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“THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ” by James Fergusson
(Bantam Press/ Random House $NZ39:99)
Somalia, on
the Horn of Africa, is in a state of chaos. It has an official government, the
TFG (Transitional Federal Government) in Mogadishu. But out in the desert and
scrub-lands, tribes rule and the notion of a functioning government is really a
joke. Various Western interventions destabilised the region in the twentieth
century. There followed the long-term dictatorship of Siad Barre (from 1969 to
1991). Then there was many-sided civil war, fed at least in part by Islamicist
groups funded from other Muslim countries. In most of the land, real
infrastructure is virtually non-existent.
Truth to tell, Somalia is only dubiously
a state at all. When independence came from European powers a couple of
generations ago, not all Somalis wanted to be part of the new state of Somalia.
Though it has a Somali population, Djibouti chooses to remain firmly separate,
as does the confusingly-named Somaliland. Real authority in Somalia itself is a
congeries of tribes, warlords and youthful fanatics, with the central
government having little power to overcome traditional tribal loyalties. Worse,
the UN places it at the top of its list for government corruption. And over two
million of its citizens have fled abroad, most of them to such Western nations
as Britain and the United States.
We are
dealing, then, with something so chaotic that it is difficult to write a
straightforward political or social commentary upon it.
But British journalist James
Fergusson has imposed at least some sort of order upon his book The World’s Most Dangerous Place (subtitled
Inside the Outlaw State of Somalia).
Based on his journeys in Somalia in 2011, and his investigations of Somalis
abroad in 2012, this is a very generous slice of journalism, running to nearly
400 pages (exclusive of its two sections of colour photographs). And like
Caesar’s Gaul it is divided neatly into three parts.
In the
first part, Fergusson is with the soldiers of AMISCOM, the African Union
Mission in Somalia, made up mainly of Ugandans and Burundians. He is an
“embedded” journalist, observing what is officially a peacekeeping mission, but
is unofficially a continual war against al-Shabaab. The literal translation of
al-Shabaab is “The Youth”. This Islamicist movement is made up mainly of
youthful recruits, and hence is very much the Somalian equivalent of the
Taliban. Many Taliban and al-Qaida leaders have indeed fled to Somalia, made it
their new base, and recruited hungry and gullible boys.
In these first seven chapters,
Fergusson is mainly in the shattered remnants of Mogadishu.
In the
second part of the book, he moves out into the backblocks of Somalia –
particularly the northern coastal regions, where piracy has once again become
big business. Finally, in the third section, he is with the “diaspora” of
Somalis living in London and Minneapolis.
Even in this orderly organization
of material, much of what Fergusson tells me suggests chaos. There is, for
example, this indication of violence as a routine feature of the everyday life
of children:
“Mogadishu was a city where violence was so endemic that it had become
the norm. The sleep of its citizens was no longer disturbed by the sound of
shooting at night; small boys thought nothing of playing football in their
street while a firefight raged up and down their neighbourhood. In 2011,
according to the World Health Organization, nearly half of Somali victims of
weapon-related injuries were children under the age of five. An entire
generation of Somalis had grown up knowing that they could be violently killed,
at random, at any time.” (Pgs.45-46)
Fergusson makes this remark while
visiting a primitive hospital in the city, which treats both military and
civilian casualties. Later he describes Mogadishu as “Lord of the Flies with automatic weapons” (Pg.72)
Perhaps even more shattering are
his accounts of young girls (and we are talking nine- and ten-year-olds as well
as teenagers) who are forced into “field marriages” by the young warriors of
al-Shabaab and others. This means months of being treated as sexual utilities,
raped and mutilated before being discarded. Again, in visiting a hospital,
Fergusson sees wards of bruised and damaged young girls, some with the babies
that their “field marriages” have produced.
In one thirty-page chapter,
Fergusson gets to talk to deserters from al-Shabaab. He discovers that they are
mainly foolish and uneducated teenagers. Some were so naïve that they were
drawn into al-Shabaab by recruiters who showed them clips from Bollywood
musicals and claimed they were documentary evidence of the virgins awaiting
them in Paradise, should they sacrifice themselves for the Islamicist cause.
Here is how Fergusson describes
their first encounter:
“One day, waiting at the base convoy point for another ride up to the
front, I came across three recently captured al-Shabaab fighters, the oldest of
whom was seventeen, the youngest fifteen. They were slumped along the wall of
an administrative Portakabin awaiting transport to who knew where, their hands
cuffed behind their backs, dirty and dejected, a look of shock in their eyes.
They were volunteers, they said, who had put their hands up when an al-Shabaab
recruiter came to their school. This had happened just fifteen days ago. They
decided to surrender when they became separated from their unit and ran out of
bullets. Why, I asked, had they put their hands up in the first place? The boys
all looked at each other.
‘We were given a piece of fruit every day,” said one of them.”
(pp.152-153).
