Everyone said I’d die if I went to Somalia. I lost my job, I maxed out a couple credit cards and I nearly started a riot at a Mogadishu movie theater. But I didn’t die. I celebrated my survival yesterday in Nairobi with a big wet kiss from this giraffe.

Somalia: so what’s it all about? It’s about how divisive internal politics can prevent the resolution of a conflict that pretty much everyone agrees must end. It’s about how war and famine combine to create a spiraling humanitarian crisis that few in the world seem to care about. But mostly it’s about how the U.S. aims to fight wars in Africa — by proxy — and how these proxy wars might have the same result as our misguided invasion of Iraq. Instead of destroying Islamic extremists, pre-emptive wars often breed them.

Speaking of Iraq: I’m off to London en route to Basra, where I will be covering the staged British withdrawal, which you might view as a prototype for the eventual U.S. departure. (more…)

Nurses, including several women wearing head scarves, crowd over what appears to be a cadaver. They’re pouring a disinfectant wash on sponges and dabbing at a crude suture running from the man’s sternum to his pelvis. The stitches, according to one observer, are “worse than a veterinarian’s.” Flies probe the wound. But this is no dead body, a plaything for inexperienced med students. This man is a survivor. And the inexperienced medical personnel are the only ones available.

It’s just another day in the surgical ward of the Red Cross-funded Madina hospital in downtown Mogadishu. Since fighting between government troops (and their Ethiopian backers) and insurgents spiked in September, Madina has seen a 25-percent increase in patients, up to 550 per month, many with shrapnel, bullet and blast wounds. The hospital has enough supplies, thanks to foreign donors, says Dr. Dahir Mohamed, but it’s running out of space. In the hallway, a woman cradles a crying baby whose black skin has been boiled pink by a fire.

Somalia’s hospitals struggle to keep up with the growing stream of sick and injured resulting from a double whammy of famine and war. So dire is the need that the Ugandan peacekeepers had to open up their military hospital to civilian patients and beg NGOs and friendly governments for more supplies. And at Dr. Hawa Abdi’s privately run refugee camp, she has built her own hospital where she treats her residents. During a visit last week, I saw a man riddled with no fewer than seven AK-47 rounds, lying limp on a bed while his friend hovered nearby, worried. But this man is one of the lucky ones. Others slowly die where they were shot, overlooked or simply abandoned as just another hurt person in a country teeming with them. (more…)

Eight dead. Ten tortured. Scores arrested. More than 50 fled. Mogadishu’s independent media workers comprise a long list of chilling statistics. A government crackdown, launched in early November and apparently energized by Mogadishu’s firebrand mayr Mohamed Omar Habeeb, has devastated media ranks. Three independent radio stations bore the brunt of the assault. A month after the three stations were gagged by government troops, Habeeb has allowed them back on the air — but with tight restrictions, apparently. So while scores of radio workers will return to work, they’ll do so with the Somali government looking carefully over their shoulders. The irony? Media was more free under the hardline Islamic Courts regime than they are under the supposedly democratic transitional government. (more…)

“You Americans … ” His words were being translated by my fixer but his tone and body language needed no interpretation. Mahmoud Samo, owner of a small Mogadishu general store, was angry. Chanting a litany of woes – rising prices, runaway inflation, danger to himself, his staff and his customers – all caused by fighting between the occupying Ethiopian army and various insurgent groups, Samo insisted the Ethiopians never would’ve come without U.S. support. Therefore, he said, Mogadishu’s current troubles ultimately are America’s fault.

It’s a sentiment I’ve heard echoed by many Somalis in the past couple weeks, in many cases expressed quite eloquently, and in English, by some of Mogadishu’s surviving educated class. Meanwhile everyday Somalis express their resentment towards America in more basic ways. When they see us, they stare. They whisper. They gather in clumps and move towards us. Some might grunt, “Gallo!” – Somali for “infidel.” Their neighborhood leaders step forward, demanding to know why we’re intruding … and demanding that we leave. It’s clear that their command has two meanings. They want the Gallo out of their ‘hood – and they want America to butt out of Somalia’s business.

Are they oversimplifying a complex situation? Probably. After all, a large portion of the food aid that keeps hundreds of thousands alive is donated by Washington. But Samo’s right to be critical of U.S. military policy in Somalia. The United States is playing both sides, supporting the army inciting much of the fighting AND the army with the best chance of bringing peace. The self-defeating strategy reflects deep confusion in Pentagon circles about how to handle Africa’s most tenacious conflict. (more…)

“I will tell you the truth,” said Ali Mohamed Siyad. “I don’t care what they do to me.”

