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Firing squads, blast walls and dangerous diplomacy in Somalia

– Somalia’s Green Zone –
When not meeting the Somali government on its own turf, Wigan does the rounds of Mogadishu International Airport, Somalia’s version of Iraq’s Green Zone.

The four-square kilometre (1.5 square mile) base is a bizarre expatriate ecosystem of muscled and tattooed private security contractors, ambitious young diplomats, jaded aid workers, furtive spies, uniformed soldiers and businessmen with an unusually high risk threshold.

It is encircled by blast barriers and razor wire and defended by African Union soldiers. It is the safest place in the city, yet on Christmas Day Shabaab gunmen launched a 36-hour assault that left nine AU soldiers and three foreign contractors dead.

Britain’s chunk of the airport is 100 square metres (1,100 square feet) of well-defended beachfront between the runway and the sea.

Like a Wild West fort, it has four blast barrier walls set back 20-metres (22-yards) from an outer perimeter with an observation tower on each corner manned by Ugandan private security guards armed with AK47 assault rifles and belt-fed PKM machine guns.

“The embassy is designed to withstand an attack,” said Wigan. “On Christmas Day the team carried on having lunch while a complex attack was going on 200 yards away.”

The airport seafront is sought after real estate with the European Union, France and Italy all building embassies.

Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have embassies in town, and China has occupied the top floor of a hotel, but Britain did not consider returning to its abandoned former embassy.

The old whitewashed Italianate building sits on a busy road, its facade bullet-pocked and its courtyard full of squatters.

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“In most places there was an existing embassy but this was a blank sheet of paper. We started with security and then added the extras,” said Wigan.

The extras include a gym, the ‘Club Mog’ bar and outside space with pot plants, hammocks, garden furniture and a game called Cornhole that involves tossing beanbags at a board with a hole cut in it.

After work, embassy staff do punishing circuit training with the ex-soldiers or stroll along the breezy beachfront with the embassy’s adopted street-dogs, Max and Vespa.

Although sequestered at the airport Wigan said “a full-time presence” is preferable to commuting from Nairobi, like most ambassadors and UN officials.

“Our depth of engagement and our ability to get stuff done is much greater,” he said.

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