Mogadishu’s economy thrived despite decade-long port closure and violence.

Evidence

The flourishing commerce in qat, other drugs, bananas, livestock and building materials, as well as imported goods such as tea, rice, sugar, cloth, furniture and technical equipment, led Hawiye Somalis in Mogadishu in the period after U.N.O.S.O.M. to boast that there were over a hundred ‘dollar millionaires’ in the city! For all the physical destruction and haphazard violence, the city was a hive of business activity and thriving public markets in arms and other hardware, and despite the protracted closure (effectively for a decade) of the main port and airport, by no means cut off from the outside world. — I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali_ Nation…, 686

Related

• Mogadishu produced about 37,000 cloth pieces annually in 1847. (similarity 0.79)
• Somali statelessness let traders move goods more cheaply than regulated neighbors. (similarity 0.78)