Journalists in Somalia have to be wary … before publishing by photocopier. ALEX BELLOS reports from Mogadishu
THE press in Britain is often referred to as the fourth estate. In Somalia – where uniquely there has been no government for six years – it is definitely the first. Mogadishu is an unlikely place to have a thriving journalistic scene. The city is effectively lawless; no central government means no national police or justice system.
Looking like Beirut did in the 1980s, it is controlled by three heavily armed clan factions which one assumes would not think twice about seeing off a reporter who published something they did not like.
But when President Siad Barre’s dictatorial regime ended in 1991, leaving the country in the hands of the warlords, so did his strong-armed censorship of the Somali press.
For journalists it was an intoxicating freedom. “When the government collapsed, newspapers popped up like mushrooms,” says Said Bakar, who was imprisoned by Barre for three years in 1974 for reporting the coup d’etat in Chad.
Mogadishu now boasts an incredible 19 newspapers, of which five are daily. “Somalis like to be informed of everything that is going on,” says Bakar dryly.
The papers bear little resemblance to counterparts in other countries. All the printing presses – like almost every other piece of industrial hardware in the city – were destroyed in the fighting. Mogadishu’s issues are instead A4 sheets printed using Gestetner machines and stapled together. Somali journalistic methods are also inevitably idiosyncratic.
There are no “official”organisations to use as sources for news stories – there is no phone system to call people even if there were. Reporters spend all day walking around the city like journalism students on a college project.
In the absence of a functioning banking system, the financial reporter for the daily paper Qaran (Nation) simply walks to Mogadishu’s main market, asks the men holding wodges of bank-notes how the Somali shilling is doing against a handful of foreign currencies and then returns to the office.
Political reporting is trickier. Clan allegiances and rivalries are so strong that Abdulahi Ahmed Ali, the editor of Qaran, says he cannot send the same reporter to interview one faction more than a few days in a row for fear they become linked to the faction.
As for the writing, Somali politics – related to clans, subclans, sub-subclans and so on – is so complicated it makes the workings of the European Union seem like a nursery tale. There are families, factions, militias, clan warlords, banana warlords, self-styled government ministers – all essentially unaccountable.
In such a highly charged climate it is inevitable that articles will offend someone with a gun on a regular basis. Attacks are common. Journalists are constantly threatened and shot at.
In 1994 Ali was kidnapped by a gunman irritated by a piece in the paper. He was kept for 24 hours and only released after negotiations between elders from his clan and the gunman’s clan.
But Ali believes the attacks are stopping. “Maybe they realise we are telling the truth,”he says. Maybe the clan leaders realise that a healthy press is important for all sides when most other ways of communication have broken down.
The importance of newspapers is highlighted because there is no television and all the radio stations were taken over by the factions, who use them as a way of disseminating propaganda. (The BBC World Service in Somalia is an honourable exception. In many remote villages the 5.30pm bulletin is the main event of the day – and the only communication with the outside world).
Somali politics is also a sub-editor’s nightmare. To identify a subclan you need to include the wider clan (often referred to by a political party), followed by backslash, followed by the subclan. Very soon the headlines of stories look like Internet website addresses.
Qaran’s offices in south Mogadishu consist of three rooms in the back of a house. One room has the photocopier, the second two computer terminals where typists transcribe reporters’ stories and the third is the editor’s office. Ali sits behind a desk in the half-light. There is a bench and three chairs and nothing else. We are talking at lunchtime and there are no journalists around.
He said his staff of 15 reporters meets at 7am for morning conference. Once they divide up the work they disappear into the city and only return for the afternoon meeting at 5pm.
The journalists then write up their articles in pencil and hand them to the typists. At midnight printing starts. Ali has the first edition warm in his hands at about 1am, and then he leaves for bed.
In the night two people come to collect the 2 000 copies printed. One takes a bundle to a distribution centre in the south, the other must cross a green line checkpoint and go to another centre in the north.
Children come to collect the papers and then stand all day selling them on street corners.
Like every business in Mogadishu, Qaran needs armed security to protect its hardware from looters. Ali employs five gunmen with AK-47 rifles.
Last year, buoyed by the strength of the press, a group of journalists formed the Somali Independent Journalists Union. Bakar is the chairman and claims 217 members – many other journalists have refused to join, saying that no organisation can claim to be Somali-wide.
Bakar has even started a Somali press club, although because Somalis are teetotal, it is in one – perhaps the most – important respect unlike any other press club.
Still, journalism is one of the few areas that has somehow risen above the country’s clan conflicts. Papers are sold all across the divided city of Mogadishu. Editors employ reporters from different clans. “Journalists are all the same family. Your problem is my problem,” says Bakar.