Word: somali
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...SOMALI MAN, SAYS U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY ROBERT OAKley, three things are important: "his camel, his wife and his weapon. The right to bear arms is in their soul." That is a stereotyped and simplistic view but with an element of truth. In Somalia's nomadic culture, a weapon has always been essential to defend against unknown enemies in the vast desert. Oakley believes that if American soldiers began confiscating weapons, they would quickly become the enemy...
...Somalia, U.S. officials fear their troops could be cast into the same untenable position. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has been leading a campaign to turn the humanitarian mission into a more problematic operation to rebuild the Somali nation. Step 1 is disarming a populace so heavily armed that no one can even begin to figure the size of the arsenal. But the Bush Administration remains unwilling to take on a task that could put U.S. troops in the middle, making the Marines the target of anyone who refuses to give...
...getting up and operating is proving a problem -- and it will take at least until sometime after the new year for the full force to be actively engaged -- getting back out promises to be worse. There is pronounced Somali resistance to turning the mission over to U.N. peacekeepers. Somalis feel that the U.N. team already in the country has been neither impartial nor adequate. They also nurse ill feelings toward U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali, who once had dealings with the ousted dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. "They practiced deceit, secrecy, deception and outright bribery," charges Mohammed Awale, an adviser...
...order to create a "secure environment." The U.S. ducked that tricky question in writing its vague rules of engagement, which leave it up to local commanders to decide how much disarming to do. Now the Secretary-General is demanding that before going home American troops not only seize the Somali clans' arsenals but also remove the mines that have been laid in the north of the country and set up a military police force to preserve order...
...MOST FEARSOME WEAPONS CONFRONTING U.S. MARINES in Somalia are the 480 TOW ANTITANK MISSILES and the 75 81-mm mortars that Washington delivered to the Somali military in the 1980s. To prevent local warlords and brigands from turning the arms against the Americans, the Pentagon has quietly dispatched Special Operations forces to Somalia to track down the weapons and seize them...