by John Fox
Sunday, June 19, 2011
When our tickets were delivered to our office for the flight to Mogadishu, the envelope had an unwelcome message, written in bold letters: “You should be at the airport three hours before the flight”.
The check-in counter will close two hours before. That meant we had to be at JKIA at 4.30 a.m. – which meant getting up at 3.00 a.m.
Because it was to Mogadishu and we assumed that there might be extra security checks, we took the message seriously.
We were there spot on 4.30 a.m. – only to find the African Express staff had not themselves arrived.
It was nearly 5 a.m. before the person with the boarding cards turned up and the check-in got under way. I was not happy.
“Why do you tell us to be here at 4.30 a.m. and you are not here yourselves?’’ I asked the young guy when I handed him my ticket and passport.
“It is just this time it has happened,” he said. To make matters worse, we boarded half an hour late – and then we had to spend another half an hour waiting on the tarmac while some kind of paperwork was sorted out.
Otherwise, the flight was uneventful. It takes only 90 minutes. Most of the time you are flying over the seemingly unending muted browns and pale yellows – the arid terrain of most of Somalia.
But right at the end, as the plane loops away from and then back to the coast, there are the blues and whites of the Indian Ocean waters as they meet the rocky shoreline.
Mogadishu looks very inviting from the air. You wouldn’t know, unless you already knew, that there are battle lines down there in the sprawling city.
The Aden Adde International Airport makes for a pleasant surprise. It is smartly white and clean. Getting the visa and retrieving luggage was no hassle. And we had our attentive minders to receive us.
Mogadishu is rated as one of the most dangerous places in the world. For a number of years, the forces of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the 8,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops of AMISOM have battled with the al-Shabaab militants over control of the city.
A few months ago, the TFG controlled only six of the city’s 16 districts; al-Shabab controlled the rest – as well as most of south-central Somalia. City’s front-line
But these last few months, AMISOM soldiers have mounted a persistent campaign and have extended the city’s front-line to the north and east.
The TFG now claims control of 10 districts. And government officials talk with confidence that al-Shabaab will soon be driven right out of Mogadishu.
It does seem that al-Shabaab is weakening. But AMISOM success has come at a price – a number of their soldiers have been killed.
While we were at the airport, we saw a badly wounded Burundian soldier being taken from an armoured ambulance on a stretcher and put on a plane to be flown out to a hospital, perhaps in Nairobi, Kampala or Kigali.
It seems that, having been thrust back, the al-Shabaab fighters have changed their tactics. Some are still surrounded in the central Bakara Market, where they have taken up sniper positions in tall buildings.
Two days before we arrived in Mogadishu, a sniper had killed the third in command of the AMISOM forces. Also, al-Shabaab have stepped up their suicide bombings.
The day we left, a bomber killed someone at the sea-port; a few days later, the minister of the Interior was assassinated at his home by a girl – believed to be a relative and a frequent visitor to the house – who went in unchecked by the security guards and detonated her bomb, killing herself as well as her uncle.
Ourselves, we were kept well back from the front-line. Our meeting with Somali colleagues was in a building inside the protected area.
We were driven there in a bullet-proof car. Outside, there was a constant stream of Casper armoured vehicles used by AMISOM soldiers.
We stayed overnight in bunker-type rooms, between sandbagged walls and under a sandbagged roof. The bedroom was air-conditioned; the bed was comfortable; there was a table for working on your laptop.
But the toilet was so far away along twisting and unlit sandbagged lines that it was best you decided to go before you needed to go.
The food was varied and well-cooked – by a Kenyan chef. Another Kenyan was selling cans of Tusker – rationing you to three cans a day.
The canteen had DSTV. The only other relaxation was to go for a walk or a jog along the beach, as long as you kept within the protected area … I really admire those hardy souls who do their four-week stints in conditions like this, before their week’s R&R in Nairobi.
Nevertheless, the way we were looked after, I guess we were safer there than driving after dark from Nairobi centre and out to the garden estates of Lavington or Karen.
John Fox is Managing Director of Intermedia