Hanad and Abdi sit up against the courtyard wall in the clammy evening heat. A large straw mat has been laid out, which serves both to keep us off the insects and to catch all the pieces of khat leaves they are dropping as they chew the night away. Nearer the perimeter wall, Mohamed and his men are also reclining and chewing, Kalashnikovs never further than arm’s reach away. Somewhere in the distance, we hear the echo of automatic gunfire. The bursts are short and infrequent. Nobody seems too concerned. I ask where it is coming from.

“It is from the south of the city,” replies Hanad, my fixer, “those people are crazy. You go over there and they will kill you. As soon as they hear which clan you are from, they will kill you, without even knowing who you are.”

I’m sat in Galkacyo in north-central Somalia. The city straddles the boundary between the autonomous regions of Puntland and Galmudug. Due to tensions between rival clans, the city is effectively divided into northern and southern zones. Crossing from one area to another is not advised. My guest house is in the northern zone, controlled by the Puntland Harti clans.

Getting here is a long, uncomfortable journey. It involves jumping from Hargeisa to Berbera, then on to Bosasso in a rusty old Soviet Antonov, piloted by three chubby Ukrainians. As I clamber into the sweaty cabin, which features a mix of different seating (including rather classy tiger print), I wonder how low you have to score at Ukrainian flight school to end up on the Somalia circuit. One pilot walks past my seat, breathing heavily. He doubles as the baggage handler. Was that vodka I smelt? Hopefully not.

My flight is packed with Somalis, many of whom are returning from visiting the vast diaspora spread across Kenya, the USA and Europe. Stood queuing in the sweltering heat on a Bosasso runway, I turn curiously to the person behind me, who is African but not Somali, and ask where he is from.

“Zimbabwe. And you?”

“Italy.” I push him for details on his trip, but he answers my question with another question.

“Well, why are you here?”

“I’m here on holiday.” Technically this is true, although everyone on the plane (and throughout the trip) finds this very amusing.

He smiles a knowing smile. “Me too.” I question Hanad on this strange encounter later. He tells me the man is a private military contractor, training a militia in the south of the country. Later in my journey I meet a number of white South Africans who are also not keen to discuss the reasons for their presence in Somalia. Once again, like me, they are just here on holiday.

The next day we set out in convoy from Galkacyo to Garoowe, the capital of Puntland. Less than twenty kilometres into our trip, one Land Cruiser developed a suspension problem which forced us to stop. As we sat drinking tea and watching the local mechanic hammering away at the bottom of the vehicle, a man on a motorbike arrived with some breaking news from Galkacyo. Sheik Hanad, a Sufi activist from a group called Suma Wal Jama, had just been

killed in a bomb explosion. People were saying it was the work of Islamists from the south, in response to his open criticism. Armed Sufi supporters were rallying in town, determined to find those responsible. We had chosen a good time to get out of Galkacyo.

Our second night was spent in the capital of Puntland, Garoowe. It is a non-descript trading town. We have not been in our hotel for ten minutes before a representative from the government security forces arrives, and demands that I go and register at their headquarters down the road. As always, there is heated discussion between our men with guns and their men with guns. In the end we acquiesce. Hanad, the only one in the group who can speak English, tells me to keep quiet and reveal nothing about our itinerary. I assumed that having the authorities know where you are at all times is a sensible safety precaution, but apparently they are not to be trusted. As instructed, I sat in the Chief of Police’s office and stayed silent, while those around me engaged in another angry sounding discussion. Just as tempers seemed about to fray, the chief picked up my passport and his scowl was replaced with a smile.

Sei Italiano! Benvenuto!

It turns out Somalis in this part of Somalia have nothing but positive things to say about their former colonisers. Most of the older generation could still remember some of the Italian they learnt at school many years ago. Spaghetti is still the staple (when people eat anything at all). The Italian government had recently been trying to strike a deal with the Puntland administration to construct roads in return for oil prospecting rights. This deal was obstructed by the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, Hanad tells me, because they were worried how oil money would change the balance of power in their relationship with their independent minded northern territory. Given Italy’s current financial situation, it seems unlikely this deal will be revived any time soon.

The main aim of my trip was to get to the coast and investigate the pirates. This was not unrealistic, after all, Hanad had very close connections with them, and had even organised an interview for a European film crew a few weeks earlier. However, things had not gone entirely according to plan. The pirates, an understandably paranoid bunch, would not let the film crew come out and film any of their hostages on a ship they had recently hijacked. However, they did agree to take a camera out onto the boat and ask the hostages any questions they wanted answered. This all went smoothly, but a few days later some of the pirates were captured by the US Navy.

Their first reaction was to blame the film makers, accusing them of putting a GPS tracking device in the camera equipment (which they confiscated). The film crew, along with Hanad, were able to escape, but Hanad’s brother was not so lucky. He was picked up in a tea joint (that we would later visit) and held hostage for weeks while the pirates insisted that Hanad admit he had betrayed them. I will never forget what Hanad said when I asked how he got his brother back.

“First, I paid the tribal elders to mediate in the matter. But they took weeks, and all the time they were just asking me to pay for khat and nothing was being achieved. Eventually, I decided to settle matters myself. I borrowed some guns and an RPG from a dealer. Then I bought the ammunition. Six rockets and thousands of bullets. The bullets were very expensive. Then my friends and I went down to where the pirates were staying, down at the coast, and I told them that if they did not give my brother back, I would use the RPG to sink their boats. ”

The calmness in Hanad’s eyes as he told this story was unnerving. I asked whether he was worried.

“No, I had to get him back. I would have killed them all. They did not want trouble. They returned him to me.”

There were three things I liked about this story. Firstly, that an arms dealer in Somalia will let you borrow the weapon for free as long as you buy the ammunition you intend to use. Secondly, that despite what you might assume, bullets do actually cost a fair bit in Somalia. And thirdly, I was very happy that Hanad was on my side.

Given the current state of affairs, Hanad thought it unlikely that the pirates would want to meet up with me. But we could still head to the coast and see how they worked, and talk to the local communities about how piracy had affected them. The most fascinating thing I wanted to find out about was how some local initiatives had actually defeated the pirates. How and why were the Somalis having some success where international naval forces were failing so miserably? We jumped in our beat up Land Cruiser, and headed off on a six and a half hour drive through the desert to Eyl to find out.

An hour in, we lost phone reception. I enquired what we would do in the event of a breakdown.

Hanad said it was simple. “We use your satellite phone to call for help.”

“And what satellite phone is this exactly?”

“The one I asked you to bring along…”

Arguing about who was at fault was pointless by this stage. We had no sat phone. We would have to hope Allah carried us through without a breakdown. He did.

The journey to Eyl is not an easy one. Although sections of the route are paved, much of it is over rocky terrain, making access to the coastal town very difficult for anything apart from a convoy of 4×4s. Or a shaky lone Land Cruiser, if you are lucky.

Three years ago there was a spike in the level of piracy in Somalia and the Gulf of Aden, with over sixty vessels suffering actual or attempted attacks. This was over double the 2007 levels. Those unfortunate enough to be captured found themselves held hostage for weeks or months while ransom payments were negotiated. If you got picked up by pirates in 2008, odds were high you would have an extended stay around Eyl.

My hunt for the pirates first brought me into the office of the Eyl District Commissioner. The office, like the town, is a simple affair. Behind his desk are two posters. One is by Mines Advisory Group, advising of the different types of UXO (Unexploded Ordinance) found across the country from the civil war. The other is from the Ministry of Justice, funded by

Norwegian Church Aid. It states quite simply “Stop – Piracy money is unlawful in Islam”. The Commissioner’s view of the pirates, like most people I spoke to in Somalia, was very negative.

“The pirates were very bad for this community. They would drive around town at high speeds in their new Land Cruisers causing danger to residents. They would drink and gamble. They even encouraged our young women to prostitute themselves with promises of money. Eventually, the community decided to stand up to them. I gave them 24 hours to get out of the town, or we the citizens would fight them and force them out. There would have been much bloodshed. In the end they went peacefully.”

The pirates have not gone altogether. They have simply moved further south into central Somalia, where there is less government control. They now operate from areas such as Garacad, Hobyo or Haradheere, a day’s drive from Galkacyo, which is currently home to the hijacked Italian oil tanker Savina Caylyn.

The decision to expel the pirates from Eyl was a local one. Similar efforts were made by the communities in Bargal, Laasqoray and Bosasso. The Commissioner and his people received no outside assistance with this task, whether from the central government or the international community. Nor have they received any reward since making this risky decision.

“Since this time, we have received very little assistance from the international community. The UNDP, UNICEF and UNFPA have all visited here, but done nothing to help us. Since the pirates left, the only development work to occur here was the construction of the fish processing house on the beach. Yet even this lacks freezers and other vital elements. It is empty and unused.

The international NGOs do a lot of work on the main highway, but they do not like to stray from it as driving is too difficult.

If we could request one thing from the international community, it would be to improve the road from here to Garoowe. With a good road we could start businesses linked with Garoowe and Galkacyo and sell our fish. Also, the UN workers in the city could come on holiday to Eyl!”

Hearing that the NGOs did not want to risk their shiny white Land Cruisers on that hellish road was not surprising. An improved road does not seem like too high a price to ask for guaranteeing the rule of law in their town. This lack of assistance is especially galling to local politicians when contrasted with the amount of money being spent on anti-piracy patrols. Over a dozen countries have sent warships to protect their shipping in the Gulf of Aden since 2008. There are also the multi-national task forces such as EU NAVFOR. The estimated annual expenditure on all this patrolling, which is split amongst the participating countries, is $1.5 billion.

GorGor, a local journalist, emphasises this feeling of neglect by the international community. “There is a piracy problem here because there are no opportunities. If people remain as fishermen, illegal trawlers have decreased our fish stocks. If you go out fishing today, you will not catch enough to pay for the fuel. Spain, India, the Arab nations, they are all stealing our fish. We require capacity building and investment from other nations to give young Somali men options other than piracy.”

GorGor and his fellow residents in Eyl question the mission of the foreign navies. “Some people say they are here to protect the foreign fishing vessels while they steal our fish.” They also question why navies were not sent earlier to prevent the illegal dumping of European toxic waste in their waters, which they allege has been happening since the early 1990s, and has recently been back in the news after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami washed up the waste on the Puntland coastline.

