Somalis Try to Begin Again

In a sweltering, bombed-out grain silo here, a group of would-be founding fathers is plotting the birth of a nation.

Or more accurately, the rebirth of one.

After 15 years of anarchy, a fledgling Somalian parliament formed outside the country is meeting for the first time on Somalian soil in this crumbling southern city. The transitional government is the latest in a string of attempts to restore law and order to the Horn of Africa nation that fractured in the collapse of the dictatorship of Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and the disastrous international intervention that followed.

Outside the makeshift parliament, where legislators began meeting last month, piles of rubble and dilapidated buildings line dirt streets. Electricity and water remain scarce. Gangs of militiamen roam the streets in trucks mounted with antiaircraft weapons.

But none of that seemed to detract from the heady mood of the lawmakers, who were appointed during a peace conference in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, in 2004. This is their Philadelphia, they said, a historic gathering of leaders from small independent fiefdoms who are working to set aside their differences.

It’s too soon to say whether they will write a new chapter in Somalian history, or end up another footnote.

“This time is going to be different,” promised Sharif Hassan Sheik Aden, speaker of the Somalian parliament, during an interview inside his new office, where the lights flickered on and off. “The reconciliation is going on. We are sorting out our differences.”

Events on the ground raised some doubts about that. Even as parliament members were debating a new national security plan, fierce battles raged in the capital of Mogadishu between warlords and Islamists. More than 70 people were reportedly killed, and hundreds fled their homes.

The government has yet to form an army, and a United Nations arms embargo prevents it from training and equipping soldiers. So the government could do little more than appeal for calm and wait for the fighting to die out.

In the south, 1.4 million Somalis require emergency food and water because of a drought, but the government has no income. To date, it has lived off handouts from the international community. China donated $100,000 in December. The European Union committed $85 million, but it has yet to be delivered. The U.N. Development Program is paying lawmakers’ $1,100-a-month salaries.

Many in Somalia fault the international community for not doing more.

Iraq’s new national assembly was front-page news in papers abroad. The conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region continues to draw high-level attention. But Somalia’s transitional government has been greeted with a “wait and see” attitude, and the parliament opening a month ago passed largely unnoticed by international media, at least partly because of the security risks and logistical challenges of getting here.

“There’s a lot of talk about rebuilding Somalia, but fewer concrete steps in that direction,” Foreign Minister Abdullahi Sheik Ismail said. “There’s a culture of indifference and apathy. We have been left to our own disaster.”

The United States, in particular, has drawn scorn from Somalian leaders. Members of parliament complain that U.S. counter-terrorist campaigns are undermining the government’s legitimacy by forging relationships with warlords to gather intelligence and pursue suspects inside Somalia.

“Everyone here is talking about the double standards of America,” said Mohammed Ali Shiriye, a member of parliament. “They are still giving support to the warlords in Mogadishu. But now the U.S. must respect this country. It must go through the government.”

Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, which is responsible for relations with Somalia, declined to comment.

The 275-member parliament was selected by Somalian clan leaders. Parliament chose the president, who appointed the prime minister, who formed the government.

Most of the new Cabinet consists of the same warlords and clan leaders who have been fighting over Somalia since 1991. The new interior minister is Hussein Mohammed Aidid, son of the Mogadishu warlord who was being sought by U.S. Marines in the disastrous 1993 “Black Hawk Down” operation, in which 18 servicemen died.

Aden, the parliament speaker, is a dapper former livestock exporter from the Bay region in south-central Somalia. President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed spent years in prison for battling the Barre government before emerging as head of the Puntland semiautonomous region in northern Somalia. Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi was a veterinarian and university lecturer.

The rest of parliament is rounded out with tribal chiefs, military leaders from the previous government and refugees who returned from the United States, Canada and Europe. At least half a dozen members claim U.S. citizenship.

The last time this crew got together was last year in Kenya, and it ended in a brawl. The parliament session at a Nairobi hotel degenerated into fistfights and chair-throwing, and police had to break it up. Not long afterward, Kenyan officials, who had played a key role in creating and hosting the transitional government, nudged the Somalis out. They left behind a trail of unpaid hotel bills.

More trouble lay ahead in Somalia. Partly because of a power struggle and partly because of clan rivalries, the leaders disagreed on where to resettle. One faction, led by the speaker, decamped to Mogadishu. The other, including the president and prime minister, settled 60 miles north in Jawhar.

The Mogadishu side opposed lifting the U.N. arms embargo and was suspicious of deploying peacekeepers from neighboring countries, particularly Ethiopia, which has a history of tensions with Somalia. In Jawhar, leaders insisted Mogadishu was too dangerous to be the seat of government. They pressed for the lifting of the arms embargo and called upon the international community to dispatch as many as 20,000 peacekeepers.

Twice last year, the prime minister narrowly escaped assassination during brief visits to Mogadishu. In November, the deputy speaker defected from Mogadishu to Jawhar. A week later, his adult son was shot to death on the streets of Mogadishu. Then his 12-year-old daughter disappeared for two weeks in an apparent kidnapping before returning home.

But the two sides announced a reconciliation in January, giving the government new momentum just as some were predicting its demise.

“The political differences are over,” Gedi, the prime minister, said in an interview in Nairobi.

In their first compromise, they decided that the temporary headquarters of the parliament would be Baidoa, a town of 400,000 still reeling from the effects of the civil war. A 1992 famine killed thousands. The hospital closed down, and Western aid groups fled. Warlords repeatedly battled for control through 2004.

The only structure large enough to house the parliament was a former grain silo. During a frenzied three-week renovation, corrugated aluminum roofing was installed and colorful rolls of contact paper smoothed over unfinished cement floors. In the rush, three giant portraits of the government leaders were hung slightly askew.

Around Baidoa, the government’s arrival has boosted sales. For the first time in years, a hotel has opened. Like most Somalis, residents here hope the latest government will last.

“The bullets have stopped and people are starting a new life,” said Deqa Said Moh, owner of small gold and jewelry shop. “We support the government.”

Asked why, she thought a moment and responded: “We support it for the sake of supporting it. What choice do we have?”

The biggest challenge will be taking on the warlords, businessmen and religious leaders who have stepped into the power vacuum. Many will be reluctant to give up their militias and lucrative franchises controlling the ports, airports and roads.

The transitional government tried to co-opt the warlords with plum jobs in the new Cabinet.

“If the warlords were struggling for political positions, well, now they are the ministers,” Gedi said. “I don’t know what else they are looking for.”

At the same time, he said, business owners have concluded that government regulation and taxes would be better than using up to 70% of their profits to pay off warlords and hire security.

Most of the warlords have pledged to work with the government, but leaders in Baidoa are mindful of the challenges ahead.

“We’ve finally got it all set up,” said Mohammed Awale, director general of the parliament, after adjourning a session in which the body’s committee structure was unanimously approved. “Now it had better work.”