Word: mogadishu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Islamists who control the city occupy a whitewashed compound in Mogadishu. They are eager to present their domination as a fait accompli. "We are ready to be a nation," says Foreign Minister Ibrahim Hassan Addou. "We want Somalia to be peaceful, and we want to establish good relations with the rest of the world." With both hands, he beckons toward the open window in his office. "Feel free to look around," he says. "You can go where you want to go and see what you want...
...last week, after protests erupted over the shortage of khat, the seemingly ubiquitous narcotic chewed in Somalia, the Islamists ordered a ban on the drug. It's unlikely to go over well. "It's good to stop hashish and harder things," says a man at a khat stall in Mogadishu, "but cigarettes and beer? There will be a day when people say, Wait, they have gone too far. I am sure...
...their assistance in capturing suspected terrorists. One of those warlords approached by U.S. operatives was Osman Hassan Ali Atto. Once a top financier of warlord Aidid--Atto was captured just a week before the downing of the Black Hawks in 1993--he is the last independent warlord in Mogadishu, a testament to his ability to play both sides of the net. Blunt-spoken and avuncular, Atto disparaged the U.S. cash-for-warlords program. "It was a waste of money," he says at his junkyard in Mogadishu, where the rusting hulks of dozers and pavers are still scarred by flak from...
Poorly trained and addled by khat, Mogadishu's bands of thugs were no match for the highly regimented and dedicated Islamic soldiers. After just three months, the warlords were decisively routed this summer. "The warlords, they did not know how to fight," an ICU militia trainer says during a tour of his training camp just outside Mogadishu. "They had the guns and the money and the khat, but they did not have the heart. For many months we have not been paid to fight, whether in money or in khat. We fight with our hearts...
...August, a large dhow originating in Iran and carrying arms, medical supplies and food arrived at a Mogadishu seaport. Included in the shipment were 80 man-portable surface-to-air missiles and launchers. The U.N. also charges that "at the time of writing of this report, there were two Iranians in Dhusa Mareb engaged on matters linked to the exploration of uranium in exchange for arms to the ICU." In separate letters written to the U.N., Syria and Iran denied having any involvement...