Word: warlord
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Facing the Enemy In reporting on warlord Abu Deraa [Dec. 4], TIME has once again given in to the urge to attach a name and a face to the enemy in Iraq, thus raising the illusory hope that the elimination of one key figure will solve whatever it is that is fueling the violence. But it didn't work with al-Zarqawi and won't with Abu Deraa because it's not about one man or even one organization. It's about the disintegration of a society in the aftermath of an unprovoked invasion and occupation. It's about...
Hussein Mohammed Aidid is still getting used to his transformation from warlord to Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister. But his assessment of the precarious hold the new government has on Somalia, after ousting an Islamist regime, is both candid and grim. "The institutions of the T.F.G. [Transitional Federal Government] are very weak," Aidid says in an interview with Time at his villa in Mogadishu. "It is a symbolic government. Permanence we do not have. We do not have institutions, we do not have a credible force. Unless [we receive outside assistance] quickly, we have no chance of building a nation...
...Mogadishu was once the center of East African trade, an Italianate city of universities and cafes on the Indian Ocean waterways that link Africa with the Arabian peninsula. Since the collapse of the last functioning government here in 1991, it has been better known as a crucible of bloody warlord anarchy, where 18 American soldiers lost their lives in 1993, and where journalists still visit at their peril. You don't move without an escort of gunmen, you don't stop anywhere for more than a few minutes, you keep your tinted windows closed and you drive to the limits...
Mohammed Hussein Farah Aidid is still getting used to his transformation from warlord to Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister. But his assessment of the precarious hold the new government has on Somalia, after ousting an Islamist regime, is both candid and grim. "The institutions of the T.F.G. [Transitional Federal Government] are very weak," he said in interview with TIME at his villa in Mogadishu. "It's a symbolic government. Permanence we do not have. We do not have institutions; we do not have a credible force. Unless [we receive outside assistance] quickly, we have no chance of building a nation...
...Aidid was - and some say still is - commander of a clan militia that ruled a district of Mogadishu from the barrel of a gun. A naturalized U.S. citizen and a Marine who served in the first Gulf War, Aidid was a successor to his father, Mohammed Farah Aidid, the warlord who battled American troops in the Somalian capital in 1993, killing 18, in a bloody street battle made famous by the movie Black Hawk Down. (Mohammed Farah Aidid was killed in 1996.) Today, by virtue of the Byzantine clan structure and shifting power deals that carve up this East African...