“But you wouldn’t confuse them with civil servants,” Steve said as he walked to the door. “They’re the most ruthless men you’ll ever encounter. They fund terrorists, bribe politicians, and use private militias to extort and control the population. Fortunately, they’ve been keeping one another in check through a constant war of attrition. The real disaster for the Somali people would be if one of the warlords was able to take out his competition—then the whole country would collapse into a dictatorship.”

FOUR

THE HORN OF Africa.

For more than a millennium, its two thousand miles of coastline had attracted Roman, Chinese, and Indian merchants and turned it into a vibrant hub on the Silk Road trading route. Yet it wasn’t until a heavy Arab migration in the seventh century AD that Somalia would acquire the culture that would define it for the next 1,400 years. The country had taken its name from Samaale, an émigré from the Arabian Peninsula, and 95 percent of its population belonged to one of the six clans descended from him and his brother.

The nation became a successful blend of traditional clan and moderate Islamic values, but like Yemen to its north, Somalia’s strategic location and vibrant food and livestock production attracted unwanted outside attention. European and African nations competed for control of the area for hundreds of years, using military force to impose their will on the Somali people—until the middle of the twentieth century, when the foreigners abandoned their empire-building and left the Horn.

What should have been a golden opportunity swiftly turned into a disaster. The Somali people were finally free, but with an ineffective government and an economy in shambles, their nation was in a state of crisis. The former colonial powers continued to harvest the rich fishing grounds off the nation’s coast with commercial fishing boats while the Somalis could barely put to sea a fleet of small skiffs with handmade nets. The balance of the country’s citizens were agro-pastoralists—raising crops and livestock—and barely eking out a sustenance living because of years of dry weather.

In this land of strong clans and weak government, the tattered economy created a power vacuum that attracted those with the might to impose their will. It was a pattern that would repeat itself many times over in the nation’s tragic history—most notably in 1969, when General Siad Barre declared himself president in a coup. He ruled with brute force, marginalizing the clans until he too was eventually overthrown in 1991.

The country fell into civil war.

There was no law, no order, no government services.

Foreign governments sent peacekeeping forces but most of those left after a few years, judging the mission to not be worth the cost. Between 300,000 and 500,000 Somalis died. Over a million lost their homes and livelihoods.