Beyond politics, tribalism

Even in the worst circumstances, good people with a good plan can succeed.
A year ago, I wrote about four local men who'd started a cattle-exporting business in Somalia. Last December, Ethiopian troops, with U.S. backing, pushed out the ruling Islamic group and installed a new government, but fighting continues. Thousands of Somalis have been killed this year.

I would have packed my bags, but the Seattle entrepreneurs are unfazed and so far unharmed, perhaps because the key player, Ahmed (Rashid) Mohamed, understands the country's dynamics so well.

"Politics change," Mohamed said. He's back in Seattle for the first time in 10 months. "We try to be nonpolitical, transcending politics and tribalism."

In Somalia, being in a livestock-based business is an advantage. Mohamed says even warlords respect cattle raisers.

"We've never been hijacked or robbed," he said.

Mohamed focuses on business not just to stay out of political trouble but also because he says there would be less fighting with more prosperity. He's high on entrepreneurship and American ingenuity as solutions to poverty and war.

Mohamed came here to study economics at the University of Washington in 1973. He's married to a local woman and has a family here, but he's never given up on Somalia.

He went back in the '80s to start a business, but war drove him out that time.

Now he's back, in this new business with three African-American partners.

Their company, Urur Livestock, buys cattle from herdsmen, fattens them on alfalfa it grows and treats them for disease at its holding facility, then ships them to the Middle East.

It's a new take on a Somali tradition.

Mohamed says 80 percent of Somalia's economy is livestock-based, and before it fell apart, Somalia was the top supplier for several Middle Eastern countries.

Somali herdsmen still leave their cattle to graze on whatever nature provides, which in the dry season isn't much. The cattle they market tend to be thin, and often diseased.

Mohamed has spent the past several months in Somalia working on an expansion of the business to the northern part of the country.

This week he's meeting with other Somalis in the Seattle area, trying to persuade more of them to take back home what they've learned here.

"There is a vacuum now in Somalia," Mohamed said. "The educated have left, and that is why we have warlords and people who are not educated running the government."

Urur has expanded its own impact with advice on community development from Washington State University. Urur runs a health clinic, a day-care facility and a dairy to supply fresh milk to schools and restaurants.

It gives donkeys to local men chosen by village elders, to transport water from Urur's well to sell in their villages. The men get jobs, the villages get water, the elders reinforce their authority and Urur gets respect and security.

Everyone prospers when good people put a good plan into action.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.

Source: Seattle Times