The Road to Hell

T
his book would not have been possible without the assistance of many people in the U.S., Africa, and Europe. Because of the nature of this investigation and the unsettled state of Somali politics, some of them cannot be named, and others can only be partially identified. They know who they are.

Thanks are due to Scott Malcomson, Jonathan Larsen, and Amy Virshup, all formerly at the
Village Voice,
for backing me on several trips to Somalia and making much of this reporting possible.

In Somalia, Mohamed Jirdeh Hussein, proprietor of the Sahafi Hotel, offered advice, contacts, and credit when my funds began to dwindle. Thanks to my crew: Abass, who was with me day after day as translator and became a friend; Osman, who drove like a maniac and kept us moving through the mean streets of Mogadishu; Hassan, Nur, and Abdi, who watched my back.

A number of my colleagues were also instrumental in the completion of this book. Special thanks to Joshua Hammer, Keith Richburg, and Mark Huband. Photographers Steve Lehman and Peter Jones worked with me on several projects. Thanks to Richard Ben Cramer for guidance and for suggesting I write this book in the first place. Ken Menkhaus, Bernhard Helander, and Michael Madany were generous with their extensive knowledge
of Somalia. Matthew Bryden devoted months of his time to answering my endless questions.

Julie Lang, Jennifer Meagher, and Ted Hannon helped with research and transcriptions. Thanks also to Linda Rubes, Barry Shelby, Tami Hausman, Chris Lavin, Judy Hart, Patrick Dillon, Marc Aronson, Amina Abdi Issa, Daphne Pinkerson, Thomas Keenan, Don Wallace, and my friends at soc.culture.somalia. The Charlotte Geyer Foundation provided some funding.

Finally, I want to express my deep appreciation to Bruce Nichols at The Free Press for patience way beyond the call of duty, and to my agent, Flip Brophy, for hanging with the project for nearly a decade.

Some elements in this book are based on material previously published in
The Village Voice, Penthouse, Forbes Media Critic,
and
The New Republic
. A few names have been changed to protect sources.

ON THE SPELLING OF SOMALI WORDS

W
hile the Somali language has a rich oral tradition, it did not receive an orthography until 1972 when Mohamed Siyaad Barre, in what will likely be remembered as the only enduring accomplishment of his regime, assembled scholars and linguists to create a standardized system for writing Somali in the Latin alphabet. Still, English-language publications use a random array of spellings for Somali words and names. In part this is the result of Somalia's diverse colonial heritage. The Somali people were colonized by the Italians, British, and French, each of whom spelled the words as they sounded to them. Thus Somalia's capital is spelled Mogadiscio by the Italians, Mogadishu by the English, and Muqdisho in proper Somali. In addition, the wide use of maps from the French Michelin company has extended French style into areas beyond French influence so that the town of Beledweyne is often spelled as Belet Uen.

For this book I had originally intended to solve this problem by using proper Somali spellings in every instance. This quickly proved awkward. For example, the name of Somalia's most famous warlord would appear as Maxamed Farax Caydiid. And some readers found it confusing when I referred to Muqdisho instead of Mogadishu. The towns of Baidoa and Bardera are more properly written as Baydhabo and Baardheere, but using these spellings would have proved puzzling to anyone who routinely followed press reports from Somalia.

To solve the problem I have compromised, using the proper Somali spellings whenever possible, and approximating them when appropriate. Thus the man known as Aidid, or Aideed in the Western press and as Caydiid in Somalia appears in this text as Aydiid. I use the proper spelling for the port of Kismaayo, which is often rendered as Chismayo or Kismayo. For the town of Gaalkacyo I have used Galkayo instead of Galcaio or any of the other variations that have appeared in print. Most of the spellings chosen for the text should be self-evident. Some of these compromises are certain to irritate Somali scholars and Somali language purists, and for that I apologize. My goal has been to communicate ideas to an audience beyond those with a specific interest in Somalia. The spellings I have chosen serve that purpose.

INTRODUCTION: DARKNESS AND LIGHT

âJoseph Conrad,
Heart of Darkness

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the ideaâsomething you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. â¦

I
n October of 1977, I traveled from my home near Boston to Kenya, East Africa, via Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville was the site of a Peace Corps staging, a preliminary training program to prepare a group of us for two years of teaching in Kenya. About thirty volunteers showed up, mostly young, recent college graduates, predominantly middle class, all of us white. I was twenty-one years old, the youngest of the group.

We gathered for the first time in a campus lounge on a cool and colorful fall day, not sure what to expect from each other, completely clueless about what the next few years would bring but sure that we were about to share an amazing adventure. On that first day, we were asked to introduce ourselves to the rest of the group. Beyond the standard biographical
data, each of us was to answer the question: Why are you joining the Peace Corps?

None of us had taken the decision to join lightly. The application process that dragged on for months, and in some cases years, weeded out those without a burning desire to join up. But the question of why elicited only vague and ambiguous answers about adventure, exploration, and personal growth. But then in a final flourish of certitude, nearly everyone capped his or her list of reasons with a statement about wanting to help people. The idea was to help Africans. Whatever else this adventure would be, it was built on a solid mission of charity and good will.

I don't recall what exactly I said that day; I hadn't really thought much about why I was going to Africa. It probably had something to do with wanting to spend a few years in a tropical climate. I would have been just as happy to be sent to Malaysia or Bolivia. I'd earlier spent a semester studying in India and had enjoyed the sights, sounds, and even the smells of the Third World environment. And graduating from college with a degree in English I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. The Peace Corps seemed like a low-key graduate program with a full scholarship and a healthy stipend. Whatever reasons I did have, I must admit that helping people was not high among them. It's not that I didn't care; I just wasn't entirely certain that people in Kenya needed help. And if in fact the Kenyans did need help, it wasn't at all apparent that any of us young and eager American kids was really in a position to offer any. None of us had ever been to Africa before, nor did we have any background in development studies. We all just knew, somehow, that our breeding, education, and nationality had imbued us with something valuable from which these less fortunate people could benefit.

It was easy to presume that people needed our help. For us, Africa was more than a place on the map, it was a location in our collective psyche. Our idea of Africa had been shaped by years of advertisements and news coverage that portrayed the continent as poor and helpless. Growing up in an affluent Western society we were invested with a stake in the image of helpless Africa, starving Africa, In public affairs discussions the term “starving Africans” (or “starving Ethiopians” or “starving Somalis”) rolls from the tongue as easily as “blue sky.” “Americans leave enough food on their plates to feed a million starving Africans.” Charities raise money for starving Africans. What do Africans do? They starve. But mostly they starve in our imaginations. The starving African is a Western cultural archetype like the greedy Jew or the unctuous Arab. The difference is that we've learned that trafficking in these last two archetypes is wrong or, at
least, reflects badly upon us. But the image of the bloated helpless child adorns advertisements for Save the Children and World Vision. The image of the starving African is said to edify us, sensitize us, mobilize our good will and awaken us from our apathy.

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