Meeting al-Shabab

Meeting al-Shabab

After spending a few days in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, I decided to travel to Lower Shabelle, one of the regions in which the UN has declared famine.  

Al-Shabab controls Lower Shabelle and most of southern and central Somalia. They gave us permission to travel and film in a camp the armed group created in K50 area.

To work as a journalist in the areas, you must have an al-Shabab person with you at all times. So, we agreed to meet our guide in Elasha Biya, a small town outside Mogadishu.

Elasha Biyaha - meaning the water wells - was a small village until 2007 when Ethiopia invaded Somalia. Hundreds of thousands of Mogadishu residents fled to Elashaba Biyaha because it was safe and close to the capital.

Until a year ago there were few brick buildings in Elasha Biyaha but now the town is a booming commercial area and has replaced Bakara market, Mogadishu’s largest commercial area [the market has just partially opened].

At 9am local time we headed out of Mogadishu taking the one main road into southern Somalia. The dangerous part of the trip was ahead: when you're crossing the frontline.

We arrived at X Control which marked that you are leaving Mogadishu, it's the government's last checkpoint. This is the checkpoint where Fazul, an alleged al-Qaeda operative, was killed few months ago. We easily got through it and Mogadishu was behind us.

Then we crossed about a kilometre of a no man’s land. This is the most dangerous area, fighting can flare-up at any point in this space. But nothing happened and from the distance we saw the black flag marking al-Shabab's first checkpoint.

Thousands of people make this trip everyday. There is a huge amount of commerce that goes between Elasha Biyaha and Mogadishu and so many residents commute across the frontline everyday for work. Practically Elasha Biyaha has become a suburb of Mogadishu (technically it's in Lower Shabelle).

We made across safely and the whole trip took only half an hour.