Inside Villa Somalia: 72 hours with the president promising to rebuild his broken country

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud says Somalia’s factions can find peace, political Islam need not be violent and democracy can grow. Here’s his exclusive interview with the Observer The drive from Mogadishu airport to the presidential home at Villa Somalia should take about 15 minutes. It rarely does. Every few hundred metres there is a police roadblock. Nothing can be left to chance: lethal explosions at checkpoints are commonplace. To avoid security breaches, nobody except Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the recently re-elected president, and a few aides, know about the Observer’s visit. We arrive in a bulletproof Hilux behind a Jeep carrying seven soldiers and a mounted machine gun, along a road lined by shipping containers padded with sandbags and walls topped with razor wire. It is eerily quiet. Continue reading...
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