Thirty, forty years, and no sign of flagging! A civil war, a guerilla war among warlords, a war against the Islamic radicals of al-Shabaab. Somalia knows no respite. Mogadishu remains, to widespread indifference, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Without an armed guard, it is practically impossible to reach it and get around. And so there is no one to bear witness to the Somali calvary, to the radicalization consuming Africa, or to the worrisome influence of Turkey and China.
Bernard-Henri Lévy with some of the « cent mentors » of Bancroft, the private American agency financed by the State Department which trains AMISOM’s elite commandos and manages this base straight out of a Graham Greene or Gérard de Villiers novel.
Attending the preparation of an intervention against the Islamist militias.
In Mogadishu.
With Gilles Hertzog (right) et Bancroft’s soldiers.
With a unit of Amisom (African Union mission in Somalia led by Ugandan and Burundian officers) pushing back the Shebab jihadists.
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Richard Rouget, chef de Bancroft, et ses hommes.
Xooga Hospital, Mogadiscio.
Bernard-Henri Lévy at Xooga Hospital, where his fixer gave him an appointment upon his arrival in Mogadishu.
A makeshift hospital in Mogadishu.
Meeting the sick in what remains of the hospital in Mogadishu.