Somalia: home of free marketeers and buccaneers

It was while working on an aid project in Mogadishu, in 2005, that I took refuge from the intense humidity in the Amiira Hotel.

Sipping my ice-cold Coca-Cola, I asked a Somali friend where the drink had been imported from. I was startled to be told it was made in Somalia. In an anarchic country which has had no functioning government, army or police force since the overthrow of the dictator Siad Barre in 1991, and in a capital city with no mains water or electricity and no proper health care I discovered there was a fully functioning coke factory.

One of the city's warlords had, I was told, bought the franchise from the Coca-Cola corporation for $1m - a bargain that would no doubt complement the extensive cannabis farms he was rumoured to own. And perhaps it is someone like him who's behind the

piracy that has reached its apogee in the seizure of the 332 metre long Sirius Star, with its $100m cargo of Saudi oil.

Modern Somalia represents the triumph of the free market, or its reductio ad absurdum. A country which has only had a written language of its own since the 1970s, and which has no sort of infrastructure, still manages to maintain property rights, provide its city-dwellers with a cheap mobile phone network and internet coverage, keep open several DHL offices - and bottle Coke.

I've been told that the cheapest international calls in the world can be made from a Sim card bought in Mogadishu, though the legality of the connection may be questionable. Business is the glue that holds Somali society together.

Something needs to hold it together, for war has been a threat to Somali cohesion for decades. First the struggle of freedom fighters against a tyrant degenerated into inter-clan fighting; then, in recent years, the frail peace forged by the Union of Islamic Courts has foundered after the intervention of the Ethiopian army - and US-backed local factions.

“I’m not black man, I'm red man,” he angrily replied

Yet, in a continent where borders are often arbitrary, Somalia is one of the most ethnically homogenous countries - the UN estimates that 85 per cent of the population are ethnically Somali. That ethnicity, though, belies a strong clan system, which defines, and divides, the country. In Somalia, your ancestry is everything, and can cost you your life.

And a confused heritage it is too: as I once walked through Mogadishu's crowded Bakhara market, a trader hollered at me: "Hello, white man!" I replied, "Hello, black man!" "I'm not black man, I'm red man," he replied, in some anger.

His response reflected the way Somalis see themselves not as African, but instead look towards the Arab world - with which they have a long history of contact through visiting traders down their extensive coastline.

And their version of trade is what now marks them out: stereotyped for much of the previous century as fierce nomads who drank camel milk, modern Somalis are, by necessity of the conditions they face, entrepreneurial pragmatists, the Del Boys of the Equator.