Mogadishu, Somalia – Mustafa, 33, dreads election time in Somalia. He drives a bajaj — a three-wheeled taxi — and says that when tensions rise, as they always do when polls are near, the whole city feels it, and drivers like him are among the first.On Wednesday, he was passing through the Hawl Wadaag district when heavy gunfire between government and opposition forces erupted all around him.Recommended Stories list of 2 itemsend of list“I couldn’t even think. Everyone was shouting and running for their lives, and we all fled from the bullets,” he told Al Jazeera. “We haven’t seen fighting this bad in years.”The shooting that began that afternoon around the homes of former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire and, later, former President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, came as opposition figures were planning to organise protests against what they describe as an illegal term extension by incumbent President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.Khaire and Sharif Sheikh Ahmed were among opposition leaders spreadheading the planned protests amid rising tensions with the federal government.The government said the planned protests would undermine security in a city still grappling with persistent armed violence.Hundreds of families fled neighbourhoods near the fighting, and by the next day, many of the capital’s central areas had emptied. The sudden eruption of violence ended a period of improving security in Mogadishu, shattering the perception that the city had begun turning a corner.“The most frustrating thing is that we have nothing to do with it, and it impacts so many of us,” Mustafa said. “ …
