Boosaaso: A Somali City Thrives Without Aid

Stephen Buckley.

Boosaaso, Somalia --For much of its history, this dot on northeastern Somalia's mostly barren desert landscape has been a dreary, underdeveloped outpost with a battered economy, few government services and virtually no infrastructure.

Then, in 1991, Somalia's government fell. The country tumbled into an ongoing civil war. And Somalis were left to fend for themselves.

In Boosaaso, that has meant harnessing community resources and talent to jump-start its import-export-based economy and provide crucial services. A businessman has established a citywide telephone system. Teachers work for no salary. A volunteer police force has been created. Boosaaso's council of Muslim elders effectively acts as the town's judiciary.

Today Boosaaso, without a formal government, has become a boom town, with one of Somalia's busiest ports, a burgeoning population and the kind a daily stability envied by much of this deeply troubled East African country.

Boosaaso's story is increasingly common throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where many communities, abandoned by governments that either dissolved or hopelessly dysfunctional, have had to forge their own paths to survival.

In Liberia, paralyzed by six years of civil war, rural residents have banded together to improve food-growing techniques, working on each other's farms to make planting and harvesting more efficient.

Rural Nigerians, victim of a vicious economic downturn that has brought prohibitively high prices, have fashioned food-sharing schemes to ensure that their communities do not starve.

In Zaire, where citizens have suffered under three decades of one of the continent's most corrupted regimes, businessmen have stepped in to pay salaries of soldiers and policemen.

"Throughout the continent, governments have been conspicuous in their absence," said Rakiya Omaar, a Somali who heads the london-based African Rights organization. "They have not provided basics such as water, schools, hospitals. For a large percentage of people, government has just not been there. They have to learn to cope on their own."

In some cases, Africans have revived, or strengthened, traditional cultural habits and institutions that dominated their lives before Western-style governments came to their countries.

"We have had to go back to our roots," said Gen. Mohamed Abshir Musse, Boosaaso's de facto administrator. "We have had to go back to traditional ways of solving our problems, traditional ways of working together. Otherwise, Boosaaso would not have peace."

Much of this fractured country has not found peace, as fighting between groups loyal to clan leaders Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mohamed Mahdi continues. Since U.N. peacekeepers left Somalia a year ago, Mogadishu, its capital, has remained the country's most unstable area. Mogadishu's port, once Somalia's most important, is closed, and thousands of the city's residents have bolted for the countryside.

Burst of fighting still ripple through Somalia's rural areas, but some communities have carved out a semblance of normalcy. They have formed governing authorities. Schools are open. Police forces are set in place. Perched between desert wasteland and the stunning blue vastness of the Gulf of Aden, Boosaaso, 905 miles north of Mogadishu, shimmers with evidence of its economic and social success. Hotels, some with satellite dishes, have sprouted all over town. Piles of rock, signifying places where residents are about to build, litter the city. Trucks, hauling goods and construction material, clog roads.

Boosaaso's population estimated at 100,000, has increased fivefold since Somalia's government disintegrated. Although members of the Darod clan historically have controlled the city, Boosaaso has lured Somalis from other major groups, unusual in a land riven by inter-clan tensions. The central city in a region called Bari, Boosaaso also has attracted refugees from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.

Tens of thousands of former Mogadishu residents have flocked here. They are people like Amur Ahmed Mohamed, who traveled nine days-- mostly through bush to avoid bandits--with his wife and three daughters before arriving here last June.

Mohamed, a tailor, could not leave his home in Mogadishu without being robbed or shot at. Three of siblings died during the war. His wife and children lived at the mercy of thugs who camped in front of Mohamed's house and sometimes offered food. He rarely had money.

Today he works 12 hours a day, six days a week. He takes home $50 a week, a fortune for him. He is planning to build a house and is looking to buy a car. And although his clan originates in southern Mogadishu, he said he has had no trouble in Boosaaso.

"This place is like Somalia's United States," said Mohamed, 23. "It has been nine months, but I feel as if we just came yesterday. I cannot say how happy we are. When you have peace, you can have a life."

Boosaaso's primary source of revenue is its port, build just as Somalia's government was collapsing. The facility on the shores of the Gulf of Aden crackles with daily activity, as dhows and ships from Arab states bring a bevy of goods that fill Boosaaso's stores and markets.

Boosaaso relies on exports of livestock, annually sending tens of thousands of goats, sheeps and camels into Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The port contributes to the upkeep of the town's police station, schools, hospitals and power stations. A handful of U.N. agencies and local and international aid groups also provide financial support.

The port helps keep institutions such as the Haji Mire primary school running. At the school, Boosaaso's largest, every student has pen, paper and workbooks. Their teachers have chalk. Such basic tools are often missing in sub-Saharan Africa's schools.

Teachers and administrators at the 900-pupil school work for food supplied by two U.N. aid groups, but most supplement that "income." Headmaster Mohoud Aheol Mohoud said community elders help supply his food. A host of relatives provide shelter. Yet he shrugs off his hardship. "When we had government, we were not paid very much anyway," he said.

The city also has a reliable power supply and, thanks to businessman Ismael Abdi Ahmed, a telephone system for the first time in its history. Two and a half years ago Ahmed, 35, bought a satellite dish and opened the Netco phone company with 20 lines. Today there are 260 lines throughout the city, and two buildings where residents line up at phone booths to place local and international calls.

Ahmed, the town's wealthiest businessman, has established a business where employees come 10 different sub-clans. In Somalia, entrepreneurs typically saturate their companies with members of their own groups.

"I do not look at what [sub-clan] they belong to, which is very abnormal in Somalia," the businessman said. "They just have to be professionals--people who are educated and smart. The main thing I'm interested in is whether they can do the job."

Like other Boosaaso businessmen, Ahmed want a government that will oversee the Bari region. As the city grows, residents say they need the structures of a formal local government to keep law and order and to provide essential services.

Businessmen want an investment code to protect the international entrepreneurs, who currently balk at bringing projects to Boosaaso because it has no such shields. Civil servants want salaries. Truckers need an organized road system. Builders and merchants need regulations for constructing homes and establishing businesses. Justice authorities need a regional court system.

A body of politicians, elders and businessmen has strained for two years to form a regional authority that would address such issues. Last week the groups began final negotiations, and it hopes to have a governing council in place within weeks.

For now, Boosaaso's clan elders and sub-elders are the closest thing to government, mediating a range of disputes from criminal acts to traffic arguments. If one Boosaaso resident slays another, for example, elders decide whether the aggrieved family will receive a payment of camels or whether the accused will be executed.

"We have tried to encourage more execution in order to discourage people from killing," said Baldogle Ali Farah, of Boosaaso's council of elders.

Yet Farah said the elders know they cannot carry the society on their shoulders. "We definitely need at least a local government, because the elders are confined only to solving problems," he said. "We just cannot provide the kind of administration that governments provide."