“I knew there were outliers, people with their own rules. I knew I had “to challenge them, sooner or later.”


By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN


ADADO, Somalia - Above the shimmering horizon, in the middle of a deserted highway, stands an oversize figure wearing a golf cap, huge sunglasses, baggy jeans and an iPhone on his hip, not your typical outfit in war-torn Somalia. But then again, Mohamed Aden, the man waiting in the road, is not your typical Somali. The instant his guests arrive, he spreads his arms wide, ready for a bear hug.

“Welcome to Adado,” he says, smiling. “Now, let’s bounce.”

Mr. Aden, 37, is part militia commander, part schoolteacher, part lawmaker, part engineer, part environmentalist, part king - a mind-boggling combination of roles for anyone to play, let alone for a guy who dresses (and talks) like a rapper and recently moved from Minnesota to Somalia in an effort to build a local government.

Think of him as the accidental warlord. And a ray of hope. In less than a year, Mr. Aden, who was born in Somalia and left for the United States at age 22, has essentially built a state within a state.

With money channeled from fellow clansmen living in the United States and Europe, he has transformed Adado and the area near it in central Somalia, which used to be haunted by bandits and warring Islamic factions, into an enclave of peace, with a police force, scores of new businesses, new schools and new rules.

Somalia is one of the most violent countries on the planet, and at times Mr. Aden has had to speak with the business end of a machine gun. His patch - which encompasses around 13,000 square kilometers and a few hundred thousand people, most of them poor nomads and members of his own Saleban clan - is now one of the safest parts of this broken nation.

Even outsiders are noticing. “When I landed here, I was taken aback, in a good way,” said Denise Brown, a United Nations World Food Program official who visited in March. “I didn’t see what I usually see in Somalia: destitution, chaos, needy people.”

Mr. Aden seems to have hit upon a deeper truth. People want government, he says, even in Somalia. “They’re begging for it,” he said.

He came to Adado last year for what he thought would be a few weeks, to help out with a killer drought. He organized water trucking and emergency food deliveries and channeled tens of thousands of dollars from middle class Somalis in America to nomads dying of hunger and thirst.

Afterward, Adado’s elders, impressed by how fast he could work, turned to Mr. Aden and asked: want to be our leader?

“We needed a man of peace and he is from a peaceful place, Minnesota,” said an elder, Mohamed Ali Farah. It did not hurt that Mr. Aden had access to overseas cash and a college degree.

People who have challenged his authority have suffered. Last summer, his police officers shot to death four men who violently refused to vacate a piece of property that Mr. Aden’s administration ruled belonged to someone else.

“I knew there were outliers, people with their own rules,” he said. “I knew I had to challenge them, sooner or later.”

Nowadays, he hands down new laws.

“It was hard for my wife and kids,” he said. “But I’m doing something big here, and they know that.”


MICHAEL KAMBER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES