Ugandan peace troops cling to Mogadishu’s K4 crossroads

Hiding from the sweltering sun and Islamist snipers behind sandbags, Ugandan troops obstinately defend a small but strategically crucial piece of tarmac: Mogadishu’s K4 junction.

“Whoever holds K4 controls Mogadishu” is a kind of motto for the African Union (AU) peacekeepers who rotate to this dangerous outpost on the edge of the confined area they control in the Somali capital.

“Kilometre Four” in southeastern Mogadishu is where the airport road meets several other key thoroughfares and is a major flashpoint in the war-ravaged seaside city.

Hunkering down behind their makeshift fortifications of canvas and sand, a few dozen Ugandan troops from the AU’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia (Amisom) keep watch on the prized intersection.

From the patchy shade provided by the ruins of the building where they have set up their position, they look on as swarms of passengers clamber in and out of minibuses with their bundles and bales.

The junction’s imperturbable traffic warden is a T-55 tank parked between the crumbling walls of what was once Mogadishu’s largest cinema.

The barrel of its cannon stares down a deserted road which serves as the city’s unofficial frontline and leads to the northern neighbourhoods harbouring the Shebab, Somalia’s feared Al Qaeda-inspired militants.

Heads covered with heavy-duty helmets and sunk into their bullet-proof vests, Ugandan soldiers posted on their base’s roof scan the horizon anxiously for an enemy they rarely see.

“Snipers have been shooting at us since the morning,” says Kenneth Wabwire, a young captain with Amisom, sitting on a khaki-painted ammunition box.

In a constant state of alert and under the scolding Somali sun, any attempt to make their base comfortable would be futile and the contingent’s paraphernalia is messily scattered across the rooftop.

The K4 unit’s modest digs include an army cot sheltered by camouflaged tenting, with weights and a pair of pink plastic slippers strewn over the sizzling concrete terrace.

Their finger on the trigger, a dozen peacekeepers with sleepless red eyes squint through a tiny loophole in their sandbags to detect the enemy.

Crouching and sweating heavily, one officer points towards a sun-baked chalk-white mosque: “The enemy snipers are posted there, you see.”

The insurgents take relentless pot shots at the Amisom force, as evidenced by a pock-marked wall behind their shooting position.

“Generally, we ignore them,” says Wabwire. “But we answer immediately if they shoot with mortars, that’s too dangerous.”