http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/24/world ... ia.html?hpThe best example of that backlash is already happening in Medina, a neighborhood a few miles from the center of Mogadishu. Just past the airport, it is a place of sandy streets and once beautiful homes now chewed up by gunfire and mold.
Shabab fighters, in their trademark green jumpsuits and checkered scarves, used to control parts of Medina. But in the last year or so the neighborhood, dominated by a single clan, banded together to drive them out.
Young men joined the local militia. Old men raised money for guns. Women and girls hauled ice, rice and milk to the front lines and braved gunfire to evacuate the casualties.
“We hate the Shabab,” said one mother, Amina Abdullahi Mohamed. “They misled our youth.”
Medina is now one of Mogadishu’s safest areas, and while still not particularly safe, an unmistakable beat of life has returned.
There has not been a suicide attack for months. The markets are packed, protected by baby-faced militiamen in polo shirts and Kalashnikov rifles over their shoulders. Beat-up old minibuses cruise the streets, and there is even something close to traffic. A tight clan network keeps a watchful eye and last month, a teacher of the Koran recruiting children for the Shabab was promptly arrested.
Medina is a picture of Somalia’s past and possibly its looming future. Clan militias carved this country into fiefs in the 1990s, which lasted until 2006, when an Islamist alliance, which included the Shabab, took over and held most of Somalia relatively peacefully. The Ethiopian military then invaded, sparking an intense guerrilla war, with the Shabab spearheading the resistance.
Muse Suudi is in Medina, the guy surely feels safe in that place.