Inside the World's Worst Hellhole: Somalia, the Perfect Failed State

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Death is everywhere in Mogadishu. It can come in the form of an exploding donkey cart, a mortar shell falling silently out of a blue sky or the dry plopping sound of a sniper's bullet, the kind of noise that the victim never hears. Sometimes death comes as it came to the medical students, as a woman in a veil, who was in fact a man with a belt full of TNT. This is al-Qaida's new approach in the country. But death often comes in al-Shabab style, in the form of a teenager desperately clinging to a firing machine gun, a gun that is bigger than he is. A boy like Sherif Abdullah, a 12-year-old who is already an al-Shabab veteran.

He ran away from the militia with another boy several weeks ago, and now he sleeps in a building in front of Villa Somalia which AMISOM uses as a gun emplacement, in a room with other deserters. The buildings shake every few minutes with the force of the explosions. One of the boys is lying on a mattress, sick with malaria. The others are only sick with fear.

One might assume that Sheikh Sharif's military leaders would intend to use the deserters for propaganda purposes, but this isn't likely. They treat the deserters poorly and carelessly, leaving the boys to beg for food or a dollar. They could run away at any time. And boys like Sherif are easy to recognize in al-Shabab units.

'No One Can Hurt Me If I Have a Gun'

He is a typical boy, except that his face is very calm. Only his eyes twitch a little whenever the sound of the AMISOM guns booms through the hallways. This is his story: His teacher had loaded many of his students onto a bus, allegedly for an outing, but the bus took them to an al-Shabab training camp 35 kilometers (22 miles) from Mogadishu. Men there showed him how to jump down from a technical and take position, and how to take apart and reassemble an assault rifle.

They gave him the short version of the Kalashnikov, the one with the folding stock. He would only have stumbled over the larger version. But even the short one was "very heavy," he says. "I always had to be careful not to fall over." The al-Shabab leaders tried to put him somewhere where he wouldn't have to run far. On one occasion, the unit fought against Hizbul-Islam, which he didn't understand, because they were also Muslims. Nevertheless, he did as he was told and shot the Kalashnikov, which hammered relentlessly against his shoulder.

Sometimes he called out for his mother at night, but he insists that he wasn't really afraid. "They told me that no one can hurt me if I have a gun." The gun was strong, and the gun did the fighting. That was the way it was. He says that all he did was carry the gun to places where it was supposed to fight.

Is he a perpetrator or a victim?

Locked in a Basement

Ismail Khalif Abdullah lives next to a forward position of government troops. He is 18, and he knows what will happen if al-Shabab wins everywhere. He is familiar with the Islamists' pressure tactics when it comes to recruiting fighters. Al-Shabab men in his district in Mogadishu wanted to recruit him and his friend. He turned them down. Then they wanted to use a room in his house. He turned them down again. They returned a short time later, bringing several people with them. They shouted that he was a thief and had stolen mobile phones.

They locked him into the basement of a house, where they left him for several days without food or water. He doesn't remember how long it lasted, but he does remember the day in June of last year when they suddenly pulled him out into broad daylight.

They had rounded up people from the neighborhood. Although he felt unwell, he recognized a few faces in the bright sunlight, friends and neighbors. But what good are friends in a war in which there are only the survivors and the dead?

According to the rules of the Koran, he and the other boy would now be punished for stealing, one of the al-Shabab group leaders announced. Four men threw each boy to the ground, and then a man approached Ismail with a large, jagged knife.

'All They Can Do Now Is Shoot Me'

Jagged edges are good, because they can make a knife work like a saw. When the man raised the knife over Ismail's right hand, the boy fainted. He claims that this is maybe one reason why the al-Shabab members starve their victims for a few days. Because he was unconscious, he didn't notice that they also sawed off his left foot. Right hand, left foot -- al-Shabab's standard punishment.

He has difficulty lighting cigarettes, partly because the al-Shabab man made such a poor job of the amputation that his arm stump is now relatively pointed. But fear, says Ismail, is something he no longer feels. "All they can do now is shoot me. I don't care."

Mukhtar Ainashe is standing on a balcony at the Villa Somalia, looking out across the once-enchanting old section of Mogadishu, down to the Indian Ocean. It isn't a safe place to stand. He could be spotted there and shot. It would be a long shot, but doable.

Ainashe ought to be afraid. But perhaps he has already been here too long for that.

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• Part 1: Somalia, the Perfect Failed State
• Part 2: A Senseless Civil War
• Part 3: 'Darfur Is a Paradise Compared to Mogadishu'
• Part 4: The Many Ways to Die in Mogadishu