Women fueled Mogadishu takeover

Women fueled Mogadishu takeover
Abused by warlords, they threw support to Islamic militias

By Craig Timberg, Washington Post | June 19, 2006

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Sometimes, the women said, it began with a knock on the door
after dark or with a kidnapping in broad daylight. And sometimes, the gunmen who ruled
this city would use a long, sharp knife to slice open the tin shacks of poor families
and snatch their daughters away.

The girls would return -- if they returned -- in the morning, sobbing and marked
permanently as castoffs in a traditional Islamic society that demands virginity at
marriage.

An epidemic of sexual violence during 15 years of lawlessness in Somalia was among the
factors that strengthened opposition to this city's notorious warlords, residents said.
The Islamic militias who drove them out in months of recent fighting were embraced as
keepers of public order, as a force strong enough and pious enough to keep Mogadishu's
daughters safe.

That helped the militias win the support of Mogadishu's increasingly influential women,
who in recent years had joined the job market en masse to support their families in the
midst of a collapsing economy. On streets throughout this ruined city, they sold
vegetables, plastic jugs of gasoline, and khat, a popular, addictive leaf chewed widely
here.