The economics of khat prohibition in the West

Khat is a plant that is widely used in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen, where it is chewed for its mild stimulant qualities, and recently it's been confounding anti-drug warriors in the West. The East African and Yemeni diaspora has brought the drug to immigrant communities through the US, the UK, and Northern Europe. While technically illegal in most of these places (the UK being the notable exception), its use is limited to immigrant communities and hasn't appeared on the streets alongside heroin and cocaine, and so it's been a relatively low law enforcement priority. As always, though, the US is the most eager to stamp out the drug, with DEA agents arresting Somali immigrants in places like Seattle and San Diego for conspiracy to import the drug from East Africa.

Diaspora communities in the US themselves are apparently divided on the issue, with many supporting the use of the drug as an integral part of their culture, and others (often women, who are by custom less likely to chew khat) wishing their adopted homelands would crack down on the use of khat. Many of the criticisms coming from within and outside of the community are the standard anti-drug arguments – it destroys your mind, turns you into an idle drug user, etc. But one bizarrely paradoxical argument is that it costs too much:

In fact, within the East African community in the U.S., there are many who welcome the khat restrictions.

"I have seen what it does," Mohamud said. "Families who are trying to make ends meet on a daily basis cannot afford it. It just creates so many problems between a husband and wife to the point where a broken family is going to be the result."

But why does it cost so much? In East Africa, the plant is cheap – only $1 per kilogram according to the Seattle PI. But across the Atlantic, in the United States where the plant is illegal, the price shoots up to as much as $700 per kilo. Some of this difference can be attributed to the cost of shipping the plant from East Africa to the United States, as it needs to be consumed soon after harvest or it will lose its potency (in contrast to most illegal drugs, which can be stored for long periods of time). But that's only part of the story – the lion's share of the price differential is eaten up by the black market, as shippers and sellers take larger profits to compensate for the risk of trafficking in this illegal substance.

Compare this to the UK, where the plant is legal, and prices are low in comparison – less than £20 per kilo retail (pdf). And it's not just the law that makes the price shoot up, but rather the degree of enforcement. For example, in Sweden, where the plant is technically illegal but enforcement is minimal, retail prices range from about $100 to $250 per kilo – high, but not as high as in the US. (Some other reasons for Sweden's high khat prices could be its relatively small East African/Yemeni population as compared to that of the UK, as well as its lack of direct air connections to the regions where khat is produced.)

Those who don't like the drug because of its cost to poor immigrant families would be smarter to simply legalize the drug and watch prices plummet, rather than adding another substance to the quixotic and dangerous war on drugs.

Somalia update

So, it's official (almost): the Ethiopians are leaving Somalia and the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab is likely to take over the parts of Somalia that haven't already seceded. Al-Shabaab is far more radical and strict in its interpretation of Islam than the Islamic Courts Union that reigned in Somalia before the 2006 US-backed Ethiopian invasion. So, by expelling what we now know were comparatively moderate Islamists (the ICU), the US and Ethiopia sewed the seeds for the current al-Shabaab takeover.

And with the conflict between first the ICU and the Ethiopian-backed TFG, and now the TFG and al-Shabaab comes death and destruction. I reported last month that the war in Somalia has been deadlier than the one in Iraq by some measures, but since then, the estimates of the death toll have only gotten worse – from about 10,000 civilians to more than 16,000 killed directly because of the conflict.

In addition to the deaths, life for the living is becoming increasingly difficult as they flee the war-torn urban areas that offer respite from the barren Somali hinterlands, where a humanitarian disaster is now brewing. As the Washington Post reports:

Out of a population of about 9 million, more than 1 million people have fled their homes, preferring drought-stricken regions of the country to the crossfire of militias battling for control of Mogadishu and other areas. Attacks on aid workers – most likely carried out by the Shabab, who equate them with foreign interference – have made humanitarian assistance almost impossible to deliver.

Also, something I didn't mention in previous posts about Somalia is that even before the 2006 invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia (backed by American money and diplomatic efforts), the US was supporting the warlords that the ICU would make its call to war.

At pretty much every step of the way since the fall of the Barre dictatorship throughout the 1980s, the United States has intervened in Somali affairs and it's backfired every single time – from its support of the warlords in the early '90s that resulted in the infamous Black Hawk Down episode, to the pre-2006-ish support for the warlords that enraged the moderate Islamists, to the current support of the Ethiopian proxy government that's enraging the extremist Islamists. Luckily, this time around there's little popular support for either a UN- or American-backed mission/invasion of the country, but that might change if American Democrats change their tune about "nation-building" and missions abroad now that the right guy is in power.

A war deadlier than the war in Iraq is about to end

Just two days ago I wrote about the imminent demise of the US- and Ethiopian-backed Transitional Federal Government of Somalia at the hands of Islamist rebel forces, but the post sort of rambled and didn't explain very well the significance of the event. The Somali Mogadishu politicians are squabbling over cabinet positions while rebels are "within a few kilometers of the city," playing Nero while Rome burns, and a little-known, but very bloody chapter in the war on terror is about to come to a close.

