Sam Kelly
Wednesday July 5, 2017
We were sipping beers in the Nairobi Hilton with the UN's special envoy to Somalia in 1992 when the nation had, literally, torn itself apart.
It was then embarking on the systematic starvation of 300,000 people as part of a protection racket by war lords.
The diplomat, a veteran of the Algerian civil war, Mohammed Sahnoun, asked: "What the hell do you think should be done?"
"Overground nuclear testing," I replied - my last trip had been unpleasant and I could not, for the life of me, imagine a place more profoundly messed up.
"Mmmm," Mr Sahnoun mused. "Not bad".
Aidan Hartley, who went on to write the Zanzibar Chest, leaned forward with a grin made madder by his dinner plate eyes, which were exaggerated through thick glasses.
"No, no, no, no," he beamed.
"I've got it: Blanket-bomb the place with ecstasy. It will make everyone love each other. And depress their appetites!"
"Brilliant!" cried the diplomat, splattering the glass table with beer in his enthusiasm.
I've been asked the same questions about other places over the years and even tried to help in small ways. Military intervention sorted out
Sierra Leone and Liberia, and Kosovo. It liberated Sarajevo.
Iraq and, as a result, Syria have been been destroyed by reckless and stupid foreign intervention. So what is the solution? Especially for Syria?
Ideas of federalisation, carving out an Alawite enclave for the rump of the regime, a north western autonomous Kurd area, some Sunni Arabistans in the middle.
Similar ideas have been countenanced for and within Iraq: a Shi'a south, the Kurds already have their own region, and a Sunni Arab area along the Tigris and Euphrates in Nineveh and Anbar provinces.
Whatever.
It won't happen.
Somalia, especially the south, remains a playground for lunatics, bandits, jihadis, freaks and thieves. And it's had a go at splitting up.
Somaliland in the north is middling along pretty well. "Puntland" went through a reasonably stable patch but is drifting back towards piracy (and anyway petrodollars and the scramble for fossil fuels will tear it apart soon).
The south is Shabab country. It does also have a sort of government the British are backing with more enthusiasm than understanding. Every few years there is a famine, of sorts.
Sometimes there just isn't a solution. Not for Somalia. Not for Iraq and certainly not one that I can see, through the haze of horror, for poor Syria.
The region was ignited by the Bush-Blair invasion of 2003 and its agonies have been fuelled by geopolitical rivalries, climate change and crooks ever since.
Islamic State is being defeated. But a Son of Islamic State will rise. Sunnis will continue to fear Shi'a, Arab nations will fight proxy wars against Iran's proxies in the lands of their two great rivers for as long as there are people prepared to fight.
This is a fire that has to burn itself out. It is a bloody, and stupid, waste of human potential. Of the billions that oil can bring, or the rolling plains of wheat across Syria, of the millennia of civilisation and breeding that have made people in this region so goddamn good-looking.
What a dismal thought.
I reflected on this on the outskirts of Raqqa where the thrill of the extreme sport of war has long worn off for fighters trying to rid the city of Islamic State. These boys in their late teens had the stoic confidence of the middle aged.
Is this the foreseeable future? More war grinding people into the sand?
The answer here, in Somalia, in Ukraine and everywhere else is probably "yes".
At least while men are in charge.