Description
In 1998, South Mogadishu is full of gunmen. As we see in this film made for the BBC, it’s a tense, violent place where the high velocity rifle is the only law. An AK-47 is a licence to kill and steal. The militiamen are subject to a kind of discipline, but it’s the discipline of the gun. Just about everything in the south of the city has been trashed. The days when Somalia was connected to the real world are just a memory: a distant dream. But as we see, in the north of the city the shopkeepers do a great deal better. Commercial life flourishes. There’s no need to have a gun or a group of bodyguards to protect your business here. There’s real life in the streets; it’s possible to sit out and enjoy yourself, in a way you couldn’t possibly do in the south of the city. There’s one very simple reason why life should be easier here than it is in South Mogadishu; though it isn’t the kind of thing that most people in western society might like. It’s because in 1996 North Mogadishu introduced Islamic sharia law. Violent crime here is punished ferociously. For stealing property worth 2 dollars – your hand is cut off. For armed robbery you lose a foot as well.
The man responsible for setting up the Sharia courts is Shaikh Alidheri: a clever and ambitious cleric. We film in his court where he’s hearing the case against a woman called Sadia, who’s accused of stealing a dress worth seven dollars from one of her friends. Fortunately she doesn’t have her hand cut off. Shaikh Alidheri’s success in curbing violence and gangsterism shows how attractive fundamentalist Islam can be in countries undergoing major upheavals. We in the West may not like it; but our attempts to impose peace on Somalia were a disaster. This works.