While no American troops were involved, money and training were provided by the US to Ethiopia in order to fight the recently-established Islamists in Somalia, and the public blessing of Ethiopia's mission by the State Department probably didn't hurt. The Bush administration viewed it as another front on the global war on terror, and took advantage of Ethiopia's presence in Somalia during the war to attack al-Qaeda leaders by air and ground.

The American financial obligation of $20 million might have paled in comparison to the trillions spent in Iraq, the rate of civilian deaths has been much higher. In total, about 10,000 civilians have been killed since Ethiopia invaded a little over two years ago and 1.9 million displaced, among a population of less than 4 million (60% of Somalia's 10 million official inhabitants live in breakaway unrecognized states that weren't threatened by the Ethiopian invasion). This compares to 100,000 civilians dead in Iraq since early 2003 and 4.7 million displaced among a population of 23 million (I excluded the 7 million Iraqis who live in Kurdistan, which the war has barely touched in terms of civilian deaths). In Afghanistan, there have been about 7,000 direct civilian deaths in seven years among a population of 32 million. That means that the per capita civilian death rate of the war in Somalia is higher than that of the Iraq war by about a third, and it beats out the Afghan war by at least an order of magnitude. And if what will be the sixth battle for Mogadishu is drawn out and deadly, this ratio could rise.

Like what is bound to happen in Afghanistan and Iraq, the proxy invasion of Somalia will have been an abject failure. The same Islamists that the Ethiopians chased out two years ago will be returning to power, but this time bringing along with them another possible civil war among the different Islamic factions to be fought before one of them emerges on top.

Update: The death toll appears to have surpassed 16,000 according to another report.

US/Ethiopian coalition in Somalia fails, Islamists advance

Somalia, yet again, is in turmoil. This time, the Islamists are advancing against Somalia's weak central government, the Transition Federal Government. And far from being a complicated and inexplicable basket case, the story of Somalia actually holds some pretty simple and important lessons: foreign governments cause problems and terrible regimes, while the international community's neglect allows capitalism to bring Somalis' living standards up.

The TFG was created in the mid-2000s as a response to Ethiopia's fear of any coherent state at all in Somalia, and the West's fear of radical Islam. At the time, the Islamic Courts Union was sweeping through the southern half of the country, and damn near took over the parts that hadn't already seceded. (Somaliland and Putland are de facto independent governments, and aren't at risk of collapse from the ICU, though they aren't the most stable regimes.) Ethiopia was understandably worried about Somali revanchism, as it won the Ogaden region from Somalia in a war of that same name in the late '70s, along with the four million Somalis on it that didn't flee into Somalia proper. The West had its own well-being in mind: it was afraid of Somalia becoming a hub for al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism.

So as a result, the corrupt and ineffective TFG came into being. From what I understand, by now it doesn't have power at all outside of Mogadishu, and the Islamists are currently preparing for a battle there. The general objection to the Islamists is their strictness: the NYT cites the example of a teenager being stoned to death for adultery for reporting a rape. But this rigid interpretation of sharia is alien to most Somalis, especially the vast population of pastoralists who have very tight family and clan-based governance structures. Given the Somalis' distaste for non-autochthonous government (Michael van Notten wrote a fascinating book about the indigenous Somali law system), and the foreignness of Wahhabi Islam, it's unlikely that the Islamists could stay in power long without adapting. But anyway, we'll see now how long the Islamists last, as it looks like the Ethiopian- and American-backed TFG is about to crumble. It just would have been nicer if this were allowed to happen years ago, so that we could have avoided the intervening war.

This pattern of foreign intervention trying to create a state begetting horrific results in Somalia is not limited to the last decade. As early as the colonial period, the imperialists had a very difficult time getting Somalis to register and interact with the state, as their isolated pastoral culture kept them out of coastal towns for the most part. The brief democratic post-colonial period was a failure, because even though it was Somali in its conception, it was the conception of the Westernized Somali diaspora and elite, not of the prevailing Somali culture. The descent into dictatorship and the horrific experiment with Siad Barre's "scientific socialism" again can be seen as a result of foreign powers interfering, with Somalia being a pawn in the proxy war between America and the Soviet Union. First by the USSR, and then to some extent by the US (though not really), Siad Barre was allowed to go on with his destructive domestic policy. Luckily, détente eroded his power and the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the nightmare, as the government collapsed for good. A brutal civil war broke out, and when Barre was finally deposed, a power vacuum led to a nasty competition over who would be heir to the Somali state. The US and international community got involved in 1992 but failed miserably, and only prolonged the civil war. This conflict was rooted in Barre's discriminatory policy towards other clans – it was a war that was destined to be fought.