Siyad, chairman of Mogadishu’s central Bakara Market, has seen his once-thriving businesses looted and his customers and colleagues harassed, arrested and even murdered by Ethiopian and government troops who are increasingly challenged by Islamic insurgent groups. Last week he drove into Mogadishu, leaving behind his family in the refugee town of Afgooye, in order to talk on the record about the government’s crimes against the people it purports to represent. He predicted it might land him in prison. He was right. Two days ago Siyad was arrested.

He’s not the only government critic to wind up behind bars. Pretty much every one of Mogadishu’s roughly 100 independent media workers (pictured) has been arrested for reporting on the fighting – some for days, some for weeks. Radio Shabelle director Moqtar Mohamed Hirabe handed me a list of around thirty of his staff who’ve been tortured or forced to flee the city.

Justice in Mogadishu is a farce. Want to arrest an annoying reporter? Claim someone tossed a grenade from his building as a pretext for an armed raid, or accuse him of knowing the whereabouts of insurgent leaders. Radio host Mohamed Farah Italy was arrested for answering the phone when an insurgent spokesman called in during a live talk show.

The system is so broke that Dr. Hawa Abdi, director of a refugee camp near Afgoyee, has raised her own police force and built her own jail in order to deal with crimes internally. Even murderers get locked up in Abdi’s jail “to think about what they did,” she says.

That the Baidoa-based government is guilty of abuses is not surprising, considering the body’s sordid history. What’s surprising is that the African Union – normally a decent bunch of guys – plays along. The fortified prison compound near the seaport, where I can only assume Siyad is moldering, is guarded by A.U. troops. (more…)

Ali Mohamed Siyad had a problem. As chairman of Mogadishu’s fledgling Bakara Market, he was responsible for the welfare of scores of businesses employing hundreds of people. It was the early 1990s. Somalia’s civil war was over, but its troubles were just beginning. There was the doomed U.N. and U.S. peacekeeping experiment that ended in violence following the shoot-down of two American helicopters in Siyad’s market. Warlords employing narcotics-addicted gunmen fought for control of the city. It was too dangerous for commerce.

So like any good businessman, Siyad found a commercial solution. He imposed a levy on Bakara’s businesses, and with the proceeds advertised for his own gunmen. Soon he had his own private army, and Bakara become one of Mogadishu’s many self-policing precincts. Security brought shoppers; shoppers caught the eye of business owners elsewhere in Mogadishu, who began to relocate to Bakara in droves. Soon it was the economic engine driving the city’s recovery. The gunmen remained even during the brief rule of the hardline Islamic Courts. Why mess with success?

Then in March came the Ethiopian army, and the northern-based Transitional Federal Government in its wake. “When the government entered, we handed over all our weapons,” Siyad says. ”We gave them 1,700 guns. After that, they started making people displaced and looting the properties.” Now Bakara — all but abandoned by businesses — is the main battleground in Mogadishu, where deposed Courts fighters and their nationalist allies take on the TFG and the Ethiopians. At night you can see the rockets and shells streaking in.

And Sayid? The former strongman and his family fled to the refugee town of Afgooye, where they live under a tree “full of mosquitoes.” 

So where do all the guns come from? It works like this: TFG fighters get fed up with not being paid by the impoverished government and decide to seek their fortunes elsewhere. But their new lives need startup cash. So they sell their used AK-47s for $250 apiece to street thugs looking for a way to boost their criminal productivity. Wearing cast-off uniforms and carrying former TFG weapons, the thugs pose as security forces, “patrolling” the city shaking down motorists and pedestrians for cash, wrist watches and especially mobile phones. My fixer has a nickname for these toughs. “They’re not terrorists,” he says. “They’re mobile-ists.”

“Mister, mister! It’s broken.” The purple-shawled woman chased after me waving the perfectly good 2006 series $20 bill I had just exchanged for goods at her Mogadishu trinket shop.

“What are you talking about?” I examined the bill. There it was — a tiny little tear on one corner, barely big enough to notice — certainly not big enough to render the bill invalid. At least not in the U.S.