This suspicion is not helped by what is seen as a heavy handed policy of stopping and searching local fishing boats. The first day that I was in Eyl, there was uproar because a local resident had his boat confiscated on the way back from a fishing trip. While GorGor’s fellow countrymen are incorrect in their assumptions about the foreign naval vessels, these conspiracy theories thrive in an environment in which there is no direct communication or consultation between the foreign powers at sea and the Somali people on the shore.

While in Eyl collecting all this information, I also got a chance to go down to the beach and see firsthand the effects of foreign fishing. There are abandoned boats strewn across the coastline. There was also another visible sign of Somalia’s problems. Backing onto one of the most picturesque patches of beach is a huge concrete compound. Hanad tells me this was built by the former Puntland Finance Minister. I ask him where the minister got the money from for such an extravagant project. This is so funny it warrants translating into Somali for the guards, who also burst out laughing. Apparently this is a typically European thing to ask.

Our time in Eyl is soon at an end, and I (rather unwillingly) leave this pristine Indian Ocean coastline, with waves that could attract surfers under different circumstances, to head back to Galkacyo, and eventually, my exit point of Djibouti. On the way back, we break down outside the very tea joint where Hanad’s brother was kidnapped a few weeks earlier. Monstrous trucks, loaded with cattle and other goods, thunder past on their way to Mogadishu. Hanad gets progressively more agitated, which in turn stresses me. This would not be a good place to run into his former pirate friends. After a tense two hours, we finish repairing our second breakdown of the trip, and get going again. Amid all the tension, it is amusing to see that Somalis have the same attitude to manual labour as most other countries: one guy does all the work, while everyone else crowds round and comments on it.

By the time we return to Galkacyo the security situation has deteriorated. Nine men are dead after a machine gun battle at a mosque, and from the sounds of things outside our compound, far more are keen to join them (or have the other side join them). I try to go up onto the roof to photograph the gun battles, but am prevented by Hanad. He is unsure what the rival militias would do if they spotted a white person in this compound, but neither he nor my guards are keen to find out. So we spent the end of my trip as we had spent the beginning, sat on a mat, chewing khat, talking about Somalia. For a land where life is so uncertain, I was surprised by the warmth and generosity of my hosts. Even my guards, two of whom were Mogadishu veterans, were very sociable, and (albeit through a translator) keen to discuss their lives with me. The next day I left, saddened by the thought of what the West’s $1.5 billion a year could be doing for Somalia, were it not being wasted on naval patrols.

Is The Western Anti-Piracy Policy Working?

Somalia has a coastline of over 3000km. This is an impossibly large area to patrol. It is therefore surprising that foreign governments still choose naval patrols as their preferred option for fighting piracy. Navy patrols off the Somali coast have reduced the success of attacks, but in response the pirates have simply increased the number of attacks. There were 97 pirate attacks in the Somali region (and 142 worldwide) in the first quarter of 2011, which represented an increase of over 100% on the previous year. Many pirates are also captured then released again (following confiscation of their weapons) due to the complexity of putting them on trial. Over 600 have been through this process so far, many of whom no doubt returned to piracy after release.

The war on piracy cannot be won at sea. Piracy in Somalia thrives because the government there lacks the capacity to combat this form of organised crime on land. They require police, courts and prisons, not only to deal with the pirates, but also Islamic extremists and criminal gangs which specialise in people trafficking.

It also thrives because of how easily the proceeds of this crime flow into (and then out of) Somalia. According to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) between $150 and $300 million was paid out in ransoms last year. Tougher regulations must be put in place to prevent ransom payments being made, and make the laundering of these payments more difficult. Yet this is still focussing on cure rather than prevention.

The Somali people need to be given opportunities other than piracy, and this will involve and international effort to develop the infrastructure and economy of Somalia, a far more difficult (and politically less attractive) way of spending taxpayer money. The idea of investing in a country that is at risk of being overrun by Al Shabab Islamist militants does not sit well with potential investors, but the current policy of ‘containment’ is simply not working.

One potential source of funds for this development is oil. Puntland is believed to be rich in the natural resource, but has been off limits to oil companies due to the lack of security. Canadian oil and gas company Africa Oil Corp has recently signed a deal with the Puntland government to sink two exploration wells. Yet it may be political, rather than security, problems that impede this source of revenue for development. Hanad, a Puntland NGO worker and activist, highlighted the tensions between the government of semi-autonomous Puntland, and the Transitional Federal Government, based in the southern capital of Mogadishu. “An Italian company offered to develop the road infrastructure here in Puntland in return for oil exploration rights a few years ago. The Puntland government wanted to go ahead, but the TFG blocked the deal. They do not want the Puntland government to appear to be more powerful than them. They think the Puntland politicians want to take over all of Somalia.”

Hopefully Somali politicians will be able to reach a compromise that reassures foreign investors and begins to create the environment necessary for development. As the British think-tank Chatham House concluded as far back as 2008, “The most powerful weapon against piracy will be peace and opportunity in Somalia, coupled with an effective and reliable police force and judiciary.”

I refer to Palestine as that region otherwise known as the West Bank and Gaza and at least nominally under Palestinian political control. I refer separately to Israel as that region on the other side of the 1948 Armistice Line, the pre-1967 borders. I am fully aware that in the complex and convoluted geopolitics of this region this definition is unsatisfactory, inaccurate and highly controversial. However as a preliminary default position it will have to do.

I made three separate trips into this region in 2010 being based for extended periods in Hebron and Nablus and also travelling extensively including into the Gaza strip. I write semi-incognito as I plan to continue travelling into the region in the near future and do not want to prejudice my chances to be able to continue to do so. However I have so much ground to cover that I am giving this to you in two instalments covering in this chapter, Hebron and Nablus and a later instalment covering Gaza.

The first thing that strikes you is why this pocket handkerchief sized slice of land should have been and still remains so hugely influential on human life, politics, history and international security. That the three great religious myth systems of the world should have a basis in this region is one obvious reason. The more I see of the impact of so-called religions on the world the less am I inclined to dignify these mythologies with the credibility they crave and demand, and the more I agree with the likes of Christopher Hitchens; religion, particularly in the Middle East does poison everything.

The tortuous history of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the aftermath of the Great Crime of the Holocaust and the founding of a safe haven for one persecuted people at the expense of another people who themselves became persecuted in turn, is one of the great challenges and tragedies of our age and has been a core problem in the history of humanity for the last 63 years.

Travel around this country, though, and you are struck with the absolute smallness of distance in Palestine. Is this really the same country referred to in Biblical epics where the Hebraic peoples moved around in desert fastnesses, where great battles were fought, where cities rose and fell? I mean, it’s all so tiny. If you are used to the great distances of Africa or Asia, Palestine comes as a shock. You have reached your destination before you realised you had left your starting point. Take the drive down from Jerusalem to Hebron. Almost as soon as the walls of the Old City have fallen behind you, you are passing by Bethlehem. ‘Wait a minute’, you think ‘what about the hagiographic images of donkey rides across deserts to reach the ancient city and the cold search for a room at the Inn?’ Bethlehem seems more like a Jerusalem suburb than a separate destination. Getting through Israeli security checkpoints (more on that later) does slow down journey times, but it’s hardly the Great Trek. About 30 minutes drive down a 4 lane highway and there you are in Hebron, hotbed of Palestinian radicalism, the centre of the fear factor for Israelis.

I spent seven weeks living in Hebron and three weeks in Nablus and in a long and varied career in many of the hot spots of the world, I have rarely felt so relaxed and unthreatened as I have in Hebron and Nablus, both attractive and fascinating cities with a long and colourful history.

My main concern in Hebron was where I could get hold of a beer, being one of the more conservative cities in Palestine. It was bone dry, and only by mounting rescue missions to Bethlehem and Jericho was I able to restock my fridge with suitable refreshment, the light and tasty Palestinian Taybeh beer, albeit a beer with some quality control issues; it broke my heart to have to tip an undrinkable bottle or two down the sink. In Nablus I had to make excursions to the Samaritan settlement of Kiryat Luza on top of Mount Gerizim, where booze was available in the shops; if you could make it past the Israeli checkpoints separating the village from Nablus city.

Figure 1: Modern Hebron city

In Hebron the main issue for the Palestinians is the absolute stinking behaviour of the Israeli settlers both in the old city and in the adjacent (illegal) settlement of Kiryat Arbah. These are the worst of the Zionist fundies and express their contempt for their Palestinian neighbours by actually tipping their garbage down on their heads. In the old souk the Palestinians are forced to protect their streets with a covering of chicken wire to stop the garbage from the Israeli flats above landing on their heads. Anyone following the news and the US sponsored Peace talks knows that the Israeli settlements are the big sticking point in achieving any sort of peace.

Figure 2: The Old City Hebron

I was able to wander at will in the old souk of Hebron and into the Israeli quarters, a luxury not available to the Palestinians. Passing through the Israeli Defence Force checkpoint in the old souk that allowed entrance to the Machpelah Caves, otherwise known to the Palestinians as Al Haram al Ibrahimi and to the rest of us as the tomb of the Biblical Prophets, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives, I was warned in a hushed tone by the Israeli soldier to ‘be careful of the Palestinians, they’re all thieves’. I fumed quietly ‘cheeky bugger’ but thought better of voicing this openly. I never felt threatened in seven weeks in Hebron and realised this was part of the defence mechanism the Israelis use to stigmatise the Palestinians. If they couldn’t think of them all as thieves or terrorists they might start thinking of them as human beings with the same hopes, dreams, worries and expectations as themselves and even start treating them humanly instead of as sub-humans.

I lived in uptown Hebron close to the football stadium where the local team, Hebron Al Shabaab (Hebron Youth) played every weekend. It brought home to me again the relative normality of it all. They loved football here and especially loved Spanish football, Real Madrid and Barcelona having fanatical followings in Palestine. I was in Nablus when Spain won the World Cup. I thought the outpouring of celebrations nationally was a new ‘intifada’ so loud and long did they celebrate. The truth is all the Palestinians want, like all people is a normal life in their own country, but for the moment this remains a frustrated dream.

