source:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article3908867.ec=
e
When Ibrahim Saeed Abdullah saw a neighbour=92s cinema burnt down by a
barrage of grenades, he realised that he had no choice but to heed the
death threats he had received from the big men with guns in their
hands and hatred in their hearts. Last week he closed the doors of his
own cinema for the last time.
It was two years since Abdullah had opened for business in Mogadishu,
the largely ruined capital of war-torn Somalia. The location may have
been inauspicious but the timing seemed right: the Islamic Courts
Union, an Islamist coalition that briefly took over much of the
country in 2006, had just been driven out by an American-backed
Ethiopian invasion.
In recent months, however, Al-Shabab, the military wing of the Islamic
Courts Union, has spread renewed fear through Mogadishu, a city of up
to 3m people that has been convulsed by fighting for 17 years.
Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, Al-Shabab does not approve of the
showing of films.
Soon Abdullah=92s cinema was the last one standing in Mogadishu and he
was threatened repeatedly. =93They came with weapons, surrounded my
cinema and told me, =91We will kill you if you don=92t close=92,=94 he
said.=
Al-Shabab, now an autonomous rebel group which has added an explosive
element to the combustible mix of Mogadishu=92s militias, enforces
strict sharia (Islamic law) and uses tactics im****ted from the global
jihadi movement. As in Afghanistan, those who work or trade with the
government risk being branded as spies or collaborators and beheaded
as a warning to others.
Members of Al-Shabab deliver =93night letters=94 to businessmen and others
they wish to intimidate. One such letter listed =93traitors assisting
the occupiers who attacked the country=94 and warned of action if they
did not make amends in 48 hours.
The group has overrun at least eight towns this year and taken control
of large swathes of Mogadishu. It is behind a spate of roadside
bombings directed at convoys of Ethiopian troops.
Journalists are routinely harassed. Editors and broadcasters received
a letter from Al-Shabab last week instructing them to stop referring
to the government and to say =93puppets=94 instead. They were told to call
dead insurgents =93martyrs=94.
The government=92s writ does not run far and the Ethiopian forces
propping it up are widely loathed. They come under attack as soon as
they leave their heavily fortified bases. Meanwhile, some militias
regarded as pro-government have received no wages for months and are
switching their loyalties to whoever pays them.
Mogadishu is at the epicentre of the anarchy. The threats posed by
rival militias mean that to travel in the city is to be in constant
fear of ambush or bombing.
My photographer Philip Poupin and I experienced a hold-up at a
government checkpoint five miles from the city centre. A group of
perhaps 20 heavily armed men with a flat-bed truck and a large
antiaircraft gun mounted on it pointed their rifles and ordered us out
of our vehicle.
Our armed guards scuffled with them but were easily overpowered. The
confrontation was eventually calmed by our translator and our guards=92
guns were handed back, but it was a reminder of the risks that
foreigners face in Somalia.
In February a roadside bomb killed three people working for M=E9decins
Sans Fronti=E8res, forcing the aid organisation to withdraw all its
international staff. Last month Murray Watson, 69, a British flood
prevention expert, was kidnapped by six gunmen in the south of the
country. He and a Kenyan colleague are still missing.
Two Somali-born Britons who had returned to build a school in the town
of Baladwayne were shot dead by rebels with links to Al-Shabab. Last
week the group announced that it would target all white people in
Somalia.
Meanwhile, the country is witnessing what United Nations officials
have called =93Africa=92s worst humanitarian crisis=94. Some aid workers
estimate the number displaced at well over 1m.
In Mogadishu, two Red Cross-funded hospitals have treated 1,112
casualties this year, a third of them women and children.
At the city=92s Medina hospital nearly all the patients had been caught
up in the haphazard violence. Ahmed Dalal, the uncle of six children
recovering there, described how two mortar shells had hit his house,
killing the children=92s mother. Many people have been killed by
Ethiopian troops who responded to rebel attacks by shelling entire
districts.
South of Mogadishu are the camps for internally displaced refugees.
These make****ft huts and shelters fa****oned from twigs and cardboard
boxes spread along both sides of the road for 15 miles towards the
town of Afgoye.
Ahmed Osman and his wife Khadija Yusuf were rebuilding their tiny
shelter with branches they had gathered. =93It had almost fallen down
and it will rain soon. We can=92t afford any plastic sheets,=94 Ahmed
said. Khadija added there was little chance of it being safe for them
to return to Mogadishu.
American diplomats still hold out hope that the government will be
able to hold elections next year. But they fear that Somalia could
become a terrorist hub in east Africa and are concerned by links
between Al-Shabab and Al-Qaeda.
Most of Al-Shabab=92s senior members were bodyguards to foreign Al-Qaeda
operatives in Somalia during the 1990s and display a powerful streak
of antiAmericanism.
Aden Ha**** Ayro, one of its leaders, was killed with 24 others in a
predawn US airstrike on his home in Dhusa Mareb, several hundred miles
north of the capital earlier this month. Ayro, Al-Shabab=92s military
commander who was trained in Afghanistan, had been blamed for the
deaths of at least 10 foreigners, including Kate Peyton, a BBC news
producer, who was killed outside her hotel in Mogadishu in 2005.
Ayro=92s assassination provoked a furious response from Al-Shabab, which
called for revenge against all foreigners. =93This incident will cause a
lot of problems to US interests in the region,=94 said Mukhtar Robow
Adumansur, an Al-Shabab spokesman.
Last week Al-Shabab fighters seized a police headquarters and attacked
two Ethiopian military convoys.
Ahmad Abdisalam, Somalia=92s deputy prime minister, said he believed the
only hope of a solution to the country=92s problems was through local
dialogue. =93We need to reduce the internationalisation of the
conflict,=94 he said.
However, at the Americans=92 insistence, Al-Shabab has been excluded
from the peace talks, which are being held in Djibouti between the
government and the Islamic Courts Union.
Talk of peace means little to most Somalis. At a government
checkpoint, a young boy stood guard last weekend. He said he was 17,
but looked closer to 12 or 13, and had been working there for a year.
Paid about =A325 a month, he said he had signed up to sup****t his
mother, father and three brothers. I asked what he saw himself doing
in a few years=92 time but he did not grasp the question. He replied
that he had been in many battles and expected to die soon: =93Everyone
who does this job dies.=94
Road to ruin
1991 Muhammad Siad Barre, dictator, deposed
1992 US Marines sent to restore order
1993 Two US helicopters downed in Mogadishu. US pulls out in 1994.
Years of internecine warfare follow
June 2006 Islamic Courts Union takes control of Mogadishu
December 2006 Ethiopia, with US backing, invades. Islamic Courts
routed
April 2008 US airstrike kills Aden Ha**** Ayro, a leader of Al-Shabab
rebels
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