But as I’ve quickly learned, Africans have a different idea about what makes money money. In Kenya I was told I couldn’t use 1990s series bills. I never got a good explanation, but it might have something to do with counterfeiting and the newer bills’ design elements, such as watermarks, intended to thwart coiners.

In Somalia, however, it’s apparently not counterfeiting that renders old money useless, but appearance. Somalis only want bills that are crisp, untorn and colorful, my fixer explained. Which basically undermines the whole idea behind paper currency. Four hundred years ago, people swapped gold for goods and services — because, well, gold is pretty. Everyone likes it. Everyone wants it. Replacing the gold with paper money (ostensibly backed by gold stored somewhere) was a controversial process, especially as it became clear in coming centuries that there wasn’t enough gold to pay for all the bills out there. Over time, people got comfortable with the notion that the paper bill represents labor, not gold, and soon the gold standard didn’t matter so much.

Now in Mogadishu, we’ve come full circle. The bill is (to an extent) the pretty thing that everyone likes and everyone wants. Rather than representing gold, or labor, it represents itself. If it’s not pretty, it’s no good.

So here’s an idea. Let’s horde all the U.S. bills in Somalia and issue some other currency — let’s call them “Davids” – to represent it. That way our nice little bills, our monetary backing, don’t get dirty or torn. Somalia will be on the dollar standard.

But unless Somalis get comfortable with the idea of currency backed by labor, soon the Davids will assume intrinsic value and we’ll need a currency to represent them, too.

Ashen, gaping faces. Limbs bent at strange angles. Clothes all twisted and askew, chilling evidence of these Islamic Courts soldiers’ final desperate seconds, tearing at themselves to find the wounds that were killing them.

Next, a band of Islamic Courts fighters hiding around a corner from a Transitional Federal Government patrol. The youngest fighter looks to be around 13 years old; the oldest might be in his early twenties. One carries a Russian light machine on his shoulder, ammo draped and dangling. One of the youngsters totes an RPG that’s longer than he is.

The oldest, the leader, peeks around the corner then urges the others on. They take turns darting out into the street, spraying a few rounds then ducking back, smiling sheepishly, looking to their elders for approval. Some glance at the camera, but only for a moment, just making sure their heroics got caught on tape. 

The leader encourages the kid with the rocket. He runs out to shoot the thing but loses his nerve and comes scampering back. They cheer him on; he tries again: whoosh! The rocket disappears from the frame in a puff of smoke and now the rocketeer is all grins. Watching this video, it’s clear to me these guys have no formal training whatsoever. They’re just kids, playing a game with guns. And they’re in way over their heads. On the tape, an Ethiopian Hind gunship churns overhead, a reminder that adults play this game, too – and play harder.

I wonder about the cameraman. He’s sitting next to me as I watch his handiwork. He speaks maybe ten words of English. How did he get inside this fighter cell to shoot this tape in March? I know for certain he’s no friend of the Islamic Courts. Just yesterday he drove into downtown Bakara Market with two acquaintances, members of the TFG, to pick up a camera he’d left behind during the recent fighting. Some Courts guys spotted him with his TFG pals and shot up the car, killing one of the TFG and wounding the other.

This war is tough on Somali journalists. Eight have died this year, and dozens have been forced to flee their homes by a government that doesn’t want the world to know how bad it is here. The other day I polled around 20 photogs, writers and radio producers: every one of them had been arrested; most had received death threats; many were now unemployed. They asked for a few dollars apiece to cover the cost of coming to see me. And when I agreed, they were almost pathetically grateful.

The cost to me for the cameraman’s combat footage, for which he risked his life? Just $100. Plus, he asked me to send him a baseball cap from the States.

This morning something exploded. In any other city, that would be the ass-kickingest lede ever, but around here it’s downright quotidian. My fixer told me someone had targeted a vehicle belonging to the Red Cross as it passed near Ugandan positions at the strategic Four Kilometer roundabout. I grabbed my camera and we hopped in the truck to go check it out. Idling at the supposed site of the blast, we counted potholes – some bigger than kiddie swimming pools – and wondered which was a bomb crater and which were just the result of 17 years of neglect. We asked a passing Somali soldier, and he pointed to the tiniest hole of them all, a mere scoop amid the gaping maws that make driving through Mogadishu a feat for the only truly brave or truly skilled.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a Red Cross vehicle that got bombed, but some other “important person,” according to the soldier. Which made me wonder: in a capital city with no government (they’re all further north in Baidoa), no major businesses and few functioning public institutions, who qualifies as a VIP? A warlord? A visiting clan elder? An American journalist?

