July 11, 2006

MOGADISHU, Somalia — When a Coca-Cola bottling plant opened here two years ago, the 400-plus investors invited to finance the project were carefully chosen by clan.

There were Abgal investors and Habar Gedir investors, and representatives of other clans around Somalia as well. All kicked in a minimum of $300 to help start the United Bottling Company, Somalia’s only Coca-Cola maker. It was a deliberate effort to create a feeling of communal ownership for the factory in a place where clan-based conflict has long been the rule.

 

But Somalia is a difficult place to read, and now, two years after the plant went up, the Coke brand faces a much changed business environment, one with both opportunity and peril. Islamic militias took over the capital in June and brought stability to the city, so much so that the Coke bottler here predicts its sky-high security costs will soon plummet.

“Before, we had gunmen accompanying our distributors,” Mohammed Hassan Awale, the sales manager and acting general manager of the plant, said in an interview. “Now, no guns are needed.”

There is another benefit to peace, he said. “If there is peace, there is opportunity for work, for business, and people will have money to buy Coke,” he said.

The new political reality in Mogadishu has also taken a bite out of business, as some imams have begun railing against Coke, calling it an un-Islamic beverage that should not go down a proper Muslim’s throat.

Nur Barud Gurhan, a hard-line sheik in Mogadishu, raised the issue in January during a protest against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were published first in Denmark and then in other countries. He declared that Westerners were enemies of Islam and that their products, anything from milk that originates in Denmark to Atlanta’s most famous carbonated export, should not be consumed by Somalis.

The anti-Coke campaign was picked up by members of the Islamic courts who took over Mogadishu. They defeated the secular warlords who long controlled the country, and who received American financial support in recent years for their efforts to root out terrorists.

Using Washington’s support for the warlords as a rallying cry, the Islamic militias have also railed against Coke, spreading a message in mosques that has already prompted many to abstain.

“I was selling Coca-Cola before the U.S. government formed the devil’s alliance with the warlords,” said Hilowle Yarow Hassan, a restaurant owner. He has since stopped selling Coke.

Omar Hussein Omar, who owns a tea shop in the capital, used to sell Coke as well but was persuaded by religious leaders to give it up. “Out of ignorance, I was selling and drinking Coca-Cola, but now I hate it so much,” he said, indicating that he has no desire to help his enemies in the West profit, even if some of his countrymen are involved in the local Coke enterprise.

“If I had the power, I would destroy the Coke plant in Mogadishu because they are generating hard currency for our worst enemy,” said another Coke detractor, Talha Kheyr Abdulla, an English teacher.

The Coke plant was quiet on a recent morning. Mr. Awale offered a bottle of ice-cold Coke to a visitor, but acknowledged that production, which can exceed 30,000 bottles an hour, had been temporarily suspended. He blamed not anti-Americanism but the relatively cool weather last month, which had reduced sales and prompted a slowdown in the production of Coke, as well as that of Fanta and Sprite.

In his view, most Somalis are not anti-American and enjoy Coke as much as others around the world, though he conceded that Washington’s alliance with the warlords had provoked much anti-American sentiment. “The people do not hate the U.S.,” he said. “They hate what the U.S. did.”

Coke was bottled in Mogadishu in the 1980’s, when Somalia was still one country, but that plant has long been in ruins. The ramshackle walls are still painted a faded red, but inside, where all the machinery used to be, are now thousands of squatters, most too poor to afford a luxury like Coke.

Before the new plant went up in July 2004, Coke still found its way into Somalia, by ship from the United Arab Emirates. It cost about 8,000 Somali shillings a bottle back then, or about 60 cents, a significant sum in a place where jobs are scarce and most struggle to eke out a living. The modern production facility has reduced the price to about a third of that, company officials here say.

That is good news for Coke drinkers like Abdulahi Adan Abdurahman, 31, who ignores religious leaders’ calls for him to stay away from it. “I love Coca-Cola,” he said. “I drink it all the time. It’s my favorite drink.”