Word: mogadishu
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...Marine raised on John Wayne movies and bloodied in Desert Storm's armored romp through Iraq might be perplexed by last week's action in Mogadishu. Under the command of a Turkish general who was advised by a retired U.S. admiral, U.N. Special Envoy Jonathan Howe, troops from five countries set about destroying the power base of Somalia's most notorious warlord, General Mohammed Farrah Aidid, beneath a hail of missile fire and cannon bursts from helicopter gunships overhead. Troops from the U.S., Pakistan, Morocco, France and Italy searched for Aidid. Prodded by Washington, the U.N. wanted to punish...
...results were visible in the tracer fire illuminating Mogadishu's sky. This time the U.N. was one of the combatants. For four nights the Somalian capital echoed with deafening explosions as U.S. AC-130H ground-support planes and Cobra attack helicopters pounded the capital. Aidid's compound, arms caches and other locations took withering fire. Before U.N. ground forces advanced on his main base, a loudspeaker truck gave his gunmen several warnings to surrender. But soldiers came under fire as they moved in, provoking heavy retaliation from...
Such sentiments were widespread in Aidid's Mogadishu neighborhoods, which meant the U.N. was winning the battle against the warlord but losing the war to coax a workable society out of Somalia's anarchy. At the White House, the . motive for intervention was simple: to restore respect for the blue helmets...
MOHAMMED FARRAH AIDID can work the crowd as well as any politician. At a demonstration last week in Mogadishu against the U.S.-led air strikes, the United Nations' most-wanted man switched nimbly between martyrdom and angry defiance. Stretching his hands skyward, he led 1,000 clansmen in prayer, urging them to take comfort in Islam. "The U.N. and the U.S. are trying to impose colonial rule on us," he said. "God will destroy Washington as surely as they have destroyed Mogadishu...
...heavyweight in the country's precarious power balance. He is widely respected by Somalis for his leadership in ousting former dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and for his military successes on behalf of his clan. His anti-U.N. and -U.S. radio addresses sparked a vigorous response: riots convulsed Mogadishu twice in the past five months. "He is a war criminal whose indiscriminate shelling of civilians contributed to many deaths," said a Somali journalist. "But he is a very strong clan leader, and the U.N. attacks have made him even more important as a spokesman for the Somalis against foreign aggression...