The World's Most Dangerous Place by James Fergusson Read Free Book Online

ignored the calls, although once when he did answer I was astonished to hear him launch into a protracted series of comedy farting noises, loud and impressively inventive. It turned out that the mobile phone company had sold or given his number to al-Shabaab, who then paid locals to plague him with nuisance calls, including death threats. I asked him why he didn’t just change his number.
    ‘I have,’ he said. ‘Dozens of times.’
    ‘But – doesn’t it drive you mad?’
    ‘It would take more than this to take away my sanity.’
    Bibi looked weary, though, as his mobile rang yet again. This time, Will answered and propped the phone next to the speaker of an iPod he had set up. The caller, had they gone on listening, would have been treated to a diverse playlist containing everything from Eminem to Supertramp.
    Nuisance-calling sounded a childish tactic, but it had in factsignificantly hampered the ability of both AMISOM and the TFG to communicate. Al-Shabaab’s access to the mobile phone companies’ customer databases was so total that Mogadishu’s residents had learned not to answer any incoming call unless they recognized the number. I also suspected that the never-ending death threats, however empty they might have been, were far more wearing than Major Bibi was prepared to admit. In the digital age, the most effective response to a technologically superior enemy was often surprisingly low-tech, as al-Qaida first spectacularly proved with their attacks of 9/11.
    This memorable evening unfortunately had little effect on my bid to secure a seat in an outgoing Casspir, and the waiting about at the Bancroft Hotel continued. A pair of lion cubs in a cage at the back of the camp provided an unlikely distraction when there was no one around to talk to. The animals, thought to be orphans from the south of Somalia, had been captured by smugglers hoping to sell them on as pets to rich Arabs. Port officials had found them in the hold of a UAE-bound ship docked at Mogadishu and, not knowing what to do with them, passed them on to Bancroft. They were kittens then, perhaps just three months old, but they quickly grew into cubs that paced purposefully around their enclosure, and devoured a dead goat every three days. Like the outcome of the AMISOM mission itself, the eventual fate of the beasts was uncertain. The original plan was to have the Somali speaker present them as a gift to his Ugandan counterpart, but that scheme had fallen through. Returning them to their natural habitat had been suggested, but this was rejected on the grounds that they were already too domesticated to survive. The truth was that no one quite knew what to do with them – a bit like the international community’s attitude towards Somalia itself.
    When I last saw the cubs in 2011, they had fallen gravely ill with a respiratory disease that no one could diagnose, and had lost so much weight that they tottered when they walked. The Ugandan orderly who had been put in charge of them shook his head sadly, and explained there were no zoologists or lion experts in Somalia. The lions wouldn’t eat goat any more, or even the cooked chicken he tenderly proffered them. The only hope, he said, was outside help, perhaps from the Born Free Foundation based in South Africa. So far, though, no lion vet had agreed to undertake the journey to Mogadishu; and very soon, he thought, it would be too late for these animals anyway. For both the lions and the state, foreign intervention, if it was to have any chance of succeeding, had to arrive in time; and it had to be the right kind of intervention, or it could easily end up making matters worse.
    * Qat , the leaves of Catha edulis , a flowering shrub native to East Africa, have been chewed for centuries in the region for their stimulating effect. The plant contains cathinone, a naturally occurring alkaloid that acts like an amphetamine by triggering the release of dopamine to the brain.
    * Later that summer, on the