Kismayo: A City of Hope Amidst Political Tensions

I travelled to Kismayo on Friday, 23 May. The trip was part of a series of roundtable discussions that Somali Public Agenda (SPA) and Puntland Development Research Center (PDRC) were convening to explore options for compromise on FGS-FMS relations, constitutional review, and elections.

As passengers entered the airline gate in Mogadishu, a lady was asking people for their seat numbers. I told her that it was great to see local flights actually seating passengers according to their assigned seats. I was supposed to sit in the second row, but all the seats in that row were already occupied. A woman who had taken a seat that wasn’t hers claimed she had lost her boarding pass and refused to vacate the seat. She told me to find another seat elsewhere.

I assumed the airline crew would resolve the situation. I thought that if I sat in another seat, I could be asked to move. I was wrong. Three of us ended up standing while all seats were occupied; the tickets and boarding pass they sold were more than the available seats. I asked the airline staff why they bothered asking about seat numbers if they weren’t going to enforce them. They said they would find a solution. They then began asking passengers with younger siblings to vacate their seats and hold teenagers and children on their laps, with a promise to reimburse the ticket fees. Eventually, we flew to Kismayo.

I anticipated that we would encounter the Jubaland security and intelligence forces since we were planning to convene a dialogue on political issues. When we landed in Kismayo, we were directed to an office where we were seated and asked for our ID cards and the purpose of our visit. An officer took notes and updated his supervisor, who arrived a few minutes later. They already had prior information about our trip, as my PDRC colleague had coordinated with the administration. We were asked to fill out standard forms, which even included clan and sub-clan information, and they took our photos. The process took more than 30 minutes before we were allowed to get into the car waiting outside. The security officers informed us that this is the standard procedure for anyone arriving in Kismayo. The process was not new to me, as I had travelled to Kismayo several times before, though I used to go through the section for ordinary citizens. The tight screening might have been influenced by the strained relationship between Kismayo and Mogadishu.

Despite the hiccups on the plane and at Kismayo Airport (Sayid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan International Airport), I witnessed promising developments in the city. I had the privilege of being accompanied by the mayor of Kismayo Omar Abdullahi Mohamed (Faraweyne), who gave us a tour of the town and ongoing infrastructure projects, particularly the construction of tarmac roads and sewage systems. I saw in Kismayo the best sewage system I’ve seen anywhere in Somalia. The city and its administration are benefiting from the investments and funding of the Nagaad Project, formerly known as the Somalia Urban Resilience Project. The mayor showed us the sewage system that collects waste and rain water from the town and discharges it into the sea. The local government demolished buildings to reconstruct the roads and sewage systems. The work was ongoing as we toured the town.