It’s Always Sunny in Somalia
In Somalia, killing is negotiation. –Black Hawk Down
It is hard to think of a country anywhere in the world with a worse reputation for war, brutality, and sheer chaos.
The moment Somalia’s poor reputation hit home for me was when an Afghan I met in Kabul expressed abject horror at the idea of visiting Somalia. Things are bad when people living in an active war-zone are terrified of a country.
Google’s auto-complete is also an interesting exercise. Type in Somalia and the letter “A” and Google returns anarchy, “B” gets you Black Hawk Down and bombing, “C” for conflict, and so on.
The question: Is there another side of Somalia?
One country? Or many?
My old friend, the US State Department, treats all of Somalia equally. Not surprisingly, it emphatically advises against all travel to the country.
It only once mentions distinct regions — and in doing so makes clear they are all equally dangerous: “All U.S. citizens traveling to Somalia, including Somaliland and Puntland, are advised to obtain kidnapping and recovery insurance prior to travel.”
I check my travel insurance policy and find kidnapping nestled between lost luggage and delayed flights.
Reassuring.
Arriving in Somaliland
Through friends, I learn the autonomous northern part of Somalia, called Somaliland, is considered much safer than the south. I book a flight. An unannounced schedule change leads to a last-minute red-eye flight on an antique Jubba Airways jet. Sadly, the old MD80 looks better than the American Airlines planes I flew on in Dallas.
I finally land in Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital, exhausted.
The airport is a breeze. The staff are exceedingly friendly. The immigration officer beams when he sees my US passport. The customs officer teases me over my minimal luggage. A janitor whistles and says hello. I wonder if everyone is secretly members of a Somali off-Broadway troupe, ready to spontaneously break into a musical routine – or if I accidentally popped an Ambien instead of a malaria pill.
Upon exiting into the bright Somali sunshine, my host is nowhere to be seen. I feel panic welling up inside: I don’t know where I am staying, my phone does not work, and I have no local currency.
A man asks if I need a taxi. I decline and brace for a hoard of other drivers to descend. Yet, no one else approaches. The original driver returns with a chair and suggests I wait in the shade.
My host, Mohammed, arrives and apologizes profusely. He expected it to take longer to clear immigration; it took me less than 20 minutes from touch-town to exit. I hope you’re taking notes, LAX.
We drive into town, only 10 minutes away. We stop at a statue commemorating Somaliland’s independence.
A Crowd Gathers
As Mohammed explains the statue’s significance, a crowd gathers around us. I feel nervous. Isn’t rule #1 of travel to avoid gathering crowds? I suspect rule #2 is to avoid being the cause of said crowds.
It turns out people are eager to have their picture taken with the statue and share their stories.
“Until we won independence in 1991, we were not allowed to build anything greater than one-story high, own phones, or obtain any managerial government jobs.”
“The southern Barre regime bombed us and committed many other crimes against civilians. Everyone educated was either kidnapped or killed.”
“People only hear about warlords and pirates in Somalia. But we are peaceful.”
The short history: British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland joined in 1960 after gaining independence from their respective colonial powers. After years of repression by the south and a civil war, Somaliland declared independence in 1991. Somaliland, with almost 4M people, comprises about a third of Somalia’s population.
However, Somaliland’s self-proclaimed independence remains unrecognized by any other country.
Posing after storytelling.
A Different Somalia
In Somaliland:
- It is safe to walk around at all hours of the day and night
- In the last ten years, there has been the sum total of one incident of terrorism
- Presidents step down peacefully; the country has democratically elected four leaders since 1991
We walk around town freely, eat at local restaurants, and drive into the countryside. Locals approach out of curiosity, not to harass or beg. Mohammed explains, “Somalis are a nomadic people. Visitors are therefore treated as respected guests.”
I inquire about Al-Shabaab, the Somali Islamist group notorious for attacks throughout Eastern Africa. Mohammed gets visibly animated. “People in Somaliland have no patience for extremism. If someone were to espouse Al-Shabaab ideology, they would be immediately reported and detained. Al-Shabaab is not welcome here.”
Traditional meal of Somali rice and camel steak.
West Knows Best?
A friend of Mohammed’s, Khadar, joins us for dinner. He works for a NGO, somewhat uncommon in Hargeisa. Since Somaliland is officially unrecognized, it receives less aid than the southern government in Mogadishu. I ask whether more aid would help Somaliland.
He responds, “Maybe yes, maybe no. Aid comes with strings attached. The West often tried to instill its own values and culture. This does not always work. Look at Mogadishu – or Haiti – two of the foreign aid and NGO capitals of the world.”
He gives the example of local elections.
The 2003 elections were funded internally; the 2012 elections by foreigners. The foreign funding including certain requirements such as banning candidate symbols (e.g. a camel) on the ballot and requiring named candidates instead of parties for each local race.
The result? A ballot with thousands of candidates that many illiterate Somalis did not understand. Voter turn-out dropped and violence increased due the resulting confusion.
He concludes, “The West does not always know best. Local culture and customs matter, even if they seem strange or antiquated to outsiders. We do not send Somali observers to America, despite the Florida fiasco in the 2000 presidential election.”
