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Comment by cyphertruck | Hacker News Reader

I’m not taking offense wt your statement, but do want to say: You are being unkind to Somalia. I’m serious.

The perception of Somalia is skewed heavily by western news for the simple reason that the Somali people rebuffed the attempted invasion by US & UK proxy forces. (Guessing you most Americans don’t know that even happened.)

Somaliland isn't somewhere I would want to live, but I would pick it over the Bay Area. With an arrangement with the tribal elders, one would be safe, and property crimes like this would be dealt with by a judge. Unlike in SF.

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As a person whose family is from East Africa, saying that you would literally live in Somalia over the Bay Area is really goofy.

There's a GDP per capita of ~250 bucks, the 4th lowest in the world. Even if you lived in some western enclave of Mogadishu, your quality of life would be so much lower that it's incomprehensible. You think the poop in the streets in the Bay Area is annoying? In Somalia 1/3 of people have to defecate in the open. 50% of people don't have access to a basic water supply. The government is still trying to contain Al-Shabab--bombings and skirmishes still happen. As a westerner, especially if you're white, you'd live in constant risk of being kidnapped for ransom.

I don't like the bay area either, but at least keep the criticism tethered to reality. Somalia isn't Syria or Venezuela, you probably wouldn't be murdered but it would be a very dangerous situation.

https://www.unicef.org/somalia/water-sanitation-and-hygiene

Somaliland is an autonomous region seeking to break away from the larger Somalia and get international recognition as an independent nation. From what I hear, it is a relatively peaceful and orderly place

Fair enough. I don't actually know that much about Somalia other than the (probably outdated) impression that it's a place that literally has no government.

A US Service member was dragged dead through the streets in '94 in celebration of defeating a UN peace keeping mission to ease an on-going famine, and those images were broadcast all over the world.

It's easy to underestimate just how powerful that image is in shaping perceptions, and rightfully so: a lot of violence has been done to us citizens by thugs and pirates using the the lawlessness in Somalia as cover.

The pirates didn't start the practice of abusing lawlessness. After the civil war and the breakdown of the state, fishermen from other countries would illegally trawl the waters off the Somali coast and industrial waste was being dumped by foreign opportunists. Just one instance involved 600 drums of radioactive waste from Europe and the US. This exacerbated the problem by reducing the fish supply further.

Eventually, this led to violent clashes where Somali fishermen would take over ships in the area illegally for ransom. This quickly became the piracy industry as we know it.

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