The Road to Hell (4 page)

B
y the spring of 1993, people had stopped starving in Baidoa. American soldiers had come and gone, replaced by international peacekeepers. Aid workers by the hundreds descended upon the town to nurture the victims.
Many Somalis who had fled the city during more than a year of fighting began to return. And other Somalis, many of whom had never been to Baidoa, showed up looking for work with aid agencies, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and the so-called non-governmental organizations, commonly known as NGOs.

On a typically hot afternoon in June 1993, a young American aid worker climbs into the front passenger seat of his Toyota Land Cruiser. Beside him sits his driver, a nineteen-year-old Somali kid called Jiis. In the back seat of the vehicle sit two other young Somalis; one is Jiis's younger brother, and the other is a cousin of some sort. The trio are employed as security guards. Each holds a battered AK-47 assault rifle, muzzle resting lightly on the door frame and pointing toward the cloudless blue sky. With everyone in position, Jiis steers the car away from a massive tarmac airstrip and starts down a rutted, dusty road. Despite the weaponry, none of the gunmen appears particularly on guard. The American stares silently and grips a medium-sized package that he has collected from the plane. A white-on-faded-blue UN flag mounted on a little metal post crudely welded to the front bumper snaps in the wind. As the Land Cruiser rocks along, Jiis and his friends begin to talk to each other in Somali, softly at first, but the conversation soon escalates into louder, more adamant tones. The American doesn't understand a word, but it sounds to him as if they are arguing. He pays little attention; Somalis always seem to be arguing about something.

This time Jiis and the boys are really arguing. The two guards in the back seat are trying to convince Jiis that they should drive off and kill the American right now. Jiis insists they wait. He knows the package contains something important because the American seems nervous today—more nervous than usual. He was anxious earlier in the day when Jiis was late showing up at the compound where he lived with other foreigners. “Where the fuck is Mohamed,” the American had said, using Jiis's real name. When Jiis arrived, he had to endure a lecture about the virtues of showing up on time. Jiis doesn't like the American. The American has complained about his work habits before, calling him lazy, threatening to fire him. Jiis isn't sure he wants to put up with anyone telling him what to do, especially a foreigner, a
gaal
, an infidel. As it turned out, they'd arrived in plenty of time to meet the plane.

When a silence finally settles in, the American speaks. The package, he says, contains food his mother has sent him from home, and when they get back to the compound he is going to open the package and share some chocolate.

Jiis translates for his colleagues and continues. “These people, they talk to us like we're children. They think they can make us happy with pieces of chocolate while they keep boxes of money.”

“Thank you,” Jiis says to the American.

“Let's kill him now,” says Jiis's friend one more time.

“No. We have to have a plan,” Jiis insists. “You boys are stupid. You can't just take all this money without a plan. We need to have a plan to take the money, and we need to have a plan to get away.”

W
hen troubles come, the Land Cruisers always follow. Airplanes and trucks bring bags of food and blankets, and Land Cruisers bring relief workers. They are young, earnest, healthy, clean, and tanned European and American kids in short pants, T-shirts, baseball caps, and sunglasses. They stride like an invincible force through the mass assembly of vulnerable, sick and dying victims of war, famine, and disease. In their Land Cruisers they glide over dusty streets in faraway, forgotten places, the flags of their aid organizations flying in the wind they make. The faster they drive, the more erect and firm fly their banners, bearing symbols that mean caring and helping to people thousands of miles away.

Now, in the middle of 1993, Baidoa is an aid workers' jamboree. There is food. People crowd the market. Children run and play and laugh. There are the sounds, generators from behind the walls of NGO compounds, and the grinding of tires on gravel. Only occasionally does the sharp crack of gunfire silence the clamor of normal activity. Land Cruisers are everywhere. The NGOs rent the Land Cruisers from their owners, their new owners, who looted them from the aid agencies that were in Somalia before the war. When things get more secure and their presence seems more permanent, the NGOs will buy their own Land Cruisers. Until then, it's safer to rent for $75 a day.