Sunset over Hargeisa.
Similarities and Differences
Similar to Kurdistan, Somaliland proved that one country can have many different realities.
Somaliland also echoes my experience in Burundi, where locals felt that outsiders unfairly claim superiority without respecting local customs and culture.
Finally, like Afghanistan, Somaliland highlighted media skew. No one reports on the two decades of relative peace in Somaliland, its growing economy, or desire for independence.
Instead, media coverage goes straight from Black Hawk Down (warlords) to Captain Phillips (pirates). Perhaps the next movie about Somalia could instead be It’s Always Sunny In Somaliland, featuring the trials and tribulations of the goofy yet lovable Hargeisa airport workers.
As one Somali tells me, “It’s day and night between us and the south. We feel in control of our own destiny; we just need the world to recognize us and understand we are different.”
If you have not already, read more about my journey, sign-up for future updates, and follow along real-time on Instagram.
Paul, I have to say that Silicon Valley networking parties have more danger than this trip of yours.
This!
And more protesters as well, from what I have heard…
Keep rocking, Paul!
I love your purpose and style, keep it long too ; )))
It looks like short trips though, are you planning to stay a few weeks in a row somewhere?
Not on this part of the trip, sadly. Since I am almost always staying with local hosts, it’s a bit much to ask someone to take me in for multiple weeks — and finding more than one or two hosts in the country in advance proved to be a challenge. But knowing what I know now I would be exponentially more comfortable going out and exploring almost all of these countries on my own. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose. Next time! 🙂
And you don’t mention Qat ?!?
Actually, none of the people I met in Somaliland were using it, at least at the time — unlike in Djibouti where it was literally everywhere. It’s definitely a very interesting and controversial cultural phenomenon. Honestly, I am a bit nervous to really express an opinion on it without spending more time really understanding its history, impact on society, etc.
But Somaliland is not like Mogadishu. Are you planning to go there? Mogadishu is what evokes warlords and danger, I was hoping this post would be about that city. Somaliland is safe and can hardly be called Somalia.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find any local contacts in Mogadishu through either of my two usual networks: facebook friends of friends and CouchSurfing. My understanding is that I would not have been allowed to deplane in Mogadishu as a foreigner unless I had a local sponsor (government or NGO) or “fixer”. Given that “fixers” seemed to run in the $500-1000/day range, it was sadly not a feasible option for this trip. But I would certainly like to go one day.
But perhaps more importantly, my point was not to say the safety of Somaliland and the South are the same; quite the opposite, in fact. But from both a policy and media point of view, the two are almost always lumped together. According to every nation in the world and virtually all international agencies, Somaliland is part of Somalia.
Thanks for writing!
Yes, I love seeing the distinction that the people want people and are tired of fighting. It’s the governments that are still at war. While we are our governments, let us love each other first and foremost. Thank you for posting this up. It’s so uplifting!
Thanks, Glenn!
You’re journeys been an eyeopener for me-I should have known better having first hand experience of skewed media reporting of areas I live in-you’re reminding me of the inherent goodness of the majority of the worlds people-thank you Paul.
My pleasure — thank you for following along!
Thanks! There are not many “Travelers” out there! Phil
You are a simple man, and your analysis portray that simplicity, i say this in a positive way. As for the poltiics, i am sure you know, most of what the locals told you about the south is not true. Like being denied jobs lol or not being able to build more than one story high. Again the situation in Somali is never simple, the so called south contains Puntland that is geographically to the north of Hargeisa and is very peaceful and not to mention economically richer, and the so called North has regions that are very unstable and contested by both Somaliland and Puntland. I am sure about one thing, You could not visit Mogadishu without spending at least 1000 a day because, Mogadishu is expensive.
Thanks for writing, Jamal. I sadly am in no position to verify the historical accuracy of some of the claims made by people I met; I can only pass them along. But I have also heard that Puntland is peaceful and prosperous and would love to visit one day. I too have heard Mogadishu is prohibitively expensive, particularly as a foreigner. Hopefully one day that will no loner be the case.
“after gaining independence from their respective colonial masters”
You probably didn’t mean it to be offensive, but I found that statement quite offensive and as far as Somaliland is concerned, its not historically accurate. Somaliland was not a colony, it was a protectorate of Great Britain and it only became such because the community leaders had signed treaties with the Brits.
The primary concern of the British with regards to Somaliland was only ever to deny their European competitors a foothold in that very strategic part of Africa. There is also another reason Somaliland wasn’t a colony as say Kenya was: Somaliland is and was not particularly suitable for commercial scale agriculture and there were no other natural resources as such. Somaliland also did not have large urban population whom the Brits could tax or govern because the population, beyond the port of Berbera and the towns in the hinterland, was largely nomadic. Because by this time >90% of Africa had already been colonised, the community leaders agreed to this arrangement in return for protection to ensure that they could keep out other European and foreign powers from their country
This meant that Brits only ever had a very small presence in Somaliland, often not extending beyond the port town of Berbera and a few other towns. And for the most part, the locals were free and did indeed rule themselves. At no point did the Somali inhabitants see the Brits as “their masters”; Somalis are known for their independence and strict adherence to their culture and religion.
