Al-Jezeera TV is slowly wining the admiration of the Somali intellectuals for its persistent effort to expose what is really happening in Somalia which would otherwise have remained covered under the ashes of anarchy. Mohamed Addo, Al-Jazeera reporter in Mogadishu made an impressive story about how the Somali market functions despite absence of a central bank to regulate the Somali currency.

I feel very much attracted by Mohamed Addow's brief analysis on the Somali market economy regarding fluctuations of US dollar. In the absence of a central bank that regulate Somali currency, we live in a situation where no one can predict what the dollar exchange to the Somali shilling would be next day or within the day itself as changes can happen drastically inside a few hours.

No one controls how much Dollar can the market take or how much of it should be sucked away to stabilize the market. It is like rain. It just comes in any amount it wishes and it is up to the nomad to decide which way he would you use the water. In Somalia pastoralism is not limited only to nomadic life but it affects the political and business life of the whole nation as there is no one in control of the market forces on which most of our life depends.

Dollar in-flow is peak during the last days of each month when people receive remittances from their relatives in abroad and that is the time when the Somali shilling gains some relative strength. But a huge amount of Dollar would soon leave the market for business deal in abroad and that is the time a severe shortage of dollar is felt which in turn gives rise to devaluation of the Somali currency.

The Somali currency is further killed by the injection of large amounts of counterfeit Somali shilling into the market, which facilitates business interest groups buy available dollar with this counterfeit money.

The Somali economy is growing in a way that only the rich become richer by exploiting the poor and keeping them in the margins of despondency. From the huge profits they generate from this uncontrolled business nothing comes back to the general public in the form of public welfare, as they do not contribute to building roads, hospitals, schools, wells etc

They do not pay tax as there is no such authority that can have a capacity to embark on a revenue collection scheme. Instead they give extortion money to militia manning roadblocks who give one option to them if they fail to pay the money: Death. And to recover from the money the lost to the gunman they increase the price of the commodity thereby placing unbearable load on the shoulders of the local consumers.

It is not the arms market that Somalia is bleeding but it is the dollar market and the counterfeit money that this nation is dying. Before I close this short comment I wish to thank Mohamed Addow of Al-Jezeera and the Rehearsal Studio that have given a much needed attention to Money issue of Somalia.

I’m sure many have tried to talk about it but abandoned the idea of writing anything about this subject when they have seen both the poor and the rich eating in the same restaurant, getting confused who is the master and who is the servant.

They overlooked the fact that there is informal and rather unconventional economic system in Somalia in which people of Somalia assist one another on tribal basis, thus bringing the two (rich and the poor) in the same venue and on the same status.