My work took me into the Hebron hills in the region south of Hebron known as Musaffer Yatta. This was more uncertain territory, being officially under Israeli military control despite being within the West Bank. Mostly populated by Bedouin shepherds Arab settlements are forbidden here and any attempt at construction is quickly ripped down by Israeli military patrols. Not so of course the new Israeli settlements on the hilltops, replete with water and greenery using the aquifers under Arab land to fill their pools and water their gardens, while the ancient water catchments used by the Bedu are frequently demolished by the Israelis to deter use of these lands and drive them away to their new Bantustans.

We were stopped time after time by Israeli patrols, demanding my passport while I stared up the barrel of a machine gun mounted on the front of a Humvee controlled by some spotty nervous teenager in uniform. Apache and Blackhawk choppers buzzed us in the desert, just in case we were AQ making a prohibited foray into the holy land of Judea. I visited Bedouin living in caves in the hillsides within sight of the Israeli settlements (mind you these cave dwellers did have solar power with satellite TV in their caves!) They’re not allowed to build houses or any shelters taller than knee height so caves are the next best bet. The juxtaposition of 21st Century villages on the hilltops overlooking cave dwellers is just one of many absurdities of Palestine.

Figure 3: Bedouin encampment in the foreground and the illegal Israeli settlement of Karmel in the background

Nablus too is another Palestinian city made notorious by Israeli mythology as a hotbed of terrorism and militancy. While it is true most of the Palestinians are pretty angry and hence militant…who the hell wouldn’t be under the circumstances….again what hits you on the surface is the normality of everyday people going about their everyday life. Only when travelling south to Ramallah and Jerusalem and east to the Jordan valley, do you see the restrictive nature of that normality; the endless checkpoints, the suspicion, the change in control of the countryside every few kilometres as you move in and out of Palestinian and Israeli control. Some roads are under Palestinian control while the verges are Israeli; it’s a confusing and surreal land in so many ways.

Figure 4: Nablus city from Mt Gerizim

Figure 5: Souk in Nablus old city

This pocket sized country is beautiful though in a rugged kind of way. The central spine is mostly hills and mountains merging south into the Negev desert and east into some of the lowest land on the planet in the Jordan valley. It’s also becoming incredibly overcrowded with all available half decent land becoming built up, either by Palestinian villages or Israeli settlements. The whole demographic issue is another political hot potato as the Palestinians try to fill their land up to achieve demographic superiority over the Israelis and strengthen their political position. The Israelis in turn pour in their settlers to fill up the land and use the argument of rule by conquest as the basis to justify their continued and perhaps permanent presence in Palestinian lands.

I entered Palestine a bit naive and not really understanding the context. I left feeling a bit confused, rather angry, but also certain that here was a story that is too infrequently told in the west. We get fed the Israeli narrative all too frequently and it gets (intentionally) mixed up in the rhetoric of the War on Terror to justify repression and injustice. There is a tale of two sides here and one that it is essential to understand if we are to at all comprehend some of the complexities and hazards of this dangerous modern world.

Author – “Wild In Africa”

“Take as much sovereignty as you can stomach!” was Boris Yeltsin’s message to the regions of Russia in the summer of 1990, as the Soviet Union was collapsing around him.

Many areas did just this, and managed a peaceful transition to independence, with fifteen sovereign republics emerging from the ashes of the USSR. But even today, there are a few regions that didn’t quite make it. Most of these can be found between the Black Sea and the Caspian.

Everyone has heard of Chechnya, a small republic in the Caucasus region. They made headlines in 1994 after going to war with Russia, driving them out of their homeland and establishing the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Unfortunately for them, one of Putin’s first moves upon coming to power was to launch the Second Chechen War, thus brutally re-establishing control of the area for Moscow.

When the Republic of Georgia was newly formed it also had problems with separatist regions. South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both formerly autonomous areas under the USSR, declared their independence and went to war to preserve it. Both of these wars were characterised by atrocities, ethnic cleansing and a general disregard for civilian life, on both the Georgian and separatist sides. Today, these two regions maintain de facto independence from Georgia following cease fires, but the situation remains tense.

The Abkhazians, like the South Ossetians, have benefitted greatly from Russian help in their quest for independence. Support for these breakaway regions seems odd from Russia, the same country that fought fiercely to retain Chechnya, and said that Kosovan independence: “threatens the destruction of world order and international stability”. However, a quick look at historic relations between Russia and Georgia shows that Moscow’s seeming duplicity is not at all surprising.

The problems between Russia and Georgia date back hundreds of years. The Georgians found themselves unfortunately sandwiched between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, as well as the Persians. This meant lots of invasions, and eventual absorption into Russia. They tried to declare independence in 1918, but were once again invaded in 1921 and brought back into the Russian fold. These days things are not much better, with Russia positioning troops on Georgian territory in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and threatening all-out war should Georgia attempt to retake these two areas. As a further provocation, Russia has also given out passports to residents of both areas, meaning any action taken against Georgia can now be represented as ‘in defence of Russian citizens’.

My trip to Abkhazia came as part of an 8000km road trip from the UK to Russia and back. On a map, heading through Turkey and then swinging round the Black Sea seemed like the most obvious route, however, I initially thought that driving between Georgia and Russia was not possible. In a way, I was right.

Ever since the 2008 South Ossetia War, Georgia has broken diplomatic relations with Russia and closed the border. Travelling from Georgia into Russia is illegal. Fortunately for me, Abkhazia is positioned between Georgia and Russia, and travelling from Abkhazia into Russia is a very simple process. All I had to do was convince the Georgians that this was not my intention.

Entry into Georgia with a Russian visa in your passport causes a few hassles, but nothing unmanageable. I cruised through the Turkish side at Hopa with no issues, and only had to deal with a few raised eyebrows from customs upon entering Georgia.

“You are going to Russia?”

“Yes, we’re heading to Baku (Azerbaijan), and then getting a boat.”

This explanation was not unusual; as people often bring in cars from Europe and go on to sell them in Central Asia. Where our story fell down was the fact that we were driving a battered, right hand drive, twenty one year old Volkswagen camper van with a custom paint job (yellow smiley face on the side) and an inflatable mattress in the back. Despite this, we were eventually let through.

Things did not go so smoothly once we reached the de facto border with Abkhazia by the River Ingur. Two uniformed Georgian guards sat in a sweaty shed, laughing heartily while watching Brazil get knocked out of the World Cup by Holland. They were friendly and approachable, but also quite insistent.

“Why do you want to go to Abkhazia anyway? It’s full of bandits! If you’re heading to Azerbaijan then it’s out of your way….”

After about an hour of trying to talk them round, they summoned their superior, who was less friendly and just as insistent.

“You cannot enter. It is not safe. You need to turn back.”

Turning back was not a good option. We were on a strict schedule, and not getting access here would mean tracking back to Turkey then getting a ferry to Russia.

I tried everything. I showed them my letter of invitation to Abkhazia (which I had arranged beforehand online). I showed them my Georgian visa. We told them we already had a hotel  booking in Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia. We were only going on a day trip, we would be back by nightfall, we would be very careful, we knew people there. Nothing was going to shake these men. Eventually, I lost my patience.

“Do I or do I not have a visa for travel around Georgia?”

“Yes, it is right here in your passport.”

“And is Abkhazia not part of Georgia? Or are you telling me it is another country?”

“No, of course not, it is part of Georgia!”

“Well then, I have every right to enter.”

They scratched their heads, muttered to each other, and eventually pulled a dusty ledger off the shelf. Things were looking up.

“OK, you can enter, but only on foot. You need to leave your vehicle on this side.”

We both knew what was going on here. They wanted a guarantee that we would not cross into Russia. I could see their frustration as they tried to enforce the government’s policy of no access to Russia when there was a completely porous border only a few hundred kilometres away. But leaving the vehicle was not an option.

Eventually, two EU monitors, who were presumably there to make sure the Georgians and Abkhazians didn’t start shooting at each other again, grew bored of sitting in their shiny new Land Cruiser and wandered over. As soon as they approached the Georgian guards lost a lot of their bravado, acting as if they knew they had done something wrong. After explaining the problem to the monitors, and sharing a few jokes about the World Cup (one was French, the other German) we were reassured it was simply a misunderstanding, and allowed to go on our way.

Entering Abkhazia was a surreal experience. We were still surrounded by the same lush green almost tropical vegetation. There were still cows everywhere, who still seemed to think the road was a warm sleeping area first and a driving surface second. But the signs of war were everywhere. The Abkhazia customs post looked like a military barracks. There were soldiers and heavy equipment everywhere. Just around the corner was a contingent of Russian troops, and you could hear combat helicopters patrolling. What really stood out was that everything had been shot. Everything. The Russians must have dished out a lot of bullets in this conflict, because people seemed to have unloaded whole magazines onto walls, down the road, into drainage areas. Even the trees looked like they’d taken a hit or two.

The Abkhazian soldiers were very surprised to see us, but also extremely welcoming. Soon we had a crowd of five or six heavily armed grizzled looking veterans peering into the van, asking to see photos of where we had been and maps of where we were going. They found my brother’s tongue piercing hilarious. One of them spoke a little English, which was still better than our Russian, and so as we sat waiting for the paperwork to be processed, we discovered that everyone there liked Italian music, one of them used to be on the Soviet Olympic swimming team and we were only the second set of tourists to successfully pass through that border that year.

After getting back our passports and saying farewell to our new friends, we started on the long, pot holed road to Sukhumi. Thin buffalo stood grazing among the abandoned houses. There were cemeteries every few kilometres, all carefully tended to, with an open soft drink left out for the deceased, who would also be pictured on the memorial. It soon became obvious that most of the dead were young men. Russian military insignia were painted onto many of the shattered houses. We were worried about mines, so the only places we stopped were at checkpoints, most of whom were too busy celebrating the Dutch victory to pay much attention to us.

After a few hours of driving through this beautiful but post apocalyptic landscape, the sun set, and we found ourselves entering Sukhumi at night time. I was worried about driving a vehicle that was so obviously foreign around at night in a new city, but once we actually got in our fears vanished. Sukhumi is a brightly lit, newly built seaside resort for Russia’s wealthy. There were Russian number plates everywhere. Prices were all in Roubles. Majestic government buildings towered over the waterfront bars. Well heeled Russians walked the wide boulevards dressed in designer evening wear, speaking loudly into their iphones.

