Mogadishu, Somalia - Two men - one in military uniform, the other in a baggy button-down shirt - sat on a plastic mat in an unfurnished tin-roofed room in the heart of the Somali capital, Mogadishu. They were contemplating how they could voice their plight to those in the country's corridors of power after many failed attempts to reach out.
Ahmed Mohamed Ibrahim and Hasan Mohamed Yusuf were active soldiers fighting on the front lines against al-Shabab - the al-Qaeda-linked armed group fighting Somalia's internationally recognised government - until they were both seriously wounded.
Twenty-five-year-old Ibrahim vividly remembers the day his life changed forever. He was part of a group of soldiers responsible for protecting the presidential compound and the country's seat of power, Villa Somalia,against advancing al-Shabab fighters.
"Al-Shabab wounded me in 2010. I was guarding the presidential palace. Three bullets hit my arm, shattering the bones above my elbow into pieces," Ibrahim told Al Jazeera as balls of sweat formed on his brow. "That was the last time I used my arm properly."
Doctors at the local hospital told him he needed to be taken abroad for treatment to save his arm.
"I don't come from a wealthy family, so there was no way I could afford to go outside of Somalia for treatment. I was my family's breadwinner," he said in a soft, clear voice, void of emotion. "The local hospital stitched my wound and put a bandage on it. Now, only the skin is holding my arm together."
He was only 20 when he was wounded during his second year of army service. He has not been formally discharged from the army since his injury, but since 2012, Ibrahim hasn't received any wages or compensation from the army - which probably doesn't know whether or not he is even alive, he said.
'I have lost everything'
Yusuf sat next to Ibrahim on the mat, staring at his own heavily scarred legs. The 37-year-old father of four said his injuries are not just physical.
"I can't sleep at night. I can still smell the blood from that day," he recalls. "I was not able to walk for more than a year, and I have constant pain in my head from the shrapnel wound I sustained that day. But worse than the physical pain is that I have lost everything; my wife left with my kids because I could not provide for them after I was injured."
All Credits: aljazeera.com
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