Abdifatah Barawani

In the schools that Somaliland’s post-civil-war generation remembers, the war that had devastated much of the territory’s major cities had not entirely left the classroom. Its marks remained on blackboards and damaged doors. Chairs were scarce enough that some of us sat on empty milk cans and bricks. The buildings in which we learned seemed themselves to be lessons in what had happened. This was Somaliland in the mid-to-late 1990s. Peace did not return in a grand ceremony.

Late on Sept. 3, explosions hit the Doolow residence of Mahad Abdirahman Aden, better known as Shub, a former commander of Somalia’s Custodial Corps, in an incident that has generated conflicting accounts over its cause and who was responsible. Local media reported a number of casualties among people at the residence, though accounts differed and no official death toll has been confirmed. The circumstances of the explosions and the number of casualties have not been independently verified.

In the early 2000s up until 2012, when Somali piracy was at its peak, counter-piracy forces and initiatives were established through cooperation between regional states and external countries with strategic interests in the region. These efforts aimed to deter the increase and strengthening of armed groups targeting maritime vessels.