Freedom Takes Somalis on a Wild Ride : Relief effort: With the troops comes a sense of security that lets the capital city cut loose.

The foreign troops sent here to restore order have ironically fostered a new form of chaos, turning the capital city into a circus of wild civilian drivers, helpless Keystone traffic cops and suffocatingly crowded shantytown businesses.

Although there is still nightly gunfire here between factions in Somalia’s civil war, the relative stability since troops arrived has stopped people from running for their lives and started them shopping again--with a passion.

Inflated wartime prices have now fallen so far in the main bazaar of foul-smelling open-air shops that gleeful merchants are praising the U.S. Marines for returning their freedom to earn a profit by selling widely affordable goods.

“After the troops come, conditions are better,” said Ourola Farah Mohamed. “We are doing our daily work without fearing anybody.”

The 70-year-old merchant in black and white flowered cloth, who sells cooking oil and soap, has one more request of the Marines as long as they are over here anyway.

“The guns must be controlled by the Americans, not by the pirates,” she said.

It is doubtful the supply of guns will ever dry up, but the watchful eyes of heavily armed Marine patrols in town have reduced the rich profit that had been raked in by weapons dealers.

Even the price for the ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifle--it seems few locals leave home without one--has plummeted lately.

“The price for an assault rifle was $350 before we got here; now merchants are trying to get rid of their inventory,” said military spokesman Marine Col. Fred Peck, who is from Camp Pendleton.

Locals say that AK-47s can now be had for as little as $100, but there is a brisk business in pistols that can be more easily concealed from Marines.

Peck said handguns are going up in value because people fear their weapons will be confiscated.

But the occupation by multinational forces has had a far greater effect than merely devaluing arms in the starving nation where people were only recently afraid to walk along the dusty streets.

It has let people feel free again, and the exuberance of freedom of movement has turned downtown Mogadishu into a virtual destruction derby.

Traffic laws have been torn up like yesterday’s parking ticket as a daily cavalcade of beat-up vehicles goes banging through the city.

The cars have bullet holes and large dents. Some have been rolled over and resurrected. Anything that moves has helped turn the city into a perpetual gridlock that makes Manhattan traffic seem like a drive through Kansas.

“They are not using the roads according to traffic law, they are mostly unqualified drivers and they do not care,” said Tesfaye Gebremariam, a translator from Ethiopia who has lived here for two years.

Cars careen within half-inches of fleeing pedestrians. Horns are used extensively, and drivers don’t make turns against traffic unless they’re willing to risk their lives.

A squadron of traffic police who simply stayed home during the civil war has reappeared.

With their regulation blue berets and whistles, the officers make a futile attempt to control vehicles that must seem like a stampeding herd of cattle.

The officers try their best but give up and peer blankly as cars swirl and gyrate around them, making anarchy of the rules of the road.

Still, for those who miraculously survive the vehicular conflagration, all this is a healthy sign. It is the start of a recovering economy.

When the war came, shops were looted, and merchants who were able spirited their goods into hiding.

As time went on and the city was ravaged by artillery and fire, business people established a bazaar along a main drag.

Shops, sometimes several deep, are crudely constructed of scavenged wood, burlap and tin taken from roofs of houses outside the city.

Here, there are meat, potatoes, sugar, rice, sundries and gasoline. Goats are slaughtered, their heads and guts neatly laid out on tables where the parts are caked with flies.

It’s not fancy--in fact the smell is awful--but it is affordable for Somalis.

There is perhaps only one area where price gouging continues.

At a seedy downtown hotel where about 100 foreign journalists are staying, the rates are $170 a night for two single beds with wafer-thin mattresses.

The hotel charges $130 for a case of South African beer and $50 for the privilege of sleeping on the floor of the lobby.

However, conditions are improving. The hotel management lately consented, under threats by journalists, to provide constant running water.