SOMALIA: IRIN Special - The Berbera Lifeline: Part II
Read Part I

BERBERA, 3 April (IRIN) - Regardless of the political debate over the issue of recognition, developing the Berbera corridor is likely to be pursued in a regional context, as well as for the purpose of improving the Somaliland economy. One UNCTAD official told IRIN that “even if the port in Mogadishu opens, it’s still easier to supply parts of Ethiopia from Berbera.” Burao, in northern Somaliland, would continue to be the main livestock market for the region, he said.

The emergency cycle

Another reason for supporting trade in Somali territories was because trade had always cut through local and regional politics to some extent, including clan conflict, pointed out one development worker. Somalia’s strong informal economy under the government of former President Muhammad Siyad Barre provided the basis for “the informal war-economy in the anarchic post-Barre period”, said Dr Ahmad Yusuf Farah of the War-Torn Societies Project, Nairobi (Factional Reconciliation Process versus Arta Peace Initiative, January 2001). Farah said the business class was “composed of fiercely competing, freewheeling, individual traders tied primarily to their kin groups for protection and business opportunities”. The dissolution of state monopoly on key economic activities had “provided fertile ground for the private sector to establish itself as the engine driving reconstruction”.

Efforts to support trade may succeed where conventional emergency aid had so frequently failed in Somalia, one aid worker told IRIN. “The port is the only venue where all clans have more or less equal access and rights to compete,” he said. Supporting trade and commerce has also proved to be a way of strengthening the fledgling administrations, said one humanitarian source, with the port being “one of the few places where both the private and public sectors interact daily”.

Developing Berbera port, together with a regional approach to improving transportation, “will contribute to the stability of the Horn of Africa by fostering common economic interests”, insists UNCTAD.

But the catastrophic effects of the livestock ban threaten to undermine this. The challenge will be to ensure that there is sufficient and innovative response before the collapse of trade demands an emergency response itself, in a region trying to recover from widespread drought. “There is little point [in] encouraging recovery if you can’t sell your animals... This is a crisis that must be a priority for the international community,” Bronek Szynalski, UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Drought in the Horn of Africa, told IRIN.

Fractured countries and economies

However, lifting the ban would not solve the root cause of the disaster, one local economist pointed out - which is that Somaliland and much of the region depends precariously on one trade.

“Even if the livestock trade resumes again, it can be cut at any minute: the export market is not in our hands,” said Dr Muhammad Usman Fadl, the Somaliland minister of planning and coordination. He told IRIN that the economic challenge was to diversify, and move away from dependence on livestock and on importation of essential goods. An economy based on one major product and a few agricultural farms had, among other things, caused rural-urban migration and poverty, said Fadl.

In many ways, the structure of the economy reflected both the strengths and weaknesses of a community which considered itself beleaguered, pointed out one regional expert. It is characterised by a determined self-sufficiency - remittances from a far-flung diaspora have supported and nurtured a territory that has suffered both civil war and international isolation. The constant flow of remittances has rebuilt ruined towns and villages, and has doggedly brought business to places capital would otherwise rationally avoid. Remittances had been “key to establishing both a functioning administration and a working economy”, one local economist said. According to one senior administration source, remittances have also been crucial when “times get bad - like the livestock ban”. “When the going gets rough, we pick up the phone and relatives abroad squeeze out a few more dollars,” said the source.

In this way, Somaliland has survived and grown, frequently against the odds, but has not diversified. There are six regions in Somaliland, which embrace opportunities for fisheries, salt production and gemstones. But despite the rich coastline, “it is still easier to buy and drink camel milk on the coast than buy and eat fish”, pointed out one local economist. Coastal Somalilanders have not exploited fisheries for cultural reasons, and instead depend on livestock as heavily as those inland. Economists say there are sufficient resources to make the change, but tradition and culture constitute an obstacle.

There is also concern that the environment is not able to sustain the large herds of livestock. In an ecological assessment of the coastal plains of Somaliland, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) said large concentrations of livestock combined with the cutting down of trees for charcoal and firewood have “had a profound effect” on the environment. In a report issued in May 2000, IUCN said “grazing pressure and soil erosion are now a serious problem and, together with periodic droughts, have had a devastating effect on the vegetation and soils”.

As early as 1947, there was concern over environmental degradation of the habitat in British-ruled Somaliland (which had the same boundaries as the unilaterally declared Republic of Somaliland of 1991). An official report said that “the soil and vegetation are on the brink of irretrievable ruin” on account of animal congestion and overgrazing, John Markakis recorded in “National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa” (1990).

The effects of this heavy dependency on livestock are evident. Nomads have grown to rely more and more on imports such as clothing, spaghetti and vehicles, and there has been increased movement away from rural areas into the urban centres. Poverty and malnutrition have mostly been kept in check by community sharing and remittances, but many Somalilanders wonder for how long this can continue.

Somaliland is not alone in its dilemma. Vulnerable economies are typical of the pastoral regions that feed into the Berbera corridor.

Pastoralists who bring their sheep, goats and camels overland to Berbera port come mainly from areas characterised by marginalisation and insecurity, including southeastern Ethiopia, southern Somalia, and the two recently formed independent territories in northern Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland.

Isolation, mobility and fierce independence have set nomadic cultures at odds with central authorities and modernising new states. The relationship between pastoralists and the central government has “often been ambivalent at best, at worst openly hostile... Pastoralists are no respecters of state borders,” Richard Hogg said in “Pastoralists, Ethnicity and the State” (1997). Government policy-makers generally regard the pastoral areas - typically the borderlands and frontiers - as having little contribution to make to the national economy. They are often areas considered rebellious and difficult by central governments. “The defining characteristic of the relationship has been extractive and authoritarian,” Hogg said. Attempts by the centre to impose administrative and political structures, monopolise the use of violence, and collect taxes, have made herders “state-resistant”, John Markakis said (in “National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa”, 1990).

In the pastoral areas of southeastern Ethiopia, northern and southern Somalia, this political marginalisation has had dire economic consequences, including the lack of veterinary facilities and certification procedures, and the near absence of abattoirs, meat factories, good roads, airstrips, and communication facilities. Political marginalisation and conflict have also resulted at times in restriction of movement of people and livestock, destruction of water points, and confiscation of animals.

Before declaring itself independent, Somaliland shared many of these features with its pastoral neighbours. Now, as a breakaway state, it sets a precedent, pointed out one regional expert. On the one hand, it symbolises the secessionism and resistance feared by central governments in the region and by international bodies. On the other hand, it faces the considerable challenge of having to establish a central administration and a diversified economy in a predominantly pastoralist territory. Key to this will be the fortunes of Berbera port.