This approach has been followed elsewhere, notably in Puntland. It was a driving force at the recent Arta conference, which unlike most international gatherings on the issue resembled a modernized version of a giant traditional shir. It lasted more than six months. For the first time, intellectuals, NGO officials and even women -- a first in Somali history -- turned up to speak for the "modern" sector of civil society. Then the elders, the businessmen, religious leaders, traditional chiefs and finally the warlords joined in. The whole driving force of the conference -- which brought together about 2,800 people -- and the elections held during it rested upon balancing the clans.
Does this first attempt at giving Somalia a national government based on the country's social structures and, in a broad sense, its culture, have a chance? Haven't its sponsors -- mainly Djibouti -- tried to go too fast, turning their backs on a more gradual approach that would have involved slowly bringing together or federating self-governed areas until the whole country was covered, in a type of building-block process?
It is safe to conclude that the Arta talks will stand as a decisive turning point, because representatives from across Somali society had a say in the process. The post-Arta era has begun, and it lies in their hands.
* Anthropologist at the Paris-based Institute for Development Research (IRD).
KEY FIGURES
Population: 9.4 million (1999)
GNP per capita: n.a. (1999)
GNP per capita annual growth rate: n.a. (1990-98)
Life expectancy at birth: 48 years (1998)
Adult illiteracy rate: 76% (1998)
Sources: World Bank, UNDP.
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