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Somalis yearn for Islamic rulers to return and tame the warlords - Independent Online Edition > Africa

Somalis yearn for Islamic rulers to return and tame the warlords - Independent Online Edition > AfricaThe ruins of the old sugar factory in Marere, in the southern interior of Somalia, tower over the wooden shacks and brick huts which shelter the 2,000 or so people still living here. This used to be the second-largest sugar factory in the world, employing more than 20,000 people. Now, its rusting steel frame, chimneys and pipes sunk deep into the tall grass provide a painful echo of the wreck which Somalia has become.

Everything worth anything has gone, the scrap metal systematically torn off and shipped to India or old equipment taken by scavengers to be sold off at the market in nearby Jilib.

"Maybe one day someone will rebuild it," said Abdirizak Hassan Moalim, squinting into the sun. The 21-year-old has been living in a village near the sugar factory for two months after fleeing the violence in Somalia's capital Mogadishu. "It needs to be safe here first though," he added. "There was a chance under the Courts, but now, I don't know." Six months after the fall of Somalia's Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), insecurity has returned to the country.

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