Five years later: Mogadishu little changed

[Shinbir Majabe]

 

When Al Jazeera English first reported from Mogadishu in November 2006, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was in control of the capital and most parts of southern Somalia.

 

A month later, Ethiopian troops backed by the US invaded the country, removing the ICU, and replacing it with the Transitional Federal Government.

 

In 2009, the al-Shabaab armed group rose from the ashes of the ICU to eventually control much of the capital and other parts of the country.

 

In August, al-Shabab said it was withdrawing its fighters from Mogadishu, in what it described as a tactical move.

 

Nazanine Moshiri revisited Mogadishu five years after Al Jazeera’s launch and found that the situation in the famine-ridden country is little changed.