Bulldozers at dawn

The bulldozers arrived before sunrise. At first, Asli Kheire Mohamed assumed the noise was coming from a nearby main road, where trucks and construction vehicles often thundered through before dawn. Then came shouting. By the time she stepped outside, men were already climbing onto the roof of her house

“I counted around twenty of them,” she recalled later. “When we asked what was happening, they said: “We will demolish this place.”

For forty years, Asli’s family had lived there, in a cluster of homes and roadside businesses that had gradually become part of the city’s growing neighborhoods. The compound included small shops and a clinic. The family possessed documents they believed proved ownership of the land. They paid taxes. Local authorities had long known who lived there.

None of it stopped the demolition. Asli told Geeska she tried to show officials the documents while the operation unfolded around her. The response, she recalls, never changed. “They kept repeating it,”

Then the threats began. According to her account, armed men warned that her son “would be shot dead” if he stayed. The family fled before they could retrieve their belongings. Clothes, furniture, documents, cooking utensils -- the accumulated contents of four decades -- were left inside as bulldozers pushed through the compound.

“I couldn’t take anything,” Asli told Geeska in a weary voice filled with grief and despair. “We ran to save our lives.”

Across Mogadishu, scenes like this have become increasingly common. For months, Somalia’s capital has been gripped by a wave of demolitions and mass evictions that has displaced thousands of residents from neighborhoods scattered across the city. Entire compounds have been flattened within hours. Families say they have been forced from homes they lived in for decades. In many cases, residents insist they possessed legal documents, paid taxes to local authorities, and received no formal warning before bulldozers arrived.

The federal government says the campaign is part of city-wide camping of “reclaiming public land.” They describe the demolitions as part of a broader effort to reclaim public land illegally occupied during decades of state collapse and conflict. But critics see it differently -- an industrial scale “land grabbing.”

Opposition leaders, civil society groups, and displaced residents have accused the government of carrying out land seizures under the guise of recovering public land. The opposition has been accusing the government of large-scale land grabbing for more than a year, alleging that the campaign disproportionately targets vulnerable communities. Some critics also claim that reclaimed properties are later transferred to businesspeople linked to politically connected figures. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, Somalia’s former president and current opposition leader, has publicly accused the government of engaging in what he described as “illegal land grabbing.”

The issue of land in Mogadishu has haunted Somalia for over two decades now. When the Somali state collapsed in 1991, formal land registration systems collapsed with it. Government archives disappeared. Competing authorities issued conflicting ownership papers. Families fled violence and occupied abandoned properties. Militias seized strategic areas. Informal settlements spread rapidly across the capital as hundreds of thousands of displaced people searched for shelter in a city without functioning institutions.

Some residents possess documents issued by previous governments. Others rely on agreements made by district administrations, clan authorities, or private brokers. In many neighborhoods, ownership exists through social recognition rather than enforceable legal systems. A family may live on the same property for thirty years and still remain vulnerable if political power shifts around them.

As Mogadishu has grown in recent years, fueled by returning diaspora investment, rapid construction, and rising land values, those unresolved disputes have become increasingly explosive.

Land is now among the city’s most valuable assets. New apartment blocks rise beside settlements of displaced families. Luxury developments appear along roads that once served as frontlines during the civil war. Investors compete for strategically located properties across districts whose legal status remains ambiguous.

Local residents told Geeska that demolition campaigns are increasingly viewed as struggles to secure land for investment, driven by the rapid expansion of high-rise developments across the city.

In August last year, the issue became deeply contentious when three former Somalia presidents -- Abdiqasim Salad Hassan, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, and Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo -- released a joint statement condemning the land evictions.

In their statement, the former leaders warned against what they described as the “illegal seizure” of public land, alleging that the sale of these properties violates the constitution and laws governing state asset management. They urged investors and businesspeople not to be deceived into purchasing what they called “plundered public land,” stressing that any acquisitions made outside legal frameworks could face legal challenges.

The former presidents also called on the government to “provide resettlement for the displaced people” and insisted that “the revenue generated from the sale of the land must be deposited into the Government’s Central Treasury.”

The demolitions have since become deeply entangled with the broader crises confronting the country. The current government has undertaken a two-year-long constitutional amendment process, which culminated in a new constitution replacing the provisional one. However, the new constitution remains deeply divisive. Major opposition blocs and two federal member states have rejected it. It has also contributed to the current stalemate over the electoral roadmap.

President Mahmoud declared that, under the new constitution, his term will end in 2027, effectively granting himself a one-year extension. The opposition and two federal member states rejected the extension, eventually leading to the collapse of negotiations between the federal government and opposition groups.

As a result of these overlapping crises, opposition groups have repeatedly organized demonstrations in Mogadishu, demanding an end to the evictions. Several planned protests were later blocked or dispersed by security forces. Opposition leaders accused the government of using state security institutions to suppress peaceful protests. As these crises unfold, displaced residents often find themselves trapped between the vulnerability of displacement and the hope of returning home.

For people like Salad Abdi Sheikh Hirsi, the demolitions felt like military operations. He remembers the morning his family’s property was destroyed. “It started before sunrise,” Salad told Geeska.

When he arrived at the compound, men were already stripping iron sheets from rooftops while bulldozers moved below, crushing walls and bulldozing the entire house.

“When I tried to approach them, they pointed weapons at me and told me not to come forward,” he said.

Like Asli, Salad says residents had no opportunity to remove their possessions. Furniture, business supplies, family records, and household items remained inside as buildings collapsed around them.

The compound included more than homes. According to Salad, there was also a warehouse, a shop, and a small clinic where staff members and injured patients were present when the demolition began.

Even after the structures were flattened, he says, the operation continued. Workers allegedly returned the following day to search through the debris before excavators cleared away rubble and sealed off the land entirely.

What unsettled residents most, he said, was the absence of any formal process beforehand. “No warning. Nothing.”

Afterward, family members repeatedly approached district authorities and police officials seeking explanations. Sometimes they found no officials available. Other times, Salad says, authorities denied responsibility altogether.

Then came a statement he says he still remembers clearly. “They told us: ‘We are soldiers under orders. We will demolish this place, and there is no one for whom we will stop the operation.’”

Human rights advocates, including the Coalition of Human Rights Defenders, a human rights advocacy group, warn that the crisis risks triggering a new wave of urban displacement in a city already grappling with conflict, drought, poverty, and insecurity. “The destruction of shelters without the provision of alternative housing has created a humanitarian emergency, exposing affected communities to extreme hardship, protection risks, and further displacement,” the group said.

So far, however, many residents say basic protections remain absent. Instead, uncertainty has spread across entire neighborhoods. Local residents now speak quietly about rumors of upcoming demolitions. Some families sleep lightly, worried that bulldozers could arrive before dawn. Others rush to verify ownership documents issued years earlier by authorities whose legal standing may no longer hold.

For decades, Mogadishu existed as an allegorical city -- an analogy for lawlessness to many who viewed Somalia as a failed state, an embodiment of what institutional failure looks like. In recent years, however, it has become a city defined by recovery: glass-fronted buildings, returning investors, paved roads, a booming real estate sector, new businesses, and promises of renewal after years of collapse. But beneath this development, a progress increasingly boasted about by the current administration, are neighborhoods that have been destroyed and people who have been forcibly evicted from their homes.

For displaced families like Asli and Salad, their livelihoods have been shattered in a matter of hours. Their homes were demolished, leaving them with nowhere to return and rendering them homeless, with no clear prospect of resettlement.

• We contacted the relevant authorities for comment regarding allegations made by residents and opposition figures, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.