Somalia is often described as the world’s most dangerous place — and there’s enough truth in this to make anyone asked to go there think twice.
I regularly look for experts to send to a peacekeeping radio network there called Bar-Kulan (“meeting place” in Somali), which broadcasts from Nairobi to Somalia and the Somali diaspora.
Every day dozens of CVs enter my inbox, from technicians, journalists and translators across Africa and elsewhere, looking for work. Once they’ve gone through the triage process and the qualifications, at least on paper, look good, the road to employment usually reaches a dead end when I mention that the job entails frequent travel throughout Somalia.
Every few months there’s a rash of stories datelined Mogadishu, as the African Union (AU) mission based there, Amisom, and the public relations firm tasked with helping it improve its image, lay on junkets for international media houses.
The big players in Africa, including the SABC and East Africa’s Nation Group, as well as Radio France Internationale and others, were guests at Amisom’s headquarters last month.
While there, their journalists travel in Casspirs through parts of Mogadishu under the joint control of the AU and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG).
These junkets generally last only a few days and the journalists, while at greater risk than in most other parts of the world, are protected by soldiers, flak jackets and armoured vehicles. They also get to leave once their short assignment has come to an end.
The positive spin to these rather expensive efforts is that, even if only briefly, the major media houses have content about Somalia produced by somebody who was actually there. But when foreign journalists are not in Somalia, and that’s most of the time, most of what we read, hear or see from Somalia comes from Somalis.
There are hundreds of journalists with varying degrees of skill scattered throughout Somalia, practising their craft under extremely dangerous circumstances.
According to Reporters Sans Frontières, 11 local journalists have been killed in the past two years, largely in south-central Somalia, which includes Mogadishu and the port city of Kismaayo.
Most of this region is under the control of al-Shabaab, a militia of young radicals that once formed the armed wing of the Islamic Courts Union, which controlled south-central until it was ousted by Ethiopian forces and replaced by the TFG.
Al-Shabaab and another militant group, Hezb-i-Islami, have probably done more to curtail media freedom and drive journalists underground or abroad than any other force at work in the country.
They have shut down or banned newspapers, radio stations and television services, including banning music from the airwaves.
Bar-Kulan avoids these restrictions by locating its studios next door in Kenya and using shortwave and the internet to avoid the difficulties of erecting FM transmitters in places with neither security nor a stable power supply (though Mogadishu is served by an FM transmitter located within the Amisom compound).
But its journalists are located throughout Somalia.
In the more dangerous regions — basically anything south of the Puntland area of central Somalia down to the border with Kenya — they and other journalists tend to work under cover.
At the very least, pseudonyms are used and, more often than not, radio pieces are voiced-over in studio to protect identities.
Somali journalists work for all the major news agencies and media houses, including Reuters, AFP, AP, Al Jazeera, RFI and BBC. They also write prolifically for Somali websites based in most places where large numbers of Somalis have moved — Kenya, Canada, the United States and Europe.
The amount of news generated by local journalists reflects the fact that security in Somalia varies Âdramatically from place to place.
It’s more difficult to get stories from areas controlled by al-Shabaab, leaving important cities such as Kismaayo, Belet Weyne and Marka under-reported.
Puntland, the part of Somalia that is the Horn of Africa, where the Indian Ocean meets the Gulf of Aden, is a semi-autonomous region with its own government.
It has its weaknesses on the media-freedom front, but provides a far more secure and stable environment in which journalists can operate without the same fear for life and limb their counterparts face further south.
And then there is Somaliland, the former British colony which united with the former Italian colony in the south to create Somalia at independence in 1960. In 1991, after the government of former president Siad Barre collapsed, it broke away and declared independence.
Neither the AU nor the United Nations recognises the move, but to all intents and purposes, Somaliland is a separate country. Its capital, Hargeysa, is home to many journalists formerly based in Mogadishu.
It’s a lot safer to practise journalism in Somaliland than it is in most of the rest of the country, but not as safe as it should be. Journalists are frequently arrested and the National Association of Somali Journalists complains that the judiciary has repeatedly failed to punish perpetrators of attacks on media workers and outlets.
Government authorities in Hargeysa are extremely sensitive to how Somaliland is presented in the media. Bar-Kulan’s correspondents in Somaliland protect their position by shying away from reports on sovereignty and relations with Mogadishu.
There is always a price to pay when it comes to getting the story out. Somali journalists have a tougher time than most, but in spite of the very real threats they face, many are trying to do their job. I salute them.
David Smith is director of Okapi Consulting, a Jo’burg-based organisation that established and manages Bar-Kulan radio, which is funded by a trust fund managed by the UN support office for Amisom