It’s wonderful news that the two journalists kidnapped last year in Mogadishu have been freed today after 15 months. The dribs and drabs of news coming out of Somalia have at times suggested Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan might not survive. Both had been desperately ill and rumours circulated constantly that, with little prospect of a ransom, their kidnappers might simply decide to shoot the pair and call it a day. There are other horror stories that may or may not be confirmed in the days ahead.

But for now the main thing is that after $1m was reportedly paid for their release, the two are free and back at the Sahafi hotel – ironically the scene of another kidnapping this year.

Good news for both, although I dread to think what emotional and physical scars the two will carry with them for the rest of their lives. Now I just pray that no-one else ends up in the same situation. The press pack in Nairobi – of which I was until recently a part – always treated Mogadishu with the utmost respect. We only went if we knew we could do it safely. Too often though we were surprised by the attitude of others parachuting in. Veterans of Baghdad and Kabul assumed they’d seen it all. They hadn’t. Mogadishu may as well be on another planet. Here are some things to think about and some lessons to learn:

1. Money talks in Somalia – whatever you think about the ethics of paying money to gunmen, this is the only way to get people out
2. Diplomats have few links on the ground – negotiations apparently went nowhere for months as clueless Australian and Canadian officials dealt with numerous intermediaries with no connection to the hostage takers
3. Mogadishu is dangerous – no-one has control. There are no green zones or security consultants to hide behind. Don’t trust anyone you are paying. All kidnappings involve someone on the inside
4. Journalists are targets – no-one is going to believe any “I’m here to tell your side of the story” nonsense
5. Mogadishu is dangerous – if your fixer says to you, “They are saying bad things,” then leave. Don’t stay for one more snap
6. Everyone knows everything and everyone knows nothing – one colleague arrived in Somalia a few years back to learn that his arrival was the second item on the radio news. At the same time, if people want to disappear you, they can. Easily
7. Mogadishu is dangerous – bloody dangerous. People get killed even when it is “safe”

There are ways of operating in Mogadishu. There are good fixers and stringers who can help. There is a wealth of information and advice from experts in Nairobi.  But if you don’t bother asking around and taking the temperature then you only have yourself to blame. Sometimes – but not always – the place is simply best avoided. No story is worth your life.

UPDATE ***

Here’s what Amanda Lindhout has to say about her ordeal:

“My day was sitting on a corner on the floor in a room 24 hours a day for the last 15 months,” she said.

“There were times that I was beaten, that I was tortured. It was an extremely, extremely difficult situation.”

One of the first things that puzzled me about Darfur was why the West cared about what was happening in Sudan’s western region, when it gave such little attention to conflicts in Somalia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and others that I’ve forgotten about. Now it seems that Darfur is going the way of those other wars. My regular Google Trends search shows that news outlets (in the lower of the two graphs) are now paying more attention to Somalia – predominantly its pirates – than Darfur, represented by the blue line which has now slipped beneath that of Congo too. Its last spike came in March, when President Bashir was indicted by the ICC and responded by expelling 13 aid agencies.

Now it is in danger of becoming just another forgotten crisis. Its pulling power was always based on its status as the first genocide of the 21st century – a dubious claim and one that is clearly no longer true. The outgoing AU-UN hybrid force commander has declared the war is over, and the statistics provided by Alex de Waal at Making Sense of Darfur have long suggested that simmering tribal conflicts – over land or livestock – are the biggest cause of violent death. In his latest update, he reports 67 violent deaths during the month of October, the biggest contributor being clashes between the Zaghawa and Birgid around Muhajiriya (although these are the aftershocks of fighting earlier this year, part of the higher-level rebels versus government conflict).

The question now, given that the humanitarian crisis continues, is what next for advocates? There’s no longer a genocide button to push. How do we keep people interested in just another African disaster?

I spent five years as a stringer for various British, American and Irish news organisations in Africa. I built my portfolio from scratch until I was the first port of call for up to a dozen newspapers and radio stations. The money was good, the hours flexible enough for the occasional 18 holes in mid-morning and the work took me from my base in Nairobi to Liberia, Botswana and Mozambique – as well as across my home turf of East Africa and The Horn.

Foreign bureaux are shrinking. The days of the linen-suited staff foreign correspondent are gone. That’s sad and probably means foreign coverage is getting patchier. But it means there are more opportunities for motivated, well-organised and professional stringers – reporters who file to multiple outlets.

