By Abdi Sheikh - Analysis
Friday, October 18, 2013
Street lamps now
light up some of Mogadishu’s battle-scarred roads and couples visiting
the seaside, scenes unthinkable when the Al Shabaab group was in charge
of Somalia. “We feel free,” said 18-year-old Samira Aden, emerging from
the Indian Ocean with her friend at Lido beach, where women were banned
from swimming until just two years ago when African troops drove the
militants out of the capital.
Rebuilding a life that many in the world
take for granted is a slow and often imperfect process. Radicals still
control swathes of countryside and some towns, and have launched several
attacks on the city since 2011. Last month they showed their reach by
striking a Kenyan shopping mall. But residents of Mogadishu appear
determined to enjoy their new freedoms and not be deterred by the
threats.
With Al Shabaab no longer in charge, the city’s youth flock to the
beach or gather at coffee shops to chat, testing the boundaries of a
still conservative society. Residents savour the new routine of shopping
at well-stocked stores, filling up cars at gas stations rather than
buying jerry cans from roadside vendors, and even enjoying a night out
at the clutch of restaurants and hotels rising from the rubble. “We had
none of this freedom during the years of fighters’ rule,” said Aden. A
few main streets are lit by solar-powered lamps. Police are testing
traffic lights, but only in their compound for now. Many overseas
Somalis are returning after fleeing during years of fighting, when the
country was carved up by clan warlords before radicals took charge of
Mogadishu in 2006. Their money has spawned arts venues and sports clubs.
“Business is booming in Mogadishu,” said Abdisalan Nur, manager of
the Fathi hotel and restaurant. “We have spaces for men, spaces for
women only and spaces for couples.” Near the beach, a new guesthouse has
a swimming pool, a tennis court and children’s swings. Adults pay $30 a
month to join while children can splash in the pool for $3 a day. That
is way out of reach for many Somalis who scrape by sometimes on just a
dollar or two a day, however. Prices are being pushed up by the richer
returnees. “It was violent before but life was cheaper then,” said Farah
Jibril, 36. The more liberal attitudes of the young and
Western-educated people coming from abroad have also become a source of
friction. “I enjoy Mogadishu and the newly born democracy but people
from the diaspora have taken it too far,” said Sabdow Aden, who is
unhappy seeing young people on the beach showing too much affection. Al
Shabaab, which has threatened more attacks, echoes this. “All the evil
practices are done by people from the diaspora just to mislead our young
generation,” an official at the group’s media office said by telephone.
Reminders of the fragility of the gains are always present. A bombing
closed the National Theatre after it briefly reopened last year. And in
June, 22 people were killed when Al Shabaab gunmen stormed a UN base in
the capital. “The threat coming from Al Shabaab in Somalia is more
dangerous and not less,” said one Western diplomat, who was also
commenting on the attack claimed by Al Shabaab on a shopping mall in
Nairobi in September in which 67 people were killed. The government led
by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who too over last year, says the
group has been weakened. “Security is improving by the day and the
government is doing everything in its power to contain Al Shabaab,”
presidential adviser Abdirahman Omar Osman said.
The government still has to rely on an African peacekeeping force
whose control in the nation of 10 million barely extends beyond the
capital. Many areas in Somalia are still waiting for the peace dividend
Mogadishu enjoys. In the dissident-controlled town of Barawe, south of
the capital, where US special forces launched a failed attempt this
month to capture an Al Shabaab operative, residents describe a life of
constant surveillance and hardship. “We are not allowed to sit and chat
in groups,” local elder Farah Siyada said by phone. “You have to answer
100 questions if you are to travel to Mogadishu for medical reasons.” In
the capital, residents are keenly aware of the turn in their fortunes.
“I never thought Mogadishu would be as peaceful as it is,” said Hamdi
Arale, who drives her own car, a practice that Al Shabaab banned women
doing. “Life has completely changed.”