Sheep Exports Lead Way as Somali Economy Revives : Africa: Growing business in Mogadishu’s streets and port augurs well for the country’s long-term survival.

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.

The workers were preparing the 100-foot dhow this week for its outbound cargo: 2,000 Somali sheep destined for the Persian Gulf port of Dubai, the first of what specialists here say could total exports exceeding half a million Somali sheep and goats in the weeks ahead.

The animals will bring as much as $24 million from Muslims in the oil-rich Gulf as they prepare for the slaughter and feast of Eid al Fitr, a holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan later in March.

This might have seemed an isolated event--one commercial vessel docked in a newly liberated port, surrounded by the anarchy and bustle still dominated by the massive American military and U.N. humanitarian operations.

But the Al Mannal is one of almost 40 commercial ships that have come and gone from Mogadishu in the past month, bringing with them thousands of tons of basic consumer goods and fueling one of Somalia’s most encouraging developments. In a nation known for chaos, starvation, deprivation and death, Mogadishu’s long-dormant economy has sprung to life, surviving last week’s rioting in the capital and auguring well for the country’s long-term survival.

It is an economic boom in miniature fueled partly by sheep but also by pent-up demand, a collective wealth of Somali savings--even after two years of civil war--and a new sense of security among Somalis after three months under an international military umbrella.

“Business is good now,” said Abdul Rashid, proud owner of the 2,000 sheep waiting to be loaded on the Al Mannal. “Before the forces came, we couldn’t bring anything in and out of Mogadishu. Now, the whole economy is coming very much better.”

The rebirth began with repairs to hundreds of thousands of blown-out windows and bullet-pocked facades in better-off commercial districts of the capital during the first days after U.S. Marines led a multinational coalition of peacekeepers into Mogadishu nearly three months ago. Now it has grown into a full-scale renaissance in many neighborhoods.

There are hundreds of new shops and stores, albeit crude concrete establishments with tin roofs and shabby walls. Stands in the city’s flourishing outdoor markets are awash with newly imported basics such as clothes, fresh tea, batteries and shampoo.

The markets are multiplying as fast as Somali entrepreneurs can find the tin sheeting and tables to build them; they even are sprouting in gutted city blocks near the notorious Green Line that has divided Mogadishu’s two major rival clans for two years.

But as a private-sector centerpiece, Mohamed Jirdeh’s Hotel Sahafi has no rival.

Three months ago, it was a nightmare, the city’s only hotel and a spot where toilets failed to flush, tarantulas roamed the rooms and guests--almost all of the Western press corps covering Somalia’s lurching attempts to move from anarchy to order--slept on its cockroach-infested floors.

Now it is poised on the brink of the 21st Century. In recent days, Jirdeh has imported 58 high-tech Japanese air conditioners and installed them in rooms scrubbed spotless and fumigated insect-free. On Monday, he took delivery of 50 new, state-of-the-art Japanese televisions, which will carry Cable News Network live when hooked up to a satellite dish that Jirdeh purchased for the hotel roof.

The modernization has not been without hitches. In a city still without municipal power, Jirdeh is hunting for a voltage stabilizer for the crude generators that furnish power to the hotel before he can switch on the sensitive air conditioners. And he is missing a key part--unavailable in Somalia--for his satellite dish.

Jirdeh is quick to concede that the hotel is special. Using a stockpile of dollars that poured into his hotel at the height of the American intervention, Jirdeh reinvested in his property.

But most of the financial capital that fled Somalia, along with the majority of the business community, still awaits more evidence of Mogadishu’s stability before it returns in earnest.

Still, in a city with no government and no law, apart from the 30,000 coalition troops deployed throughout the city and countryside largely to protect relief operations, Mogadishu’s boom has spread far beyond the Sahafi Hotel and into almost every corner of this new urban market.

More important, like Jirdeh and his hotel, the market proved itself resilient, enduring last week’s street violence unscathed. For example, Hussein Ali, who owns a book stand in a market hit hard by rioting, opened up shop hours after the dust had settled--with a foot-long knife strapped to his belt to discourage looters.

But Mogadishu’s port holds the hardest evidence of how widespread and persistent is this capital’s grass-roots economic rebirth. The proof is in ship manifests, recorded by a U.S. Army battalion that rebuilt the port and continues to administer it. The logs show:

* Feb. 1, the 160-foot Al Riyad arrived carrying 13,494 sacks, cartons and cases packed with clothing, sugar, plastic bags, baby shoes, glasses, flashlights, yeast, powdered juice, T-shirts, shampoo, soap, rat poison, tea and spaghetti.

* Feb. 2, the 125-foot Al Hazarat came with 10,500 bags, drums, bundles and cartons of sugar, diesel fuel, plastic sandals, tires, batteries and clothes.

* Feb. 3, the Al Yusaf arrived with 3,450 cartons and sacks of similar goods.

* Feb. 4, the Alexander II docked with iron sheeting and 3,000 sacks of coffee and tea.

The records continue in similar fashion for each day since. So great is Somali demand after two years of war that there were a dozen loaded, private commercial vessels awaiting their turn to dock at Mogadishu Port on Monday; some, like the Al Mannal, must wait offshore for as long as two weeks while Army controllers struggle to fit them in around the movements of higher-priority military and humanitarian ships.

“We’re at a point now where it’s time that the militarization of the port--not the security of the port, but the emphasis on military operations--is going to have to pull back, or we’ll kill the commerce,” said harbor master Edward Johns Jr., a U.S. Army chief warrant officer called up from the reserves to administer Somalia’s port last December. “We came here, and we fed the folks. Now it’s time to move to the next step. And the next step is to open the doors to commerce.”

He cited the urgency of the approaching Islamic holiday, in which Muslims slaughter a sheep or goat for a feast to mark the end of the fasting of Ramadan; the tradition had helped make livestock Somalia’s biggest export before civil war was touched off by the overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre two years ago.

(Though their livestock, like the people, suffered terribly during the nation’s famine, the animals--precious commodities here--were protected as much as possible in the circumstances and have made remarkable recoveries since better order has been restored, analysts say. Also, there was less disruption in some areas of the country where huge herds are common.)

“There are 600,000 goats and sheep scheduled to be shipped out of here to Saudi Arabia between now and April--one-half of the animals the Saudis need to mark the occasion,” said Johns, who also served as harbor master in the Saudi port of Dammam during the Persian Gulf War.

To help Somali exporters meet their targets--indeed, to help fuel the entire Somali economic rebirth--Johns said the American military should turn over the port’s administration to civilians as soon as possible.

But he conceded that there are obstacles to such a move. The tattered remains of the Somali port authority, which crumbled along with Siad Barre’s regime, have neither authority nor a government behind them. U.S. military efforts to turn the port over to a civilian contractor have been stymied by delays within the U.N. mission.

Further, the American military, eager to withdraw the bulk of its remaining 16,000 or so troops as quickly as possible, will continue to dominate the port in coming weeks.

“As the troops move out, it will tend to strain the port facilities somewhat,” Johns said. “But there are some serious, basic philosophical questions that have to be answered now--especially if this port is going to serve as the force behind Somalia’s return to commerce.

“They are questions like: OK, we’ve brought this abandoned, broken-down port back to life, but who owns this beautiful land now?” he added. “The country of Somalia. But there is no country of Somalia. So who’s going to charge for the use of it? OK, the government. But there is no government.

“These are the questions that someone’s got to answer, and pretty quickly . . . , “ he said. “The transition of this port from military to commercial vessels has started, but it’s just not moving as fast as people would like--and certainly not as fast as the economy of this country demands.”

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