Word: mogadishu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...there's little that distinguishes Mohammed's stall from the others. A grenade rests against a box of ammunition next to a row of AK-47s, and still more rifles hang from nails beneath a patch of tin roofing. His booth occupies prime real estate in the center of Mogadishu's Bakaraaha Arms Market, and he obsessively polishes his guns with an oil-stained rag in a battle against sand and grit. But few passersby show interest. Once one of the most bustling, bristling arms bazaars in the world, the Mogadishu weapons market is weathering a down cycle, with business...
Since then, the Muslim militias, which call themselves the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), have consolidated their claim to Mogadishu and expanded their control to include most of Somalia, particularly the fertile lands and strategic ports in the country's south. Meanwhile, the U.N.-backed transitional government is unraveling. Confined to the squalid town of Baidoa near the Ethiopian border, the government is dependent on foreign money and security and crippled by internal dissent and mass resignations...
...mission to provide humanitarian relief and restore order--were felled by militias loyal to warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid. Eighteen U.S. special forces were killed, and the world community's involvement in Somalia effectively ended. What followed was a decade and a half of intermittent war that reduced Mogadishu to rubble. Along the "green line," the architectural gem of the former Italian colony that bore the brunt of the warlords' reign, the once proud edifice of the National Bank is obliterated, and only a stone shard remains of the cathedral's twin bell towers...
...armed thugs--have been replaced by disciplined Islamic troops. The city's ports have reopened, buses travel the roads by day, and Somali families stroll the sidewalks by night. Barring the notable exceptions of a Swedish journalist and an Italian nun who were recently murdered, there's no denying Mogadishu's new semblance of order. "This is an area of the world that we would obviously like to see stable, and [the Islamists] are doing that to some extent," says a Western diplomat. "So if what you see is what you get, then maybe it isn't the worst thing...
...between the two forces. But war could leave Somalia even more broken than it already is. John Prendergast, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group and an Africa specialist in the Clinton administration, says a conflict would likely end the transitional government?s chances of taking over in Mogadishu, severely damage the Islamists capacity to lead, flatten the city of Baidoa and leave Ethiopia with heavy casualties. ?The [Islamic] militias are highly motivated and disciplined and would rally around the slogan of protecting Somalia from foreign invaders,? says Prendergast. ?But the reaction from Ethiopia would be hellish...