Julie Flint.

Abstract: The Republic of Somaliland, the northern region of Somalia which unilaterally declared independence in 1991, has been successful in maintaining peace inspite of lack of resources which stems partly from the lack of international recognition. The UN has sent aid in the form of food, but not the money which Somaliland is requesting for disarmament purposes. Nevertheless, disarmament and demobilization processes for about 50,000 troops are proceeding, even if public officers have to use their own money to buy basic necessities. Political leaders and clan elders together think of solutions to government problems instead of resorting to violent means.

The breakaway Republic of Somaliland, the northern region of Somalia which "liberated" itself in May 1991, settled all its security problems within two years through cooperation between political leaders and clan elders-- an arrangement that could serve as a model for Somalia and elsewhere. Now, the region is eager to demobilize some 50,000 men under arms, but lacks the resources not only for disarmament, but also for running the region, where most officials have not been paid for months.

Assembled at a few minutes' notice, they march and wheel tirelessly in the crushing afternoon heat. All are thin, ragged, and poorly shod. Some have laces in their shoes; many don't. At last, they halt and stand at attention while their commander, a man of impeccable military bearing, tells them: "We have won the first war. Now we are fighting to win the second--the war for demobilization."

Everyone in the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, the former British Somaliland, is agreed on one thing: Somaliland will stand or fall here at Mandera, a British army camp abandoned for the last half-century and now the site of the first of six camps planned for 50,000 men needing--and for the most part wanting--demobilization.

If it stands, it will not be thanks to the community of nations. The United Nations, which is spending $1.5 billion on the forcible disarming of the rest of Somalia, has so far promised much but delivered little. Non-governmental organizations can help, but cannot rehabilitate 6,000 men--far less 50,000.

Unless this pattern of neglect changes, Somaliland risks sinking back into the insecurity and violence against which it has set its face. Today's success could be tomorrow's tragedy.

Two and half years after Somaliland's unilateral declaration of independence, a small miracle is taking place on the southern shore of the Gulf of Aden, unseen and so far unappreciated by those whose armed humanitarianism has turned Somalia's famine into slaughter.

Unlike Somalia, Somaliland is begging to be disarmed. It is mending its division by discussion rather than by arms. It has even permitted a token presence of Unosom, the spearhead of the UN's "pacification" operation, despite the fact that it does not need pacification. And it is not breaking the financial back of the international community. It should cost relatively little and, because of neglect, is costing less.

More than a month after the first recruits arrived at Mandera, the UN, which had promised food, uniforms, and latrines, had provided little food, no uniforms, and no latrines. There is no electricity in the camp. No lamps. Officers dig into their own pockets to buy flashlights.

"We are asking for $25,000 a month to disarm all our men," exclaims Vice President Abdirahman Aw Ali. "And what have we had? Some food from the World Food Program. We asked for rice and they sent us maize--and rotten maize at that. It's not even good for donkeys."

For the moment, the mood at the camp is upbeat. Despite bad conditions, a dreary diet, and no indication as yet of future employment, the men are confident. Too confident, perhaps: The other side of high hopes is crushed expectations. "Unosom promised to fulfill all our needs and so far has given nothing," says the camp commander, Mohamed Handnle. "But our government has supplied food--rice and tea--and we are satisfied. That's how we liberated Somaliland--on rice without sauce."

Somaliland "liberated" itself within months of the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre, the dictator who condemned the northwest of his country to political insignificance and economic underdevelopment before launching a genocidal clan war against the civilian support base of the rebel Somali National Movement.

At "independence" in May 1991, Somaliland was in ruins. Its capital, Hargeisa, was three-quarters destroyed. Towns and villages were sown with mines that still bring two or three victims a week to Hargeisa's rundown general hospital. Soviet-American rivalry had turned the country into a vast arms dump littered with ammunition stores and unexploded ordnance. Siad Barre had set clan against clan.

For the first two years of independence--two wasted years--security deteriorated steadily under president Abdirahman Ahmed Ali "Tur," a former SNM chairman whose political leadership was both inert and incompetent. (The current president, Mohamed Ibrahim Egal, makes excuses for his predecessor. Tur's problem, he says, is that he never really believed in independence.)

The turning point for Somaliland came in October 1992, when clan elders negotiated an end to clashes in the Berbera area. Six months later, the Council of Elders--the Guurti--met in the town of Boroma and within five months had negotiated a comprehensive peace agreement for the whole of Somaliland, drawn up a new constitution with a two-tier government, and chosen Egal as president. Many believe this collaboration between ancient and modern forms of government could provide a model for other parts of Africa. The Boroma conference not only cost a fraction of the internationally sponsored Addis Ababa conference for Somalia. It also succeeded where the first Addis failed.

In Somaliland at least, the collaboration seems set to continue. The Guurti's septuagenarian chairman, Sheikh Ibrahim, has nothing but praise for Egal, a veteran politician and two-time prime minister.

"Since 1991," he says, "the elders have been successful in preventing an all-out war. But we felt we were not supported by the previous administration. Boroma took place in a government vacuum. Then Egal came and so far we are satisfied with him. In three months, he has accomplished things that weren't even tackled in the two preceding years. He is very hard-working and he began with nothing. We feel we handed him many problems, many of them hidden."

