Architecture tells of the city's Arabic and Italian colonial past A visit to Mogadishu will make you seriously question your sense of reality. Even now, hotel guests dine on the finest fresh lobster and crab you could hope to taste. But you eat in a city which has cracked under the weight of nine years of civil war. Its buildings are blasted and mortared. Scrub bush grows out of broken roofs and empty windows, and the sand of the desert which has crept back into town piles up against walls and on street corners.
Rubbish lines the roads, and shredded plastic bags hang from every twig.
A quick tour will take you past the building that was once a technical college, the ruin that was the university. Rival warlords have controlled the country since civil war broke out in 1991. There is no central government, no civic institutions - and no taxes to pay. At one end of Mogadishu society, businesspeople do more than justice to the Somali reputation for commercial acumen. In the most freewheeling market in the world, they buy gold from the Middle East, trade everything from electronics to weapons, and annoy neighbouring countries by sending cheaper, duty-free items across the border.