A rooftop view of Hargeisa, capital of Somaliland, which is home to half a million people
Abdilahi Omar sips on a glass of sweet milky tea as traffic in Hargeisa, Somaliland's capital, increases ahead of the morning rush.
In front of him young boys ride their donkey carts to the river to collect water while ice-cream trucks serving soft-scoop start their rounds.
"So you can see, Hargeisa is calm," says the newspaper editor gesturing to the traffic police armed not with automatic rifles but with fluorescent batons and whistles.
"People are going to work peacefully, you can walk freely. There are no guns on the streets here."
This is not Somalia as the outside world knows it. But then, Somalilanders will tell you this is not Somalia. Period.
Somaliland, which is 137,600 square kilometres in size (comparable to England and Wales) and lies to the north of Mogadishu, is also a territory in limbo: it prints its own currency, flies its own flag and even issues its own passports.
But it is a state no other country will recognise. Continue>>>>>> http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2008 ... 54692.html
