John Simpson reports on two Somali fiefdoms — one governed by guns; the other by the laws of Islam
MOGADISHU must be the most divided city on earth. Several distinct factions confront each other across great swaths of wrecked buildings and empty streets.
There is not just one front line, there are two. In the city centre lies an area known jokingly to the Somalis as the “Bermuda Triangle”. If you venture in, you are unlikely to emerge alive.
There is a clear dividing line between southern Mogadishu, held by the faction of the late General Mohammed Farah Aideed, and Ali Mahdi Mohammed’s northern Mogadishu. Even when there is little fighting, the line is nerve-racking to cross. In the silence of no-man’s land, the buildings are appallingly smashed.
Filming here can be an unhealthy business. Our camera crew was filming in no-man’s land for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Newsnight the other day. It seemed peaceful enough, but suddenly a group of militiamen turned up and arrested them.
One militiaman took up a position in a doorway beside the car, put a round into the chamber of his AK-47, slid off the safety-catch, and aimed at the cameraman’s head.
It was then that our bodyguards earned their money. The best and toughest of them, “Little Ears”, walked quietly across to the man with the AK, took him by surprise and smashed him in the face, knocking out his front teeth. After that, the crew managed to get back to the relative safety of our hotel.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that force is the only thing that can succeed in this Hobbesian world of warfare. Nothing short of calculated violence would have sorted out that situation.
For those of us who want to believe in more rational and peaceful ways of behaving, Mogadishu forces us to reconsider — just as it destroyed the good intentions of the United States and United Nations troops who intervened here between 1992 and 1995. This is a place where ferocity seems, depressingly, to work.
Southern Mogadishu is controlled by the militias loyal to Hussein Aideed, the US-educated son of the late general who died of wounds on August 1.
His gunmen are reasonably well-disciplined, but they can do what they like here. As a result the streets are quiet and tense, and the shopkeepers operate nervously. At night the area is completely dark. Any European venturing out then is effectively committing suicide.
As you cross no-man’s land, you pass from an area where the gun is the only law to one in which the most savage punishments are restoring a kind of order. The streets of northern Mogadishu bustle with economic life, and you rarely see a gun. There are even a few policemen around. At night, the streets are properly lit.
This part of the city is run by an uneasy alliance between the pragmatic Ali Mahdi and the leading Islamic cleric in Somalia, Sheikh Alidheri. Two years ago, Alidheri forced through the introduction of sharia courts to try offenders according to Islamic law and subject them to its punishments.
These are, by Western standards, ferocious. The theft of goods worth more than about R10 means the loss of the right hand. If a gun is used in the crime, the left foot is cut off as well. As we made our way to Alidheri’s court, we came across a severed hand and foot lying abandoned in the dust. Someone had just suffered the penalty for armed robbery.
Later we obtained a tape, filmed with a small video camera, of a man having his hand and foot cut off at Alidheri’s court. It is done fast but casually, and there is no anaesthetic. When we examined the pictures in a BBC cutting room in London, they were so revolting that the picture editor had to leave the room.
Realising how Westerners would react to sharia punishments, Alidheri made sure we were unable to watch a serious case. Instead, our cameraman was allowed to film a woman being tried for the theft of a dress.
The trial was fair and properly conducted, in a smallish, oppressively hot, upstairs room. After the owner of the dress had given evidence, Alidheri turned to the accused.
“Do you agree that what she says is correct?”
“Yes, and I want forgiveness,” she answered.
That was impossible, but mindful of the camera the sheikh chose to be lenient. The owner of the dress had not taken proper care of her property, he found; and he sentenced the accused woman to 48 lashes.
This time the pictures were just acceptable to a Western television audience. Although the woman was frightened and weeping it was clear she was not in great pain. Without the presence of the camera the whipping might well have been a great deal fiercer.
For us, watching it all, the spectacle was ugly and degrading. Yet this ferocious, exemplary justice has quietened the streets of northern Mogadishu. We may not like the sharia courts and the punishments they inflict, but nothing the supposedly civilised world can come up with has worked as well.
John Simpson is the BBC’s foreign affairs editor