Welcome to Somaliland: just back from Somaliland, Alex McBride sings the praises of an unrecognised country, somewhere in the Horn of Africa, which is doing everything to survive.

In 1991, Somaliland declared unilateral independence from Somalia after a bloody civil war. Since then Somalilanders have drawn up a constitution and established democracy. Hargeisa, the capital, is safe but Somaliland is still not recognised under international law. Recognition is more than a legal nicety. International status brings aid and theoretically guarantees a country's borders.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The seeds of a national consciousness were sown with the union between Italian Somalia and the British Protectorate of Somaliland five days after the latter gained independence in 1960. It was an unhappy marriage from the start: in 1961 Somaliland military officers staged an unsuccessful coup.

By the late 1970s, relations were so bad that President Said Barre's military government in Mogadishu encouraged Ethiopia to fight a war with Somaliland in an attempt to neutralise the province's threat.

In the 1980s, things descended into a guerrilla war which culminated in the Somali airforce, piloted by South African mercenaries, bombing Hargeisa from the city's own airport. The governor directed the attacks from the top of his house, checking daily to see which buildings still stood. It was a ruthless fight: there were mass disappearances and it is alleged that children were used as disposable blood banks.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Despite being up against tanks and jet fighters, the Somalilanders united in a national purpose and pushed out the government forces. When Barre's regime imploded in 1991, forcing him to flee to Kenya in a tank, Somalia slipped into civil war and Somaliland took its chance, declaring independence. But there was not much to declare independence over. Hargeisa was almost completely destroyed. The country was broken without an economy or basic amenities like running water. Travel was impossible as all the bridges had been blown, and landmines dotted the countryside.

The war had also displaced over a million refugees, scattered around the world, not knowing whether they would ever return. Somalilanders are everywhere now, from Britain to America to Japan and even China.

Edna Adan, now the foreign minister, came back in a little propeller plane with a UN mission a few months after the war. It was so dangerous the pilot was under orders not to stop the engines. The Somalis might have gone from Somaliland but the country was divided between rival factions.

Over the next few years, a workable peace was hammered out by the clans. When Adan retired from the WHO, she decided to move home. A nurse and midwife by profession, she wanted to do something to help her country.

In 1997, she was given a piece of land in Hargeisa that had been a Siad Barre execution centre and started to build a maternity hospital. Relying on donations and her pension, it was a slow process. The hospital was finally finished in 2002. It delivers poor women's babies and provides them with medical care. She charges those who can afford to pay so she does not have to turn away those who cannot. Interestingly Adan first tried to build a hospital not in Hargeisa but Mogadishu. The war in 1988 put paid to that.

Nationalism is not new amongst Somalilanders, but the confidence that they can function as a country is. They compare their stability with the chaos in Somalia and reassure themselves with the huge oil deposits that could make them one of the most important countries in Africa.

This confidence has increased as Somaliland's prospects have improved. There is a "can do" attitude swirling around. This, along with the prospect of long-term peace, has encouraged other members of the Somaliland diaspora to return as nation builders.

Abdirahman Mohamed Abdi decided to come back in 2001. He had left in 1972 and spent many years living in the hippie town of Eugene, Oregon, USA, where he ran a string of petrol stations and a mail order business. Despite being well into a comfortable middle age, he sold up and returned to rebuild the bombed out Oriental Hotel, the first hotel in the Horn of Africa, which his father had built in 1953.

"It cost me almost $600,000. That's my life savings right there. I am an optimist by nature. I will get my money back in the long term," Abdi says. His return is more than a romantic gesture. Because Somaliland is not recognised by the international community, it does not qualify for most aid. Without foreign capital, there is not much to repair the country's infrastructure or develop the economy. "Only the diaspora can deliver that," says Abdi. "Investment is the machine that is running the country. Business people create jobs. I have 25 people working for me. And another 25 earn a living because of the money I have invested in this hotel."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

He is not alone among the older generation of returnees to risk all. Abdulyadir Hashi Elelmi came back several years ago when he retired from a Kuwaiti oil company and built his own hotel on the outskirts of the city. The once deserted area he chose is now dotted with large Brasilia-style villas.

Elelmi now finds himself in the "Belgravia" of Hargeisa where plots of land exchange hands for $20,000 in a country where many are barely surviving. His hotel, the Maan-Soor, like Mohamed Abdi's, provides vital employment. It also stimulates other businesses that supply food, furniture and building materials.

Investment from the diaspora comes not only out of duty but from optimism that something special is happening and a good return can be made if you are prepared to take a risk. The younger diaspora Somalilanders, in their 30s and 40s, have come back partly because they want to get in on the act first. As Ahmed Madar, who returned from London, puts it: "Who comes back first gets priority." For him this means sinking $125,000 into a house for his family.

His friend, Forhan Hajj Ali Hamed, returned after a business career in the US. He is more ambitious. He outlined his plans sitting cross-legged as he and his fellow diaspora friends chewed qat. His language is that of a North American MBA. In a little over five years, he has built up a successful trading company which sells his own brand of cigarettes and is also moving into the more glamorous industry of telecoms.