We pulled up at the first hotel I saw, which was a bad move. At seventy five dollars for a double room, this was the most expensive place we stayed at on our entire journey, but what luxury! We had Russian satellite TV, two double beds, a mini bar and a sit down shower with eight adjustable nozzles for that full-body massage effect. After changing out of our filthy travelling clothes, we were informed by the friendly but non-English speaking staff that the restaurant was closed, so we headed out to find some food. It was around 11:30pm.

My brother and I felt a little like castaways, dying from lack of water. All around us there were restaurants serving up fresh seafood and delicious looking meat dishes; however, we had no Roubles. We needed to find a cash point, and fast. Perhaps it was the dehydration from a day of sweating in the van. Perhaps it was the lack of food, or the euphoria of having crossed our most difficult border yet. Whatever the reasons, it did not occur to us that wandering around late at night in a former conflict zone looking foreign was not a good idea.

Sure enough, less than half an hour into our quest, and only a couple of hundred metres from our hotel, a rather large gentleman and his smaller henchman approached us, barked something in Russian, and in no uncertain terms explained what would happen to us if we did not hand over some cash. With negotiations failing due to my lack of Russian (or weaponry) I handed over the twenty Euros worth of useless Goergian Lari I had in my back pocket, and the larger gentleman seemed happy. So happy in fact that he bid us welcome to his country and started to head off. Unfortunately, his smaller, drunker friend wanted to swap shirts. He took off his shirt and motioned for me to do the same. I had been calm up until this point, but there was no way he was taking the shirt off my back. I refused, and he started shouting, getting more and more aggressive. As my brother and I prepared ourselves for the inevitable fight that was about to break out, the larger man actually held his friend back and motioned for us to leave, laughing all the while. He was the most polite mugger I have ever met. Back in our hotel room, we capped the bizarre night off by eating cans of cold baked beans from our emergency rations, while sitting on extremely expensive imported bed sheets and watching Russian reality TV.

Heading out of Abkhazia over the River Psou into Russia was a boring but hassle free process. The queue to get out was huge, and consisted mainly of large SUV’s full of Russian families returning from their seaside holiday. The Russian border guards kept asking when we had first entered Russia, as everyone else they were dealing with drove into Abkhazia via Russia and went back the same way. It took a long time to persuade them that we had genuinely driven in from Georgia. After four or five hours of waiting, we were allowed through. We had made it into Russia, and had hit the half way point of our journey.

Abkhazia is going to great lengths to persuade the world that they are independent. It used to be just Russia and a few other non-countries that recognised them (South Ossetia and Transnistria). Recently they have added Nicragua, Venezuela and the mighty Pacific island of Nauru, but they still have a long way to go. Most UN member states are wary of granting recognition following bloody civil wars featuring ethnic cleansing. They would much rather see a referendum, which the Georgian government is rather unhelpfully refusing to organise. In the mean time, what we have is a tense standoff, aggravated by the growing presence of Russian troops, and now even the Russian navy is getting involved, with increased patrols to help Abkhazia guard its maritime border on the Black Sea.

Abkhazia is full of Russian troops. The banks are full of Russian money. The hotels are full of Russian tourists. All the businesses are dependent on Russian imports. The Abkhazians themselves are all citizens of Russia, watch Russian TV and speak Russian as a second language. Abkhazia like to think they are de facto independent. What I saw was a de facto colony of Russia.

Ever since arriving in Angola for work last year, I had been pouring over maps of the region, examining what travel opportunities my new location afforded me. One neighbouring country in particular stood out: the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The true heart of the Dark Continent, the Congo still seems to capture the imagination, over a hundred years after Joseph Conrad published his seminal Heart of Darkness, or Sir Henry Morton Stanley and Pietro Savorgnan di Brazzà fought it out to establish colonial control of the region for France and Belgium. Today, what people know of the Congo they know through news reports of civil war atrocities and UN interventions. Tim Butcher’s excellent book Blood River echoes the view that Europeans seem to have always had; that the Congo is a dark, dangerous, unknown place, that civilisation abandoned a long time ago.

“The Congo? You don’t want to go there, it’s dangerous. They have no security there.”
“I’m sure they say exactly the same thing about here in Angola.”

This was exactly how conversations played out with everyone I spoke to about my proposed journey. Two weeks and a lot of hassles later, at the end of my trip, I found myself having exactly the same conversation in reverse, with a Congolese policeman I had met by the border with Angola.

“Angola? You don’t want to go there. Didn’t you hear about the Togo football team? It is not safe!”

My journey began in Luanda, the sprawling Atlantic capital of Angola. On a map, it looked simple enough: follow the coastal road north to N’Zeto, then branch inland to the Angolan border town of Noqui, where I would enter the DRC. It was less than four hundred kilometres. How long could it possibly take?

The answer is sixteen and a half hours, over some of the worst roads in Angola. One stretch in particular (between Tomboco and Mepala) seemed to have been abandoned during the civil war and was slowly being reclaimed by nature. We did not pass another vehicle for over two hours as we crawled along, praying that the huge fissures in the mud track would not damage the suspension and leave us stranded. Thankfully, it did not rain; otherwise I doubt the Land Cruiser would have made it.

We spent the night in Noqui, having to sleep in part of the local hospital as there were no hotels in town. It is a small place, which looks out over the Congo to Matadi, it’s much larger Congolese neighbour. It was fascinating to listen to the locals here talk about the Congo with the sort of reverence usually reserved only for the West.
“Over there they have electricity. Look, we can see them all lit up at night, and over here were are in darkness!”

I pointed out that this was not strictly true, as some houses on our side did seem to have power.

“That is the governor’s house, and the centre of town. But they all have to buy the power from the Congolese authorities. We cannot produce our own here.”
My new friends spent the night telling me how much better life was in the DRC, how business opportunities were plentiful, cost of living was low and there were tourists in abundance. I was beginning to look forward to crossing the border in the morning.
This enthusiasm for the border crossing was short lived once I reached the Congolese side of the checkpoints the following day. In what I can only describe as the biggest shakedown I have ever witnessed, the Congolese authorities demanded everything from my trainers to my dollars, and most things in between. The head of immigration, growing frustrated at my unwillingness to produce a “sucrée” (literally a sugary drink, but in this context a bribe) and the fact that my DRC visa was in good order, instead chose a different tactic:

“There seems to be an irregularity with your Angolan work visa.”

I assured him that there was not and that even if there was, it was nothing to do with him and no barrier to my entry into his country.

“My friend, I am only pointing this out for your benefit. I am trying to help you! We wouldn’t want you getting stuck outside Angola…”

After over an hour of assuring me that there was a serious problem (he knew because he had studied Angolan immigration law at ‘Immigration School’) and demanding money to sort it out, he finally gave up and let me go. Sadly, he was only the first of many Congolese officials who tried (and more often than not failed) to extort money from me. It is a simple fact of life in this country. You are immeasurably rich by their standards, and therefore should be willing to part with your dollars. The trick is to remain calm, be patient, and allow plenty of time if you need any sort of official document or visa (a lesson I would forget later on in my trip). Most importantly, never let an official know you are in a hurry, or show that you are becoming impatient or losing your temper. Funnily enough, this will not result in faster service.
Matadi itself is a picturesque market town situated near the mouth of the Congo. The first European here was the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão in 1485, but it is best known as the start of the infamous Matadi to Kinshasa railway, completed in 1898, and still running until the civil war a few years back. These days getting to Kinshasa is easy, as you can drive for seven hours along one of the few decent paved roads in the country, which is used to move goods between the capital and the port on massive HGV’s.

I spent the next four days on a whirlwind tour of Kinshasa, picking up the shopping list of items I required for my travels within the country. This included changing my single entry visa to a multiple entry visa (to allow a visit to Brazzaville), trying to find the address of the elusive tourist information building, booking flights to Goma for a trip to the national parks as well as flights west for my eventual return to Angola via Cabinda. I soon learnt that people in the Congo are loathe to tell you they do not know the directions to somewhere, and will often have a guess rather that recommending you ask elsewhere.

Interspersed with all this red tape, getting lost and waiting in dingy government offices I also tried to see some of the sights Kinshasa has to offer. As a city, Kinshasa is quite light on tourist attractions, but I still managed to find Mobutu’s old presidential park (complete with empty animal cages and abandoned amphitheatre), the Museum of Kinshasa, the zoo and of course the Congo River itself. Getting anything done was a struggle that involved multiple taxi rides across a hot, bustling, congested city, but it meant getting a real flavour of the place. Everyone was friendly (including the police), and when things got too much there was always an overly priced Western supermarket or Lebanese-run restaurant to duck into for a quick air-conditioned break.

My carrier of choice from Kinshasa to Goma was Hewa Bora Airways. On the negative side, they are banned from EU airspace for not complying with air safety and aircraft maintenance regulations. One of their planes also overshot the Goma runway in 2008 and burst into flames, killing forty two people. On the plus side, their flights have a reputation for running on time, and of those killed in the aforementioned accident, all but one were people on the ground as opposed to passengers on the plane.

It is a testament to the sheer size of Congo that you can take a three hour internal flight. Touching down in Goma felt like a different world to Kinshasa. First off, being a passenger plane we were in the minority on the runway. Most planes here are either UN or mining, bringing in cassiterite for export to the ports of Kenya. There were none of the high rise buildings or queuing lanes of traffic. It was also around ten degrees cooler and rainy, being high up in the green hills looking out over the Rwandan town of Gisenyi. This used to be a lakeside resort for the Belgians back in the early nineteen hundreds, and many of their hotels and buildings are still standing. Side by side with these colonial remnants are reminders of the more recent troubles here. The UN has a heavy military presence, as this is a base for their MONUC peacekeeping force, helping to maintain stability in one of the most war-torn parts of Congo. Although the Second Congo War ended in 2003, this area has remained volatile due to the presence of large numbers of FDLR rebels in the bush.

