AT THE Coconut Beach Hotel, which opened last month, new guests are served coconut smoothies when they arrive. The rooms do indeed have a view of the ocean. What betrays where the hotel is, in Mogadishu, the war-torn capital of Somalia, are the two dozen guards in football shirts loafing around the doors clutching AK-47s. At the top of the stairs sits a machine-gun nest pointing at the gate. Aisha Abdulle Hassan, the proprietor, explains that she has invested $2m in the business. She is confident that it will soon be highly profitable. But she is taking no chances: “Our security is as tight as we could make it,” she says. “Only Allah knows if it is enough.”
Hotels are booming in Mogadishu. This is not thanks to tourists—only the most daring or idiotic would take a holiday in Somalia. Rather, the demand comes from power-brokers, who meet in them to discuss how to create a new government. This year Somalia is meant to hold elections, as part of the UN-led reconstruction effort. But even as peacemakers blather inside air-conditioned conference rooms, battle continues to rage outside. Hotels have become a target for militants. On August 30th a car bomb blew up outside one in Mogadishu, killing at least 15 people. After a quarter-century of costly foreign intervention, Somalia is still Africa’s most-failed state.
At no point since 1991, when the despot Siad Barre was overthrown by rebels, have Somalis had a government worthy of the name. Officials from Mogadishu cannot safely visit much of the country, let alone govern it (even excluding Somaliland, a region in the north that has been de facto independent since 1991). War, famine and terrorism have prompted legions of Somalis to flee. A sixth of them—2m out of a population of perhaps 12m—now live abroad. For those who remain, life expectancy is just 55 years, and barely a third can read.
Since 2007 Somalia has been occupied by armies from neighbouring countries, who—beginning with the Ethiopians in 2006—invaded to eject an incipient Islamist government in Mogadishu. The result was the creation of a Western-backed Somali transitional government, and a new enemy, al-Shabab, a splinter group from the Islamists. Al-Shabab immediately resorted to guerrilla war. In an effort to keep the jihadists at bay, Western governments pay for AMISOM, a force of 22,000 foreign soldiers operating in Somalia under a joint UN and African Union mandate.
Today, the Islamists control little in the way of towns. But Somalia remains deeply insecure. In Mogadishu, fearing kidnap or worse, foreigners generally confine themselves to the international airport—a sprawling compound protected by thick fortifications and Ugandan soldiers. Travel outside means taking a risk in a taxi or enlisting an armoured car. In other parts of the country, especially in the south, AMISOM troops live in fortified camps with thin supply lines, while al-Shabab wander into villages and operate as they please.
That is not to say there are no successes. At Villa Somalia, the bullet-pocked Italian-built Art Deco presidential palace, Mohamed Sheikh Hassan Hamud, the police commissioner, says that things have got better. A few years ago, at least one police officer was dying every day, he says. Today, it is five to ten a month. But his officers still cannot do much beyond escorting VIPs and guarding government buildings. Asked what he does to protect businesses from attacks, Mr Hamud answers: “We cannot protect them. They must have their own security.” That strengthens al-Shabab, because most firms choose to pay off the militants rather than risk attack.
Source: The Economist
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