It is already a crowded market with five phone companies competing hard in a country of only four million. At every corner, there are "sub-stations" where you can surf the Net or make a cheap international call.

Cable television is what really interests Ali Hamed. On a hill in the outskirts of eastern Hargeisa, surrounded by shacks and the ubiquitous plastic bags that catch on everything, he has built a television station. He has a deal with a Gulf company to supply a cable package of American sitcoms and English Premiership football.

Once he gets his satellite uplink, he will start producing his own content and export the culture of the old country to the Somaliland disapora nostalgic for it abroad. Building a television station does not come cheap. Ali Hamed reckons his ambitions have cost him $1.2m.

It is hard to emphasise the risks that these people have taken. Aside from the usual pitfalls of a start-up business, they have had to work in a country without banks so it is impossible to get a loan. Almost everything has to be shipped in from abroad. More alarmingly, they have made large capital investments where insurance does not exist. If there is a fire or a theft, they could lose everything.

Another impetus to return is the fatigue of being stateless. Mohamed Kassim, a successful Somaliland businessman who, having got his family out of Mogadishu, stayed on and became the minister of finance in an interim Somali government. When the prime minister failed to return from a state visit to Saudi Arabia, Kassim realised the game was up. He left, a cabinet minister, with the soldiers saluting him onto the plane and landed in London stateless, working as an Arabic translator in hospitals. Kassim loved London but he returned because Somaliland was his home. Hashi Elelmi, the owner of the Maan-soor Hotel, returned after living abroad for nearly 50 years because, aside from wanting to help his country, he was, as he put it, "tired of being a second class citizen".

Ismail Adam Osman feels the same way. He was lucky to get a visa for his family to escape to Britain when the bombs were falling on Hargeisa in 1988. He studied hard and became a civil engineer working for British Telecom in Wembley. Though he is grateful to Britain, he felt that there was a glass ceiling and being a Somalilander and a refugee meant that he could only go so far. He went back and lobbied his clan and the governing party for a political job. Within three months, he was appointed a minister and recently promoted to minister of interior, responsible for the police force and the army.

On the face of it, the diaspora returnees are a benefit for Somaliland. There is a strong belief that it can be a successful nation. They are bringing in investment and know-how which are creating badly needed jobs and opportunities. The city is teeming with building projects.

Their arrival, however, has been hard to miss. They build lavish houses and drive big cars. Symbols of wealth like this only accentuate the poverty of the majority. Most of the people I spoke to insisted that there is no envy from those who stayed behind.

In Islam, they say, people accept the station they are given in life. While it might have been true in the past, the very visible enticements of Western life are changing this. Young Somalilanders look at the returnees who are often from privileged backgrounds in the first place, and see what they might be able to have. The only way to do this, they conclude, is to leave.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Rakiya Omaar, a diaspora Somalilander herself, runs an organisation called Africa Rights. She describes the exodus of the youth not as a rational desire but a mania. "Young people are voting with their feet. They leave in huge numbers. They leave by any means possible and put enormous pressures on their families to raise money to make arrangements for visas to get to the West."

This desperation can lead to disappointment and tragedy. Rakiya describes how families sell their houses to get fake visas or passports for their children. Often these travel documents are spotted and the person is sent home. Others end up in detention centres in Tunisia and Malta, unable to contact their families. Recently almost an entire football team from Hargeisa sank in an overloaded boat in the Mediterranean. There was only one survivor.

A young diaspora Somalilander visiting from Sweden has noticed a growing resentment in his peers. He and his brother were walking in the street when they were stopped by a group of teenagers who demanded that they give them one of the jackets they were wearing. When they asked why, the boys explained that the brothers had two jackets while they had none. Heavily outnumbered, they handed one over.

Somaliland is a very young country. People have large families. It is not uncommon for a woman to have 10 children. These young people don't just suffer from a lack of employment opportunity--there is also little for them to do, a problem which is exacerbated by the traditional Muslim culture.

As Rakiya explains: "There are lots of young men and women who are kicking their heels. They are bored. There are no extra-curricular activities in these schools. It is a very conservative society and has become more conservative. The idea of going to discos is out of the question."

Mohamed Kassim is blunter. "Hargeisa is dead at night," he says. The return of the diaspora to the towns brings different expectations and attitudes. The Somaliland boy from Sweden was walking his female cousin to the bus stop when a group of boys accosted him and demanded why he was talking to one of "their" girls. The boy squared up to fight but they pulled out knives and he had to be rescued by a passer-by. He is happy to visit Somaliland but he has no intention of living there. The African Union, a key player in whether Somaliland will be granted independence, recently visited to assess Somaliland's suitability for recognition. Their report has not been released but well-informed sources say it is very favourable.

Somaliland is already a nation in all but name--it has an identity and a sense of purpose. What is not certain is what kind of nation it will be. The war and the effects of economic development are changing the old society. Women go to work in record numbers. Money and ideas flow in, pricking the aspirations of the young.

Yet the country is still run by institutions designed for a nomadic society. Moral and cultural rules are determined by old men. Many educated families still circumcise their daughters. When independence comes, it will lead to even more rapid change. There are massive untapped reserves of oil, coal and gemstones. Once the green light is given, multinational companies are bound to move in.