A riveting article on how much life in Mogadishu has changed for the better, after forces backed by US taxpayers were finally defeated and driven out.
There are many such reports about the ICU and the peace it brings - in fact, the ICU seems to be having a far more dramatic and stablising effect than even the Taliban did on war-torn Afghanistan. It seems that the ICU is riding an enormous and overwhelming wave of support from the common people - long may it continue, regardless of interference from rebel colonists.
Mohamed Abdullahi no longer shoves his mobile phone down his trousers when leaving the house. Abdulaziz Mohamed has dismissed the armed men that used to guard his stationery shop. Farh Dir enjoys a restaurant dinner with a childhood friend - the first time he has been out at night in years.
“What has happened in Mogadishu is a miracle,” said Abdi Haji Gobdon, the 62-year-old director of Voice of Peace radio in the Somali capital. “We are still trying to take it all in.”
Three weeks ago, the last of Mogadishu’s warlords were chased from the city by a combination of Islamist militia firepower and what people here describe as a “societal uprising”.
After 16 years of chaos, the world’s most lawless city suddenly has a taste of peace and security. Almost overnight, the atmosphere has changed from one of fear and despair to euphoria and even cautious optimism about the future.
“Everybody is happy,” said Ahmed Mohamed, a spectacled 41-year-old businessman. “We are only a short time into this revolution, but we all hope this could be the start of a new life.”
While the west frets over the motives of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which now controls Mogadishu, there have been few, if any, signs of a Taliban-like agenda - even if the ICU did appoint a cleric wanted by the US to a top post on the weekend. There have been no lustrations - purification ceremonies, no public floggings, and no move to ban the use of khat, the narcotic leaf that is daily bread to many Somalis.
For now, at least, the courts enjoy huge support - 95%- according to Mr Gobdon, even if it is based less on their religious bent than on their success in defeating the warlords.
Few in this battered city had expected this to happen. Since the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991, the warlords and their heavily armed militias had kept a tight grip on power, amassing huge wealth at the expense of the people. Extortion, kidnappings and theft were so rife that the streets emptied at sundown.
With no justice system to turn to, individual Somali clans started setting up their own courts, with the Koran as their guide. The courts established some degree of order and their popularity grew. Rich businessmen such as Mohamud Omar Adani, a 42-year-old man with a healthy beard and a potbelly swelling his white jellaba, poured in money and weaponry to strengthen the courts’ position. “We supported them because we thought they could bring peace,” he said. “The warlords were making life and business very complicated for everyone.”
The warlords felt threatened. In February they formed a coalition and said they would take on the ICU, whom they accused of sheltering terrorists.
“The warlords made it very clear that they had taken money from the US and that they were looking for al-Qaida suspects on America’s behalf,” said Aini Abukar Ga’al, 46, a human rights officer for the Coalition for Grassroots Women’s Organisations, in Mogadishu.
“This immediately gave birth to a popular insurrection against them. Ordinary people helped by blocking the roads, and even using their own weapons to fight. It’s what we’ve been dreaming of for so long.”
The warlords’ legacy is a calamity of a city. Rotting rubbish covers the streets; plastic bags hang from trees like blue and white flowers. Wrecked cars lie by the roadside, their rusted skeletons having long been picked clean of anything worthwhile. In the “old town”, virtually every building is heavily damaged; the crumbling former British embassy is occupied by squatters.
The clean-up has already begun. Most of the roadblocks that littered Mogadishu have disappeared. At the Bar Ubax crossroads, renowned for its permanent 30-minute traffic jam, the cars move smoothly through under the guidance of the ICU militia. In the first two days the Guardian was in the capital, there was not a single audible gunshot. That changed on Friday. At a largely peaceful rally in the capital in support of the ICU - which, in a widely hailed move, had just agreed to conducting dialogue with the fragile interim government - there was a sharp crack as a pistol was fired. Martin Adler, an awardwinning Swedish cameraman, staggered and fell to the ground. He had been shot at point-blank range and died shortly afterwards. The assailant was not caught; his motives remain unclear.
The assassination caused genuine shock in Mogadishu and served as a reminder that the ICU’s control is not absolute, and that lasting stability remains a long way off. On Saturday morning, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the 42-year-old chairman of the ICU, issued a personal apology and vowed that the peace process would not be harmed.
In an earlier interview with the Guardian, the softly spoken cleric had sought to allay fears that the courts wanted to turn the country into a strict Islamic state hostile to the west. “We just want to bring peace to the country,” he said. “We will not impose anything on the people if the people are against it, not even sharia law.”
But yesterday it was reported that Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a hardline cleric on the US terror list, would be the head of the ICU’s “parliament”, raising questions about the strength of Sheikh Sharif’s promise.
There is some nervousness in Mogadishu about the ICU’s motives, particularly among the youth. “We know that the courts do not like us watching football or romantic movies,” said Nasruddin Ali Dini, 21. “For now they are going slow, but that may soon change.”
But many others believe that the courts know that they cannot push too far against their people, who are more attached to clan than religion.
“Sharia law can be very positive for us, but only if mixed with our own culture,” said Ms Ga’al, the human rights officer. “If they try to make women wear black we will refuse. Believe me, another insurrection will come if there is anything nearly like the Taliban.”
Abdulkharim Hassan, 36, who owns a telephone shop, said he preferred not to think about what may happen as he enjoyed his new-found freedom. “Nobody knows about the future,” he said. “But we know about now, and it feels good.”
Omar Hassan, a lorry driver from Tooting, south London, got a phone call from his mother on June 7. “Come back home now,” she said. “It’s time.”
Home meant Mogadishu, the city he and his older sister left 14 years ago to seek asylum in Britain. “Time” referred to the ousting of the warlords two days before.
So Omar requested leave from his employer, Holmes Place, the fitness chain, and booked a flight to Dubai, and then on to Mogadishu. He phoned a hotel and asked the manager to arrange a pickup at the makeshift airport, two hours’ drive away. “I was expecting him to bring a lot of bodyguards, but he did not bring any. And there were none of the roadblocks that I had heard so much about,” said Mr Hassan, 28, of his arrival 10 days ago.
This was his first visit since he escaped during the chaos of 1992 - and the first time his mother had thought it safe enough to invite him back.
“My mama was so pleased to see me,” said Mr Hassan, whose father died in fighting shortly after he left. “And it felt so good to be back at last. From watching the news you would think the Taliban had taken over here. But from what I have seen and heard it is nothing like that. Islam has a bad reputation in the west, but you can see the Sharia courts have stopped the people’s suffering. If the international community gives Somalia support now, the peace will continue.”