Word: mogadishu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...center of Mogadishu is an awesome, ghostly monument to war. The streets are lined with rows of crumbling, freestanding Italianate façades sprayed with bullets, splashed by rocket-propelled grenades and showing clear blue sky where their roofs and walls used to be. Somalia's capital is less a city than a collection of tribal neighborhoods. Its back alleys lie under several feet of dirt and plastic bags, traffic is regularly held up by armed privateers demanding payments, and the air is thick with gunfire...
...raid came three weeks after several thousand Ethiopian troops, tacitly backed by the U.S., invaded the country to oust the Islamist forces that had seized control of Mogadishu six months earlier. Outgunned by the superior Ethiopian army, the Islamists deserted en masse, with a core group attempting to retreat into the thick forests near the Kenyan border. The Islamists' flight left them exposed, which may have helped the U.S. track their whereabouts and move in for the kill. Approval for the raid came from Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, which had held power for all of 11 days...
...right. It was The Woman who Disappeared, " says Hirsie. "It was very popular in Mogadishu. It was very simple English. Even a person who had just 500 words could read that book. The story was very interesting and the English was very simple...
...Hirsie admits to a fondness for Shakespeare, but says he spends most of his time reading how-to business books these days. "I don't get the chance to read fiction," he says. "A man who reads a novel is a man at rest. A man in Mogadishu works 13 or 14 hours a day. We don't have time for that...
...Ibrahim introduces me to a friend, Ali Halane, the BBC's Arabic Service correspondent for Mogadishu. Ali is reading War and Peace. He confesses to finding it hard going...