Somalia: Number one Failed Nation, yet Somaliland stable at peace

[Hadoodil]

Mogadishu is ground zero for the failed state of Somalia, a place where pirates and terrorists rule. Yet to the north, the breakaway region of Somaliland is stable and at peace. What happened?

 

Good read.

 

Here is the link

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/09/somalia/draper-text

[Hadoodil]

The Fund for Peace has ranked Somalia number one on its index of failed states for the past two years. That distinction understates the pathos of Somalia. Failure—to deliver security, sustenance, services, or hope—has, for 18 years now, been the house that Somalis call home. And they are leaving their home in droves. The lucky ones migrate outside the conflict zone—on harrowing journeys to refugee camps in Kenya or Yemen, or to Somaliland, the breakaway republic that once formed Somalia's northern swath. Those less fortunate—more than a million of them—have ended up in camps for internally displaced persons. But many choose to remain in Mogadishu, a city that looks, at first glance, like most of its kind in Africa. A crazed tangle of battered automobiles, mule-drawn carts, and untended goats rules the pocked streets. The markets teem with brilliant mangoes and bananas and junk merchandise from the West. Women in Muslim head scarves pass by, as do boys kicking soccer balls and men with cheekfuls of qat.

Yet amid the exoskeletons of banks and cathedrals and luxury hotels overlooking a glimmering coastline that once buzzed with pleasure boats, an awful truth dawns. Mogadishu was never like other African cities. Mogadishu was a spectacular city. Even in its disfigurement, the beauty is still there—above all, in ghostly Hamarweyne, where photographer Pascal Maitre and I stand in the empty boulevard and squint out at the sea until a call to prayer from a nearby mosque reminds us it is almost five in the afternoon, after which all outside activity ceases.

[Hadoodil]

Why is the violence so intractable? A clarifying paradigm can be found immediately to the north, in Somaliland. No visual distinction marks the Somalilander from the Somali. But the naked eye detects plenty of differences between the two regions. Somaliland's capital city of Hargeysa is an almighty wreck of sledgehammered streets, ungoverned traffic, litter, and refugee camps, but there are two things there that you will not find in Mogadishu. The first is a construction boom—of hotels, restaurants, business centers. The second are the currency-exchange booths everywhere on the streets, where women sit alongside yard-high stacks of Somaliland shil­lings, unaccompanied by security of any sort.

 

What one almost never sees in Hargeysa is violence.

[GAAROODI]

Its called being civilized and understanding truth,honour, respect and decency.

 

Some people have it other don't. I cant help but wonder were Somaliland would be today if we never united with Somalia in 1960. We would have been a regional superpower, a nuclear armed nation in africa. Ethiopia and Eriteria, Somalia and all these little inhuman uncivilized states would be in our realm of influence.

 

inshalah one day.

 

like Nieitche said man " what doesnt kill you makes you stronger".

 

we are stronger today for knowing what somalia is, in my view a backward,hostile, hypocratical, self serving, conspiratoral,immoral society, thats the reason why God is still testing you, until you realise this and let by gones be by gones, give every man his right without condition, they will still continue to suffer.

[Naxar Nugaaleed]

don't you simpletons understand that those rankings include Somaliland?

[poiuyt]

Originally posted by Naxar Nugaaleed:

don't you simpletons understand that those rankings include Somaliland?

L.O.L