Yusuf Ali was a child when he first learned what it meant to take a life. Now 34, he lives in Mogadishu, a city that holds no distance from the memories he carries.
The reminders are everywhere. For Yusuf, daily life in Mogadishu is not a fresh start. It is a landscape built on top of everything he survived, and the two are impossible to separate.
"It was either kill or be killed," he says. Those words carry the full weight of a childhood that was never his to choose. The nightmares have not stopped.
His story is one that thousands of former child soldiers across Somalia share quietly, without ceremony or support. The world moves on. For them, it rarely does.
Originally published by BBC Africa.