The greatest of those problems, deriving in part from Somaliland's failure to win international recognition, is the government's near total lack of resources. Even today, the few officials who have telephones jump when they ring. The president is the only man in government with an international connection--a satellite telephone paid for by a charity. Faxes are sent from the offices of the few organizations, invariably non-governmental, which believe in building up local structures rather than bypassing them in the name of the fictitious Somali unity officially invested in Mogadishu.

The vast majority of government employees are still unsalaried, relying either on personal finances, remittances from abroad, or income from herds, wells, or small businesses--as are most teachers. Ministers' offices have nothing more than a few sticks of furniture and perhaps a filing cabinet.

With no home of its own, Parliament meets in the law courts, sitting when the courts are not. The bank is the street, where huge amounts of dollars change hands every day. (Safely, so far.) Primary schools are run in abandoned buildings, ruins, and the open air. Omar Bobe, mayor of Hargeisa, surveys his city through shell holes in his office wall. His staff of 120 has worked without pay for the past year.

Like most others, Bobe remains cheerful. "I am not only optimistic," he says. "I am 400,000 times optimistic. My people have been oppressed, killed, looted, and raped. Their economic infrastructure has been destroyed, but now they have their freedom and are ready to build their country without help from anybody." Some--few admittedly--are less optimistic. Interior Minister Musa Bibi, an SNM veteran, is one. "Nothing has changed," he says. "This is still a country where nobody goes to work."

Some things, however, have changed--thanks to the improvement in security brought about by the elders' patient work of reconciliation. As Somalia descended into madness, Somaliland has been putting conflict behind it.

In the six months since his appointment, Egal has established a government and begun building an administration that not only has a wide clan base but includes many of the SNM leaders sidelined by Tur. There are still pockets of resistance to legality, but Egal is confident they will in time surrender--not by force, but by persuasion.

Hargeisa already has a police force dressed in green uniforms (Unosom's sole contribution to security). Police officers receive rice, oil, and powdered milk in place of salaries and recently acquired their first vehicle: a second-hand Toyota loaned by a concerned citizen, one of a group of volunteers who supply food for Hargeisa jail. The Supreme Court has been reconstituted and Islamic law replaced by the 1962 penal code with minor amendments to make it acceptable to Muslim leaders. (Under the 1962 code, the penalty for murder was death. Now there is the possibility of compensation and even forgiveness.) Hargeisa has its first 150 telephone lines. Local businessmen run a small electricity grid using two bulldozer engines and give free current to police stations, courts, mosques, ministries, and main streets. All vehicles must be registered and traffic police are beginning to confiscate cars without papers. Primary schools are open for children under eight and there are plans to begin secondary schooling in 1994 for Somaliland's "lost generation"--the children who, because of war, have never been taught.

Most importantly, the government has begun establishing a revenue base. Taxes are being levied on Berbera port, where tariffs are being lowered in an attempt to compete with neighboring Djibouti, and on the leafy narcotic qat, which has become cheaper since government dues replaced militia extortion. Virtually all the money raised is being poured into the demobilization experiment at Mandera. While the UN thinks almost exclusively in terms of relief, Somaliland has one overriding aim: security.

"We must put all our effort into security," says Education Minister Suleiman Adam, one of six ministers overseeing demobilization. "Some of these boys are threats to security today; some are potential threats. We must ease them back into productive civilian life. Everything else must be secondary--even schools." So far, however, the government is fighting a lonely battle. Far from supporting Somaliland's attempts to build a peaceful, productive society, the UN persists in seeing everything through the prism of Mogadishu, giving little importance to much-needed development aid and slow to deliver even relief. When food finally arrived for Mandera, weeks late, it consisted of 600 tons of grain so dry it crumbled at the touch, 200 tons of vegetable oil oozing from rusty cans, and 12 tons of powdered milk with no expiry date.

Infuriated by this nonchalance, and by a recommendation by a senior Unosom official that "it is time to dismantle Somaliland and bring this nonsense to an end," Egal ordered Unosom's expulsion in mid-September.

"Somaliland is endeavoring to pull itself up by its bootstraps," he said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. "This should be a classic situation where the United Nations Secretariat appears to be intent on putting the Republic of Somaliland in the closet like a bad skeleton."

The rift between Somaliland and the UN has been patched up for the time being, with Boutros-Ghali reaffirming the UN's commitment to contribute to reconstruction and asserting that the world body does not mean to interfere with "the Egal administration"--the UN's first bow to the de facto independence of what it has always called the "northeastern region" of Somalia. The reconciliation is still tenuous. "We've got to deliver fast and visibly to restore confidence," says Steen Tandrup, Unosom's acting director in Hargeisa. "Although $200 million has been pledged, only $2 million has been given. We strongly feel this region deserves a lot of credit because it is doing very much with little help."

The Egal administration is not counting its chickens before they are hatched. Somaliland, already littered with arms, is now littered with broken promises too.

"Unosom cheated us," says a Somali relief worker. "They come here with their planes, but with no activities and no programs. If only they would stop strutting around and show people what to do. We've got the raw materials, but we don't have the expertise. What Somaliland needs is jobs, not food."

Any jobs, says Bihi. "The masses understand the bad effect of the gun. We have all campaigned against the gun--in the mosques, at meetings, with the elders. Now people are asking us, Where's the job?"

Egal seems confident Somaliland will make it--whether it is helped or not. "I think we will somehow survive," he says. "It will not be an attractive survival, but we will survive. We have really good people. Committed people. And the decision to secede is final and irrevocable."

Julie Flint is a writer specializing in Africa and the Middle East.