As we circled, the pilot pointed at dozens of circular metal objects below: jet engines, dozens of them, neatly laid out in the bush and some half-buried in sand.

‘Russian… MiG-21 engines’, he shouted into the mike. He explained afterwards that Baledogle was to have become an assembly point for MiG-21 fighters, the first of its kind in Black Africa. This gear originally included thousands of cases of machinery, spares and other equipment that had been hauled up to Baledogle in a succession of truck convoys, the entire operation taking a year.

‘We were ecstatic’, said the Somali interpreter. ‘We were to have our own factories for those planes. Somalia was to be a leader in Africa. We thought at the time that there would be work for everybody. Somalia would become a power. The Russians told us so. Like fools, we believed them.’ His eyes blazed. Then, he added, some bureaucrat killed the project. He didn’t get the bribe he’d been offered, or perhaps it ended up in somebody else’s bank account. ‘The project was stillborn even as we were digging the foundations.’

Nobody in Mogadishu knows the whole story. Most of those involved were dead anyway. From what I could make out, cover-ups in Mogadishu and the universal corruption of Africa smothered the project before it got properly under way. Yet, my informant ventured, millions had been spent in getting as far as they did, to which all this abandoned hardware testified.

‘All wasted. Think of the hospitals we could have built… schools.’

None of us had even heard of Baledogle until Operation Restore Hope. It was the best-kept Russian secret in Africa and I could see why.

The Blackhawk had been late in getting to Mogadishu Airport to pick me up. I had to be taken there in a Humvee, one of a new generation of American military vehicles that became familiar during Operation Desert Storm and afterwards, throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.

From Colonel Peck’s UNOSOM headquarters, we retraced our previous route back to the airport. This time there was a Marine sergeant standing in a ‘well’ at the back of the infantry carrier with an extremely useful wooden staff that he used to dissuade hopeful Somalis from clambering on board. Even so, one made a dive for my Nikon. We struggled for possession until a smart blow knocked the thief sideways and he fell almost under our wheels.

If the Humvee had been moving at speed, we’d have driven over him in the middle of the main market, among thousands of people. Certainly, the mob would have turned on us in a flash. The troops on board carried live ammunition for just such an event, and they would have used it had they needed to. Their instructions were clear: don’t hesitate to use your weapons if your lives are threatened.

It’s worth mentioning that all the journalists in Mogadishu knew about rough measures handed out by the troops, especially to robbers and thieves who wouldn’t think twice about sticking a knife to your throat if they thought they could get away with it. Consequently, because these scribes were at the receiving end, and being continually threatened, few ever mentioned anything about this kind of retaliation in their reports.

We all knew that we needed these soldiers for our own security, especially those of us who couldn’t afford personal bodyguards. If it involved a few cracked skulls to keep the rabble at bay, then so be it.