Mogadishu
I return to Mogadishu to find it’s calm – only a few assassinations, hit-and-run attacks, IEDs or suicide bombs — and at last most Somalis seem ready for peace. I’ve covered events here for 21 years and love imagining an end to war in this delightful city. I also know that it’s during times of calm, when you drop your guard — forgetting that there’s one rule for Somalis and another for foreigners — you end up dead.
Mogadishu is a town I know so well I could find my way around it blindfolded. Sadly, since the early 1990s I haven’t been able to wander about on my own. High seas piracy is declining, but land-based gangs and Al-Shabaab insurgents still see Westerners like me as worth a few bob in ransom. I’m with John Conroy, a tough veteran maker of Ross Kemp films in Afghanistan, where the Taleban shot him.
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