After Food, Somalia’s Top Need Is for a Police Force : Africa: Crime is almost completely unchecked in the capital, seen as a Dodge City without Wyatt Earp.

Mahamoud Hassan and Mahad Elmi must be two of the most hapless thieves in all of Somalia.

Thousands of robberies are committed daily in this capital. There is no law, no functioning police force and not a single sitting judge. And yet Hassan and Elmi managed to get themselves locked up in a rotting prison on the bluff overlooking the movements of U.S. troops. Hassan, 28, got five years hard time for stealing a knife and $10. Elmi, who is just 15, is doing six months for stealing food from a passerby.

“It was just bad luck that I got caught,” said Hassan. “But prison is good for me. I’m going to get out of this crime business.”

Col. Abdulahe Mohamed Hirsi, who remains the warden even though his paychecks stopped coming two years ago, laughed loudly, choking on the smoke from his Sportsman cigarette. “They all say that,” he said.

The much-lamented breakdown of law and order in Somalia, it seems, isn’t quite complete. Behind bars corroded by 120 years of sea breezes and gates secured by shiny new locks purchased at the local market, 13 of the unluckiest thieves in the country are watched by Hirsi and 200 unpaid armed guards.

The overstaffed and uncrowded prison, and the mayhem that reigns daily on Mogadishu’s streets, reflect the striking lack of law enforcement here. Mogadishu is Dodge City without Wyatt Earp, a place where thieves are more likely to be shot to death than caught--and most likely to get away scot-free.

American military commanders, relief workers and Somalis agree that the most pressing need in the capital is not an occupying force of international troops but an independent, functioning police force.

The 24,000 U.S. troops here have killed more than a dozen armed Somalis, at least one of whom was in the act of stealing a television camera from a reporter. But they don’t make arrests. And, since their arrival, ordinary crime has rocketed upward.

Hundreds of foreigners, including many American journalists and relief workers, have been robbed at gunpoint. Four Somali gunmen shot a Chinese journalist in the knee last month and killed his driver before stealing their car.

“What is needed in this town is not something we are meant to provide,” said Marine Col. Fred Peck, chief spokesman for U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope. “What is needed is a municipal police force.”

Hirsi, the warden at Central Prison, takes prisoners referred by neighborhood Islamic courts. He once had 1,700 prisoners, sentenced by judges back when there was a functioning government. But he let them all go after the fall of President Mohamed Siad Barre two years ago because he couldn’t feed them. Even now, the portly warden admits he can’t feed his 13 inmates regularly, but he manages to scrounge up enough donations of rice to keep them alive.

“None of us take any salary,” Hirsi said. “We work for the Somali people.” As he spoke, an assistant loudly hammered out the next week’s duty roster on a typewriter.

Crime seems to be worst in Mogadishu. Smaller villages in the country often have their own clan-controlled militias, which are maintaining some semblance of order there.

But many in the capital, where virtually every office building has been stripped bare by looters, seem to have forgotten completely what the police do.

Two rival warlords in Mogadishu agreed last month to crack down on crime at traffic jams, where youngsters frequently steal from passing motorists. They passed a resolution that read, in full: “Anyone caught raping, looting or involved in any flagrant crime at the logjam areas shall be shot on the spot.”

Somalia’s national police force was once highly respected for its independence. The London-trained commandant, Ahmed Jama, had 18,000 police officers nationwide, 5,000 of whom patrolled Mogadishu, the capital of 1 million.

The force collapsed 14 months ago when civil war began here. All the patrol cars, the communications equipment and the office desks were stolen.

Jama is widely respected because he stood up to former President Siad Barre. Six months after Siad Barre fired him, in January, 1991, the president was gone and the rebels put Jama back to work. But later that year, the rebels split, the civil war began and order vanished. “There was no longer any police job to be done,” Jama said.

These days, Jama walks the streets of his neighborhood in Mogadishu every morning. But the rest of the time, he sits quietly in his villa behind a gate riddled with bullet holes, each of which has been carefully stuffed with paper to block prying eyes.