Despite these problems, there is a spirit of optimism in the air today. One day in town I stopped to see why a crowd had gathered, and watched a local charity organising an arms exchange. For every weapon handed in, locals were given $50 and a piece of cloth. There was all the pomp and circumstance of an official African engagement, as charity representatives mingled with local dignitaries and the press. I did not know whether to be impressed or appalled by the amount of weapons being handed over and stacked up on the ground for disposal.

Goma is one of the main access points for Virunga National Park, where you can engage in all sorts of outdoor activities. It is a very well run park, and it was easy to set up day trips through a tour operator in town. I went and checked out the mountain gorillas for a day, and scaled Mount Nyiragongo, the volcano overlooking Goma that erupted in 2002 and destroyed the centre of town. During my time in Goma I ate a lot of good food (I can particularly recommend the poulet a la mwamba) and drank a lot of Congolese Primus beer. I also checked out one of the obscenely loud clubs, partly out of curiosity and partly because they blasted their music so loud until 6am that it was impossible for me to sleep in my nearby hotel room anyway!

When my time in Goma was finished, I headed back to Kinshasa, hoping to check out Brazzaville before going home. Once again I crossed my fingers and took a Hewa Bora Airways flight back. Upon arrival I marched confidently into the Congo-Brazzaville Embassy, planning to collect my passport (which I had left there a week ago) and go spend a relaxing day over the river. What I actually did was spend 5 hours in the embassy waiting for my passport (which they had  assured me was ready days ago), an hour fending off numerous bribe requests at the ferry port and a whole 45 minutes wandering around Brazzaville before having to catch the last boat back for another shakedown. If worked out as an hourly rate, it had to be the most expensive city break in the history of tourism:

•    Changing my Congo-Kinshasa entry visa to multiple entry: $165
•    Buying a visa for Congo- Brazzaville: $80
•    Return boat ride: $50
•    Shakedowns: $20
•    Taxi to get me to and from the ferry port: $35

Total = $350

After a fortnight in the DRC it was time to head back to Angola. Rather than try to renegotiate the frankly terrible Angolan road I had come up on, I decided to fly. There used to be direct flights from Kinshasa to Luanda with TAAG, the Angolan national airline, but after a political row over expelled refugees a few years ago this was cancelled. Instead I took a tiny plane from Kinshasa to Matadi, where I had started my trip, then it was a ten minute hop over to Boma and finally Moanda, a Congolese town on the Atlantic coast. From there it was a bumpy 25km shared taxi ride north to the border with Cabinda, then a further forty five minutes to Cabinda Airport, which has daily TAAG flights to Luanda.

As with many poor African countries I have visited, I was both impressed and saddened by the optimism of the people. Everyone was very keen to tell me how hard life was, and how much better things must be where I am from (Europe, not Angola). Yet they would always equally stress how much better things are for them now, as opposed to before, during the war. Whenever I pressed people as to why their situation was so difficult, it was always the fault of the fighting. Why do they have no roads? They were all destroyed in the war. Why is there no electricity? Damage to infrastructure during the fighting. Nobody dug any deeper and asked why these things had not been fixed yet.

Whenever corruption was mentioned, it was always as a petty inconvenience, a fact of life, something that only affected them at a local level. To the Congolese I met, corruption was the police hassling them at checkpoints. It was having to pay a little extra to get that document they needed, or see through a business deal. Few people mentioned President Kabila’s rampantly corrupt central government. It seemed fine that provincial governors wore imported suits and drove expensive cars. They are leaders after all; they have to look the part. Politicians are rich because they are successful individuals. Successful in politics and also successful in business. Their gain was not perceived as anybody else’s loss.

One person I met in Goma said he was disheartened by the central government’s decision to spend money on celebrating their fiftieth year of independence from Belgium when there remained so much reconstruction to do, but even he said of President Kabila “at least he’s not Mobutu.” Another old man said to me “We should be re-colonised. Things will never be as good if we rule ourselves.” Of all the things I saw in the DRC, it was this resignation that shocked me the most.

Words and pictures by Giovanni Contadino

It’s been four years since I stepped on the sands of The Sudan, so coming back felt both familiar and a bit strange. Arrivals at Khartoum airport seemed much the same, though arriving at 2.30 a.m. on a Turkish Airlines flight meant that more than half of the only 30 or so passengers on board were actually transiting to Nairobi and Addis, so immigration was surprisingly fast and efficient. Remembering a bit of Arabic eased the way as well.

It was clear in the vivid daylight of a Khartoum morning though that the city has changed a lot since my last visit there. Oil money and Chinese investment has transformed swathes of the city into either endless vistas of new apartment blocks replacing the rather more elegant older villas and low rise suburbs, or in the Mogran area on the junction of the two Niles, a sparkling new city development called Al Sunut (the Sunut is the ubiquitous dryland tree, acacia nilotica) is transforming this part of Khartoum into Dubai on the Nile. High rise superstructures, cranes and building sites are everywhere, overshadowing the comparatively low rise Hilton Hotel, which used to be the dominant building in this part of town. Another obvious development was the burgeoning of new mosque buildings; with elaborately garish fluorescent green and white minarets thrusting into the dusty sky all around the city, the Gulf and Saudi influence clear here. Their volume controls also seem to be set to maximum as well judging by the inability to get any sleep after 5.15 a.m. anywhere in Khartoum.

I spent much of this visit bound to Khartoum but was fortunate to get out to El Geneina, only 20km from the Chad border, in West Darfur for a few days. You may remember my previous series on Darfur from 2005 following some extended time in that region. What’s the phrase? “Plus ça change”, or “same old, same old”. Despite political posturing that ‘The War in Darfur is over’ it didn’t feel much like it actually on the ground in Darfur and daily reports of skirmishes still gave the feeling of a region in active conflict. A ceasefire was signed between the Government and one of the main rebel groups, JEM (the Justice and Equality Movement who audaciously attacked Omdurman across the river from Khartoum in May 2008) on the day I flew out of El Geneina. However reported clashes continued after the ceasefire and there were credible reports of a major fire fight in the mountains of Jebel Mara with the other big rebel group, the SLA or Sudan Liberation Army in late February. It still seemed much like a war zone to me. When I mentioned to people that I was actually evacuated out of Darfur back in 1990, there was incredulity, but as I said, same old, same old.

What has changed since the last time I visited is the overt threat to the international humanitarian community. About a year ago the President of Sudan, Omer el Bashir, was indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. The backlash against the international community was immediate with most of the biggest humanitarian agencies operating in Sudan facing immediate expulsion (on the grounds that they had helped provide evidence to the ICC, a claim that has no base in reality). Another effect was that foreign aid workers became legitimate targets especially for kidnap. This was unheard of when I was in Darfur in 2004 and 2005 but now kidnap training has become mandatory for all humanitarian agency staff. The threat is real and, as is intended, is hampering humanitarian operations as most roads are no-go and the only safe way around much of Darfur is inside a noisy UN Mil Mi8 helicopter.

There were a lot of UN and AU Hybrid Force (UNAMID) Blue Helmets on the ground in Darfur; but as their UN Chapter Seven mandate does not allow them to use much more than strong language against aggressive opposition it left me wondering what was the point. They have taken a lot of hits in recent times but are unable to take forceful action to protect civilians. Highly visible UNAMID APCs dotted around Geneina, and truckloads of swathed armed Blue Helmets scurrying busily around town were testament to the international peacekeeping presence, but there are still large areas of Darfur where insecurity and active conflict precludes humanitarian access and where the people still suffer mass displacement and the loss of home, livelihoods and indeed lives. At least the main IDP camps I visited have grown no larger but they haven’t gotten any smaller either and I met people who had lived there for 6 years now and still saw no prospect of a safe return home. I didn’t see any sign of oil money or Chinese investment in West Darfur, though!

I did find rather disturbing the tangle of wrecked aircraft remains on the ground at Geneina airport. It is an unsurfaced strip, hence a dusty landing and takeoff, but clearly it had been too much for the odd wrecked Antonov or Beechcraft tipped over crazily and by now largely stripped of anything of value. I’ve got used to this type of flying in and out of bush strips in Africa but never fail to find it unsettling and get that sweaty palmed feeling until we are up safe and away. The UN Humanitarian Air Service for Darfur provides largely Kenyan crews, flying Kenyan registered aircraft, which at least all seem to be in good shape (plane and crew!)

One thing that Sudan is not though is a Taliban state. In fact social mores in Sudan seem to be more relaxed than most countries which have adopted Sharia as their legal code. Women are very visible and not at all hidden away, they drive, work and study without apparent restriction. The colourful lightweight taub wrap-around, which still functions as the condescension to social modesty for many Sudanese women, is being replaced in the city by a headscarf and a pleasingly body-hugging long-sleeved top and skirt, which the longer you stay, the more attractive it becomes. A tiny minority has adopted the burka, but they stand out in the crowd. Alcohol is of course illegal but not unavailable, but I was also surprised how much the taste of alcohol free beer compensated for the lack of punch in it, and realised I actually enjoy the taste as much as the kick and can take one without the other.

I got a rare chance (in my line of work) to be a tourist for a day and visited the 2000 year old pyramids at ancient Meroë, 220 km and a three hour drive north of Khartoum near the Nile. Sudan actually has more pyramids than Egypt, although significantly smaller and badly damaged largely by 19th Century European treasure hunters and tomb raiders. It is still a stunning sight and largely free of mass tourism so you feel you mostly have the place to yourself. The Sudanese though are latching on to some of the opportunities of tourism and now offer camel rides around the pyramids for a modest 5-10 Sudanese Pounds (about £1.50 to £3 sterling) and have opened trinket stalls for the few who venture that far. The fact that it is still largely untouched by tourism though is what adds to the appeal.

Sudan is shortly having its first democratic multi-party elections in 24 years this April. Khartoum is full of election publicity supporting the incumbent President Bashir, with the rather dubious supporting slogan ‘For unity and peace’. The opposition candidates (11 of them) barely feature in the public eye, and with the incumbent largely in control of media and election publicity there is not much hope that they will get any comparable public exposure to state their case and make a reasonable showing. At least though it is a rare opportunity to challenge the status quo and show that there is a basis for political dialogue in what for the last 21 years has been pretty much a one party, one man state.

