| Publication |
2014.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
We first saw Somalia's Parliament building from a distance, at the top of a hill overlooking Mogadishu and behind the closed arm of a checkpoint barrier. Our meeting with the speaker of Parliament was scheduled for 9:30 that morning, but the Ugandan soldiers manning the checkpoint-part of the African Union Mission in Somalia-would not let us proceed. Our names are not on the list of people with meetings in the Parliament, they told us, and they could not allow people not on that list to pass. There followed a flurry of phone calls to the aides who had arranged the meeting. But the soldiers, while polite, remained firm. They had their orders. We went back through town and tried to reach a group of MPs at another government building, but were again turned away. We consoled ourselves by noting that the soldiers' commitment to following the protocol for access to government buildings was a promising sign of their discipline and improving security conditions, but decided that it was time to give up trying to make the meeting happen that day.
|