Above I mentioned the treaties that the community leaders/elders signed with the Brits. Those treaties defined very clearly and unequivocally the nature and extent of the relationship between Great Britain and Somaliland. The Brits could not: claim Somaliland as a colony, or claim proprietorship or sovereignty over the land, except to the extent allowed by the treaties; marry the locals; build any churches or propagate their religion openly or distribute bibles; bury their dead except in one specified graveyard in the town of Hargeisa; bear children in the country; construct buildings or plant flora except in those towns specified in the treaties.
And the Brits had good reason to agree to the above terms because Somalis fought one of the, longest running and bloodiest colonial resistance wars in the history of Africa. Somalis fought invading forces during the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. Somalis had previously fought and successfully repelled Portuguese expeditions throughout the 16th century and liberated various other African peoples in South-Eastern Africa (in places like Kilwa). In these later times, the Somali states, and particularly the Dervish State, concurrently fought and successfully repelled continues and sometimes co-ordinated attacks by invading British, Italian and Abyssinian forces for a period of 25 years or quarter of a century.
By 1920 when >90% of Africa was colonised, Somalis (the Dervish state) maintained their independence and were indeed the only independent Muslim power on the African continent during WW1. In total 4 British expeditions/attempts to militarily conquer the northern part of the Somali Peninsula were repelled and ended in failure. In this war Corfield, the man leading the British expeditions to the Somali coast was killed as the British and other invading forces were repelled. Concurrently Abyssinian (Ethiopian) expeditions/invasions into Somali lands were on-going, which were as part of a conspired joints concerted effort with the British. One of these expeditions consisted of an army of 11,000 Abyssinian troops – they were soundly defeated, with only 200 soldiers returning alive and the Abyssinians subsequently refrained from further expeditions into the interior of Somalia.
When the British could not over-run the local Somali Dervish State they did two things: (1) they signed treaties with the locals which resulted in what prospectively was known as The British Somaliland Protectorate and (2) the Brits used aerial bombardment in 1920 to win the war decisively and defeat the resistance. The Northern Somali Peninsula became the first place in sub-saharan Africa and the second place in Continent of Africa where aircraft was used in warfare.
Ahmed- wow! Thank you for the fantastic history lesson. I have not only corrected the post, but also learned quite a bit in the process!
You’re very welcome. And if you want to learn more about Somaliland/Somalia visit Skyscrapercity Somalia where you can see picture galleries of Somali cities, landscapes, people and read about the literature and poetry of “the nation of poets”.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3389
But other than my above comment, I want to thank you Paul for your post. Its very refreshing to see Somali lands shown in a positive light. The reality is that Somaliland is very different from Somalia proper.
Thank u very much Mr Paul your short trip that you are in Somalia Hargeisa, I come from south Somalia and i am witness that Somali land are very peaceful and different other Somalia because of that peace we proud of them, we love them but we always one, there will be no seperation,, i wish u will be in Mogadishu or Growe punt land or kismaayo jubland in one day. Thnx alot again and again
Thank you for your message. I too hope to one day visit both Puntland and Mogadishu!
thank you very much for your visiting of Somaliland and I would like to request form you, how do you think if I can change only the head of the sentance your reporting like this:- IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN SOMALILAND, THE OTHER PART OF SOMALIA
Ahh, I think while that is more accurate, it’s unfortunately a bit long. More than that, the rest of the world thinks of Somalia as one entity — not as two separate places. Hopefully after reading this people will understand that the reality is indeed quite different and Somaliland is essentially an autonomous country, just without recognition.
I love your posts, getting a glimpse into less commonly visited countries – especially ones deemed dangerous – is always fascinating. It’s amazing that there are really very few countries in the world which are entirely dangerous, most have some safe pockets at the very least.
Have you looked into visiting the Yemeni island of Socotra? The island has stayed very stable due to its small, rural population, and I believe there are direct flights from Dubai these days which mean you don’t have to stop at the wartorn mainland. Seems like the only safe way to visit Yemen these days, unfortunately.
Thanks for the kind words, Alex. Socotra is very high on my bucket list, actually. It looks beautiful. Sana’a is also supposed to be quite charming, except for the current crisis. Let’s hope Yemen makes it onto my next itinerary!
Came across this and have been reading your various articles. How fabulous and fascinating! Thank you for taking the time to not only visit and see, but to share with us these insights. I would love to be able to travel the world, as I did when I was a kid with my family. The world has indeed changed, but after reading your outlook I am hoping that more people will see that not everything is the black and white of a disproportionate media. And there is more to the headlines. I like to follow along on your narrations, via google maps and therein live vicariously through you. Again thank you for this. Although can you tell me where Somaliland starts from its southern brother? After all…It doesn’t really show in the map. LOL
Thanks for the kind comments. I am glad you’ve enjoyed following along!
As for your Somaliland question, it’s a bit difficult to answer given that Somaliland still lacks international recognition and also has some internal disputes as to exactly where its border stands. But I found this map to be helpful.