Dispatched to Britain from Somalia as an orphan and war refugee at the age of
10, he was supposed to be picked up at Heathrow by an uncle. The uncle never
showed, so immigration packed him off to a Salvation Army hostel in Kings Cross.
Two weeks later the Army informed him his bed was needed by another and put him
on the street. Aged 10. In Kings Cross, the most notoriously rackety quarter in
central London.
He begged, slept on the street, was taken in by a kindly Italian prostitute
(that bed, too, was often required by others). Finally he moved on to Regent’s
Park mosque, where an anxious relative from Liverpool – not the delinquent uncle
– tracked him down and reclaimed him for the family.
What an introduction to the civilised world of peace and full stomachs and
Christian compassion! He passed an angry youth in Liverpool, adopting in turn
anarchist and black nationalist creeds (radical Islam never claimed him) but
obtained a degree from Liverpool University and achieved that Dickens trick,
coming from nowhere to reach a position of considerable prosperity. Today he
owns a home in Milton Keynes but lives with his wife and two children in Perth,
Australia, in a newly-built five-bedroom house.
It was thanks to Abdulrahim that
I learned the surprising news that a property boom is under way here. In
Somaliland, mind, not Somalia. He has just sold for $45,000 a
piece of land he bought five years ago for $6,000. A building boom is under way
in tandem. The British never went higher than a couple of storeys during their
brief tenure, but now Hargeisa’s chaotic and shabby centre is punctuated by a
handful of new, cleanly-designed office blocks.
There is also a boom in higher education: while we talked, the
lobby of the Mansoor Hotel filled with tall, lean Somalis crowned with crimson
mortar boards, celebrating their graduation from a local university. Educated,
successful young Somalis from the diaspora, people like Abdulrahim, are flocking
back to work for aid organisations or contribute in other ways. He himself is
working with local orphans like his childhood self, and dreams of building the
city’s first swimming pool.
All this evidence of incipient prosperity is found in the most
spectacularly failed state in the world, the world’s largest generator per
capita of asylum-seekers, where the fragile calm of the capital Mogadishu was
again shattered last weekend by 17 grenade attacks and a bomb that killed
15.
But Somaliland, the locals tell you, is totally different, and
it’s true. A white man can walk the streets without armed guards or fear of
summary decapitation. The last bomb blast here was in 2007. The former British
protectorate in the north-west of the country declared UDI in 1991. Today it has
its own flag, currency, army, parliament, president, judiciary; the most popular
name for shops and cafes is 18 May, the date when Somaliland cut itself adrift
from its increasingly wild and dysfunctional compatriot lands to the east and
south.
The only thing Somaliland lacks
is international recognition. The component pieces of Yugoslavia are lining up
to enter the EU, controversial little
Kosovo is recognised by more than 100 countries, South Sudan
provided an African precedent – but no one is interested in granting Somaliland
what it craves: outside endorsement of its internal peace and harmony and
fledgling development.
Returning expats like Abdulrahim understand why it hasn’t
happened. Unlike Yugoslavia and Sudan, which broke apart along religious lines,
Somaliland’s only differentiation from the south is that it was under British,
not Italian, colonial domination. In all respects of language, culture,
ethnicity, tradition, Somalia is one nation.
But the south remains a desperate basket case, still
terrifyingly fragile. Somaliland’s recognition by the outside world must not
wait upon the success of state-building in the south, where too many players
have plenty to gain by stoking the violence. Somaliland has plenty of problems,
but in a world haunted by failed states and the violence and chaos they unleash,
it is a little treasure.
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