Now I’m starting again in Jerusalem, and as I wait for the phone to start ringing I’ve been thinking back to the lessons learned over the past five years. So here’s how to make it as a stringer:

1. Learn it – you’ve been an accounts manager in a small stationery firm in Slough and fancy a change? This isn’t going to work for you. Get proper experience at a real news organisation. Learn how print, radio or TV news works. Learn how to pitch a story. Learn how to write it, record it, file it. Learn how editors think. You don’t want to be learning on the job when the job is in 50C heat of the Danakil Depression with a deadline and gunmen looming
2. Bust it – be on call all day and all night. Never say no. Don’t turn your phone off. Somone wants a story, then give it to them. They have to call someone else because you have a nice lie on the fifth fairway and they won’t bother interrupting you next time. I’ve sat on newsdesks where editors have rolled their eyes at the prospect of calling an unrealiable, awkward or alcoholic stringer. Be Mr Available
3. Read it - local papers are dull: full of boring council meetings and interminable political wrangles. But if you’re not reading them you’ll never spot the nib that says a British man has been found dead in a hotel room or the second sentence that happens to mention that police are questioning two women. Lots of stringers don’t bother. Idiots
4. Meet it – stories come from contacts, right? Get out and about. So the conference sounds dull, or the activist comes across as a nutter? You never know when they might come in useful. What else are you doing? Probably not much in those first few weeks. And make friends with the snappers and the wire guys while you’re at it. They know what’s happening long before you do
5. Blog it – chances are you’ll have time on your hands when you’re starting out. Maybe no-one wants to buy your stories just yet. Write them anyway and stick em on your blog. It gets you out and about reporting When a radio producer needs someone in Lubumbashi in a hurry, they might just find your name on google. Tweet it too. You’re not just a writer, you’re a businessman. Advertise. I’ve got work and story ideas from twitter
6. Slum it – you wanna be a feature writer for The New York Times? Forget it. Sure they might come calling, but don’t be too snooty at first. Be realistic. Take work, any work so long as the publication is not going to put off other clients. Getting editors to trust you is half the battle. Once your name is out there, albeit in smaller publications, bigger news outlets are more likely to trust you. Oh, and drop the middle initial – it looks daft
7. Flog it – never, ever forget that you are running a business. Someone hasn’t paid? Chase em. Keep yourself and your expenses organised and tidy. You aren’t going to change the world, or reinvent Gonzo journalism. This is your job, your living, your livelihood – not your calling. Write stories that will sell, not ones that sound like a PhD title or a development thinktank’s press release. Make sure you get paid and don’t lose your receipts (my own particular weakness)
8. Whore it – an editor wants your arse, he can pay for it. So until they pull out the cheque book and pay you a juicy retainer there’s no problem with selling your stories around. Be sensible though. Don’t stitch people up. Build relationships with editors so that you know what they want and can expect them to call when they need a hit in a hurry. They’ll want to know they can count on you. But at the same time, remember they’ll happily use someone else if they can. You find Lord Lucan riding Shergar in the Timbuktu carnival? Go to the biggest payer but remember…
9. Structure it – if you’ve got a big player using you, then use them to underwrite trips, guarantee your safety and cover your back. Bad things can happen to exposed stringers. Put your big player at the top of your list. Give them the best of your stuff. Organise the demands of your other strings around them. Everyone is a winner when you can share the expenses around a bit
10. Do it – it’s a jungle out there (particularly if you base yourself in the Democratic Republic of Congo). But if you are any good you’ll survive. It’s the ultimate meritocracy – no room for pedestrians. And if you work really hard, run things like a business and follow these tips then you’ll be set on the ride of your life. There’s no rewriting press releases or being stuck on diary, like you would back home. You’ll be kicking news in the nuts – and occasionally having it vomit on your shoes

Not content with bringing shipping lanes to a standstill off Somalia, gunmen are now intent on snagging European passengers from flights in and out of the lawless country and holding them for ransom. Yusuf M Hasan has written a gripping account of the thwarted hijacking of a flight from Bossaso, Puntland, to Djibouti…

Diyaarada way afduuban tahay. The four words, screamed by a mad man wielding a pistol in mid-air, are etched into my memory like lyrics in a veteran singer’s mind. This plane is hijacked.

The pilots turned the plane around and landed, pretending it was the destination the hijackers had demanded. Shots were fired but no-one was hurt. The passengers had no doubt about what the hijackers wanted…

The hijackers say they wanted to take two hostages – German journalists on board the plane – and that the rest of us Somalis would be set free in Las Qorey.

Security is rudimentary at most Somali airports. A few dollars in the right palms would make it easy to carry guns on board. In fact, I’m rather surprised this doesn’t happen more often. The limiting factor may well be the small number of westerners who risk flights in and out of the country.  (It might be time for the UN to reconsider its ban on journalists buying seats on its flights to and from Somalia.)

