Somalia at risk of anarchy

Diplomats and observers are warning that Somalia, three decades after it collapsed into anarchy, is once again at a crossroads, with recent progress on rebuilding a shattered state now at risk.

A group of powerful organizations and states - including the UN, the EU and the African Union's peacekeeping mission - has issued a forceful statement urging Somalia's political elites to seek dialogue. "Any threat of use of violence is not acceptable," they wrote.

Somalia was due to hold its first "one-person-one-vote" election last year - a huge milestone for a long-fractured nation. But clan-dominated opposition parties are boycotting the process over concerns about rigging, a carefully-brokered deal is now in tatters, and the country's President, Mohamed Abdullahi "Farmaajo", is being blamed by some for seeking to impose his will on Somalia's increasingly assertive regional leaders.

Adding to a nervous mood in the capital, Mogadishu - a city once torn apart by rival clan warlords - is a growing concern about al-Shabab militants. 

It has also begun to operate what amounts to a shadow government within Mogadishu, where it taxes and intimidates many businesses, administers Sharia courts, carries out targeted killings, and stages suicide attacks on hotels and government offices.

Tensions are rising sharply in Somalia, as the country's fragile political system wrestles with a bitterly contested election process, the withdrawal of some vital US military forces, and renewed concerns about an increasingly well-resourced militant Islamist insurgency.