When a remote east African city was being shelled by Somaliland soldiers three years ago, a German academic became an unlikely messenger for the beleaguered inhabitants of Las Anod. Dr Markus Hoehne, an anthropologist then at Leipzig University, spoke Somali and had previously spent time in Las Anod researching for his doctorate in the early 2000s. As the city’s hospital came under attack, his local sources provided a daily stream of information, which he posted on Twitter. Hoehne’s war diary helped foreign media outlets, like Declassified, cover the assault on Las Anod, which started when a police unit – possibly British…