The bad and the ugly
Aidan Hartley
Mogadishu
We have ten heavily armed bodyguards in Mogadishu, where a bloke called Robin and I are covering the Islamic revolution. Our escort protects us from assassins, disperses mobs of pesky children with sticks and provides that ‘bristling with menace’ effect one requires in a convoy of vehicles zooming around a failed state. They are known as Shabab, storm troopers of the Islamic courts army introducing the first system of Taleban-style rule since 9/11.
Apparently, there’s a long list of people who want to kill us and oddly this includes the Shabab. ‘Uh?’ I say. A senior bodyguard laughs. ‘Yes, some Shebab believe they will go to Paradise if they kill a Christian.’ I think I get it. The jihadis are guarding us against themselves in case they get the urge to turn us into shish kebab. ‘Before you get any ideas,’ I say, ‘I’m agnostic. Whack me and all you get is eternity in Dubai duty-free.’ Yesterday’s fashions in Mogadishu were warlords in the pay of the Yanks, clans and extravagant battles that mashed the city. Suddenly the cognoscenti now are all Salafists in Scrooge-style nightshirts, with pious sneers, blacked-out car windows and muezzin ringtones on their mobiles. When a perfumed Wahhabi bigot refused to shake my Christian hand, I wondered if I should be as alarmed as the Yanks and their allies at the turn of events in Mogadishu.
No, is the answer. Our Shabab bodyguards may derisively go ‘lor-lor-lor!’, mimicking the singing of Christians as the convoy passes Mogadishu’s destroyed cathedral. They may say: ‘You like dog? Engleez say dog like son. You put dog in lap and hug.’ They may hate America and want to assassinate us. This is what you get after years of rubbish from a United Nations-led world. But the Somali Islamists are also doing things that are very good for ordinary locals. They have cleared bandits and guns from the streets, opened up ports and roads and revived the economy. Mogadishu is a lot safer now than most cities in Africa — not for us, but certainly for Somalis. Still, I walked around districts I had not been able to visit during 16 years of civil war. I do not dare walk around most of Nairobi these days. Refugees from the diaspora are returning, schools are full (with lots of girl students), Sufis sing all night in their flag-decorated shrines, and hospitals that were recently charnel houses are quiet for lack of patients.
These so-called terrorist lunatics are trying to ban pornography, TV, wedding music, hip-hop hairdos, cigarettes, the narcotic leaf qat and theft. They apprehend pirates, execute murderers and believe Somalis can develop their country themselves, without lashings of foreign aid and UN expatriates. In conversation they express their disgust at legislation in the West that allows homosexual marriage. After reading this I bet half of you are wondering whether Wahhabism isn’t such a bad idea after all.
Most ordinary Somalis I spoke to in Mogadishu profoundly appreciate what the Islamists have done, but this does not mean they are all about to become red-eyed terrorists. Somalis are fiercely independent and anarchic and they do like their fun. On the hotel TV several channels played relentless erotic belly dancing. The Somalis constantly break into song, crooning lyrics about love. I asked the concierge what he would do if the stimulant qat was outlawed. ‘I would commit suicide!’ he exclaimed. He waved a packet of Viagra and said he always took one after chewing the qat leaf, which tends to cause impotence. He pointed at the packet logo, which was of a rocket blasting off. ‘I take one pill and I am like this. Boom!’ I said, ‘Why don’t you take four?’ He feigned shock. ‘Noooo! Take four and you ... ’ [He went into graphic detail about what he would be able to do.] ‘Oh, my God, no.’ Early on during our visit we came faceto-face with the chief al-Qa’eda figure in Somalia, a man the Americans have launched failed missions to capture, and my life passed before my eyes. Just to see this man let alone film him was supposed to be fatal. He looked surprised, then waved ‘hi’. We waved back. ‘Hi.’ For the rest of our trip we have been dodging him in the hotel lobby where he comes and goes. We are terrified that 1) his basilisk stare will finally result in a swift beheading or 2) an American Predator will land on us at any moment. It hasn’t happened yet.
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