Is this Atlanta?

Is it still like that?

This is, frankly a pretty scary city.

We've had toe higher eight gunmen to protect us from the warlords.

The local militias have bean visiting mortgage issue for 21 years now fairly regularly.

Sad to say that even today we still need so much security guards in front guards behind on armored convoy to protect us.

It's a sign of quite how fragile things are still Kevin get so what have you been given here from sugar in below sorghum?

And how long will that feed your family?

You're right on the front line here bullets, the bullets cracking all around us.

And there's a man here quietly praying We are just maybe a few meters from the front lines.

Al Shabaab positions ahead of us, the African Union behind And as you can see, it was a very active Ponsana.

Most people I've been speaking to here in the market say they are reasonably confident that Al Shabaab is not going to come back and they believe that stability just might be here to stay.

It's been years since Al Shabaab, the Islamist militants withdrew from Mogadishu itself, but they're still almost like a shadow state here.

The tax people, they intimidates, they kill and they carry out spectacular attacks.

How many people died here?

Uh, 15 people, six of them.

They were working here in the literature, so they blew up this wall.

You fixed it already Off course Were fixed with within a day's not more than two days with his life goes on.

Yes, of course.

And it will.

That really got me here.

There's been a lot of improvement here, and I can see it driving through the streets of cleaner.

There is a lot more building going on here, new hotels and so on.

Um but right now it's election time.

It was supposed to be one man, One vote That hasn't happened on Daz.

Those elections get closer.

Tensions arising.

This is a country which is used to solving things by brinkmanship But the barrel of a gun.

And so democracy is still very much in its infancy.

Here.

People are not sure if this election will be fair and free on every clan has its own candidate for for the top position of the country difficult, perhaps dangerous times, perhaps, is the most dangerous time for Somalia.

I have Bean in Somalia's reporter as a journalist and human right defender the past 18 years on.

I haven't seen a similar scenario in the past.

That's why I'm worried about that.

We've just come to a makeshift camp for displaced families, right in the middle of Mogadishu.

Among the ruins here, thousands of families who fled the violence in the countryside over years.

But in this group of people who've come just within the last few weeks and they're talking about heavy fighting in rural areas outside Mogadishu between Somali government forces on the militants of Al Shabaab, shot by be proper.

So they come here on.

They hope that this city will provide them some sort of sanctuary.

But the concern is, of course, that with tension growing here, the safety of Mogadishu may prove to be an illusion to when you look at scenes like this.

I think there's every reason, every temptation, to be optimistic and hopeful about Somalia's future.

But I'd say this is a country still very much in the making.

It was so badly destroyed, institutions of state were completely obliterated and it's going to take, I think, many more years, perhaps many more decades before.

We're really sure exactly where Somalia is heading and whether it is on a path back towards stability and democracy.