Roadblocks in Somalia’s path to a full recovery

During Mogadishu’s most recent golden age when the city was one of the top tourist attractions in the Horn of Africa with its beaches providing holiday playgrounds for thousands of Italians, the Uruba Hotel was the place to be for the city’s glitterati.

Its setting next to the lapping blue waters of the Indian Ocean not far from the presidential palace – and the view it afforded of hundreds of metres of the famously white sands of Somalia’s beaches – made it one of the finest hotels in this part of the world.

Today it is a bombed out shell. But many – like John, a tall, bespectacled American aid worker who would only give his first name in an interview at a base camp not far from the Mogadishu airport – recall happier times.

“This was a beautiful city with broad streets and wide avenues,” he says.

“The city had a vibrant cultural scene. The national theatre would host local plays and Indian movies or Kung Fu flicks which were quite popular. It was exceptionally safe. I would walk for six kilometres around 1 am from the national theatre to my living quarters near the Russian buildings, and there would be no problem at all. The trouble started when the oil prices shot up in the late 1970s and the 1978-79 war with Ethiopia left the economy in ruins.”

The expatriate, who works for an aid agency in the Somalia capital, says lunch at the Uruba Hotel was one of the more pleasurable experiences of life in 1970s Mogadishu.

Service was exceptional

“The city was very beautiful, and the best thing was that life was relatively cheap. I remember going for lunch at the Uruba which was not far from the American Embassy. The service was exceptional. As soon as you sat down you would get some fresh bread with olive oil and iced water with lemon. The first course would typically be a pasta dish and then there would be a main course of lobster or some other fish or steak. The dessert would be some fresh papaya all washed down with a cappuccino. The price for the meal would be a meagre Sh10.”

Things have, of course, gone very differently in the last 20 years. Somalia turned into a near-permanent battlefield following the ouster of former dictator Siad Barre after unrest that began in the late 1980s.

The result was the death of hundreds of thousands of Somalis who succumbed to the witch’s brew of problems that have accompanied armed conflict: disease, hunger and bullets.

In the last few months, relative peace has prevailed in the city for the first time in many years after African Union troops forced Al-Shabaab militants to abandon fixed positions in Mogadishu after a brutal five-year war for control of the city.

Al-Shabaab retains the ability to launch deadly suicide bombings as they demonstrated with an attack near the presidential palace last Wednesday and a grenade attack in downtown Nairobi last Saturday, which police blamed on the group.

But, for many Mogadishu residents, the situation in the city is more peaceful than they can remember because, in the past, their houses served as the frontlines of the war, and the daily commute to markets left one open to the threat of stray bullets.

The relative peace has triggered a spurt of reconstruction and recovery not seen for nearly a decade.

First indigenous bank

Turkish Airlines became the first major international carrier to resume flights to the Somali capital, many of the world’s major powers are reopening their embassies, and businesses are opening their doors anew, including a flagship effort by Somali-American businessman Liban Egal to open the nation’s first indigenous bank since 1991.

The key question hanging over Mogadishu’s recent revival, though, is whether it can last. Al-Shabaab has been driven out of the city largely by the firepower of African Union troops, but those forces cannot remain in Somalia forever.

Would Mogadishu remain largely peaceful the day when the troops pull out? Can the local politicians find a way to work with each other and form an inclusive and functioning government that fills the void that will be left?

And can local Somali troops be forged into a united force that represents national rather than clan interests?

The answers to those questions will determine whether the latest wellspring of hope in Somalia can be turned into something durable or whether, like the ceasefire when the Islamic Courts Union took power in 2005/6, it will just be another lull in the fighting in the nation’s troubled industry.

Certainly, the scale of the task Somalia faces is massive. Virtually no institution is playing the role for which it was intended.

The Uruba Hotel is now a command post for the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) who captured it from the Al-Shabaab in the early days of their involvement in Mogadishu in 2007.

The national stadium, too, was a key command centre for the Al-Shabaab until it became one of the last bastions to fall to the Ugandans last August.