From then up until the early 2000s, vast expanses of Somalia were more or less stateless. And yet, in many ways its people fared better than those in neighboring African states that had governments, as well as doing better than during the Barre state. The best thing for the West to do right now would be to vow not to interfere anymore in Somalia, and promise to stand by idly if the country is broken up into even smaller factions. Dictators and would-be governments are only egged on by the prevailing nation state norm, and know that if they can establish themselves in power, the international community will help them stay there. But the West should make sure to get out of the mindset that a stable central government is necessary for peace and economic development in Somalia.

Possible false flag operations in Somalia

The NYT today has a story about Somalia and the recent spate of violence against aid workers, both foreign and domestic. At least twenty have been killed this year alone, something that is apparently unprecedented in the two decades since the collapse of the Siad Barre regime. But the funny thing about the killings is that no one can quite figure out who's behind them. Though the attacks are apparently committed by radical Islamists, the groups claiming responsibility are little known. The government maintains that the Islamists are behind it, though they have a good reason to present that picture: the current federal government was put into place on the back of an American-backed, Ethiopian-led invasion of the country that drove the Islamic Courts Union out of power in 2006. But not everyone buys it:

Some Western security analysts theorize that in the violent murkiness that has overtaken the country, unsavory elements within the Somali government may be killing aid workers to discredit Islamist opposition groups and draw in United Nations peacekeepers, who may be the government’s last hope for survival.

The government admits that it desperately needs peacekeepers. But it denies that it is attacking aid workers to get them.

“It’s obvious who’s doing this,” said Abdi Awaleh Jama, a Somali ambassador at large. “It’s hard-liner Islamists who hate the West. They are forces of darkness, not forces of light.”

Considering that foreign intervention in Somalia is always a not-too-distant possibility, and that the current regime was installed by fiat, this theory isn't as crazy as it seems. The scepter of al-Qaeda led the Americans and Ethiopians to invade and expel the ICU two years ago, so hey, maybe it will work again.

Here's the archive of my posts about Somalia, everyone's favorite failed state, which includes a pretty long post I wrote taking the media to task for their uncritical look at how Somalia's fared since it descended into statelessness twenty years ago.

Whither, Somalia?

In continuing with my favorite topic, Somalia, I noticed a story on the nytimes.com about Somalia. Normally stories about Somalia are about some failed initiative or outbreak of violence between government/non-government troops, but they don't really do justice to the smallness of the the power of the "government." This story does – it says that the government lives on $19 million per annum (the rest siphoned away from corruption). And it alludes to the fact that the Transitional Federal Government doesn't control much land, but doesn't do justice to the situation by stating that "in many ways, Somalia is not a state at all, but more a lawless space between its neighbors and the sea." That's a gross simplification – much of the land (especially the produce urban areas) are under the control of governments, just not the federal government. Nomadic Somalis follow the xeer, the same code they've followed since before the Europeans. Northern Somalia is divided among the governments of Somaliland and Puntland, with weak albeit present reach. They are much less violent than the south, and for the most part have been since the start of anarchy around 1990. And anyway, the conflict is not among the traditional nomads of Somalia, but rather between invading forces and their reactions, the Islamists.

Correctly, the Times points out the failed policies of American intervention, UN intervention, and American-backed Ethiopian intervention (the current demon). However, it's reflecting only its own ignorance when it declares that "[t]he looming failure is making many people here and abroad question the strategy of installing the transitional government by force." The implication is that there was some doubt in Somalis' minds as to what any form of government, imposed by locals or foreigners, would be like for them. Somali businessmen don't have ideological commitments and consistently side with whoever will protect their business, and would be impossible to capture in the form of a permanent tax base. Somalis haven't supported the colonial powers, diaspora-backed political democracy, American-backed dictatorship, Soviet-backed dictatorship, UN-backed political democracy, or American/Ethiopian-backed political democracy. At the moment the Islamists have sway, but that seems to be a reaction to the Ethiopian invasion. Given the history and the relative mildness of Somali Islam, the Somalis would likely chafe under the Islamists if the Ethiopians withdrew.

Finally, the Times makes the eternal Somali gaffe, when it implies that anarchy in Somalia has been brutally worse than under Siad Barre and scientific socialism in the decades before: "Sometimes it seems that if anything binds this country together, it is scar tissue." This is nonsense – the Somalis have an incredibly rich culture and civilization, with a functioning and unique justice system and generally growing wealth. According to a paper called "Better off Stateless" by Peter Leeson published in 2006, key indicators of welfare in Somali have largely risen in the period since the collapse of Siad Barre's state. Infant mortality is down, underweight births per capita declined 80%, extreme poverty is down more than 15 percentage points, and access to sanitation and healthcare is up significantly. Somalia has cheap, accessible, and competitive internet and mobile phone markets as well as competitive private low-cost air carriers. Education is relatively well-provisioned by the private market, and Somalia now has a higher university enrollment than under the Barre regime.

The Times and the media in general must emerge from their paradigmatic shell of always looking to governments for indicators of society. While this might work okay in Western countries where much of the civil and social discourse is in some way filtered through government, the model breaks down for countries like Somalia where foreign and non-governmental entities and institutions are much more important to ordinary Somalis than the supposed central government.