Enough of this… In Mogadishu for how many days – running around in circles, militias in tow – adding to the quantity of armed men surrounding us every time we crossed an arbitrary barrier. Indeed, each time we had to cross into another warlord’s territory, another militia truck would have to be added to our convoy for a few hundred more that day. Expensive? Hell yes. Of course, nothing but the worst in southern Somalia. Nothing but the worst, for all intents and purposes, has all it’s been ever since my last visit there over four years ago.

Sure, it all came to a head sometime in the past two years. People started paying attention again, after all this time, all the while Somalia has been going on near a generation without a functioning government. That means kids growing up without any knowledge of law and order, any idea of what a head of state is, a parliament or some equivalent, or even what the notion of nationhood even means. This is indeed all foreign to us bloated rich western folk that, on this planet in the infancy of the twenty-first century, people can still live off the grid, off the map, with a currency that technically shouldn’t exist, in a country that technically doesn’t exist. I got in and out, officially, by paying my translator ten bucks to handwrite my entry and exit dates inside my passport. All this in the age of the internet, the ever-traceable individual, the see-through body scanner, the Al-Qaeda database (trademark) that can make any man with flammable underwear stop and think twice about taking a flight out of Heathrow to Detroit.

Ah, if it was only that simple. Once in awhile, people head out to Mogadishu, and back in the early throes of oh-six, I was doing the same. The second time, actually – one more than most, almost more than all of the world.

Mogadishu, that time, was a different experience, one that I’d written about extensively some years ago. Few cared then, and few more care now, thanks to a few token white sailors getting stuck on the wrong end of a rusty machine gun. Nonetheless I refuse to repeat that story: what I’m going to tell is the story of an aborted trip south from Mogadishu to Kisimayo, some five hundred klicks southwest, some kind of random mad-max road trip that was never intended to succeed.

Why haven’t I told it sooner? Well, I tried. Selling stuff on the country is a task somewhere between difficult and impossible, and magazines tend to only buy stuff about dumb blondes who happen to appear on American television. Thusly and therefore, no one really cared that I was heading south to Kisimayo.

Back then, in the old days, Mog was a “safer” place – warlords had divided the city into about eight, maintaining a sort of equilibrium amongst themselves, ensuring a basic level of law and order. But back then, things were not going extremely well for these eight folks, as the Islamic Courts (also known as Al-Shabab, sort of, kind of) were jockeying for their own piece of Club Mog and already controlled about half of it. Three months after our departure, they got the other half, and Mog would never be the same. But before this fundamental change in the anarchistic equilibrium of the city, we were planning a road trip south.

Indeed, a road trip with a truck full of Somalis with heavy machine guns, ourselves decked out in abandoned bulletproof vests that the Pakistani contingent of the UN had cast off around 1993, as well as a bundle of satellite phones, laptops, satellite internet, backpacks full of stinking clothes, and of course our guide and driver. We had spent the whole afternoon two days before negotiating a price.

A few grand, the hotelier demanded from us. We said sorry, we’re just poor students, not much in the way of cash, and even if we had extra cash to spare it wouldn’t do you much good as there wasn’t a single working bank machine in your whole damned country – or the three countries that currently make up the geographic boundaries of your whole theoretical damned country. It’s getting confusing already. They had an offer, however – a few friends of theirs (clan members, to be precise) had agreed that for a smaller fee they would meet up with us around the halfway point between Mogadishu and Kisimayo, and ferry us south from there.

Kisimayo, back in these ancient days four years ago, was not yet overrun by Al-Shabab but was naturally no vacation spot either – it too had been divided up between warlords, though they were far less used to receiving international visitors than the community representatives in Mog. (Think that, instead of a handful of visitors each year, you get zero). This was only one of our initial problems with the place – the mystery was, of course, did they manage the same sort of semi-organized law enforcement like the Mog types had created, ad-hoc, over the past fifteen years? Did anyone even know this was going on in Mogadishu? Obviously, no one else had bothered to ask, as I discovered one charming afternoon arguing with some fool from Ottawa who couldn’t believe someone could be calling him from a satellite phone from an airstrip west of Mogadishu asking if he knew anything about chartering aircraft out of Nairobi; but, as I said, that’s another story.

But as for Kisimayo – it was a mystery. Me and my associate had been bouncing around Nairobi for a week before our arrival in Club Mog, asking about chartering aircraft into southern Somalia, and finally found the leading “domestic” airport in Kenya and the office of a charming Somali gentlemen who gave us a price, and then delivered a deep heartfelt sigh. “You guys are young,” he said with sadness, “and perhaps you should think again about your visit to Kisimayo, considering all that is going on there.”

Oh. Did I mention that back in the early days of Oh-six, Kisimayo was the initial flash point for all this piracy-on-the-seas stuff, the jumping-off point for the Islamic rebels? The first place they really managed to gain ground against the warlords, in their mission to consolidate the southern third of the country into some sort of authoritative Islamic state? Well, it must have slipped my mind; as we did, in fact, politely decline the chartered aircraft to Kisimayo and decided to wait out the weekend for a scheduled flight into Club Mog.

Then it all happened – the militia truck appeared out front of the Sahafi Hotel on another scorching day. Over the past week we had spoken to numerous parliamentarians who wandered amongst the walls of the Sahafi Hotel like ghosts, mysterious figures from murderous army generals to intellectuals whom had spent most of their previous years in Toronto and Minnesota. Indeed, we loaded up the SUV with our craploads of gear, various sugary sweets for the journey, and watched our guide down plenty of camel milk. The call to prayer woke me up early, I pushed off the heavy velvet blankets from my hotel room’s bed, looked down from the chain-link screens that covered the balcony, and, in any event, realized it was time to go.

Kisimayo, here I come. No one had managed a road trip through Southern Somalia for, oh, probably fifteen years. Maybe they did back in ninety-three, no one will really know and few will ever really care. Strapped into the vehicle the gates then opened, and we stopped on the outside as the gates closed; from the alleys our two trucks filled with machine-gun men appeared. On our way, it would seem.

It was an innocuous journey for the first couple of hours. Past Merca, our guide kept holding his head. We played with the satellite phone, I took pictures of camels. Looked at the dust trailing us, looked at the militia’s truck trailing dust in the front. No, you don’t get to see the coast as the “highway” is, naturally, a dozen kilometres in. That is, if you can call it a highway – it had been broken into a maze of potholes, and more often than otherwise we drove along the side of the highway than on it.

Low trees, various herds of camels and cows, dotted the landscape. A clear blue sky, random Somali sounds (and of course Bob Marley) blared from the radio. We stopped briefly to fix some tires, the machine-gun men fanned out around us, but soon we were back in the vehicle. Some hours later, again, we stopped. Our guide had chatted with the hotelier back at the Sahafi via a cellular phone. Time for a stretch, at least.

Yet, this was not simply a stretching of the legs. This was another experience, that of the militia commander huddling his troops together behind the vehicle, screaming on the phone, expounding his reasons for something or other, demanding a resolution. Our guide, staring into space while holding his belly, seemed uninterested. Minutes later he turned to us.

“We had planned to hand you to another militia group one hundred kilometres south, but they misunderstood our intention. They are thinking we are coming to fight, not to meet them, so they are expecting to fight us. So we leave the question to you – do you want to go meet them, and fight them? Or, we can go back to Mogadishu,” he said, staring off into space, looking a little ill.

Ahh. It would seem as though that our intensive planning, and road tripping in southern Somalia on the cheap, may have been all for naught. There was something of a communication error here – they had told us that the two clans were friends; they had explained clearly that we were to be handed off between the two militias, without incident. Now we were, apparently, hiring a few local mercenaries to spark a war between clans in southern Somalia. The final showdown between Mogadishu and Kisimayo. Talk about kicking it up a notch.

Par for the course, perhaps. I told them in no uncertain terms that we weren’t going down there to face anyone, to fight anyone, but in fact were simply students on a research project here on the Somali coast, for a second time. When we arrived back at the Sahafi wearing level-three vests and unloading tonnes of laptops and satellite equipment, you could just see the locals drinking tea and muttering to themselves, “students my ass”.

It was not until our arrival back at the hotel, as well, that we had learned that our little road trip was novel enough that a local journalist had found fit to announce it to the entire city on local radio the day before – indubitably with a little bit of circulation to their friends down in Kisimayo as well. The media may have hammed it up, made it out to be more exciting and interesting than it was intended to be, and rumours persisted upon our departure of it appearing in Mogadishu’s daily newspaper as well. Some young white guys road tripping in southern Somalia, Mogadishu to Kisimayo? What are the odds?

But hey, we got our money back. The hotelier blamed our poor guide on wimping out due to “drinking too much camel milk”, which is a line I’ll have to try someday when I don’t want to do something. It’s one thing to say no, but in places like this, the Somalis were still eager to help us at less than half the price – and they failed. Perhaps it’s a lesson for all, and I hate to say that for those east coast Africa overlanders, your time has yet to come. One thing’s for sure, however, you should definitely bring some spare tires. And maybe a few bulletproof vests for good measure.

I spent three weeks in Zimbabwe in December 2009; it was my first return to that country in a little over two years. The last time I was there, in late 2007, inflation was heading into outer space, with more OOOOs on the banknotes than a Venetian orgasm; Comrade Bob was digging his heels in and damning the world to do anything about it, and the general prognosis was that final meltdown was only moments away. 2008 saw inflation continue to expand into the cosmos and the political future hung in the balance. However, two events put the brakes on the cataclysm: These were the power-sharing agreement between the hardliners of ZANU PF under Mugabe, and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change of Morgan Tsvangirai. I noted that in Zimbabwe that these days the ordinary Zimbabwean always talks about ‘Mugabe’, but the Prime Minister is always ‘Morgan’.

The second event was the ‘dollarization’ of the economy, whereby the Zimbabwe dollar has been replaced by the US Dollar and the South African Rand. As a result inflation has been halted in its tracks and is now close to zero, and the Zimbabwe dollar is, if not dead, then mortally wounded. On this latest trip I brought home a 50 Billion dollar banknote, which I was reliably informed would just about pay for a bus ride across Harare and roughly approximated a value equal to 50 US Cents – that’s an exchange rate of one Billion Zimbabwe dollars to the US Dollar. However for most rural Zimbabweans access to USD or SA Rands is hard to come by, and in many rural areas people have reverted to a barter economy exchanging goods and labour rather than cash.

