The main attraction is a memorial with a Somali Air Force jet that bombed the city during the territory’s independence war in the 1980s. There is another featuring the replica of a tank, beneath which goats sometimes lounge as traffic passes by.
“Nearly all the buildings you see in Hargeisa today are new,” says Ayan Mahmoud, Somaliland’s former diplomatic representative to London. “The city was bombarded so heavily there was barely anything left.”