Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Other Somalia Part 1 - Illicit Trade And The Hidden Economy, Norman Miller

Dartmouth Scholarship

In the hot, dry, strangely beautiful land of Somalia, the first issue of the day is politics: politics of survival for the Barre regime, politics of food for the burgeoning refugee camps, politics of the East-West encounter here on the Horn of Africa. The other issue is the economy, particularly the invisible, irregular, illegal economy. Somalia's story is roughly comparable to the current "second economy” analysis of the Soviet Union which suggests a large sector of that system is extralegal, undercover, and in subversion of bureaucratic regulation-"the taxi driver can arrange it" system.