A combination of political compromise and the end of hyperinflation has for the moment pulled the country back from the brink. However it is clear that this is still only a holding action as the political marriage is very shaky and the MDC and ZANU PF are very uncomfortable bedmates. It smacks of an arranged marriage more than a love affair with an element of rape within the marriage characterising the relationship between ZANU and MDC.

My task was to conduct an emergency assessment in the south east of the country in Chiredzi District, bordering Mozambique and South Africa. This was based on uncomfortably high levels of infant and child malnutrition, a serious cholera outbreak in this region in the last year and successive years of crop failures in an area characterised by unreliable rainfall. This region was also once one of the areas in which the former white farmers held large tracts of land as farms and ranches, and as a result, where much of the controversial land redistribution had taken place. It is the area known as the ‘lowveld’; hot, dry and best suited to cattle and wildlife; indeed the second largest national park in Zimbabwe, Gonarezhou, is located in this region just to the east of Chiredzi.

A week’s work in this region actually produced the conclusion that for the moment, the expected emergency is on hold. Decent rains in 2008 (and a promising outlook for the 2009/10 season as well) have produced a better than average harvest and although we did see enough hungry kids to be disturbing, levels of malnutrition were not at emergency levels. It was notable that in this region those who are suffering the worst deprivations are the peasant farmers resettled onto the former white owned farms. These farms are now with almost no services, including no clean water, no tools or seeds, and limited access to health care and education.  The dispossessed remain dispossessed, whatever the political promises of the ruling classes.

My journey took me to within a few kilometres of the South African border, where most of the male population has disappeared across in search of work, and where the women struggle to bring up their children on the few remittances that make it back home, and on whatever little they can produce in their gardens from their own labour. In the dusty frontier town of Chikombedzi I watched the idle youth gather around a storefront to watch the latest Nigerian drama unfold on the Digital Satellite TV network being beamed into the store as the only entertainment in town.  There are few vehicles on the rural roads, as few can get hold of the Dollars or Rands needed to buy petrol, and the roads themselves are falling into disrepair, as there is no money in the government coffers to pay salaries or but the materials needed to supply basic services.

The real emergency in this part of Zimbabwe, and indeed in much of the country, is the HIV/AIDS epidemic , with adult infections rates of 23%, or nearly one in four of the adult population. The health service is unable to cope, with many healthcare professionals having abandoned Zimbabwe for greener pastures, where they are able to earn a decent living. A large proportion of the population has essentially been abandoned to their fate, which is a miserable lingering death. The doctors and nurses I met were working hard against impossible odds.

Back in Harare life seemed to be more ‘normal’ than in recent years. However my memories of Harare from the 1990s are of a clean, modern, functioning city; now it is far more like any other archetypal African city, with piles of rubbish in the streets, potholed roads, power and water shortages, and hungry demoralised people let down by the failures of the government. For all the traumas it has experienced it is not yet a basket case, and indeed, compared to many African destinations, with which I have become familiar in recent years; Freetown, Darfur, even parts of Nairobi, it is still liveable and could still be a very pleasant place to live given access to foreign currency and a decent house and transport.

Zimbabwe, therefore, remains on the brink of a precipice but has maybe eased back a few steps. The future remains very much in the hands of Mugabe and his ZANU PF cohorts and until the MDC are actively, rather than grudgingly, engaged in the Governance of the country, then the future is still in an uncertain balance.

The Baloch have been living in a state of siege ever since 1948, when their territory was incorporated into the nation of Pakistan. Under the thumb of Islamabad, their rights and autonomy have been deliberately ignored by the international community, which has its own agenda for the region. Balochistan declared its independence on August 11, 1947, three days before Pakistan.

The sound of the explosion hardly raises an eyebrow among the restaurant patrons. This is the dining room of the bus station in Khuzdar, a Baloch town halfway between Quetta and Karachi. After a couple of minutes, Abdulhamid, a local journalist, gets a call. Only now does the  busy lunchtime crowd pause.

Abdulhamid breaks the dining room’s silence. “It was a communications tower. No injured or dead,” he announces. It’s good news for Sattar, who’s sitting nearby. The guerrillas’ actions won’t keep him from opening his shop in the bazaar this afternoon.

“Whenever the BLA (Baluch Liberation Army) kills somebody there’s always payback in the bazaar. The army drives down Jinnah Road (the main street) and shoots at the people from their jeeps,” says the Merchant, as he uses his fingers to wrap pita bread around a morsel of beef. He explains that four people died that way last June 4th, and a dozen more were wounded. In addition, seven local students have “disappeared.” This was the army’s response after the BLA killed a Punjabi officer a few months ago.

Khuzdar is like lots of other Baloch towns in Pakistan-controlled Baluchistan. Viral graffiti with the initials of the BLA and BRA (Baluch Republican Army), accompanied by the slogan “Down With Pakistan” spreads across the walls of almost every building. On the other side of all these discomfiting acronyms in Khuzdar stands the Pakistani army, the Pakistani Police, the Frontier Corps (border police), the Rangers and other paramilitary detachments, simply called “scouts.”

“Whether the Baloch attack or not, the army fires their bombs and weapons in order to scare us. Their training camps are right next to our houses,” complains Sattar. “Have you seen the barracks they’re building now? Some say it will be the largest military complex in all of Pakistan,” says the trader before leaving for work.

Indeed, the new military site appears large enough to accommodate all 600,000 troops in the Pakistani army. It’s so massive, it has already ‘swallowed’ two mud-brick villages. The villagers, mostly shepherds, continue grazing their livestock inside the huge barrack walls that lead from the road into the mountains. They won’t be evacuated until the wall has completely encircled the area. But it’s just a matter of time before yet another settlement of displaced persons  sprouts up in Khuzdar’s outskirts. Just like in Quetta–head to the settlements around there and ask  people how and why they came to live in the suburbs of a city, which is itself already a huge slum.

Other explosions

“Punjab (Pakistan) treats us like animals,” explains Sirbaz, a trucker who has stopped here on his way to Karachi. This man, around forty, is originally from Dalbandin, a town which lies very close to the place where Pakistan tested its nuclear weapons in 1998. They were five explosions in the Chagai hills–explosions the local people will never forget.

“My sister has skin cancer, and so do two of my brothers. There are also plenty of people with eye cancer, and malformations are not uncommon among newborns,” says the trucker. Islamabad has used every means at its disposal to prevent any investigation into the impact of the nuclear tests on the local population. But today, everyone understands that the radiation, at some stage, reached the underground aquifiers–the only water resource in this arid region.

“If you pass by Dalbandin and the surrounding area, stay away from the water.” Shirbaz warns. “Do not even use it to wash your face.” After lunch, tea with milk is served–yet another British colonial legacy of the region. No one among the elders doubts that life here was much better in Balochistan under British rule than under Punjab’s. “What do people in Europe think about what is happening in Balochistan?” asks Atik, another passenger on the road to Quetta. As he waits for my response, he gazes at me steadily with the eye they didn’t burn out with a cigarette while he was in prison.

Luanda’s domestic terminal is a crowded, dim, smoky place that definitely has not been affected by the obsession with banning cigarettes that has swept across the globe. Amongst local Angolans hauling piles of luggage were crowds of men from the Philippines and China, packed closely together, dutifully handing their passports over to their handlers when the time for check-in came. Other folks with American accents ran the gauntlet into the waiting room, which was a little less humid, sporting one working air conditioner and some truly squalid bathrooms.

Par for the course, really, in central Africa. Luanda, in spite of Angola’s nascent boom from oil and diamonds now that the war has ended, still sports a grimy little airport packed to the gills with those who would see the country’s industrial revolution arrive in full. I was heading north out of Luanda, to follow the oil workers to their mecca on the African west coast, a tiny dot of a place that few can even find on a map – Cabinda. It’s something of an exclave, wedged between both Congos, and for many, a great unknown as to what would await them there.

Cabinda has trailed far behind in the peacemaking that the rest of Angola has been enjoying for around five years. FLEC, the Cabindan separatists, only really reached a peace deal in 2006 or so, and that was conditional on a whole lot of that oil money staying within the province’s boundaries. This is no small deal – Cabinda’s been called the Kuwait of Africa, and glance at any map of the proven oilfields off Angola’s coast and you’ll see that without Cabinda, the country doesn’t have much oil at all. Angola joined OPEC in 2007 and has recently been exporting slightly more crude than Libya. The promise was, the Angolan government said, that the Cabindan locals would see their standard of living increase from all this wealth, and their life expectancy would be drastically improved thanks to a noticeable lack of bullets flying everywhere.

This may seem to be the case when one arrives at the newly refurbished Cabinda airport – a small but gleaming complex with a beautifully paved runway and glossy luggage belt, full time sweepers and window washers, plasma televisions hung from the rafters with the only channel available interrupting idle chatter. The claptrap of a domestic aircraft I arrived on seemed out of place, and at first glance the new airport could make Cabinda seem almost first world – until one sees the crowds of police officers, razor-wire, and oddly useless passport checks every few meters. And then, nearly an hour for our luggage to arrive from the aircraft and into the arrivals area. A shiny building is only a small part of what makes a country stable.

Cabinda the province has its main economic centre in Cabinda the city, and driving around the sleepy town one will see more effects of the recent peace deal – newly built parks popping up everywhere, with more gleaming fences, statues, and clean streets – at least in the town centre. Indeed, my driver would tell me, all of this has occurred in the blink of an eye, over the course of only a year. Construction is rampant, as the government attempts not only to meet its end of a peace deal but also to prettify the city for an anticipated influx of even more foreigners.

And yet, on the street level, we’re few and far between. The vast majority of the oil employees coming to Cabinda work at a vast complex just north of the capital city, in a town called Malongo – a venerable fortress of its own. Walled off by razor-wire, with unmarked minefields behind it, human rights groups have been in a tizzy for decades over this overprotected enclave within the exclave. Those seeking to escape the conflict on the outside would scale the fence, only to have their legs blown off on the other side. Things are quieter these days, the minefields are marked, but the oil company in question still refuses to let their staff drive the two dozen kilometres to the complex – they all take helicopters. While waiting for my luggage, one would arrive and leave almost every five minutes.