What does all of this mean? I have no idea. But it can’t be good.

Interesting op-ed piece in The Washington Post today by Michael Gerson, who does a good job of reminding the world that suffering continues in Darfur even though the region may have slipped off our radar in recent months. However, he makes a couple of points that may accidentally cast light on the motivations and thinking of the Save Darfur lobby and the American position on Sudan.

For starters, he rightly points out that the conflict is no longer in an active genocidal phase but then goes on to say this is  only because Sudan has achieved its policy aims – “targeting disfavored ethnic groups, destroying their way of life and forcing millions into camps”.  It is a genocide that has succeeded, he claims.

That doesn’t sound like genocide to me. If those policy aims were in fact secondary to the ultimate aim of destroying in whole or in part those disfavoured ethnic groups, then it would indeed mark a genocide, as defined under the flawed 1948 UN convention. But Gerson doesn’t suggest that. He says the genocide has succeeded. A very odd manipulation of the term, given that the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit are very much still in existence – albeit in desperately difficult circumstances. If there was peace tomorrow (unlikely I know) they would return to their homelands and attempt to rebuild their lives.

Once again, it is evidence that the term genocide has been deployed incorrectly and its supporters are having to wriggle into increasingly elastic shapes to defend its use.

He then goes on to urge President Obama to toughen his stance on Sudan…

Yet boldness — much larger carrots and much larger sticks — is needed. The ultimate carrot would be to offer Sudan’s leader, Omar al-Bashir — currently under international indictment for war crimes — the legitimacy he seeks, in exchange for the peaceful independence of south Sudan and unconditional cooperation in Darfur. This would be distasteful. But it might be worth repressing our gag reflex to gain permanent, irreversible limitations on the power of Sudan’s regime to do harm.

I’ve added the italics. Forgive me, but I thought it was up to the people of Southern Sudan to decide on independence in a referendum due to be held in 2011. John Garang, the late president, was in favour of remaining a part of Sudan and although support for his position declined with his death, there remains an argument that a unified Sudan – with autonomy and a fair deal for the South – might offer a better chance of achieving peace in Darfur.

Once again, I have to wonder about the motives of advocates for Darfur. Too often there seems to be an alternative agenda at work. I’m not sure what it is, but it isn’t the search for peace.

The accent may have been thick and the line crackly as the words travelled through the ether but there was no doubting the sinister timbre of the universal pirate battle cry.

“ARRRRRRRGGGGH,” said a man called Red Beard – his nickname apparently coming from the traditional use of henna to colour his facial hair – who claimed to be standing in the brigands’ den of Hobyo along the Somali coast, but frankly could have been anywhere.

“We are simply claiming what is ours,” he said. “For too long the international trawlers have plundered our seas, stealing our fish, and now we are have turned to a different way of life.”

His English was surprisingly good for an illiterate former fisherman-turned modern day Jack Sparrow. It was so clear that his every word was audible above the beeping of rush-hour traffic and a newspaper hawker in the background.

“I went to set one thing straight,” he continued. “This morning my copy of the Daily Nation said that we are nothing but common criminals. This is not true. In a country where criminality is commonplace, we are exceptional criminals. We are very good indeed.”

He explained that his copy of the Daily Nation was airdropped on to the beach each morning.

“And what’s more,” said the 25-year-old pirate, “I am definitely a pirate. Of that there can be no doubt. In Somalia. You called me here did you not? Aha.

“I can prove all this. From here, I can see only the sea and some boats – hijacked boats.”

He is one of a small band of seaborne gunmen who have brought world shipping to a standstill. Armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades they are earning millions of dollars from ransom.

“Oh yes,” he said, “the money is excellent. Very good indeed. Some days I can write an exclusive dispatch for the wires and rehash it into an in-depth feature interview for an American newspaper. But that’s only if I can pretend to be three different pirates. Sometimes I can only manage one. It’s exhausting. There are only so many combinations of Yussuf, Sharif and Ahmed you can use before you accidentally implicate a president.”

It had taken literally minutes of work to make contact with Mr Beard. A trusted Somali fixer provided the satphone number for $200 and I dialled it. It was engaged, twice, before I managed to get through.

The scoop was over almost as soon as it had begun.  Security forces were closing in, explained my source.

“I’ve got to move my car before the 30 minutes free parking is up,” he added. With that he was gone, no doubt back to sea and his life of plunder.

