Until last summer, the situation in Mogadishu had changed little for several years. The murderous, violent Shabaab continued to dispute much of the capital with Somalia’s weak central government. (They also control a lot of the territory surrounding the capital as well as the southern part of the country, extending as far as the Kenyan border.)

Most of the Somali capital was a virtual no-go area when I visited it two years ago to report a story for The New Yorker. I was housed on the grounds of Villa Somalia, the presidential complex that was then, and is now, guarded by African Union peacekeeping troops from Uganda. They kept the Shabaab at bay with gunfire and artillery and transported me to and from there, the airport and seaport, the only other positions they actually controlled, in convoys of armored personnel carriers.

Then came the famine that began to devastate the Shaabab-dominated southern part of Somalia. Hundreds of thousands of starving Somalis streamed across the desert border into northern Kenya overwhelming the refugee camps there, and frightening Kenyan authorities. Under pressure to move their operations into Somalia itself so as to staunch the flow of Somalis into Kenya, international humanitarian relief agencies began flying into Mogadishu to set up emergency feeding centers and food distribution networks. Along with the aid influx came hundreds of foreign nationals, and, for the first time in years, they stayed on in Mogadishu. Unable to care for its own human constituency and obliged to allow the distribution of food by the relief agencies it had previously banned, the Shaabab was placed on the defensive. Then, during a government offensive in July, Shaabab beat a tactical retreat from Mogadishu, withdrawing its fighters to the edges of the capital, but promising to carry on its jihad. On Tuesday, it made good on that vow.

Last Thursday, by coincidence, I had met with a Somali friend, whom I shall call Sheikh, in London. Sheikh was on a visit from Mogadishu, where he works against the Shababab in the Western-assisted Somali intelligence services. He told me he and his fellow intelligence agents were worried because nothing had happened in several weeks; it was “too quiet,” he said. The presence of so many foreign nationals in Mogadishu also represented an opportunity for the terrorists; despite its pullback, he pointed out, the Shabaab was not defeated, and it was likely to try and do something—a kidnapping, a suicide bombing—to make its presence felt.

Sheikh spoke with cautious wonder at the unexpected advances in security in Mogadishu of the past few months, describing how the previously isolated president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, had even begun making regular visits to parts of the city outside Villa Somalia. “In a way, all of this is a gift that the famine has given to us,” said Sheikh. The situation had already begun to reap dividends and for the first time, Sheikh told me, he had begun to allow himself to entertain thoughts of a peaceful future. The Turks had brought in hundreds of people to deal with the famine, he said, and their presence had kept getting bigger. It seemed they wanted to lead the international effort to restore Somalia to the body of nations. Quietly, they had opened an embassy, and announced their intention to rehabilitate Mogadishu’s largest educational facility, an old polytechnic with capacity for over two thousand students. Sometime this month, Turkish Airlines was to begin twice weekly flights between Istanbul and Mogadishu.

Sheikh mentioned that they were offering hundreds of educational scholarships to Istanbul—the very scholarships, I later realized, that some of the bombing victims had hoped to receive. In the face of the Turkish robustness, said Sheikh, other government, including the Italians and the British, were making promising noises about following suit. “We know that all of this could end with one bad incident,” said Sheikh. “It has happened before. So we feel hopeful, but uncertain.”

After the attack, I e-mailed Sheikh to find out if he was OK. He wrote back to say that he was. “It was a bad attack, but I think they gave us opportunities to exploit and lessons to learn.”

Another Somali friend, Yassin, e-mailed me to say that he, too, was safe. “Some of my friends lost their lives and some others were seriously wounded,” he wrote. “I spent the whole day at the hospital visiting my friends.”

The good news was that Yassin—a bright, self-taught young man who has memorized several of Barack Obama’s speeches—was the recipient of a Turkish scholarship. In a tone of promising certainty, he informed me, “I am travelling to Turkey next week for university, I am going to do a bachelor of Political Science. I am going to be in Ankara for the coming four years. I will keep in touch with you.”

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New Yorker

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