The Copper Wire 

Ali A. Jama - Toronto 1992 

Television cameras and the extensive coverage Somalia was subjected to after the arrival of the US led multinational forces in Dec 1992, has exposed many sides of the country. Somalia never saw such intensity of media. For the newsman covering these operations it was a thrill, an exotic thing to be doing in a far away land. This is the country that for so many years was a taboo to any western media and in which so much has happened unnoticed, and so much is unaccounted for. For years Somalia had been living in a total isolation from the rest of the world so that a lot of unholy things could be carried out behind the screens. The fabric of the society was slowly and meticulously disassembled for a period of 20 years. What started as standard dictatorship in a third world country soon became a clan dictatorship. A dangerous new page has been opened in the history of Somalia. The assumption that a state and its properties are owned by a clan is far more dangerous than the standard dictators that other parts of Africa has seen. Clan dictatorship in Somalia believed, naively or otherwise that it is okay to have everything for the clan and nothing for the rest or perhaps the rest will collect the crumbs and be satisfied. They believed that it is okay to have a portable generator to keep the beer cold while the rest was toiling to make ends meet. They believed that it is okayto have children at schools in London and Washington while the school system was halting to ground in the country. Just in case, buy a house in the US or Europe. They believed that it would not be necessary because of the special forces, the omnipresent national security services and special of the special forces, the "77" brigade, the notorious Lanta Burr. They believed that dismantling the very fabric of the society, they would have an excellent chance of always staying in power. Sure they did dismantle the fabric of the society, but gone with the society was the power. Power, the driving force for the demise of country, was gone when there was no body left to rule. Is this difficult to figure out? I always thought that people in responsible positions can analyze things rationally. But that is not the case with clan dictatorship. It would seem quite obvious from the outside, but you know people quickly forget. The guys with the portable generators for the beer did not know that people were starving to death in many parts of the country including Mogadishu from early 80's.

The world has woken up with shock and horror to discover at last that not everything is alright in the country. For years Immigration Canada had hard time understanding what the frightened Somalis were telling them. In the absence of any mechanism for proving or disproving the stories the Somalis were telling about the atrocities back home, they adopted a cautious approach which essentially says that unless you are proven wrong you are okay.

It is understandable that the world has some problem comprehending exactly what went wrong. How could people who are supposed to be the most homogeneous group that formed a nation in post-colonial Africa, could do so much of self destruction ? How could this happen in an era when human rights is taking increasingly important role in business and political lives of nations. How could normal people let five hundred thousand of their folks starve to death and still put a happy face at the glare of TV camera lights. What actually constitutes humanity? And when you are a powerful "warlord" who are you accountable to? My father, as simple as he was, was very righteous man. He always asked me not to eat in front of the hungry. I thought sometimes he tended to exaggerate the extent of other peoples problems. Why should you care other peoples problems anyway? He would tell me that once other peoples problems ceases to be yours you lose your reason for being a human. I thought that was being too idealistic or even naive. But 30 years later I think he was right. We, Somalis let 500000 of our people starve to death, therefore by extension there is no reason for us to claim humanity. Or is it? I have made extensive study in the economics of process industries. Does it make any economic sense to strip the copper wires of electrical distribution system of Mogadishu and sell them as scrap? How about the underground water pipes and the telephone cables. If you add the cost of manpower needed to dig up and opening up 1/2 m ditch to remove ¾ inch carbon steel tubing, cut to size, ship them and sell them, I do not understand how this operation would ever make any economic sense in this world we live in. What use do you make of old telephone cables anyway ? So this operation is not predicated by any economic considerations, so what is it ? I am not sure if I can answer all the questions around this strange actions, but I will try nevertheless to give you some of the things that went wrong.

You could roughly divide the Somali population into 80/20 ratio between pastoral, nomadic and urban agricultural. So it is the former group that sets the social and economic life of Somalia. It is the trade of livestock and their products that sustain the economies of overwhelming majority of urban centers. Trade with the outside was mostly based again on livestock. Centers like Berbera and Bossaso owed their whole existence to livestock trade. Urban agricultural sector provided in turn commodities that the pastoral sector needed. There was a continuos demographic movement from the country side to the urban centers in the south like Mogadisho, Merca, Brava, Kismayo, where there are large permanently urban population mostly based on agriculture, the so called urban dwellers in most of the centers in middle and northern parts of the country were mostly of pastoral background and have some presence in both setting ; thus the line that divides the 2 is blurred.

In the harsh reality of the pastoral setting where life is a continuos struggle with natures elements, a set of relations have been developed to help one combat these elements. These are kinship relations further expanded into tribal relations where one is expected to share the burden of protection of the group. This relations are not something that has been invented by anyone, but they evolved automatically from the needs of the group to achieve a common objective. And so came the tribes, and clans. The desire to identify with a clan is greatly diminished as one goes to urban more agricultural based areas, as the elements become less and less severe.

Coming back to why the copper wire has been stripped, we have to go back to schools of the nation in the 70's and 80's.

When the military regime took over the country in Oct 1969, the institutions were functioning well and the schools were teaching students useful education. Our students were competing, with honorable results, in many educational institutions around the world. They were being taught in schools to love their neighbor and do no harm to anyone. Learning was a pleasure because it was rewarded. The dollar was trading at 6 shillings in the banks. There was no black market on currency exchange. Average government salary was 300 S.Sh. The nation was not in debt. Mogadishu population was 400000.

In 1989 the number of school buildings had increased by 200-300 %, the nominal student body has also increased by almost the same factor. But by then dollar was not available for trade in the banks, the black market price was 2000 S.Sh to the dollar, the average government salary was 1200 S.Sh. On the average the student was attending 2-5 % of the class lectures. The rest of the time they were either selling cigarettes to complement the meager family income or go and eat Qat. For parents school and education was no longer a priority. Schools totally ceased to be educational institutions, they transformed, perhaps unknowingly, into a dangerous breeding grounds for soldiers of a new kind. Soldiers that learned only one thing, get rich at any cost. The regime in Mogadishu lost control of the northern parof the country. Maiirtenia, Mudug and Hiran for all practical purposes had undeclared autonomy for some years. The nation had billions of dollars in debt. What remained of the national institutions like banks, police, armed forces, etc were only serving privileged few. Despite all the economic difficulties land in " Boli Qaran " was a premium and there was construction boom. Some homes had several cars parked in front. Mogadishu had the only working telephone system in the nation. Mogadisho had also 2 million people, roughly 50% of the nations population. AND REMEMBER!, it is not a happy, normal 2 million people. The whole fabric of the society was bursting at the seams. We reached the critical mass. Give any social scientist these leads and ask for possible scenarios. In fact you don't have to be a social scientist to understand what a potential time bomb this is. 

For so long the government, the offices, the good cars, the running water, the telephones, and anything else that functioned in the country was associated with very privileged few. The ordinary masses hated these objects of privilege just as much as the people who enjoyed them. When the final meltdown happened early 1991, the chronically deprived majority targeted what they have been deprived of, pipes that carry running water, telephones, the copper wires that feed electricity to the privileged, governmental offices, the computers and the joysticks that only few had access to, the files and the filing cabinets that sustained the bureaucracy of the country. In other words everything and anything the ordinary street man ever associated with the ruling junta. The slogan was if we cant have them nobody will. 

That is at least some of the reasons the electrical copper wires were stripped. A form of protest, a powerful protest . End