Now, it is occupied by the UPDF, and its state of disrepair mirrors that of the rest of the country. Its roof caved in after a suicide bombing targeting former Somalia prime minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, and its pitch has been invaded by cactus in which lie four burnt-out vehicles.

The Somalia National University of Mogadishu, which should be producing the next generation of national leadership, was long ago turned into a battlefield and now serves as a field hospital and ammunitions store for Burundian troops who captured it from the Shabaab late last year.

When the Sunday Nation visited the facility, evidence of the high price African Union troops have paid to push the Shabaab out of the city was to be found in the ward holding injured soldiers.

Burundian private Bizimama Ezechieli, 32, lay motionless nursing his wounds incurred in a Valentine’s Day engagement with the Shabaab which saw the militants pushed out of Maslah town in the outskirts of the city.

He took a bullet to the right temple which exited through the back of his head. He lay in bed next to colleague Jérémie Mbonimpa, similarly heavily bandaged after being hit by a grenade.

The pair are among hundreds of soldiers who were injured or worse in the battle for Mogadishu.

But those two institutions, the university and stadium, are only two among the casualties of the long war in Somalia.

It has cost lives and left the state on its knees.

Some buildings like the Central Bank are being rebuilt from scratch with help from the Turkish Government, while many other government buildings were turned into high-rise residential areas by squatters.

The task of forging a functioning nation state from this mess is an unenviable one. But the challenge is complicated by the divisions and rivalries within the Somali leadership which is the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a credible government to lead the nation and offer a strong alternative to Shabaab rule.

Many MPs do not recognise the authority of parliamentary Speaker Sheikh Shariff Hassan Aden and insist that they procedurally replaced him in a vote in Parliament with his rival Madowe Nunow Mohamed.

Although the life of the transitional government is supposed to expire in August, deep doubts persist over whether the main players are seriously working towards a post-transition framework or whether they will angle for yet another extension.

Dr Augustine Mahiga, the head of the United Nations Political Office for Somalia, says there are significant hurdles to overcome but a window of opportunity wider than any before has opened.

“From a bridgehead at the airport and the presidential villa, the AU troops have managed to secure most of Mogadishu. The new resolution allowing Kenya and other troop- contributing countries to come in with force multipliers such as helicopters will help. But, for this whole process to be meaningful, we need the impact of the Somalia administration to be seen on the ground. We need to bring the peace process to the captured areas. Pushing out the Shabaab creates a political, ideological and security vacuum. The Somalia government needs to fill that space. And that means we must end the rifts and divisions and work together to seize this opportunity.”

Critics of the United Nations involvement in Somalia, though, say the institution, which should be at the forefront of pushing the parties to agree on the shape of a political agreement for the country, has played a disappointing role in the last two decades.

In a country where relationships are paramount and trust is built through constant engagement, the staff of the UN Somalia political office have been based in Nairobi and only returned to Mogadishu following an order by the UN secretary-general late last year.

Still, some say the officials only flit in and out of town and are hardly contributing meaningfully to peacebuilding efforts.

Dr Mahiga says those that hold that view are mistaken.

“Casual observers and armchair critics will say that the UN has been away. But you have to understand the history of the conflict. The United Nations Mission in Somalia was deployed with an agenda to supply relief. The downing of the American helicopter in the Black Hawk Down episode created a phobia against Somalia. That meant there was little appetite for intervention and warlordism and terrorism filled that vacuum. It was not until regional intervention through the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad) was mooted that the international community rallied to offer support.”

In the latest blueprint of a path to end the chaos in Somalia, leaders from all the regions of the country met in the capital of Puntland for three days from February 15 to agree on a road map for political reforms.

They reached a comprehensive agreement on the way forward, including the formation of a National Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution, which should be ready by the end of April. That will be followed by elections for Parliament and later for a president and prime minister.

It is an ambitious set of goals, and it is unclear whether they can be met. The Somalis who have been returning their money to the country and hoping the relative newfound peace can last certainly hope the transitional period comes off successfully.