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Eerie silence in empty Mogadishu
By Mark Doyle
BBC News world affairs correspondent, Mogadishu
The streets north of the ruins of the Old Parliament in Mogadishu
stretch out like alleyways bulldozed through a rubble dump.
Parts of some of the buildings are still standing - a wall here, a
section of collapsed roof there.
But the overall impression in this part of the Somali capital is one of
massive destruction. I did not see a single house there without shell
damage or bullet holes.
However, the really frightening part of it was the lack of people.
After covering several wars, I have come to be wary of empty places.
If, in a war zone, you turn a corner and see no shops open and no people
going about their business - beware.
It usually means that some military activity has recently taken place
there - so the people have fled - or that the people fear an imminent
attack.
And the local people almost always know best.
As I drove through parts of Mogadishu on a patrol with Ugandan soldiers
of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force, there was an eerie lack of
human beings.
"We don't have enough troops of our own to ensure security, so... we
still need the Ethiopians for now"
Abdi Haji Gobdon
Government spokesman
Blasted buildings aside, this ghostly absence of people was a sure sign
that this place is going through a period of terrible violence.
The United Nations estimates that in the past year at least half of the
population of Mogadishu - or over half a million people - have fled the
fighting between the Ethiopian-backed transitional government and its
Islamist and clan-based opponents.
Some of the physical destruction I saw in Mogadishu was a result of
earlier wars in the 1990s. War in one form or another has been a
near-constant fact of Somali life for decades.
But the relatively short conflict that has raged here since Ethiopia
intervened to expel the Islamists in late 2006 has depopulated Mogadishu
even more.
Pleased
The government says that is due to the unpredictable hit and run attacks
of the insurgents.
Others say it is due to the more predictable Ethiopian tactic of
inflicting heavy reprisals against suspected sympathisers of the
insurgents.
The day I visited Mogadishu there appeared to be mercifully little
military activity in the areas I was able to see.
This allowed the government spokesman, Abdi Haji Gobdon, to make an
ambitious claim: "Attacks and violence are very rare now. You see, here
we are at Villa Somalia [site of the presidency], the highest point in
the town, and we can hear no shooting."
The last bit was true.
And I was very pleased it was true, partly because it meant that my
hosts for the day - the United Nations aid mission to Somalia and the
small AU force - felt able to drive BBC cameraman Phil Davies and I
around a little.
But our tour was still strictly limited to the central districts of the
capital - around the sea ****t, the "K4" roundabout area, Villa Somalia,
Medina hospital, and, as noted at the start of this re****t, a quick
foray into the area beyond the Old Parliament.
With the AU patrol, we skirted past the edge of the Bakara market
district, which was once the beating heart of Mogadishu's historic
trading role on the shores of the Indian Ocean.
Lonely vanguard
"Can we go inside the market?" I asked, more out of journalistic duty
than hope of a positive reply.
"It is not advisable," replied Major Ba-Hoku Baruigye of the Ugandan
army, with eloquent understatement.
The Ugandan contingent in Mogadishu is the lonely vanguard of an AU
force which is supposed to number 8,000 soldiers but still has less than
a quarter of that total.
Major Baruigye's advice was wise. Bakara market - a sprawling district
rather than a building - sells everything from hi-fis to AK47s and has
become one of the strategic points in the war.
Two weeks before I visited, the Ethiopian foreign minister paid a call
to Villa Somalia.
He was welcomed there by the government, but the anti-government forces
had a message too. They sent a volley of mortar rounds into the
presidential complex.
The Ethiopian army replied by attacking its perceived opponents in
Bakara market. The death toll from the Ethiopian attack, according to
usually reliable sources, was over 20.
It would be an absolute miracle, given the high-density nature of the
market area, if some of those victims had not been entirely innocent
people.
The Ethiopians deny targeting civilians.
But over and again, during several recent trips I have made to Somalia,
people from all walks of life employed the word "indiscriminate" when
describing the Ethiopian military response to the insurgency.
"When your neighbour's house is on fire, you don't just wait for other
neighbours to help"
Major Ba-Hoku Baruigye
Ugandan peacekeeper
Of course, the roadside bombs of the insurgents can be indiscriminate
too (albeit targeted at government soldiers or the Ethiopian forces).
On the days before and after my one-day trip to the Somali capital there
were explosions which killed several soldiers and civilians.
The Ethiopians can also argue that they are sup****ting an
internationally-recognised government that many western and African
diplomats also see as the basis of Somalia's last, best chance at some
sort of stability.
And Addis Ababa says it will pull out its troops if someone else
provides security.
That "someone else" is currently supposed to be the African Union
peacekeeping force or, possibly, at some point in the future, the UN.
Meanwhile the Somali opposition insists that what it calls the Ethiopian
"occupying forces" have to go immediately.
Raised voice
"Tensions are still high and we don't have enough troops of our own to
ensure security, so... we still need the Ethiopians for now," said
government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon
"But what we are all waiting for is a UN force."
Major Baruigye made a similar point from another perspective.
On patrol inside his South-African made Mamba armoured personnel
carrier, the articulate Ugandan officer raised his voice - partly to
counter the din of the engines, but also, I felt, out of moral anger.
"When your neighbour's house is on fire, you don't just wait for other
neighbours to help. You throw on a bucket of water to help put out the
fire. That is what every member of the international community that has
a stake in Somalia should be doing."
The recently-appointed United Nations envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould
Abdallah, has been busy making contacts with the government and the
mainly Eritrean-based opposition coalition.
The proxy war being fought in Somalia's power vacuum by sworn enemies
Ethiopia and Eritrea is a further complication in any negotiations.
The Somali belligerents have not officially had direct talks yet, but
this is what Mr Ould Abdallah is working towards.
If and when this meeting takes place, the Ethiopian presence will be top
of the agenda.
But so, too, will be the possibility of some other force replacing them.
Danger of inaction
The international community has tried and failed to put out the fires in
Somalia before.
The Americans even tried once, in the early 1990s.
But that ended in a US rout in 1993 when two of their helicopters were
shot out of the skies. The battle which ensued left thousands of Somalis
and 18 US soldiers dead.
The conflict was immortalised - mainly from an American point of view,
of course - in the Hollywood film Black Hawk Down.
These days the Americans keep their distance, but clearly still see
Somalia as strategically im****tant.
They have war****ps off Somalia's coast and occasionally send in cruise
missiles at what they say are al-Qaeda bases connected to the Islamists.
No-one thinks that any international peacekeeping effort in Somalia - a
beefed-up AU force, or maybe even a UN one - will be easy.
Some say that given the historic mistrust between Somali clans, any such
effort is doomed to failure - and that there are too many unknowns to
make action effective.
But what the world does know is that when it turns its back on
humanitarian and political crises there can sometimes be consequences.
Like the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
And, some would say, like 9/11.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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