Word: clan
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...earlier incarnation, Aidid was - and some say still is - commander of a clan militia that ruled a district of Mogadishu from the barrel of a gun. A naturalized U.S. citizen who became a U.S. Marine in 1987 and served in Somalia in 1992, Aidid succeeded his father, Mohammed Farrah Aidid, as leader of a Saad clan militia after he was killed in 1996. In 1993, it was the elder Aidid's faction that killed 18 U.S. troops in a bloody Mogadishu street battle made famous by the book and movie Black Hawk Down. Today, by virtue of the clan power...
Somalia's future hangs on whether the new government can achieve that reconciliation. Since the collapse of the last functioning government in 1991, Somalia has been a prisoner of bloody anarchy, a void filled by vicious and impressively armed chaos as rival warlords, clans and subclans, and Islamists prosecuted a series of civil wars - over power, over historic animosity and over competing visions of Islam. Last summer, the Islamic Courts Union (i.c.u.) - an alliance of clerics and clan leaders - took Mogadishu and forced the warlords out. In the last two weeks, the T.F.G., backed by thousands of troops from neighboring...
...Somalia's future hangs on whether the new government can achieve that reconciliation. Since the collapse of the last functioning government in 1992, Somalia has been a prisoner of bloody anarchy, a void filled by vicious and impressively armed chaos, as rival warlords, clans and sub-clans and Islamists prosecuted a series of civil wars - over power, over historic tribal animosities and over competing visions of Islam. Last summer, the Islamist Courts Union - an alliance of clerics and clan leaders - took over Mogadishu and forced the warlords out. In the last two weeks, the T.F.G, backed by thousands of troops...
...earlier incarnation, Aidid was - and some say still is - commander of a clan militia that ruled a district of Mogadishu from the barrel of a gun. A naturalized U.S. citizen and a Marine who served in the first Gulf War, Aidid was a successor to his father, Mohammed Farah Aidid, the warlord who battled American troops in the Somalian capital in 1993, killing 18, in a bloody street battle made famous by the movie Black Hawk Down. (Mohammed Farah Aidid was killed in 1996.) Today, by virtue of the Byzantine clan structure and shifting power deals that carve up this...
...Instead, the escalating war will likely ensure that Somalia remains a failed state for the foreseeable future, a battleground not only for local clan and political rivalries but also for regional and international strategic "great games." There are unlikely to be any clear winners anytime soon, but the losers almost certainly will be the Somali people, who after more than 16 years of war, warlordism and famine, can only look forward to more of the same...