Anarchist Moves To Somalia, No Longer Anarchist

Story by Jacob Zlomke 

| Published Dec 7, 2010

Twenty three-year-old Zachary Kuhn said he had high expectations for his September trip to war-torn Somalia. However, his stay was not permanent as he had previously planned. Rather, he said his trip only lasted a week and a half.

Kuhn, a formerly self-proclaimed anarchist, said he thought he had found the perfect country when he read that Somalia’s central government collapsed around 1991.
Kuhn said he used to believe that no rules were the way by which society could function best. Kuhn was so dedicated to the idea that he had painted the anarchist “A” on several buildings in his neighborhood.

“To me, anarchy was the way to go. Parents are really annoying when they tell you what to do, and the government is like parents for grownups.”

“As an anarchist, I thought this country would be paradise. There is no government and you basically do whatever you want. That means I can smoke pot and do my own thing without anyone saying ‘no’,” Kuhn said, “but I was mistaken.”

Kuhn, who now works at a Kwik Stop and moonlights as bassist for his punk band Skid Marx, said his week and a half in Somalia was spent largely in Mogadishu.

“Mogadishu was nice, I guess, but the people there aren’t very friendly,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn said he took a helicopter ride to Mogadishu from Somaliland to the west, which he secured by paying off members of the militant group Al-Shabab.

“It was such a great experience. Squeezed in the back of a military helicopter with two gunmen, who I’m sure didn’t register their firearms, was exactly what I wanted. It was all so real.”

Kuhn said following the helicopter landing in Mogadishu, his “new friends” in Al-Shabab were immediately overrun with gunfire and he was soon in the back of an old Ford Mercury with people he was “pretty sure” weren’t members of Al-Shabab.

“I spent the next three days in a cellar, eating only moldy bread and drinking dirty water,” Kuhn said. “No one spoke English and I got spit on a lot. I sort of wondered if coming to Somalia had been a mistake at that point.”

Kuhn said he spent his time in the cellar with two other men that didn’t seem to like him, until on the third day, the three of them escaped together. Kuhn said they ran from building to building until they found what seemed to be a stronghold for his two counterparts.

“They handed me some kind of gun. I don’t know what type; I had only seen it on Call of Duty.”

The three of them escaped to the desert hills outside of the city and camped there for two days, hunting rodents for food. Eventually, Kuhn met up with sheepherders and joined their caravan back to Somaliland where he was able to sell all of his belongings and clothes for a safe ride back to the United States.

“All in all,” Kuhn said, “it was a good experience, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I did learn a lot, though. After almost dying at the hands of militant gangs two or three times, I would say that Somalia really needs to get their shit together. Like, maybe some kind of central government? And they could all pay taxes too. That way they could have schools and libraries and good roads.”