---
type: Country
title: Somalia
description: Why the country is broken rather than whether it is safe — colonial borders drawn across clans, a dictatorship, a civil war, al-Shabaab, and a verdict Harry deliberately refuses to round off.
tags: [somalia, mogadishu, horn-of-africa, clans, al-shabaab, piracy, colonial-history, security]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T15:00:00Z
---

# Somalia

Harry spends two days in [Mogadishu](/places/mogadishu.md) with local guides, a
videographer and an armed security guard, and frames the trip around a question
that isn't the usual one: **not whether it is safe, but why the country is
broken.**

## Why it is broken, as Harry sets it out

- **Clans, not ethnicities.** Somalis are one ethnicity divided into many clans,
  and that division is the country's fault line.
- **The colonial carve-up made it worse.** Britain held the north, Italy the
  south, France what became Djibouti, and Ethiopia took the Ogaden. The borders
  ran across clan territory, and the administrations played the rivalries against
  each other to keep control.
- **Independence brought no peace.** He gives the date as 1950 *(from video –
  unverified)*, followed by Siad Barre's rise in a coup, famine and mass
  starvation in the 1970s, a war with Ethiopia, and his overthrow in **1991**.
- **Then warlords.** Years of civil war between militia factions, with the state
  only partially reassembled since.
- **Al-Shabaab.** Allegiance to al-Qaeda declared in 2012, a campaign of suicide
  attacks, harsh rule where it governs, and **territory held even inside the
  capital.**

## Security, honestly stated

- **He travelled with armed security throughout** — two guards at the fish
  market — and the guard's name is withheld in the video for the man's own safety.
- **The hardest part is not being able to tell who is who.** Military, police and
  private security all in similar dress, all carrying AK-47s, plus military bases,
  helicopters and a green zone.
- **The recent attacks he reads out before going**: 37 killed at a beach, 20 by a
  bomb during the Euro 2024 final, 14 in a hotel siege, and air strikes in the city
  the night before he lands *(from video – unverified — his dates don't line up)*.
- **Some places are simply refused.** Checkpoints would not let him near the Black
  Hawk Down crash site, on the grounds that it could be classed as al-Shabaab
  territory.
- **Filming is the risk you control.** People object, and his practice is to keep
  the camera on himself and keep walking — see [keep moving](/tips/keep-moving.md).

**The verdict he gives, and it is the most hedged in the bundle:** he will not
call Somalia dangerous and he will not tell anyone they will be fine. Danger is
not yes or no, it is a grey area. Nothing happened to him; something could have,
with one wrong turn or one wrong person. Be careful with filming, be respectful,
don't be an idiot. A Somali he asks puts it the same way — *you cannot say yes
it's safe.*

## Money, food and daily life

- **Nobody uses cash.** A $3 camel ride is paid by phone, to a number, and no
  money changes hands anywhere in two days.
- **Somalis largely don't eat fish**, which is why fish is cheap in a coastal
  country. The preference is camel, chicken, beef and lamb. Camel meat with banana
  is the first meal he's given.
- **Around 90% Muslim**, conservative, and — his words — rightly proud of it.
- **A strikingly young population**, visible in the street before anyone tells you.
- **Khat** is chewed socially, for energy.
- **Hospitality looks like a gathering**: family and friends, traditional music,
  tea, and everyone sharing how their day went.
- **Piracy has collapsed** since its 2000s and 2010s peak, under naval patrols and
  prosecutions, though it hasn't disappeared. He is told the economic cost peaked
  at **around $7 billion in 2012** *(from video – unverified)*. The boats are used
  for tourists now.

*Obs: Harry was allowed to meet a reformed pirate but **not** to ask him anything
about piracy — the government does not want the country associated with it. The
restriction is recorded because it is itself information about the place.*

## What he says gets left out

The artists, the innovators and the young population pulling the place together.
His own example is the two men who worked on the video with him, who built
professional businesses under these conditions.

## Source

- [I Ignored Western Media and Went to Mogadishu, Somalia 🇸🇴](/videos/OApi-ZiH4TQ.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OApi-ZiH4TQ