Although many police officers are ready to return to duty, the people may not be ready for a police force. A few former policemen have donned their uniforms and begun directing traffic at clogged intersections, but few motorists heed them.

“This will be a very difficult country to police because so many people have gotten used to looting and killing,” Jama said. “When the political questions are settled, then policeman can do a police job. Otherwise, it will be a waste of time.”

Few would disagree with the police chief. When U.S. Army engineers began planning to install a 160-foot-long, 15-ton steel bridge near Kismayu, south of Mogadishu, one of the American soldiers asked, “Who’s going to guard it?”

Maj. Jim Nelson, an American liaison officer with the U.N. operation here, was incredulous. “Why do you need to guard a 15-ton bridge?” he asked. “Here,” he was told, “you do.”

Although the commanders of the U.S.-led military mission here insist that they are not a police force, the presence of 36,000 troops from 22 countries has helped restore some order to the countryside, and, increasingly, to Mogadishu. The “technicals,” heavily armed battlewagons that once plied the streets, have vanished. And fewer guns are visible these days, mostly because the gunmen know that their weapons will be confiscated by the troops.

A tentative cease-fire has ended the civil war, and the two main warlords have agreed to put their weapons away. But now the city is terrorized by hundreds, if not thousands, of free-lance looters who have been unable to steal relief food and have branched out to other crimes.

Ordinary crime remains so prevalent that the U.S.-led troops have given relief agencies special permission to ride the streets with armed guards to protect their vehicles and personnel.

“It’s better now than when we arrived, when bandits were systematically plundering the city, but we still have work to do in Mogadishu,” said Lt. Gen. Robert B. Johnston, commander of Operation Restore Hope. “There’s still this warrior ethic. Somalis often resolve problems at the end of the gun.”

Street bandits have stolen everything from sunglasses to television cameras. And they are growing increasingly bold. A young thief stole the side arm from a Marine as the American rode through the streets atop an armored vehicle.

As a result, the market for stolen goods has blossomed on Mogadishu’s streets, encouraged, in some cases, by foreign relief workers with dollars to spend. A British official with the U.N. Children’s Fund recently bought two cameras that had been stolen from American journalists. His purchase was discovered by coincidence when he asked an American news agency to repair the cameras. Informed that they belonged to the news agency, the UNICEF official demanded $1,300 for them.

This week, a first step was taken to restore law enforcement here. The U.N. Development Program announced that $2.4 million was being allocated to finance an interim police force in Mogadishu and some rural areas. The money will provide uniforms, some equipment and six months of salaries, a U.N. official said, and training is to begin Monday.

Central Prison is a picture of Somalia’s decline. Built by the Italians in the 19th Century, it has spiked turrets on each corner. During the day, the 13 inmates are allowed brief periods in the cracked concrete courtyard, where two trees provide little shade from the blazing sun and the walls block out the breeze.

Mahamoud Hassan was captured by a local militia because his looting had begun to encroach on its turf. Mahad Elmi, an emaciated youth in a ragged cloth skirt, was ordered into prison by an Islamic judge, on the recommendation of his father.

“His family put him in here to punish him,” explained the warden, who offered the two inmates a cigarette, which was eagerly accepted.

Elmi said he stole because he was hungry. “This is the worst thing that has happened to me in my life,” he said. The two prisoners said they had not had a meal in two days.

The warden believes that his prison is an example of the dedication of his guards and their commitment to law and order here. They are hardly unique in Mogadishu. All across the city, former Somali government employees go to work every day, sitting behind desks without papers, going through the motions of work with no hope of a paycheck.

When the fighting broke out in earnest here, in November, 1991, Hirsi had released his prisoners because, he said, “I didn’t want to take responsibility for them dying.”

But he stayed behind his desk because “this is where I belong,” he added. “I don’t have any other country. My country is only Somalia. And I don’t have any other profession than taking care of prisoners. It’s the only job I know.”

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