Each Land Cruiser carries one or two foreigners and three or four Somali kids. It gives the aid workers a thrill. And it gives jobs to the kids with guns. To most Somalis, the kids with guns are known as mooryaan, little bandits, punks, street kids. For the aid workers they are security guards. Most Somalis fear them and wonder why the helpers from abroad spend so much time with these
mooryaan
. These are the same kids who were looting the Land Cruisers before, and now it's not exactly clear whether they are paid to protect the vehicles or bribed not to loot them.

Mohamed Sheikh is a former looter who now has a job with the United Nations as a driver and gunman. He has a round, boyish, mischievous face, light brown skin, and sandy hair that appears streaked with blond when he
stands in the sunlight. Mohamed was born with one leg slightly shorter than the other, and as a child he had walked with a barely perceptible limp. He had long ago learned to compensate for his imbalance, but the nickname he was given as a child had stuck. Everyone calls him Jiis, which means “limp.” He had been living in the town of Beledweyne when the war to oust Mohamed Siyaad Barre began in 1989. Members of his Hawaadle clan had joined with the victorious forces of the USC, the United Somali Congress, and captured the capital of Mogadishu in January 1991. Jiis never fought with the guerrillas, but within days of their victory, he was in the capital, gleefully joining the festival of looting that had engulfed the city. He stole a rifle and began breaking into the abandoned homes that were once occupied by foreigners, NGOs, and members of Siyaad Barrels clan, the Daarood. He stole electric generators, televisions, and VCRs.

In Mogadishu in those days, a major cause of death was car accidents, as kids from the bush, former cattle herders, took to the streets in looted cars and Land Cruisers, driving on whichever side of the road they chose, not knowing any better and not really caring. In the new Mogadishu the
mooryaan
made the rules.

Jiis and his brother and a few friends took what they wanted and sold what they didn't need. They spent their time chewing
qat
, spending $10 or $20 a day on the stimulant, which even during the worst of the fighting and the peak of the famine was imported daily from neighboring Kenya. They watched looted movies on looted VCRs and televisions, all powered by looted generators. They particularly liked American movies, violent American movies. Jiis watched and worked on his English by listening to Glint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone.

When there was nothing left to loot, the USC forces split into their clan and subclan factions and began to loot from each other. Mogadishu exploded again, and Jiis got out of town, first heading south along the coast to the port city of Kismaayo. Out of money and in need of work, he got a job there with the UN doing security, riding around in Land Cruisers, and protecting the occupants. He also made money on the side by running errands in the market for the foreigners who were afraid to leave their protected compounds. For example, a lot of them wanted to bu a macawis, the Somali sarong. Jiis would buy one for $8 and sell it to them for $25. Occasionally they would pay him off by letting him take bags of food, which he could sell on the market.

Not long after the Americans arrived in Somalia, Jiis was fired from his job in Kismaayo for being rude to his employers and not showing up for work. So he and his brother headed for Baidoa, where NGOs were setting
up shop and work was plentiful. He had a gun. He knew how to drive. And he spoke English, after a fashion.

S
everal times a day in Baidoa the Land Cruisers congregate around the long tarmac airstrip. The aid workers talk quietly among themselves, exchanging news like African women at the village well. They complain about their Somali workers. They discuss the dangers of life in Somalia, or they pass along legends from the days before the arrival of the marines: the looting of the Red Cross warehouse, the hijacking of the CARE convoy on its way to Baidoa, aid workers who had been held hostage or murdered. They talk of the former Somali army major who ran the airport before the Americans came, how he charged landing fees and entrance fees and made a fortune from every relief plane that landed.

Their Somali escorts gather in their own group to complain about and ridicule the foreigners. They are certain the foreigners are getting rich in Baidoa. Why else would they have left their plush California mansions and English country estates to come here?

At first there is only the soft murmur of voices trailing away into the open air. Wind faintly rustles the thorny bushes. Heat rises from the tar. Most of the aid workers have walkie-talkies on their belts that occasionally squawk in unison. The landing lights of the C-130 Hercules appear in the distance long before any sound is heard. The plane emerges as a blurry white ball through the midday heat. Even the nomads gather just to watch. Sometimes they wander out on the runway and the aid workers shout and wave them off.

