Somaliland's diaspora: From manager to minister in a flash (Feature)

By Michael Logan Oct 23, 2010, 3:06 GMT

Hargeisa, Somalia - Just four months ago, Hussein Abdi Dualeh was an engineer with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), managing maintenance contracts and living a comfortable life with his wife and three sons.

Today, he's helping run a self-proclaimed - although internationally unrecognized - nation in the Horn of Africa.

Dualeh, 54, is typical of the highly-educated diaspora politicians who have returned to Somaliland - a breakaway state in the north-west of war-torn Somalia - to serve in the new government of President Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo.

'I came for the inauguration and they told me: `You`re not leaving,`' says the erudite and articulate Dualeh, who heads up the Ministry of Mining, Energy and Water Resources.

He's only half-joking.

Silanyo, elected in late June, slashed the size of his government and looked to the diaspora to fill key posts in his 20-member cabinet.

As well as the energy docket, the information, planning, foreign affairs and fisheries ministries are in the hands of Somalilanders who have just returned after decades in the United States, Britain and Canada.

'They promised to have an effective government and to have qualified people in the right positions,' says Dualeh. 'The president realized he would have to look elsewhere and tapped up quite a few people from overseas.'

Dualeh, like many of his peers, left a Somalia languishing under the brutal reign of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, who seized power in 1969 and oversaw 21 years characterized by repression and civil war.

While Somaliland was struggling to reclaim the independence it gave up in 1960 - when the former British protectorate joined with Italian Somaliland to form the Somalia of today - Dualeh was pursuing his education and career abroad.

He graduated with a degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 1983 and worked at Chevron for five years.

In 1989, two years before Siad Barre was finally ousted and Somaliland declared its independence, Dualeh joined Metro.

Somaliland set about quietly rebuilding as the rest of Somalia descended into the failed state it has become today.

The stability and democratic credentials of Somaliland are a stark contrast to the rest of the Horn of Africa nation. The ineffective Western-backed government in Mogadishu is hemmed in by Islamist insurgents who control much of south and central Somalia, and pirates based in the breakaway region of Puntland terrorize international shipping in the Gulf of Aden.

The international community is showing increasing signs of backing Somaliland with aid, if not recognition, viewing it as a buttress against al-Qaeda-linked militant Islamist group al-Shabaab.

But the freshly arrived ministers, still reeling from culture shock, still have a big job on their hands.

Somaliland`s annual government budget is 50 million dollars - half of the value of the contracts Dualeh managed for Metro.

The self-proclaimed state is drought-prone and poverty-stricken, with poor infrastructure and high unemployment. Its 3.5 million residents are heavily reliant on livestock - although there is real innovation and growth in the telecommunications and money-transfer industries.

The capital Hargeisa is a dust bowl, where goats pick through rubbish littering the side of the bumpy dirt roads and makeshift huts housing displaced people far outnumber the few big houses erected by the diaspora.

It's a far cry from Los Angeles.

'It's a sacrifice. I was making a six-figure salary and drove a Merc, but dropped it all to come here,' says Dualeh, who has left his family behind in California. 'I want to see if I can help the country of my birth.'

While the personal sacrifice is tempered by the fact Dualeh has given up a job as an anonymous middle-manager to become a important man, he and the other diaspora ministers appear to have a genuine desire to help Somaliland fulfill its potential.

Not everyone is happy with the appointment of people who have lived the high life abroad to such exalted positions, however.

Ahmed Hassan Ahmed, who lived in India, the US and Canada over the last 30 years, returned to become the Director of Awareness in the Ministry of Information. Ahmed - who ironically has the remit of educating the returning diaspora on Somaliland`s culture - admits there is resentment among the locals.

'The biggest complaint is that there are so many expats (in the government), but it`s my country too,' he says.

Despite the grumbles, many others believe the diaspora brings back valuable skills and experience, and Dualeh says Somaliland was always in the hearts of those who left.

'Even though we were never here, we lived it,' he says.

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