The minister carefully surveys his countrymen from the window of his propeller plane. Any suspicious movements down there? A few exhausted-looking militiamen squat next to the dusty airfield behind a machine gun, flanked by a couple of boys wearing their ammunition belts across their chests like villains in some spaghetti western. Off to the side, colorfully dressed women wave Somali flags. A desert wind blows across the dry plain.

Something unusual is about to take place here, on one of the many tiny airfields in the bush not far from the Somali capital. Energy Minister Mohammed Nureni Bakar, an oil expert with a doctorate in economics who has spent most of his life in Dubai, is about to land in Mogadishu, the city where he -- along with the few dozen other ministers that make up Somalia's fledgling government -- should by all rights be governing.

Mogadishu was once a beautiful city on the Indian Ocean, but 14 years of civil war and anarchy have wreaked havoc here. By noon, the militiamen who run the city have usually started chewing a local drug, Kat, and are out patrolling the streets among the city's ruined buildings.

Few countries on earth are as ungovernable as Somalia. Anarchy has prevailed here ever since the country's dictator, Siad Barre, was driven out 14 years ago. And since the Americans hastily pulled out of Somalia in 1994 after a few of their Blackhawk helicopters were shot down and a mob dragged the corpse of a GI through the streets of Mogadishu, the country has been left entirely to its own devices. Since then, four major clans, along with their numerous sub-clans, have divided the country up amongst themselves. Somaliland declared its independence and the Puntland region in northeastern Somalia became semi-autonomous.

Amazingly, some things in Mogadishu are flourishing. Somalis can now choose from among 15 television stations and 20 wireless service providers. Coca-Cola opened a factory in July 2004, and many global players in the oil industry have secured drilling rights. The country's healthcare and education systems are considered well-developed by African standards.

And since last fall, the country even has a government. In response to international pressure (the United States, in particular, considers Somalia a hotbed of terrorism), the clans' representatives met in neighboring Kenya last October to elect a president. The man they chose was Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who, curiously, also happens to be the president of the separatist Puntland region.

His life history reads like the perfect biography of a power-hungry adventurer from the days of the Cold War. Educated in the Soviet Union, he was once a colonel in the Somali army, until former President Barre put him behind bars for six years for refusing to take part in a military coup. Yusuf was later rehabilitated by the dictator, serving as one of his key commanders in Somalia's war with Ethiopia in the late 1970s. Then the two men had another falling-out, and Yusuf established a militia to oppose Barre, gaining the support of neighboring Ethiopia.

But then he also quarreled with the government in Ethiopia, where he was imprisoned for another six years, before resurfacing in Somalia in the early 1990s. Yusuf became involved in the civil war, allying himself with various groups, and ultimately became the president of his home region, Puntland, which he rules with an iron fist.

Now Yusuf finds himself achieving his ultimate goal: to rule Somalia. But how will he do it? As a member of Puntland's Darod clan, he has no influence in the capital. In an attempt to resolve this potential problem, he appointed Ali Mohammed Ghedi, a member of Mogadishu's influential Hawiye clan, to be his prime minister. But this didn't sit well with Hussein Aidid, the son of the notorious warlord who plunged Somalia into bloody chaos in the early 1990s, so Aidid was given the position of deputy prime minister.

And so the Somali government has finally been assembled; it's a collection of characters that could keep a war crimes tribunal occupied for years. For the past few months, the Somali warriors, along with a large entourage, have been living in hotels in Nairobi, an extravagance that has probably cost the European Union and the Americans several million dollars by now. But President Yusuf remains hesitant about returning to his country and its treacherous capital. The government has no infastructure and no real police force, and Yusuf has even asked for an escort of 20,000 peacekeepers.

Ethiopia and Uganda have offered troop contingents, but this, too, has some built-in tensions, because both countries are predominantly Christian while Somalia is largely Islamic. In addition, Ethiopia has annexed the Ogaden region, which is inhabited by Somalis.

Meanwhile, Energy Minister Bakar has returned from his exploratory visit to Mogadishu. To be on the safe side, he decided to make it only a half-day trip. "It's really a shame," says Bakar, "the entire country is full of oil, and all we would have to do is begin drilling."

He'll likely have to wait quite a while before his dream of oil flowing freely in his tortured country becomes a reality.