Surviving a suicide bombing
Somali-canadian escapes death and grieves for friends and colleagues who were less fortunate
Ahmed Abdisalam Adan is a survivor, and despite nearly dying in a suicide bombing that killed two of his friends, the Somali-born Canadian considers himself lucky.
“I’m alive,” he says in his first interview since the May 1 attack in central Somalia, his red and watery eyes the only visible reminder of the injuries he suffered when shrapnel tore through his body. “I’m not surprised it happened. I wasn’t expecting it, but I wasn’t surprised.
“At some point,” he says, “you don’t look for the logic; you just thank God you’re alive.”
This has been the reality for years for those on the front lines in Somalia — a country that may finally be on the road to recovery with last week’s election of a new president after two decades of chaos, corruption, conflict and internationally appointed governments that failed to bring peace.
Adan, a former journalist who cofounded the media company HornAfrik, was a member of Somalia’s transitional parliament when he was targeted in the bombing. His delegation was visiting the region of Dhusamareb when a suicide bomber rushed toward them, killing seven, including two MPs.
Al Shabab, the Al Qaeda-affiliated group that claimed responsibility, is at its weakest since its rise to power in 2007. But what the organization lacks in support or territory hasn’t stopped its targeted assassinations of political leaders and journalists, or the deaths of civilians killed in large-scale bombings.
“It’s difficult to guard yourself against someone who wants to die,” says Adan. “This is the phenomenon of this war.
“And at the end of the day this is the tragedy of this; young boys are killing themselves without knowing why, without understanding, without planning it themselves.”
With burning metal embedded in his stomach and head, Adan was airlifted to neighbouring Ethiopia for emergency surgery, then transported to Washington and finally to Toronto, where he is undergoing treatment at Sunnybrook Hospital for lingering ear and eye injuries.
He is pragmatic and positive about Somalia’s future. The only dark moments come when he thinks about the past and is overwhelmed by the loss of friends and colleagues.
“They have killed so many good people . . . who were trying to do something positive for the country,” he says. “That is more painful than what I went through.”
Beside Adan at the Somali restaurant in north Toronto where we talked this week is his wife, Falastine Iman, a witness to one of the most agonizing memories he has.
It was August 2007 and Adan was briefly back in Ottawa while Iman, also a journalist, was in Mogadishu. She called him to tell him the tragic news: Mahad Ahmed Elmi, a popular HornAfrik radio host, had been shot to death on his way to work.
“I had convinced Elmi to come from South Africa to take over the (daily morning talk) show,” says Adan. The death still weighs on his conscience, as do the murders of
“At some point you don’t look for logic; you just thank God you’re alive.” AHMED ABDISALAM ADAN ON THE BLAST THAT KILLED 7
other journalists he inspired, who then died reporting. Elmi’s funeral was held on the same day he was killed. Iman talked by phone with her husband from the grave before leaving the site in the back seat of a Land Cruiser carrying two other journalists: Adan’s friend and HornAfrik co-founder Ali Sharmarke, and Reuters’ photojournalist Sahal Abdulle. Barely 10 minutes later, Adan’s phone in Ottawa rang again. “She said, ‘Ali is dead,’ ” Adan recalled. Al Shabab was then in its infancy and a popular movement fighting against Ethiopian troops who had rolled across Somalia’s borders in December 2006. The transitional government of the day had blood on its hands, too, and Ethiopian troops stood accused of human-rights violations. HornAfrik’s unbiased reporting was disliked, and it was never discovered who had planted the explosive device that detonated under Sharmarke’s seat. On the night Sharmarke was killed, Adan recalled the last words of his friend in an interview with the Star. “I’m just worried about the young reporters,” Sharmarke had told Adan. “The risk is getting so great.” When he later chose to become a politician, Adan knew he would continue to face those risks. In May, it was Iman’s turn to cling to the phone and feel helpless half a world away. She is now based in Washington as a reporter for Voice of America, and looking after the couple’s two young children. She heard about the suicide bombing from an editor. “As soon as he said there was an explosion, I knew it was Ahmed,” she said. ” Eventually someone in the region got the names of the victims and told Iman her husband was injured but alive. Soon after, she was on a flight to Addis Ababa to be by her husband’s side. Adan says that despite all he has watched his homeland go through, he has high hopes for the new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who survived an assassination attempt just two days after being named president. Adan knows him personally. In 2002, he was the executive director of the Centre for Research and Dialogue when Mohamud worked as a field researcher for post-conflict reconstruction.
“It wasn’t even 24 hours later and there was a party here,” he says, sweeping his hand around the Istar Restaurant, where banners congratulating the president still hang.
“That wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago . . . or even 10 years ago. We’re not looking at clan, or his background or connections; people here were celebrating hope.” Mohamud had risen above Somalia’s notorious corruption, getting the vote of the majority of parliamentarians without buying votes, using intimidation, or relying solely on clan politics, which filled the void in the past two decades without a functioning government.
“The concern is that he will be overwhelmed by the problems. I look to the international community and say, ‘Will they wait, or will they take the risk and work with the Somali people?’ ” says Adan.
‘This means doing something on the ground. . . . The Shabab has been beaten militarily, but now you need the political track,” he says.
“It’s much more expensive and long-term: development, rehabilitation, institution-building, training, paying salaries. This is where the help is needed.”