The lack of effective government gave them freedom of action to print currency abroad and so manipulate prices to their own advantage, and there were no taxes to pay except those to militia gang leaders. As the ‘president’ of Mogadishu’s commerce committee put it to the adventurous young French journalist Jerome Tubiana in February 2002, ‘We only pay the faction controlling the port of entry of our goods and then transport them by road as far as Kenya, in Ethiopia, and to Djibouti. We pass through the frontiers without too much difficulty because the frontier zones are occupied by Somalis. So our clothes or our televisions are cheaper than those of Kenyan and Ugandan traders.’

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 686