Word: militiamen
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...vowed to press ahead with the demolition job; earlier, they drilled a hole in the larger statue's head so they could pack in dynamite there and around its feet, toppling the 1,400 year old colossus. The smaller statue was already badly damaged: as a cruel joke, Taliban militiamen had fired a rocket at its groin. Until last Saturday, the regime was denying access to Bamiyan, so it was still uncertain whether the demolition orders were being carried...
...been some time since he who ruled the capital also ruled the provinces. That much the Rwandan military discovered in early 1997, when it rolled across the border, hoping to carve out a buffer zone to prevent Hutu militiamen using sanctuaries in the state then known as Zaire for their genocidal campaign against Rwandan Tutsis. As they moved westward, the Rwandans encountered no resistance - the army of the reviled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko had no interest in defending the borders of a state that hadn't paid them for years. Mobutu's kleptocracy had finally reduced Zaire to an empty...
...assassinations are controversial. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has had to defend the morality of Israeli actions in Knesset committees. But Israeli military sources say the hits are effective. They undermine the confidence of Palestinian militiamen, and they also spread suspicion among the gunmen that their comrades may be collaborators...
...government ignores such threats in the hope that its increasing strength will render the warlords irrelevant. It has enticed some 5,000 of the estimated 20,000 militiamen around Mogadishu into five "demobilization" camps where they will be retrained as the new national army. "Some of them have good discipline," says Colonel Ali Hashi, head of demobilization in the city. Hashi says the government controls 180 of the 300-odd "technicals"--trucks and pickups with rear-mounted antiaircraft and antitank guns--in the city. Afrah, however, scoffs at the notion that warlord power is slipping. "This is our business...
...destruction is not only physical. The whole concept of a state has been distorted. At the airport, militiamen charge landing fees and sell exit visas. Anyone with $30 can buy an official Somali passport in the central Bakara market, though few countries will recognize it. A few stalls away, moneychanger Bashir Moalim Mohamed opens a huge safe packed with $10,000 worth of Somalia shillings. "I am the central bank," he says, pulling out stacks of new notes recently imported by local businessmen from a printing company in Canada. What about protection? Mohamed plucks a rusty M-16 assault rifle...