Word: aidid
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...keeping the peace or making war? Renewed attacks early last week by American helicopter gunships against warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid killed 54 Somali civilians, according to International Red Cross estimates. Outraged mobs retaliated by killing four foreign journalists. Italian General Bruno Loi, commander of a 2,400-man contingent, sharply criticized the U.N.'s "shoot first" policies, causing a crisis between his government, which backed...
...Nations as in the streets of Mogadishu. Without bothering to notify Rome, Kofi Annan, the U.N.'s chief of peacekeeping operations, ordered General Bruno Loi, Italy's military commander in Somalia, to be "rotated back home" for insubordination. Annan denounced Loi for meeting with armed clansmen of Mohammed Farrah Aidid and refusing to carry out orders in the increasingly violent campaign to capture or kill the warlord. "Only the Italian government has the competence to decide who should lead our soldiers," responded Foreign Minister Beniamino Andreatta. The Italians, retorted a U.N. official, should "either get on the team...
...furor over the U.N.'s attempt to discipline Loi quickly widened last week into a full-scale international debate over the pistol-packing tactics the peacekeepers are pursuing to destroy one of Somalia's most powerful warlords. After weeks of escalating assaults on Aidid's compounds, the Italian government, the aid community in Mogadishu and many Somali citizens charged that the attacks served mainly to broaden the war and divert attention from the primary goal of humanitarian relief. "A peace mission," said Italian chief of staff General Domenico Corcione, "is being transformed into a war operation...
...battles have raged in the streets of Mogadishu almost daily since 23 Pakistani peacekeepers died in an ambush last month. Blaming Aidid, the U.S. has led U.N. forces in an aggressive bid to flush him out, culminating in a daylight attack on a meeting of Aidid's top commanders on Monday. At the end of a 20-min. barrage of missiles and cannon fire from U.S. helicopter gunships, dozens of bodies lay scattered around the demolished villa. When foreign journalists arrived to view the carnage, an enraged crowd turned on them with stones, guns and machetes, killing four...
...missiles responsible for the civilian casualties are almost entirely American. While the U.N. military forces are ostensibly led by Turkish General Cevik Bir, his staff is predominantly American and the real boss in Somalia is U.N. special representative Jonathan Howe, a retired U.S. Navy admiral. The determination to decapitate Aidid's faction is considered an American interpretation of the U.N. resolution calling for the capture of the Somalis responsible for the ambush of the Pakistanis. A total of 35 peacekeepers have died since May, none of them American. "The U.S. is quick to stir up trouble with air strikes," said...