Like many other cities in the country, Burao suffered from destruction and the people from internal displacement due to a prolonged civil war in the 1980s. In 1988, almost all its residents were either killed or forced to flee to refugee camps in Ethiopia. When those lucky ones who survived came back to Burao in 1991, they returned to a ghost town striped of almost everything of value that could be moved or removed. Almost all the dwellings in the city were either roofless or without windows, or both. Also, many of them were left in ruins, and the streets were overcome by natural vegetation in the absence of a human population for nearly three years. Public resources or facilities, including schools, were not spared destruction. Before the civil war, the town boasted one of the top technical schools in East Africa, and a vocational school for range management. Both were national institutions. It also had two main secondary schools (Sheikh Bashir, and Sheikh Osman Nur). All of these institutions were looted, and damaged extensively. Reconstruction started in earnest as soon as people returned to the city. Restoration of schools also began though slowly. Primary and pre-primary schools were first repaired. Unfortunately, the process of rehabilitation was twice interrupted by local conflicts, first in 1992, and then in 1994. The situation was exasperated by the ban on livestock exports to the Middle East in 2000. As the principle livestock market in the country, this had a disproportionate effect on the economy of Burao and caused its recovery to lag behind that of other main cities in Somaliland.