Word: mahdi
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...beleaguered residents of Mogadishu had brief cause for rejoicing last week. Under the gaze of TV cameras, Somalia's leading warlords, Ali Mahdi Mohammed and General Mohammed Farrah Aidid, jointly announced that the so- called green line dividing the capital into separate sectors under their respective control had been abolished. Thousands of men and women cheered as the two rivals promised that for the first time in more than a year, people were free to travel across the capital. "Today is a great day," declared Ali Mahdi, whose gangsters control the northern part of Mogadishu. "Starting from this minute...
...special way -- with looting and shooting afterward. Several vehicles attempting to cross the green line were stolen by marauding gunmen. Journalists and relief workers who ventured near the line were robbed and threatened by teenage gangsters brandishing automatic | weapons. "Whatever the two men say," observed an aide to Ali Mahdi, "the people of Mogadishu will not mix. There is too much hostility...
...warlords' struggle for power that must be settled before peace can return to Somalia. Robert Oakley, the U.S. special envoy, believes Ali Mahdi and Aidid may actually turn out to be irrelevant to an eventual political solution. "Right now they are factors in the political landscape," he says. "But the Somalis don't like domination by a single political party. When people aren't fighting, they don't need military alliances." A former Somali journalist puts the issue in blunter terms: "The U.S. has to deal with these people to stabilize the environment in the short term. But when peace...
...entering into negotiations with Somalia's warlords, but would simply inform them of U.S. military aims and lay down a deadline to withdraw their gunmen. By Friday, Oakley had brokered a temporary reconciliation between the country's two most powerful clan leaders, General Mohammed Farrah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohammed, who had not spoken in more than a year. Emerging from their meeting at the U.S. liaison office, the two warlords agreed to an immediate cease-fire and ordered their fighters to leave the capital, though no one believed their hostilities have ended for good...
...impossible to tell whether that is sound strategy or a recipe for disaster. When Aidid and Ali Mahdi made their tentative peace, neither called on his followers to surrender their weapons. A U.S. senior official said that "Aidid has parked his heavy weapons in Ethiopia." Meanwhile, the gung-ho attempt of some of the vanguard troops to seize weapons slowed perceptibly. French troops initially searched Somali cars for weapons; by week's end they were searching only for the heavy guns that used to be carried on technicals. "It would be inconceivable to disarm Mogadishu," said a senior French army...