Then, instantly, in a shower of sound, the plane is on the ground. The Land Cruisers ring the hulking transport plane like suckling piglets. The ear-ripping rush from turbo props, and the toxic sweet smell of burning jet fuel fills the torrid air. The plane drops its rear cargo door and pallets are rolled toward a waiting forklift. There are crates of bottled water for aid workers and peacekeeping troops. There are cases of beer and boxes of medical supplies for UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund). And there are smaller packages for individuals and organizations containing messages, personal mail, food from home, and cash for salaries. A wiry, gray-haired white man with no shirt stands in the back of the plane shouting in a colonial English accent at the Somalis who are unloading the packages. They don't understand and they can't hear anyway beneath the whine of the engines. Still, they respond to his directives. The white man's flesh is sticky with sweat, and flecks of grain, grains of sand and cardboard-brown
dust from the boxes coat his body. Then the Hercules closes its door and is gone.

Most of the Somali security guards help their employers load the boxes into the backs of the Land Cruisers. But Jiis just watches. I'm not your fucking slave, he once told the American. The American is getting paid a lot of money, Jiis figures. He wants to be here. Let him load the boxes.

The American would like to fire Jiis, but he's afraid. He knows that labor disputes have led to deaths. A Red Cross worker was recently shot to death in the nearby town of Bardera by an angry former security guard. It's best to take these things slowly. It may be possible to make friends with the boy, make him understand that working with the UN is a big opportunity. He's already earning $300 a month in a country where annual per capita income is $150. Maybe he'll start to cooperate. But Jiis isn't going to cooperate. He's not impressed with the foreigners and their technology, the way they come and go in airplanes. They have their CD players, radios, and notebook computers, their Swiss Army knives, their running shoes and Gore-Tex clothes with Velcro fasteners. Jiis has seen this all before. The town of Beledweyne was full of them. They'd been there as long as he could remember, taking care of refugees from Ethiopia. As long as he could remember, the foreigners had been coming and staying for a few months and then leaving. There were always new ones walking wide-eyed through the market, staring at camels. But eventually they would become scarce, preferring to ride in their air-conditioned Land Cruisers, plowing slowly through crowds of Somalis as they passed on their way to work or to enjoy each others' company behind the walls of their compounds.

That evening, Jiis and his friends chew qat and talk. There are four of them now, as another security guard has been brought in on the plan. The
qat
keeps them awake and alert. The plan, a simple plan, is settled upon. The Americans have made the roads safe for travel at night. Buses will be going to Mogadishu before dawn. That is how they will make their escape.

In the very early hours of the morning, with everyone asleep, Jiis walks into the room where the American sleeps. He pushes the muzzle of his rifle against the sleeping man's head and prods him awake. Then, in the voice of a bad guy from one of the American movies he had once watched, Jiis says, “Open the fucking safe and give me the fucking money.”

The American obeys. He is tied up and gagged and locked in his room. Then Jiis and his friends drive to the edge of town and abandon the Land Cruiser. Stealing the Land Cruiser would have brought problems. The Somali owner would have tracked them down or found a relative of his in
Mogadishu or Beledweyne. As dictated by Somali tradition, somebody would have had to pay. That crime would have trailed Jiis for the rest of his life. But stealing from the foreigners is something different. They would have no idea how to find him because they had no idea who he was.

The safe contained nearly $100,000 in cash. Jiis takes his $25,000 share and gives most of it to his ailing father in Mogadishu. He passes out more to friends and relatives and takes the last $5,000 and goes to the port city of Mombasa in Kenya, where he spends it on women and drugs. It is a glorious four months. Jiis, the limping kid from the Somali bush is a big man in the big city. The Mombasa bar girls call him the sheik.

When the money is gone, he moves in with family in Nairobi, where he is looking for another job with the UN. “The money was mine,” Jiis explains a year later in Nairobi. He's wearing blue jeans and a U.S. Navy baseball cap, and looks very much at home slurping down a gin and tonic at the Serena Hotel. “You may say it's the UN's money, but what is the UN? This money comes to Somalia and people are taking it. I have just taken mine.”