This would constitute not an argument against outside intervention but, rather, a lesson that intervention doesn't have to be of the UN-led, billion-dollar variety.

Before leaving the city I met with Hussein Abdullahi, a well-educated businessman who fled Mogadishu in 1991 and wound up in Toronto, driving a taxi. Three years ago, during a return visit, he was struck by the fact that his Somali friends were living better at home than he was in Canada, at the bottom of the immigrant ladder. He decided to move back and now manages a thriving pasta factory, a bread factory, and a medical clinic.

Sipping an ice-cold Coke in his office, Abdullahi offered to share a secret that, he promised, cou...

This would constitute not an argument against outside intervention but, rather, a lesson that intervention doesn't have to be of the UN-led, billion-dollar variety.

Before leaving the city I met with Hussein Abdullahi, a well-educated businessman who fled Mogadishu in 1991 and wound up in Toronto, driving a taxi. Three years ago, during a return visit, he was struck by the fact that his Somali friends were living better at home than he was in Canada, at the bottom of the immigrant ladder. He decided to move back and now manages a thriving pasta factory, a bread factory, and a medical clinic.

Sipping an ice-cold Coke in his office, Abdullahi offered to share a secret that, he promised, could make me rich. A chubby man with a beatific smile, he leaned forward conspiratorially. "Everything is possible in Mogadishu now, everything," he said. "If you have the money and the knowledge, you can do whatever you want. It is virgin here."

Perhaps so, but only in the way of scorched earth.