Somalia Economy

When the United States and the rest of the world turned away from an ungrateful Somalia seven months ago, some predicted that clan leaders might be able to stabilize their homeland, free of outside meddling. Others foresaw an inevitable resumption of the desert country's nasty warring, and so what? Actually, Somalia has dabbled with both scenarios. The result has been a ripe, still-painful, always-scary experiment in deconstruction.

It has become a common sight here: barefoot stevedores, their glistening ebony faces powdered with dust and sand, staggering up from the ocean onto a sand beach that has become the main trading port of this ravaged city in the Horn of Africa. On their backs they lug 110-pound sacks of Indonesian cement, Brazilian sugar or flour from the United Arab Emirates. Others clamber atop barges to discharge crates of foreign food, electronic goods, car engine parts or generators. A fee of $1.

Bright and early each brutally hot day in Somalia, Ali Osman Hassan shows up for work in the middle of nowhere, on the rocky road that links Mogadishu with the interior. Using his hands, Hassan scoops dirt and rocks into a foot-deep pothole, sculpting a smooth, rounded top. As each vehicle approaches, he draws attention to his handiwork by spinning a rolled-up piece of cloth like a cowboy's lasso over the filled pothole.

Mohammed Awil Mohammed watches with satisfaction as four women crouch on the sandy ground outside his shop in the musty heat of the dawn here, pulling the husk from frankincense with their fingers and teeth. Each worker, her lips ringed with white powder from her labors, will clean and sort at least 35 pounds of the clumps of aromatic gum before her day ends at 11 p.m.

It has become a common sight here: barefoot stevedores, their glistening ebony faces powdered with dust and sand, staggering up from the ocean onto a sand beach that has become the main trading port of this ravaged city in the Horn of Africa. On their backs they lug 110-pound sacks of Indonesian cement, Brazilian sugar or flour from the United Arab Emirates. Others clamber atop barges to discharge crates of foreign food, electronic goods, car engine parts or generators. A fee of $1.

The first sign of real hope for this nation's war-ruined economy arrived in a heavily armed van at the Hotel Sahafi last week wearing an Australian bush hat and a pocketful of promise: Greg Clutton was here to buy bananas--millions of them.

Lost in the shadow of a Gargantuan U.S. Navy vessel loading helicopters, tanks and trucks bound for home at the south pier of Mogadishu Port, scores of sweating Somali stevedores tossed 100-pound sacks of chilies and sugar off the Al Mannal, a weather-beaten dhow, while another group loaded it with hay.

Mohammed Awil Mohammed watches with satisfaction as four women crouch on the sandy ground outside his shop in the musty heat of the dawn here, pulling the husk from frankincense with their fingers and teeth. Each worker, her lips ringed with white powder from her labors, will clean and sort at least 35 pounds of the clumps of aromatic gum before her day ends at 11 p.m.

At the end of the 20th Century, an era marked by space exploration, computer wizardry and test-tube babies, the status of the human race may more accurately be reflected in a sobering statistic: 786 million people--almost one in every six on the globe--are suffering from acute or chronic hunger. More than a billion more face various forms of serious malnutrition.

Your article on Somalia's ruined schools (Dec. 30) is very informative and painted an accurate picture of the magnitude of the wreckage that the 2-year-old civil war brought. I am not certain, however, whether this civil war is caused by the "dispute between nomads and farmers," or a power struggle between different nomadic clans, which is what all the protagonists belong to. In fact, Somalia's civil war is a war of nomadic clans in an agricultural territory. It is, therefore, the farmers who are most affected by the famine.

When the United States and the rest of the world turned away from an ungrateful Somalia seven months ago, some predicted that clan leaders might be able to stabilize their homeland, free of outside meddling. Others foresaw an inevitable resumption of the desert country's nasty warring, and so what? Actually, Somalia has dabbled with both scenarios. The result has been a ripe, still-painful, always-scary experiment in deconstruction.

The first sign of real hope for this nation's war-ruined economy arrived in a heavily armed van at the Hotel Sahafi last week wearing an Australian bush hat and a pocketful of promise: Greg Clutton was here to buy bananas--millions of them.

Lost in the shadow of a Gargantuan U.S. Navy vessel loading helicopters, tanks and trucks bound for home at the south pier of Mogadishu Port, scores of sweating Somali stevedores tossed 100-pound sacks of chilies and sugar off the Al Mannal, a weather-beaten dhow, while another group loaded it with hay.

Bright and early each brutally hot day in Somalia, Ali Osman Hassan shows up for work in the middle of nowhere, on the rocky road that links Mogadishu with the interior. Using his hands, Hassan scoops dirt and rocks into a foot-deep pothole, sculpting a smooth, rounded top. As each vehicle approaches, he draws attention to his handiwork by spinning a rolled-up piece of cloth like a cowboy's lasso over the filled pothole.

At the end of the 20th Century, an era marked by space exploration, computer wizardry and test-tube babies, the status of the human race may more accurately be reflected in a sobering statistic: 786 million people--almost one in every six on the globe--are suffering from acute or chronic hunger. More than a billion more face various forms of serious malnutrition.

As the TV airwaves fill with images of international troops in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, America gains an opportunity to learn about a country whose political problems and human suffering have too long been neglected. I know from personal experience--I struggled to bring 13 in-laws out of the Liboi refugee camp in Kenya in 1991, at a time when everyone seemed to turn a deaf ear to the need for aid in this then-forgotten corner of the world.

THE WHITE-ROBED SURGEON, AWEYS ABDI OMAR, hands covered in blood, was cutting into the abdomen of a Somali man in Mogadishu's Digfer Hospital when half a dozen armed men burst into the operating room, carrying a moaning figure in their arms. "Doctor, you have to leave that one," they said, pointing to the anesthetized patient on the table. "Our brother has been shot." "But this patient may die if I leave," Omar protested. "Your brother is not hurt badly. He will have to wait."