Mohamed Abbi, 50, is a guitar-playing security guard in North Galcayo. Although his music is popular on both sides of town, he cannot cross the Green Line to perform in the South. (Photo by Xan Rice)

The latest attempt to install a government to deal with clan violence is hampered by a parliamentary dispute over the seat of power

BY XAN RICE
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

August 11, 2005

GALCAYO, Somalia -- The thin strip of no man's land that divides this town into north and south bears no markings or warning signs, but everybody knows it's there. The towns- people also know that crossing the so-called "Green Line" could spell instant death.

"If I had to go to the South now, surely I would be shot," said Mohamed Abbi, 50, a security guard with a knitted green fedora atop his head, four yellow tombstones for teeth and an old AK-47 slung over his shoulder. "A Southerner coming here to the North, he would be shot, too."

More than 14 years after Somalia lapsed into violence and lawlessness, its people have learned to live with extreme measures just to keep a semblance of peace. In Galcayo, that has meant splitting the Darod and Hawiye people - two of the country's main clans who are identical in all but name - into two towns after years of warlord rule and clan fighting. Women and children are generally left alone, but a man can be murdered for straying too close to the invisible Green Line in a place where a bullet is the only real law. It is hard, if not impossible, to determine the number killed since there is no working government and no records.

Governing by gunfire

"Everyone has a gun ... Every day people are killed," said Abbi, a guitar-playing former policeman who fled Mogadishu, the capital, when civil war broke out in 1991 and settled in this busy market town 300 miles to the north. Fierce clashes that erupted between the Darod and Hawiye, who had lived side by side for years, led soon after his arrival to the establishment of the Green Line. Today, young men can be seen riding on the backs of "technicals" - pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns - on both sides of the line.

"If we don't get a national government, it will always be like this," Abbi said ruefully.

In fact, Somalia has a government. Formed in exile in Kenya last year after two years of peace talks, the Transitional Federal Government has a 275-member parliament, including many warlords. But this is the 14th attempt at installing a functioning national authority in 14 years, and the majority of the 7 million people in this country on the Horn of Africa are not holding their breath.

After delaying their relocation from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, for eight months, most in parliament had finally made their way home by mid-June. But parliament has yet to convene on home soil and nobody is sure when, where or, indeed, if it ever will.

Abdullahi Yusuf, 70, the former warlord who was elected president in October, refuses to sit in Mogadishu, which he says is not secure and where he is unpopular. He has proposed moving the capital to nearby Jowhar, where he has set up base. But more than 100 fellow legislators - especially those with strong business interests in Mogadishu - say that is unacceptable.

Equally unpopular is Yusuf's call for 20,000 international peacekeeping troops to help the government get established and oversee disarmament. Many here are famously suspicious of outside intervention, as the U.S. military found in 1993 when 18 troops were killed during an operation to try to stop a war-induced famine.

Hopes for a settlement are fading. A meeting between Yusuf and a main opponent, House Speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, broke down in Yemen in late June, and there has been no reconciliation. In addition, Mohamed Dheere, the warlord who controls Jowhar, announced two key cabinet ministers opposed to Yusuf were plotting military action to take control of the town. The ministers denied the plot.

Babafemi Badejo, a senior political adviser to the UN office that monitors developments in Somalia, acknowledges the huge amount of work ahead. "Somalia falls into the category of countries like Afghanistan or Iraq, where the government's capacity to govern is still not felt," said Badejo, a Nigerian living in Nairobi who has worked for 12 years to achieve peace in Somalia.

There is also concern about terror cells following the London bombings, with at least two of the arrested suspects being Somalia natives. The International Crisis Group said an Afghanistan-trained militia leader runs a "ruthless independent jihadi network" from Mogadishu.

But while huge amounts of international capital have been invested in Iraq and Afghanistan because of links to the war on terror, Somalia has almost disappeared from the West's radar screen.

Immediate action urged

For the U.S. and the European Union to adopt a wait-and-see approach over the next few crucial months would be a major mistake, said Matt Bryden of Nairobi, a Somalia analyst with the International Crisis Group based in Brussels.

"The international community needs to say to Yusuf: 'Get moving...'" said Bryden, who blames the president's refusal to bend for much of the problem. "The best-case scenario is ... the status quo. But renewed fighting is a very real scenario."

For a country whose people have suffered so much already, that would be a disaster. There are two hospitals in Galcayo because even the sick fear crossing the Green Line. In the northern one, young mothers lie with their babies on mattresses in a special therapeutic feeding center. The children are twigs, some weighing half what they should. Some have come 400 miles. One in 10 will die.

"The humanitarian situation is already very bad and deserves a lot more attention," said Colin McIlreavy, 34, the head of mission here for Doctors Without Borders, Holland, which runs both hospitals.

Mohamed Waksame Abdulle, the new governor of North Galcayo who returned to his homeland recently after eight years in Australia, acknowledged as much: "The new government is committed to restoring law and order ... But many people in this country have grown up lawless and it's very hard to convince them to return to a normal life."

One of those people is Mohamed Hussain, 30, who was lying in the hospital trauma ward in North Galcayo recently, his right leg in a splint after a bullet ripped through it during recent clan fighting that killed 26 people. He wears the injury like a badge of honor: It is his eighth gunshot wound.

"The clan elders are meeting to see if they can find a solution," Hussain said with a grin. "But I hope they don't, so we can fight again."

Somalia's clan system

Somali society is organized on a lineage system in which the origins of all

Somalis can be traced back to a handful of patriarchs.

How it's organized

CLAN-FAMILIES: There are 6 main clan-families, or groups of clans who believe themselves linked by descent from a common ancestor.

Size: 100,000 to 1 million per clan-family

CLANS: Inside each clan-family, there are multitudes of clans, or groups believed to be descendants through males of a common ancestor.

Size: 10,000 to 100,000 per clan

LINEAGES: Each clan then further subdivides into lineages, making it possible for all Somalis to know how they are related merely by giving their name and clan membership.

Size: Varies

The problems

MANY SOMALIS see their loyalty first to their clan and that has hampered

attempts to form a stable government.

THE CLAN SYSTEM'S principles of retribution have encouraged individuals

to take law into their own hands, especially in disputes over water and

grazing lands.

ABOUT 15 PERCENT of the population are ethnic minorities who do not belong

to a clan. They traditionally have been discriminated against by the clans.

SOURCE: INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES, Aug 11, 2005