Hostile Seas by JL Savidge

Author:JL Savidge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2013-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

A few moments of searching offers up a sign of life: a military truck winds up a low hill at a snail’s pace toward a prominent set of white buildings that dominate the cityscape. The complex was clearly imposing at one time, but has suffered the same shot-up fate as so much of the rest of the city and retains little of its dignity. From this distance, with its sooty stains and gaping holes where windows once were, the building seems little more than a carcass. This is Villa Somalia, the Presidential Palace, the seat of government for Somalia’s presidents. Driven out by violence, the interim government has relocated to Baidoa, the provisional capital, a city a few hundred kilometres to the northwest. The once-proud seat of Somali government is a forlorn, vacuous shell.

On the bridge, half a dozen sets of eyes now skim the harbour’s ruffled waters for signs of either the AMISOM boat or fast-moving skiffs. Spotting a small boat at distance in even the slightest chop is a challenge. An occasional fishing skiff, nets cast, appears atop a swell as a tiny speck before disappearing with the sea’s next undulation.

I examine the shoreline again. This time I focus on a low, flat building fronted by a prominent runway that runs roughly parallel to the water’s edge. This is Mogadishu International Airport, established on what once must have been prime real estate, and serving as the main base of the African Union’s Mission to Somalia.

At the north end of the runway is a decaying cargo plane missing an engine, its abandoned, come-here-to-die quality matching that of the ghost town it lies in. Later research will identify it as one of two Belarusian cargo planes fired upon by unidentified assailants in March 2007. This was the first one targeted, and the luckier of the two. It made an emergency landing and the crew and Ugandan peacekeepers aboard survived. Two weeks later, a second plane carrying humanitarian aid and parts for the damaged aircraft was shot down on its approach to Mogadishu, killing all eleven crew members.[11] The Belarusian airline that operated the two planes suspended its operations in Somalia and abandoned the damaged aircraft to its fate. Cargo planes and a few commercial flights continue to operate from the airport, but right now the only activity is the odd military truck moving about.

Past stretches of beach and rock outcroppings lies the port of Mogadishu. A few small boats are tied up at the solitary jetty. Only a single vessel alongside one of the port’s six berths is large enough to carry significant cargo. This is MV Abdul Rahman’s destination. Here the vessel will unload its cargo of food aid onto the trucks that will carry it into the interior, and hopefully, if not disrupted, to its intended recipients.

Somalia’s four deep-water ports — Kismayo to the south, Mogadishu in the central region, and Bossasso and Barbera on the northern coast — were developed in the sixties and seventies to facilitate international trade.

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