FLEC, or the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda, had been battling both Angola and Chevron-Texaco’s interests here for a number of decades. Along a sideline to the protracted and well-publicized civil war of mainland Angola between the MPLA and UNITA, FLEC engaged in a nasty guerrilla war for longer than anyone could remember. Their leaders stipulate that the original agreement signed with Portugal was for independence, in 1885. When independence for Angola arrived in 1975, they said, Cabinda should have become a separate nation. But instead they became another province, and were swiftly invaded by the MPLA. FLEC has been fighting against this ever since, and even though the most recent peace treaty was denounced by some within the group, the province is nonetheless reasonably peaceful these days….. and the government, with its relentless construction initiatives, is trying to prove that it’s worth their while to stay that way.

Cabinda’s city itself is gaining affluence, and the highway north to Pointe Noire is a beautiful and well marked stretch of asphalt. We headed to Cacongo, Cabinda’s second city, which has not seen nearly as much development. Sandy beaches, ancient colonial buildings, the water just over there, it could be a prime vacation spot for some. However, head northeast from Cacongo into the inland of Cabinda and one reaches the homeland of FLEC and its real base of support – as well as more Angolan soldiers.

Buco Zau is a small town carved out from the jungle on a few hilltops, and the residents certainly were not alone in the wilderness with all those uniforms about. I, the hapless white guy, was getting too many stares from the resident army and police – however I was really here to check out the forest reserve in the environs that goes by the name of Maiombe.

One unfortunate fact of so many decades of conflict is the endless placement of minefields across the borders in central Africa. Maiombe is said to have animals, from primates to elephants, yet no one in their right mind would go see them without an idea of where these minefields lay. Or, for that matter, whether any animals still remain. Locals would tell me that the animals do indeed remain, but like so many animals exposed to years of conflict, will find the areas of country where the fewest people are. I went away empty handed, though I poked around further north near the Congo-Brazzaville border for a few more hours. It is in fact open these days – but only to foot traffic. This area is also an excellent place to hide out if you’re a guerrilla group aiming to conduct research initiatives for asymmetrical warfare – in June 2008 there was an attack near the commune of Massabi, near the Congo border. Army leaders quickly issued press releases expounding their efficient success of eliminating the threat.

The invasion and reconstruction, though, is just the tip of the iceberg. Coming up soon are more hotels, and plenty of visits from small-scale VIPS, like Angolan ministers and various people in pressed suits from large organizations like the World Health Organization and the World Bank. In many ways it’s a very Angolan approach to solving the problem of Cabinda: if you throw enough money at the problem, it will go away. Indeed, promoting the idea of being a rich Angolan, rather than a poor Cabindan, is top of everyone’s to-do list in the province these days.

Victims of Stalin´s cartography of yesteryear, the inhabitants of this unrecognised territory face an uncertain future. Transnistria could end up as a bargaining chip in the often difficult relationship between Russia and Moldova.

“It´s not fair to call us ‘separatists’. It wasn´t us who wanted to split from the USSR,” says Sergey Simonenko from his bureau at the government buildings of a country that still nobody recognises as legitimate. Simonenko happens to be the Deputy Foreign Minister of the ‘Moldovan Republic of Pridnestrovie’. It´s a patch of land better known outside its boundaries as “Transnistria”.

In the fractured world of post-Soviet politics, Moldova emerged as a separate country, its boundaries conforming to those of the erstwhile Soviet Republic. The left bank of the Dniester had been annexed to the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic by Stalin back in 1940. Mainly populated by Russians and Ukrainians, the inhabitants of this narrow strip of land decided a few years back that they rather fancied being masters of their own destiny. With Moldova’s independence from the Soviet Union, the two factions on opposite sides of the Dniester, those on the west speaking Moldovan and more attuned to Romania, and their neighbours on the east bank, having greater affection for Russia and Slavic values, quickly turned against each other.

“Moldova even considered joining Romania,” continues Simonenko, “but the majority of us here are Russian. What kind of future was there for us under Bucharest´s rule?”

The Moldovan-Transnistrian conflict was one of the many that reshaped the Eurasian map back in the early nineties. Boundaries were redrawn from Tajikistan to the Dniester. “Half a million Transnistrians finally got their independence,” claimed the Slavs. “And half a million Moldovans are kidnapped by a tyrant regime,” the right bank of the river.

Last September, Transnistria celebrated the 18th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, something that had already happened a year before Moldova declared hers. European Union officials like Javier Solana approved moves against Trans-Dniester on the basis of respecting Moldova’s territorial sovereignty. Quite ironic, seeing how many EU governments have applauded and recognised Kosovo´s independence.

Today, no country in the world recognises an independent political entity on the left bank of the Dniester other than the Ukraine. But some “quasi” states as Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been regular attendants to the annual celebrations in Tiraspol, the Transnistrian capital. Moreover, the two breakaway regions recently recognised by Russia have had representatives here for years, a sort of “would be” ambassadors.

Very much the same as the Caucasian republics, Transnistria also boasts its own passport, its flag, car plates…and they go further by printing their own stamps, and even coining their own currency: the Transnistrian rouble. Needless to say that none of these are valid outside this country which barely doubles the size of Luxembourg.

As for the national anthem, there are three versions, one for each official language: Russian, Ukrainian and Romanian. The melody, a candidate for the USSR anthem composed in 1943, is common to the three but the lyrics change depending on the language we use.

“Let´s praise our factories,” says the Russian version. Small wonder here as most of Moldova´s industry was located on this side of the river when the war started. The 90% of the electricity of the Latin country was produced here so the loss of Transnistria left the Moldova in literal darkness.

Lenin versus Sheriff

“No, we are not communists; the Moldovans are!” continues Deputy Minister Simonenko, despite the hammer and the sickle on the Transnistrian flag on his desk, and also on his business card.

“We still keep the Soviet symbols because we are proud of our past, that´s all”

In fact, Simonenko is right when he states that the communists are those on the west bank of the river. Vladimir Voronin is Moldova´s Communist Party´s First Secretary as well as the president in functions of the country since 2001. But his son, Oleg, owns the dubious honour of being the richest man of Europe´s poorest country. It seems that equal share of wealth is still a distant concept in Moldova.

Back in Transnistria, just a light stroll from 25 October street towards Gagarin boulevard is more than enough to realise that this is far from being a communist stronghold. Despite the severe look of Lenin´s red granite statue opposite the government building, Gazprom branches, jewelleries change offices and other outsiders to former Soviet taste work hard in the name of the privatization policies that rule here. The biggest example is probably Sheriff, the company allegedly linked to Igor Smirnov; that Kamchatka born bushy eye browed man who happens to be Transnistria´s first and only president up to date.

Sheriff owns the local petrol stations, a supermarket chain and the telephone company, but also the casino at the city centre, the brandy distillery, and even the local football team: Sheriff Tiraspol FC! Paradoxically enough, football is the only thing that links both banks of the river Dniester. The local team has been the indisputable winner of the Moldovan league since 2000. Moreover, Sheriff stadium is still the only one that fits UEFA criteria, so Tiraspol hosts Moldova´s squad´s international fixtures.

Just clichés?

“Western journalists come here on a daytrip: they take pictures of Lenin, the billboards, the war memorials, and they always write the same cliché afterwards “Transnistria: the last Soviet Paradise”, “the Soviet theme park”…But we are a modern country!” explains Svetlana, a chemical engineer in his late 30´s. “If it were for me, I would pull down all those symbols straight away”.

Svetlana’s anger towards these stereotypes is evident. Yet, the Soviet cliché is far from being not the most harmful of all those Transnistria has to bear.

“Chisinau constantly spreads rumours about arms and drug trafficking here”, continues Svetlana. “European observers have been checking these borders for years and they’ve found none of that”. She refers to the European Mission for Border Assistance that monitors both the Ukrainian and the Moldovan sides of the border. According to them, smuggling to and from Transnistria consists mainly on chicken and alcohol.

Abkhazia and Chechnya are also alleged “black holes” for drugs and weapons, but such rumours are not exclusive for quasi states or “Muslim threatened” areas. “Unfriendly” legal states are also targeted by this kind or accusations:

“During Kuchma´s rule, the Ukraine was also suspected of all sorts of arm trafficking. Surprisingly enough, all those accusations vanished when Yushenko and his ‘Orange Revolution’ came to power,” remembers Svetlana. “Nobody has mentioned the smuggling issue ever since”.

Nonetheless, we could have more easily stuck to an example everybody knows: the also alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction weapons’ in Iraq.

Whether there´s any truth in the rumours surrounding Transnistria, they´re very likely to tone down in the near future. Everything points now that Moldova´s long claimed territoriality will be solved by an agreement brokered by Moscow rather than by any kind of military intervention.

After being backed by Russia in and after the war, it seems that the Kremlin is now putting its weight behind Russia’s Slavic brothers on the Dniester. Moldova has been pressurising Russia for years by boasting her intentions of joining NATO. But now that the US global ballistic missile defence has reached Russia´s very borders, and with the Ukraine and Georgia willing to join NATO, Moscow is likely to buy Moldova´s ‘neutrality’ by forcing the Tiraspol authorities to bend down their knees and fully integrate within the Moldovan state.

For Moldova happens to be now a very strategic spot between the borders of Romania (already a NATO member) and the Ukraine. What can Transnistrians offer today to their former allies?

Not too far from here, the Russians from Crimea gather at the port of Sevastopol in support of Russia´s Black Sea Fleet. Will Russia take military action on the Ukraine in case Kiev finally joins NATO and kicks out the Russian fleet? Can Sevastopol be the future capital city of an unrecognised state like Transnistria is today?

“We feel bretayed,” confesses Yuri, 41, looking at his Russian passport once handed out by Moscow; the same one he used to vote for United Russia, Putin´s ruling party, last March. Yuri also keeps his Moldovan passport for practical reasons, and the Soviet one too.

“I keep it for my children,” says this mechanic from Tiraspol, looking at the CCCP abbreviation in gold on the red cover. “One day I want to tell my children that I was born in the biggest country in the world.”