Aweys Abdullahi Ali has never known a day of peace in Somalia. Gunmen have killed his mother and set his home on fire. Ali, 20, sees no end to the violence.
Yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of Siad Barre, Somalia’s socialist dictator whose overthrow ushered in years of conflict. The nation is now home to a generation of people who have known nothing but war.
“I’ve woken up to the crack of gunfire ever since I was young,” said Ali, a dark-eyed young man with a wisp of a beard. “I never believed Somalia was ever peaceful and I used to wonder what my parents were talking about when told me about the old days.”
Even though Barre had his opponents imprisoned and tortured, Ali imagines the dictatorship as a golden age compared with the current anarchy.
Government forces and insurgents have carved up the battle-scarred capital of Mogadishu. Temporary roadblocks mark constantly shifting front lines.
Gunmen scan the waiting citizens: Are their beards too long? Not long enough? Is that one a spy? What clan are they from? Do they have any money? The lucky are just told to pay a bribe.
“Once I refused, and they showed me the body of a dead young man and said if I don’t pay something they will kill me,” Ali recalled.
Last year, gunmen came to rob Ali’s neighbors. The woman screamed. Ali’s mother ran outside to help.
They shot her.
“We rushed her to Medina hospital but she died,” Ali said.
These days, Ali and his father live in a ruined house near an African Union peacekeeping base. There’s no water or electricity.
The afternoons are sweltering and dull. There are no jobs. They have no money for school. Those with money fled long ago.
“Imagine being 20 and never having been to school,” said Denise Shepherd-Johnson, a spokeswoman for UNICEF. More than two-thirds of Somali children have not completed even primary school, she said.
“Imagine in the future you’re asked to run a country and you have no idea what a government even does. Imagine trying to dream when the world of possibilities is so limited you are just trying to survive,” she said.
Ali can’t picture a better future or remember a better past. He can’t imagine the nightclubs his parents described on the Mogadishu beach front or the cool grass of the lawn in their old comfortable house before it was shelled.
Ali doesn’t think the war will end anytime soon. Corruption, clan politics and regional rivalries fuel the conflict. Ethiopia and Eritrea fund opposite sides in the conflict and Islamist insurgent movement al-Shabab has attracted foreign fighters.
The US and its allies hunt down suspected members of al-Qaeda but can’t stem the flow of volunteers.
What happens next is unclear. The mandate of Somalia’s government, which has failed to provide security or services, is due to run out in August. No one knows whether it will be extended.
Even the memory of what a government is supposed to do is fading.
“I do not know what a government is or what it does for people,” Ali said. “This war will not end before my son is grown and I will be a very old man.”
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