Somalia

This month in a country that doesn't exist an election is due to be held to choose a government that will not be recognized. This is not a hypothetical puzzle, it is the actual state of Somaliland.

Somalia is the world's most glaring example of a failed state: For the past 18 years Somalia has not had a functioning government and has been marked by widespread violence and chaos.

On June 4th Narayan Mahon and Tristan McConnell arrived in Somaliland to begin reporting from this unrecognized breakaway region of Somalia. Tristan McConnel introduces the reporting project from the city of Hargeisa in the northwestern region of Somaliland.

Somalia's economy is dominated by trade in khat, a narcotic banned in the U.S. and much of Europe.

Eye-popping, head-buzzing khat is loved by Somali men who chew the leaves for their stimulant effect. While most of war-torn Somalia's economy is moribund, khat does a bustling trade estimated at well over $50 million annually. Doctors warn, however, that the drug is not only a drain on limited Somali resources but is also destroying lives.

What began as a way for exiled Somalis to send money to relatives at home has become a company that almost single-handedly keeps the entire war-torn country afloat.

"Remittances are a lifeline to Somalis," said Abdirashid Duale, chief executive of Dahabshiil, at his Hargeisa headquarters. "They are the main income people here receive."

Dahabshiil, a family-owned money transfer company, is a household name among Somalis. It is also Somalia's economic linchpin connecting the wealthy diaspora with the impoverished homebodies.

This September in Somalia, hundreds of thousands of people are due to take part in an election. At polling stations guarded by civilian police, they will stand in orderly lines beneath a scorching sun waiting to vote for a new leader.

Much of this country continues its relentless descent into mayhem and murder. But Somaliland, a small north-western chunk, has been trying for the past 18 years to free itself of its bigger, nastier neighbour, having declared independence when Somalia's last government, a violent military autocracy, collapsed in 1991.

Until pirates showed up on the world's media radar few people would have been able to point to Somalia on a map. That all changed in April when a gang of pirates attempted to hijack a US-flagged ship with an American crew. They failed but took the ship's captain hostage.

The days-long stand off ended with the deadly sniping of three pirates by US Navy SEALS.

The road to the port town of Berbera on the Gulf of Aden drops thousands of feet through a landscape of white sun-bleached rock, brittle thorn bushes and bone-dry riverbeds set against a backdrop of mountains sliced by desiccated ravines cut when the rain occasionally comes. It is an unremitting kind of beauty.

Unlike every other breakaway state in the world Somaliland is more functional than the territory it wants to decouple from. The fact that Somalia is the country it wants shot of makes its case even more compelling because today it is impossible to find a better example of a failed state.

Somaliland's argument for recognition rests on two pillars: peace and democracy, but both are more fragile than they seem.

The dusty, potholed streets of Hargeysa in Somaliland are filled with battered cars and ambling pedestrians. The tangled birds' nests of wires that cling to every telegraph pole are testament to a boom in telephony, informal stalls line the roads, selling imported goods and Ethiopia-grown khat, a plant chewed as a stimulant - and behind bricks of local currency sit the money changers.

The first time Farah Ismail Eid set out to hijack a ship off the coast of Somalia his boat was easily outrun. On the second occasion he kept pace but his boarding ladder was too short. On the third attempt he was captured.

Eid, 38, from Eyl on the Somalia coast, is one of an estimated 1,500 fishermen-turned-pirates who have made the seas between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean the most dangerous shipping route in the world.

The slight figure of Farah Ismail Eid is a far cry from the swashbuckling, murderous image of a pirate of the high seas.

The scourge of piracy along the Horn of Africa's coastline has caused shipping firms to pay millions of dollars in ransoms and has taken several lives. The mighty U.S. Navy and other major powers have deployed warships and frigates to patrol the waters of the Gulf of Aden, but still the pirates succeed in hijacking cargo ships.

It's a disconcerting experience to report from a place that doesn't exist. 18-years ago Somaliland broke away from Somalia, its bigger, nastier neighbor. While that benighted nation has continued its descent into chaos, death and mayhem Somaliland has kept the peace and built a likeness of democracy.

But as Somalia's anarchy is showered with money Somaliland is diligently ignored. In April donor nations pledged another $213-million to the besieged Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu, that's roughly seven times the annual budget of Somaliland's entire government.