Tobias Simon in Mogadishu, The Guardian

Ahmed, a Somali journalist, fled to Uganda in 2009 after he was threatened by al-Shabaab militants. He later moved to Kenya, and only returned to Somalia in 2012 after al-Shabaab had withdrawn most of its forces from the capital, Mogadishu. But danger is ever present.

“Al-Shabaab tracks you and then out of the blue they message you, ‘We know you are at your office right now,’” he says. “You can try to protect yourself, but in the end you just pray that nothing will happen.” Since 1992, 59 journalists have been killed in Somalia.

The Islamist extremist militia still casts a shadow over Mogadishu, despite the presence of thousands of African peacekeepers, European troops and soldiers from the ill-equipped and underfunded Somali army.

Hopes for a new government in August tempered by fears of bribery and violence, says Michael Keating, head of UN mission in Mogadishu.

Ahmed, who was a friend of a 25-year-old businessman killed in a suicide attack on Mogadishu’s Naasa Hablood hotel last month, says: “It was a very painful death as he was deported back from Jeddah [in Saudi Arabia] in 2014 and newly married. He was running his own business and expecting his first child soon.”

After years of chaos – starting with the fall of the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and the ensuing conflict between powerful warlords – Somalia has started to make some progress: elections were held in 2012 and political institutions are slowly being rebuilt. The government last month unveiled its first national development plan in three decades, and limited polls are due to be held in August.

But the security situation remains perilous, even though most of al-Shabaab’s fighters withdrew from the capital in 2011. The militants have resorted to hit-and-run shootings, assassinations and bombings that sow fear in this city on the Indian Ocean.

Read more: Foreign troops in Somalia struggle to keep al-Shabaab at bay

Source: The Guardian