Somaliland "liberated" itself within months of the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre, the dictator who condemned the northwest of his country to political insignificance and economic underdevelopment before launching a genocidal clan war against the civilian support base of the rebel Somali National Movement. At "independence" in May 1991, Somaliland was in ruins. Its capital, Hargeisa, was three-quarters destroyed. Towns and villages were sown with mines that still bring two or three victims a week to Hargeisa's rundown general hospital. Soviet-American rivalry had turned the country into a vast arms dump littered with ammunition stores and unexploded ordnance. Siad Barre had set clan against clan. For the first two years of independence - two wasted years - security deteriorated steadily under president Abdirahman Ahmed Ali "Tur," a former SNM chairman whose political leadership was both inert and incompetent. (The current president, Mohamed Ibrahim Egal, makes excuses or his predecessor. Tur's problem, he says, is that he never really believed in independence.) The turning point for Somaliland came in October 1992, when clan elders negotiated an end to clashes in the Berbera area. Six months later, the Council of Elders - the Guurti - met in the town of Boroma and within five months had negotiated a comprehensive peace agreement for the whole of Somaliland, drawn up a new constitution with a two-tier government, and chosen Egal as president. Many believe this collaboration between ancient and modern forms , government could provide a model for other parts of Africa.

Boroma took place in a government vacuum. Then Egal came and so far we are satisfied with him. In three months, he has accomplished things that weren't even tackled in the two preceding years. He is very hard-working and he began with nothing. We feel we handed him many problems, many of them hidden." The greatest of those problems, deriving in part from Somaliland's failure to win international recognition, is the government's near total lack of resources. Even today, the few of officials who have telephones jump when they ring. The president is the only man in government with an international connection - a satellite telephone paid for by a charity. Faxes are sent from the offices of the few organizations, invariably non-governmental, which believe in building up local structures rather than bypassing them in the name of the fictitious Somali unity officially invested in Mogadishu. The vast majority of government employees are still unsalaried, relying either on personal finances, remittances from abroad, or income from herds, wells, or small businesses - as are most teachers.

The bank is the street, where huge amounts of dollars change hands every day. (Safely, so far.) Primary schools are run in abandoned buildings, ruins, and the open air.

As Somalia descended into madness, Somaliland has been putting conflict behind. In the six months since his appointment, Egal has established a government and begun building an administration that not only has a wide clan base but includes many of the SNM leaders sidelined by Tur. There are still pockets of resistance to legality, but Egal is confident they will in time surrender - not by force, but by persuasion.

Hargeisa already has a police force dressed in green uniforms. Police officers receive rice, oil, and powdered milk in place of salaries , and recently acquired their first vehicle: a second-hand Toyota loaned by a concerned citizen, one of a group of volunteers who supply food for Hargeisa jail. The Supreme Court has been reconstituted and Islamic law replaced by the 1962 penal code with minor amendments to make it acceptable to Muslim leaders.(Under the 1962 code, the penalty for murder was death. Now there is the possibility of compensation and even forgiveness.)

Hargeisa has its first 150 telephone lines. Local businessmen run a small electricity grid using two bulldozer engines and give free current to police stations, courts, mosques, ministries, and main streets. All vehicles must be registered and traffic police are beginning to confiscate cars without papers. Primary schools are open for children under eight and there are plans to begin secondary schooling in 1994 for Somaliland's "lost generation" - the children who, because of war, have never been taught. Most importantly, the government has begun establishing a revenue base. Taxes are being levied on Berbera port, where tariffs are being lowered in an to compete with neighboring Djibouti, and on the leafy narcotic qat, which has become cheaper since government dues replaced militia extortion. Virtually all the money raised is being poured into the demobilization experiment at Mandera. While the UN thinks almost, exclusively in terms of relief, Somaliland has one over riding aim: security. 'We must put all our effort into security," says Education Minister Suleiman Adam, one of six ministers overseeing demobilization. "Some of these boys are threats to security today; some are potential threats. We must ease them back into productive civilian life. Everything else must be secondary - even schools."

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