Good Riddance to Al-Shabab (Newsweek)
Published in Newsweek magazine - March 2012
The previous occupants of the crumbling palace left its interior covered with multicolored chalk drawings and painted graffiti. The childishly rendered pictures give the place a kind of schoolroom look. That is, except for the subject matter: AK-47s and tanks spewing bullets and flames; exploding airplanes; cellphones, complete with painstakingly detailed buttons, the detonators of choice for the roadside bombs that are used by the Islamist radicals of Al-Shabab. Guiding us through Somalia’s onetime presidential palace in Baidoa, Capt. Mahamoud Yissak seems almost regretful for the fighters, who mostly fled when the Ethiopian Army captured the city. “They’re only teenagers,” the Ethiopian officer says. “They think only about jihad.”
