Andrew Harding: Mogadishu is a “chameleon-like city”

Andrew Harding, the BBC’s Paris correspondent, describes Mogadishu as a “chameleon-like city”. He’s referring to the fact that there’s something elusive about it that means it escapes easy definition for those who are more familiar with it. Popular depictions of the city tend to refer to the conditions which have defined it since Somalia fell into a ruinous civil war at the beginning of the 1990s when Siad Barre’s military regime fell. Siad Barre, the former military dictator, vowed that if anyone tried to force him out of the city, he would “take the whole country along with me to the land of ruin.” The rest of the country has fared generally better than the capital though. The city became the stage on which competing warlords fought for supremacy and later divided what remained of it between themselves. Mogadishu then became a symbol of what Somalis typically meant when they referred to the 1990s as burburka or the destruction in English; but it was also the place where the worst of the civil war was seen.

The failed UN-led US intervention, and the fighting between US troops and Farah Aideed’s clan militiamen, cemented the association Mogadishu had with the problem of violence. That image slipped into popular culture through films like Black Hawk Down, and even a later episode of South Park, in which Eric Cartman leads his friends to Mogadishu to become pirates. Mogadishu has never had a problem with piracy, but for the average viewer, that probably seemed like the sort of thing that was plausible there. After all, the city became, in the words of the former New York Times bureau chief for east Africa, Jeffrey Gettleman, “most dangerous place in the world”. 

Harding travelled to Mogadishu in the early 2000s and says those perceptions are not entirely wrong. Mogadishu can be a very dangerous place, and that remains the case to this day for its residents, with roadblocks and securitised, armed police checkpoints dotted across the city. Life remains on edge at the possibility of al-Shabaab attacks. But those perceptions are “not everything. Nowhere near everything,” Harding tells Geeska. 

In his book, The Mayor of Mogadishu, Harding peels back some of these layers and complicates that narrative through the stories of some of the city’s most colourful personalities, including the former mayor, Mohamed Nur – known as “Tarzan” – who took on the forbidding task of rebuilding the city in the early 2010s. “He was outspoken, interesting and a risk-taker,” Harding says, adding that he was open, candid and had an “great story to tell”.

Nostalgia is an important part of the book, as the characters Harding features recall Mogadishu’s heyday from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 1972 visit to the dazzling cinemas, theatres, bustling markets and beaches. “I met so many older Somalis, particularly in London, who would get this faraway look in their eyes when they started talking about the Mogadishu they once knew,” Harding says. He also spends a great deal of the book recalling the vicissitudes that have shaped the city – from independence to the 1969 military coup, the 1977 war, and the eventual collapse of the state in 1990. But he also brings the story to the modern era, giving vivid descriptions of Mogadishu today and the challenges it still faces as it very slowly tries to emerge from an ongoing civil war.

Faisal Ali: You note, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, that he could have essentially visited any city in Africa but chose Mogadishu in 1972. I suppose you could also have written about any other city, including larger, wealthier, or potentially more impactful places like Addis Ababa, Cairo or Accra. What was it about Mogadishu that appealed to you so much that you felt compelled to tell its story?

Andrew Harding: It’s such an extreme, chameleon-like city. And I’ve been lucky to have seen so many sides to it. First, there was the shock and fear of driving through the ruins back in 2000, in an armed convoy of clan militiamen. Then there were those front-line trenches and tunnels during the al-Shabaab era. And then, slowly, I began to discover the buried treasure – the cinemas, the architecture, the beauty of the old city, obscured by decades of war.

FA: Can you talk to us a bit about how you crafted this story? It seems as though numerous small jigsaw pieces needed to be found and carefully arranged for such a strong and coherent narrative to emerge. 

AH: It was my first book, so I suppose I was working things out! I decided to start with the most dramatic episode, and then got hooked on so many different stories, but I tried to tie them together chronologically, using some of my own experiences too.

FA: Mogadishu is a city better known for many negative reasons – fighting, warlords, hunger, terror, and so on. When you initially set out, was it with the aim of correcting or challenging that perception? Or were you more generally interested in what had happened there?  

AH: Tricky. Those perceptions aren’t wrong. But they’re not everything. Nowhere near everything. And in the process of researching the book, I just got swept away by the stories of what Mogadishu had once been – such a beautiful, cultured place. Of what has been lost. And very quickly, I became determined to make sure the book would play a role – a small role – in challenging the dominant Black Hawk Down image of the city.

FA: During your research and interviews for the book, you obviously encountered many people who shared their personal stories. Were there any moments or encounters that deeply affected you while you were preparing the book? 

AH: What springs to mind are actually my experiences promoting the book. I came to launch it at the 2016 Mogadishu Book Fair and was just blown away by the enthusiasm and support I received there. There were hundreds of young Somalis, just so delighted to see a foreigner (I think I was the only one there that day – the security was dicey that whole week) coming to share the experience with them. And visiting the Somali community in Minnesota (during a snowstorm) was great too.

FA: You chose Mohamed Farah (Tarzan) as the central character in your story about the city. Why did you opt for him as a protagonist, rather than telling the city’s story in a more general sense – the kind of approach that’s quite popular these days? 

AH: I got to know Tarzan a little soon after he arrived in Mogadishu as mayor. I enjoyed his company. He was outspoken, interesting and a risk-taker. And he had a great story to tell. Most politicians are much more guarded. I thought his life would provide a good structure for a book that tried to capture not just Somalia’s modern challenges, but where it had come from. 

FA: Nostalgia is a key theme in this book. Many of the people who spoke to you about Mogadishu reflected longingly on the city’s recent past. What does this melancholic nostalgia tell us about how they view life in the city today? 

AH: Ah, the nostalgia! I met so many older Somalis, particularly in London, who would get this faraway look in their eyes when they started talking about the Mogadishu they once knew. And then they’d start to argue about short skirts, coffee, religion, cinema – and everything that has changed since then. I think of a line from the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats: “Man is in love and loves what vanishes. What more is there to say?” 

FA: You’ve worked in many cities around the world as a broadcast journalist. I’m curious – is there another city you’ve encountered whose story resonated in any way with what you found during your research for this book on the Somali capital? 

AH: I’ve known other cities better. Places like Grozny that have suffered far worse destruction, and boisterous places like Johannesburg that are often unfairly maligned. And gorgeous places that deserve so much better – like Goma in the DRC. It’s hard, as a white guy who doesn’t speak the language, to hang out safely in Mogadishu for as long as the city deserves. But it’s a bewitching place, nonetheless.