Someone just unloaded what sounded like half a clip from an AK-47 right outside my hotel in Mogadishu. I was in my skivvies working on a story (it’s hot, real hot) at the time. I pulled on my pants – forgetting to zip up, of course – grabbed my camera and scampered downstairs expecting an Al Shabab frontal assault on the hotel.

A man was sweeping. Another had his feet up on the coffee table in the lobby watching a truly embarrassing Bollywood flick. A third man jabbered on his cell phone in the courtyard. No one seemed the least bit concerned. The only surprising thing is that after week of nightly explosions and countless tales of extreme brutality in this seething city, I still get excited when someone squeezes off a few rounds on the street.

We went patrolling with the African Union’s Ugandan contingent today, zipping between their airport base, the seaport they control and a couple key road intersections that they’ve wrested from insurgent control. It’s an army on a shoestring: no air support, no robots, none of the camp luxuries that most Western armies enjoy. But they do have tanks, machine guns and sandbags, and they aren’t afraid to use them. At the critical Four Kilometer roundabout downtown, where roads shoot out in every direction, Captain Felestino Egau and his men have beat back two insurgent assaults in just the last couple months, suffering only a couple injuries. Peacekeepers in other parts of the world (U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, I’m looking at you) are mostly talk, and tend to hide in their holes when someone, say Israel, rolls across the border. But the Ugandans fight.

Of course, Lebanon is no Somalia. People still vacation in Lebanon. But here in Moga, when we journalists joined the Ugandans for a group photo beside one of their Russian-made tanks, I cracked, “This is me on holiday in Mogadishu.” And everyone laughed and laughed.

The first time we went to the tiny movie house near the Mogadishu seaport, with a mind to doing some interviews, the manager fussed at us for not making an appointment. It was tense, but not alarming. We promised to call ahead next time.

And we did. Even so, when we arrived at the cinema a couple days later, we almost started a riot.

Our security guards stayed outside. We went inside with our fixers. A hundred pairs of moviegoers’ eyes — kids, mostly — drifted away from the Bollywood flick on the big TV and followed us as we walked to the back of the room. There were murmurs; a few got up to leave. And outside, we could hear arguing. Someone had confronted our guards.

That someone was a man claiming to be the neighborhood “mayor.” He bustled inside with his thugs, waving at us to put away our cameras. He said we needed his permission to work in the neighborhood — and permission from the government. We said we had government clearance. So he invented a sub-level of clearance and said we needed that, too.

The theater owner was aghast, caught in the middle, having invited us in without realizing how the ‘hood would react. He was powerless to stop the rapidly growing and angry crowd. Several AK-47s were in evidence.

“Let’s get out of here,” I muttered. We raced outside, muscled through the crowd and hopped into our truck. Our fixers and guards tried to reason with the crowd, but it was hopeless. We sped away, the theater owner clinging to the outside of the truck. A couple blocks away, in a quiet alleyway, we interviewed him about his business, slipped him a couple thousand shillings for his trouble and let him go.

A platoon of Ethiopian soldiers toting machine guns, RPGs and AK-47s slogs through the mid-day Mogadishu heat, patrolling along the Afgoye road, one of the main routes for refugees fleeing the embattled city. This morning there were two more bomb blasts downtown: the first woke me up fifteen minutes before my alarm. Now the road is packed with people. The Ethiopians keep it safe. They might not be able to secure the city, but at least they can secure a way out.

Before the current conflict began last year, there were more than 400,000 internally displaced persons in Somalia. Now there are a million. Most have settled in rural villages that were already too poor to feed their own people. Being so scattered makes reaching them with emergency aid a major challenge, according to U.N. World Food Program official Pete Smerdon, based in Nairobi. Less difficult are the few tens of thousands of refugees who have gathered in a clutch of small camps along the Afgoye road. Today there are long convoys of WFP trucks lined up to drop off U.S.-supplied bags of corn. Last month a spate of shootings at food distribution points briefly shuttered WFP operations in the area. This month, people in the camps will eat.

But it’s only temporary relief. A double whammy of drought and war has made Somalia one of the hungriest countries in the world, with a malnutrition rate higher than 15 percent. You can see it in the wizened eyes of Mogadishu children who’ve already suffered a lifetime of pain and desperation.