Hiiraan Online

Mogadishu (HOL) — For generations, a hulking brown boulder sat quietly in a Somali river valley, its iron surface hammered by villagers who used it as a whetstone, a landmark and a source of folklore. Children in El Ali, a settlement in central Somalia, called it Shiid-birood or “the iron rock.”

That rock was no ordinary stone. Scientists later confirmed it was a meteorite, weighing 13.6 metric tons, likely formed from ancient asteroid collisions before falling to Earth thousands of years ago. Today, it is gone. Uprooted in murky circumstances from Somali soil and now believed to be sitting in storage in eastern China, where sellers are offering it for millions of dollars.

When Somali miners first reported the rock in 2019, a 70-gram slice was sent to scientists in Canada for study. Chris Herd, a professor at the University of Alberta, realized the fragment contained minerals that had never been documented in nature. Within days, his colleague Andrew Locock confirmed at least two new minerals.

“These discoveries show us geological conditions we’ve never seen before,” Herd said. “To find two new minerals on the first day of study was phenomenal.”

The findings, approved by the International Mineralogical Association in 2022, cemented El Ali’s scientific value. The meteorite was classified as part of the rare IAB iron group, thought to originate from the shattered cores of ancient planetary bodies.

They were later named elaliite, after the town of El Ali, and elkinstantonite, honouring American planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who leads NASA’s upcoming mission to a metal-rich asteroid. A third mineral, olsenite, was later identified by researchers at Caltech.

The disappearance of the El Ali meteorite has become a saga of contested ownership, violent conflict and international smuggling, exposing Somalia’s fragile hold over its cultural heritage.

For centuries, villagers sang songs and told stories about Shiid-birood. Oral traditions described it as a punishment from Waaq, a local deity, for communities that strayed from their faith. Families chipped away at its iron surface to sharpen knives, while children scrambled on top, pretending it was a horse.

In 2019, opal miners stumbled upon the boulder and alerted a Mogadishu-based mining company, Kureym Mining and Rocks. A sample sent to Nairobi confirmed what local lore had long suggested: the rock was extraterrestrial, made of iron and nickel.

That discovery triggered interest and trouble.

In February 2020, the meteorite was taken from El Ali. The region is controlled by the militant group al-Shabaab, and accounts differ on what followed. Some local leaders say militants oversaw the extraction and clashed with clan militias, leaving several people dead. Other geologists later downplayed those accounts as exaggerated.

What is clear is that the meteorite was moved out of El Ali, reportedly sold to Kureym for $264,000, and briefly impounded by Somali authorities near Mogadishu’s airport. Scientists examined it there, confirming its significance. But by late that year, the boulder had slipped back into private hands.

By 2021, Kureym was contacting researchers abroad, sharing slivers of the meteorite with scientists in Canada and the United States. The samples revealed something extraordinary: three new minerals never before identified on Earth.

While scientists marvelled at the findings, the meteorite was already on the move. Video evidence shows it packed inside a shipping container at Mogadishu port in late 2022. Months later, new footage placed it in Yiwu, a trading city in China’s Zhejiang province. Sellers are now offering it in pieces for $200 a gram or $3.2 million for the whole stone.

“This was cultural looting, not a legal trade,” said Dahir Jesow, El Ali’s representative in Somalia’s parliament, who accused the mining company of using paperwork to justify the theft after the fact.

Somali officials have appealed to UNESCO to declare the meteorite part of the country’s heritage, a step that could complicate its sale.

The El Ali saga echoes other cases where communities lost access to meteoritic treasures. In Greenland, massive iron meteorites were taken by American explorers in the 19th century. In Tibet, a statue carved from a meteorite was removed by Nazi-backed expeditions in the 1930s.

Experts say the global market for meteorites has boomed in recent years, with wealthy collectors driving up prices and smugglers exploiting fragile states. China, in particular, has become a major destination.

Some Somali geologists want the boulder returned to the National Museum in Mogadishu, which reopened in 2020 after decades of war. “Students and children would come to see it,” said Abdulkadir Abiikar Hussein, a geologist who first examined the meteorite for the government. “It would help build scientific expertise here.”

But others fear the meteorite would remain vulnerable, even in the capital. “It could be stolen again,” said Dalmar Asad, a spokesperson for a Somali human rights coalition, arguing that an international institution may be better placed to protect it until security improves.

For now, the El Ali meteorite sits in limbo far from the Somali valley where it fell to Earth and where generations came to see it as part of their lives. Its journey, from cosmic origins to contested commodity, has become a reminder of how easily the heritage of fragile nations can be lost to the highest bidder.