Dear readers,
If I could be so bold as to predict a soon to be continuously-running theme in this first post, it would go something like this: Overexcited westerners drink the proverbial Kool-Aid of a “flourishing democracy” with hyperbole. Denizens of said area are described as “warm” or “welcoming” or “pro-American” and then are compared with a sloppy analysis of a situation near said area – ideally in the same country (zing), which is much crappier by comparison. Voila, a snappy op-ed.
The latest chapter: the ‘discovery’ of a democratic Somaliland in the pages of the IHT/Boston Globe. This is vintage Kool-Aid – the facts are basically on, but everything is slightly overstated and simplified.
Mssrs Buttigieg and Myers, who ’stayed only a night’, came up with this quick conclusion after looking at cave paintings and the like:
The international community’s approach to Somaliland not only ignores these accomplishments; it might destroy them.
Unfortunately, they have it exactly backwards.
Turret and boy, outside of Hargeisa, taken in 2005...
But first, where have we heard this before? Ah, yes – last February Nick Kristof wrote an unfortunately titled piece, “The Land of Camel Milk and Honey” with more unfortunate hyperbolic lines like: There are public schools and hospitals — even a public library. If Kristof had visited the hospitals in Hargeisa, I sincerely doubt he would have described them with such aplomb.
I agree on a few of these points; we shouldn’t take anything away from Somaliland – they’ve done (comparitively) well with extremely little – but that’s part of the point, and hyperbolic rhetoric advocates a destructive policy prescription.
More wisdom from Kristof:
The lesson of Somaliland is simple: the most important single determinant of a poor country’s success is not how much aid it receives but how well it is run.
I wish it was this simple. Aid and resources affect how a country is run, which is why the much greater and more vexing issue in my mind is if the world actually does recognize Somaliland. Who’ll be at the coronation? Enter the oil companies, and there goes the neighborhood. Mix with complex loyalties fighting over the profits and you’re back to Somaliland circa 1994 (that is, in an internal Somaliland civil war). Or south/central Somalia today.
In brief, I’m not naive enough to think that the resource curse* and the aid curse will not apply to Somaliland – which they’ve avoided up until now – and that’s why the semi-state is better off unrecognized at this stage.
Somaliland’s existence and fragile balance is extraordinary and would not have been possible had it been recognized in 1991. If we drop $500 million on the leaders of Somaliland today, we might as well rename Hargeisa to N’djamena and call it a day…
until next time,
H
*Lots of pick from here. See Collier’s Commodity Prices, Growth, and the Natural Resource Curse: Reconciling a Conundrum