This last sentence reminds us of
another Somali reality. Famine has been a major recruiting agent for
Islamicists. Like most famines in human history, the great Somali famine of June-July
2011 was not caused by the forces of nature, but by foolish human decisions.
And al-Shabaab would not allow relief agencies to distribute food in the areas
they controlled, as al-Shabaab knew that hungry people were more pliable.
Fergusson does mention the good
intentions of the TFG and the international forces, which helped to set it up.
But he has to note that attempts at stable government are always subverted by
the need to maintain tribal balances in the allocating of government offices;
and hence tribalism continues to be supported, promoted and embedded in the
feeble state. He also notes that a disproportionate number of TFG ministers
have been literate, but under-qualified, returning refugees who simply do not
understand how a government should function.
When he moves out to the northern
province of Puntland (on the actual “horn” of Africa), Fergusson meets at least
one sophisticated official who suggests that maybe Sharia law, for all its
inhumanities, wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. At least it would give
some predictable order to a county without this commodity. Up in Puntland lives one third of Somalia’s
population. And up in Puntland, the only sealed road is one that was built
eighty years ago by Mussolini’s colonising Italians. The main legitimate income
of this region comes from import duties. Real income derives from piracy,
despite the smooth assurances Fergusson is given by a provincial official.
If I were to summarise all of the
contents of this book, I would simply produce a catalogue of miseries. But
alongside his (necessary and vivid) reportage, Fergusson has built something
else into The World’s Most Dangerous
Place. Two of the book’s most interesting features are the ongoing dialogue
Fergusson conducts with other Western observers of Somalia; and his awareness
of how much Western perceptions colour what is reported. I am interested to
note how often he refers to the remarks of the nineteenth century explorer
Richard Burton and mid-twentieth century novelist Gerard Hanley as perennially
reliable guides to the Somali mentality.
Fergusson is unsparing in his
analysis of the way Western influence has played its part in destroying this
country. Somali tribal warfare in the nineteenth century became truly lethal
only when it was armed with the best modern weapons. Clan feuds inflated to
full-scale wars once the British and Italians left plenty of equipment and
ammunition lying around in Somalia after the Second World War. The Siad Barre
dictatorship relied extensively on US backing. The US saw it as a counter to
the Soviet-backed dictatorship next door in Ethiopia. The dictatorship made
Somalia even poorer than it had already been. The collapse of the dictatorship
coincided with arrival of Jihadists. Fergusson compares the early 20th
century Somali “Mad Mullah”, Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, fighting the British, to
Osama bin Laden fighting Alliance forces. Similar mentalities are in play.
Fergusson also notes how much
Western pop culture gives people an unreal image of the region. He refers a
number of times to Ridley’s Scott’s film Black
Hawk Down, based on the incident when American helicopters were forced down
in Somalia and their crews massacred. In his opinion, the film sold the world
foolish stereotypes. He gives an account of the media circus at the time of the
Somali famine, with Hollywood actors forcing themselves into the limelight to
show how concerned they were with humanitarian relief. Mind you, their
limelight-hogging was pardonable compared with the posturing of Ghana’s Jerry
Rawlings, who also visited Somalia during the famine, with camera crews in tow.
As Fergusson tells it, the US now
is desperate not to be identified with AMISCOM’s war on al-Shabaab. For “the
Great Satan” to be seen as backing these African peacekeepers would simply
provide Islamicists with a propaganda weapon. Yet the author spends time at the
fortified “Bancroft Hotel” in Mogadishu, which crawls with African and Western
“advisors” and mercenaries, some CIA among them.
And there is also an awareness of
the way Western pop culture influences the locals. Here is an early passage
where Fergusson describes the Ugandans he met in AMISCOM:
“Some of the men, in their aviator sunglasses
and decorated helmets, looked so astonishingly like extras in a Vietnam war
movie that I think they must consciously be emulating Hollywood. Yet there is
no doubt what generation they belong to when one of them nods and grins and
says in a near flawless American accent, ‘How ya doin’, man? Are you on
Facebook? I’ll catch you later on Youtube.” (Pg.21)
And in the long chapter where
Fergusson examines those Somalis now living in London (it is called “The Somali
Youth Time-bomb”), he quotes this interesting fusion of black American rap and
Jihadism, as chanted by some young London Somalis:
“For the cause
We kick down doors and
break laws
We don’t care about
police we live by Allah’s laws
For the cause I clap
down niggaz that test me
I’m a Muslim. I can
let nothing oppress me
For the cause I won’t
stop till I reach my garden
I beg your pardon. I
ride with bin Laden.” (quoted pg.273)
I do not believe Fergusson
trivialises anything he reports, but he cannot help being aware of the irony of
being a Western journalist in a land of war-torn, starving and intimidated
people. In the Mogadishu sections of this book, he frequently expresses
feelings of guilt about going back each evening to a comfortable, secured
hotel, after another day of observing human misery. He does not leave us with
despair. A final section of the book suggests that AMISCOM now has the upper
hand over al-Shabaab. But his own delicacy of feeling is to his credit.