So there I was buying shower gel in my new local supermarket in Jerusalem, when my eye was caught by an African scented variety.  I don’t tend to pay much attention to the flavour of my grooming products but on this occasion – already nostalgic for my old home – I thought this was just the thing for me. As I walked home, I began to wonder exactly what it might smell like. These are the scents that I figured must be in it:

• fume of matatu – visitors from Europe were always amazed that I drove around Nairobi with my windows open in a fug of blue, carcinogenic smoke. Didn’t like to tell them that I feared the windows might fall out if not fully wound down
• sewage scent – provides a nutty, sweet background note, particularly on a hot day
• aroma of roasted goat – sweet, meaty and a bit like roasting lamb but with a more sort of agricultural flavour
• the smell of thunder – the great clouds and downpours of the rainy season were always preceded by that sort of piney smell that means rain is coming and it would be best to get to a makuti-roofed bar from which to watch the thunder and lightning
• essence of woodsmoke – with the exception of air-conditioned offices, I don’t think I was ever more than 10 yards from a fire

So imagine my disappointment on getting home to discover that my Africa shower gel made me smell of rather exotic musky, spicy vanillas. Rubbish.

No-one was much interested in my scoop from last year that the man widely regarded as the world’s worst film director was working on a project about the Darfur conflict, provisionally entitled “Janjaweed”. Now the trailer is out, and I for one can’t wait to Uwe Boll’s movie “Darfur”.

Set against the genocide in Darfur, six Western journalists visit a small peaceful village and find its people overshadowed by fear. Hearing that the state sponsored Janjaweed militia is heading to the village, the journalists are faced with a difficult decision – leave and report the atrocities to the world, or risk their own lives and stay in the hope of averting a certain slaughter.

Sure there’s a bit of typo in the trailer, his Janjaweed look like they’ve just arrived from Saudi Arabia and the journalists are much better looking than any journalists I know, but who cares? It’s easy to pick holes in films about Africa. At the end of the day this is an action movie that happens to be set in Darfur. I’m not expecting to come away enlightened about the complexities of the conflict. It’s a bit of fun that helps keep Darfur on the agenda.

And it’s great that Boll got there before George Clooney, who would no doubt have made all the same mistakes but turned it into a serious, campaigning movie with a, you know, message.

However, even I am a little uncomfortable with Boll’s decision to cast actual Darfur rape victims as Darfur rape victims. Boll might reckon this was the best way to generate realistic responses to the Janjaweed’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, but I’m not so sure. Now I’m no expert on the Nations guidelines for this sort of thing but I’m sure they might have something to say about making women re-enact their brutal experiences in the name of entertainment.

The Congolese army has been accused many times of brutality. Like so many African armies it is a mishmash of different rebel militias teased into a semblance of a national force, while retaining a certain relaxed approach to battlefield law. The deeply flawed United Nations peacekeeping mission managed to overlook their failings up until this week, when even it withdrew its support. (Things are really bad when a mission that has harboured sex abusers and paedophiles decides enough is enough.)

And now we have fresh allegations of abuses. This time the Congolese army has really outdone itself, using a vaccination programme as cover for an attack, according to a press release from MSF:

Last month, seven vaccination sites operated by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) came under fire during attacks by the Congolese army against the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Thousands of civilians had gathered at the sites. MSF denounces this clearly unacceptable abuse of humanitarian aid for military purposes.

The Lynn Rival (pic supplied by EU)

Somali pirates are back in the news after kidnapping a couple from Tunbridge Wells (my hometown incidentally) as they sailed their yacht from the Seychelles to Tanzania. I hope they are released safe and sound but I can’t help thinking their course was reckless, given the number of attacks on boats and ships – many bigger and faster than the Chandlers’ Lynn Rival.

Now it emerges that some of these other ships have begun using armed guards. The debate has rumbled on for a long time, and  this recent comment piece at Lloyd’s List ends by once again arguing that taking guns to sea solves nothing…

In truth, seafarers are innocent targets in a dilemma that can only be mitigated by unified government naval protection and, ultimately, by solving the complex political woes of Somalia and its neighbours. Encouraging seafarers to shoot back would only endanger seafarers’ lives.

But in a press release that I almost didn’t read, from the EU’s anti-piracy  taskforce,  it seems that vessels are now taking things into their own hands. Gone are the unarmed security teams. Now we have armed fishing boats.

In the afternoon of October 27th 2009, 350 nautical miles east of Mogadishu, Somalia a French Fishing Vessel was attacked by pirates in two attack skiffs. The pirates opened fire on the Fishing Vessel. Her embarked military Vessel Protection Detachment (VPD) fired warning shots after which the pirates broke of [sic] their attack.

This is the inevitable result of our collective inability to come up with ways of tackling Somalia’s problems and cannot lead anywhere good.