Inside the fight for Somalia's future
Training the army that will either stabilize the country, or fail it. Tristan McConnell Somali National Army troops are trained by European Union soldiers in Jazeera, Mogadishu. (Tristan McConnell/GlobalPost) QORYOOLEY, Somalia — In the end, it wasn’t clan militias or Islamic militants but a government soldier who killed Dr. Osman. Over his 54 years, the pharmacist had earned a reputation for fair dealing in business, kindness among friends, and piety in the mosque. A family man, he had survived Somalia’s clan wars and then kept his head down when the Islamic militants known as Al Shabaab overran his hometown in southern Somalia five years ago. A follower of a softer, mystical branch of Islam, he obeyed the ultraconservative occupiers’ harsh new rules — don’t smoke, don’t chew khat, pay the Islamic tax, go to the mosque five times a day without fail — and carried on. In February of this ye...