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Arthru Okwemba
Nairobi, January 14, 2004 (The East African) – When a person boards a plane from Puntland state, for instance, he or she has to pay a visa fee of $20 at Bossaso airport and a similar amount at Hargeisa airport in the Republic of Somaliland.
As one moves down to the central and southern zones, a $20 visa fee is again charged at airstrips or airports controlled by the warlords.
Hence, in the same country, a person can pay the visa fee five times, depending on the zones being visited.
In places where a government exists, some of the money goes to the state. In other areas, it is pocket by warlords and the militiamen.
As such, there are those who are getting super rich as the conflict rages. This is the group locals say would prefer the current state of affairs to continue.
But this does not bother them as much as security does. Some locals are fleeing certain parts of the country to settle in either Puntland or Somaliland, which are relatively stable.
To the people of these two states, the most insecure places are the Southern and Central parts of Somalia, which encompass areas like Mogadishu and Kismayu.
Indeed, when a person passes through Puntland, the perception of a country on fire that many people in Kenya have fizzles out.
In Bossaso, one of Puntlant's most vibrant towns with a strategic port on the Red Sea, business is booming and much of it is conducted in US dollars. You can buy a soft drink or sweets with a dollar, and get change in US cents.
Even elderly businesswomen have mastered the art of differentiating a fake from authentic dollar by just feeling and looking at certain features.
Buildings are coming up fast in Puntland, as people race against time to catch up with opportunities lost through the war. In Bossaso, there is a university known as the University of East Africa.
The residents, who have not had an opportunity to get an education, crave for it, especially the English language.
A few private schools, which offer English language courses, use the Kenyan curriculum, administered by Kenyan teachers, who are increasingly setting-up camp in Somalia.
A primary school teacher, who earns about Ksh7,000 ($90) at home, can earn as much as $500 (Ksh39,000) a month in addition to a free return air ticket to Kenya when schools close. An estimated 600 Kenyans are said to be working in Somaliland in different capacities.
In this respect, despite the over 10 years of conflict that has slowed down development in Somalia, the country appears to be beating the odds. Everybody is going about their business with no apparent worry. There are no people carrying guns around as is popularly believed, although many have them in their homes.
A 16-year-old boy told me he has his own gun, which can come in handy in the event that his clan is attacked by another.
Most of the locals blame the civil war or clan wars, as some call them, for providing the fertile ground for the guns to get into the hands of civilians.
With only $50 (Ksh3,850), one can get a pistol. Double that amount and you have an AK-47 rifle.
The biggest worry is that with so many people owning guns, conflicts can flare up easily and degenerate into something nasty.
If person is killed by someone from another clan, the attack is taken as an assault on the clan of the deceased person. Therefore, the offended clan will kill anybody from the other clan in revenge.
This situation has forced international agencies working in Somalia to define how to offer tenders and contracts, or hire people.
A staff member of an international agency working in southern Somalia says: "In this part of the world, sometimes qualifications do not matter when hiring. You have to know how a clan will take it if you employ someone from a rival clan."
The process is said to be so dicey that the agencies have to consult the elders, who then decide who should get a contract or a job.
On its part, in an attempt to bring law and order, the governments of Puntland and Somaliland have ordered that only law enforcement agencies, the military and few people licensed to have guns should carry them in public.
In addition, many Somalis hope that the ongoing peace talks in Nairobi will come up with solutions that would minimise the current tensions fuelling gun ownership among warring Somali clans.
This kind of hope, however, does not resonate among the Somalis in Somaliland. A number of the locals interviewed are neither anxious nor interested in the whole peace process.
They still harbour - something one discerns easily - a deep mistrust of their brothers in South Somali and Puntland.
Screamed one of them when I inquired why unity had eluded them for so long: "We cannot participate in talks when senior people who served in the Siad Barre government and were architects of the maiming of our people and destruction of our land are now seen as saints in the talks in Nairobi."
There are claims that around 1991 and 1992, Barre's army, which continued fighting after his ouster in January 1991, bombarded Hargeisa, one of the then flourishing towns with a strong political and economic base. The raids are said to have left over 640,000 people dead and the entire town reduced to rubble.
Many of the people in Somaliland have kept pictures and relics of the town immediately after it was flattened as a reminder of the injustice meted out to them.
Pointing at one of these pictures, Egal Mohammed says agonisingly: "We speak the same language, worship the same religion, we are people of the same race, and yet we were battered like this by our fellow brothers. It is difficult to start talking of unity."
Even those who might disagree with him are now losing their patience with the talks, which began in 1991 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia under the facilitation of the United Nations.
To many of them, the consultations have taken too long without any tangible success and are turning out to be an avenue for some people to enrich themselves.
Although most locals and senior politicians who are in favour of the talks say the country can only be governed through a decentralised unitary state, with a loose central government, Somaliland is taking a different stand.
It says it does not even want to be part of that decentralised unitary state. They just want to stand as an independent state. Indeed, they have been fighting hard to win international recognition.
Like a fledgling democratic state, people in Somaliland elected their third president early last year and recently concluded municipal elections. Early this year, they plan to hold parliamentary elections.
Meanwhile, compared with the two states, the other parts of the larger Somalia are struggling to put their act together.
Politics revolves around clans - the Hawiye, Darod, Isaq, Dir, Rahanweyn - a number of which say only self-determination is the way out.
This brings into sharp focus the question, Should self-determination be used by the Somali people as a way of solving conflicts?
In Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Army led by John Garang prefers the same model. Conflict experts argue that if self-determination can bring lasting peace on the continent, then why not think about it in any political parleys?
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