Word: warlords
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Events continued to go well -- too well for Aidid's taste. His supporters had greeted with handshakes the first U.S. Marines to hit the Mogadishu beaches Dec. 9, and the warlord himself had attended two peace conferences arranged by retired Ambassador Robert Oakley. But he evidently concluded that the U.S. and the U.N. were making so much progress putting together the beginnings of a peaceful regime that his chance of eventually taking over the whole country was slipping away; he could retrieve it only by causing enough trouble to disrupt the mission. In early June his forces ambushed Pakistani troops...
...Kismayu last December, the door of his C-141 air transport opened to admit a blast of foul air. "It was the smell of rotting flesh," he recalls. Not far from the airstrip was a pile of partly dismembered bodies in a shallow mass grave, victims of a local warlord. In some places, Somalis who at first welcomed the Americans became resentful when they realized that the U.S. would not simply wipe out the warlords who were terrorizing them. At the same time, soldiers found themselves in mortal danger whenever they seemed to be taking sides in even the pettiest...
American Army Rangers in Mogadishu raided a suspected meeting place of fugitive warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, but the attack went awry and turned into a 15-hour fire fight, leaving at least 15 American soldiers dead, one taken prisoner and two unnacounted for. With Congress in an uproar, President Clinton addressed the nation and said he would immediately send more troops to Somalia, bringing their number to 10,000. Clinton pledged, however, that all forces would return home by March...
...Boys or The Sunshine Boys -- had begun when the main characters really were boys, and continued for 53 years of love, comradeship and betrayal. Concubine (cut by about 15 minutes for its U.S. release but still a rich and savory 2 1/2- hour banquet) hopscotches from the warlord era to the Japanese occupation to the Cultural Revolution and beyond. And under each regime, the artist is a pampered slave: flogged by his teachers, adored by his audience, toyed with by the elite, denounced by Mao's vindictive masses -- and always asked to do that showstopper, the fable about the king...
...renewed fighting has turned into Frankenstein's monster running amuck, largely beyond the control of its original superpower sponsors. The West, which for years backed Savimbi, overtly and covertly, as an anticommunist African democrat, finds itself with little leverage over a rogue warlord whose control of Angola's diamond deposits could enable him to finance his operations indefinitely. Backed by oil revenues of $3 billion a year, the government too has looked determined to fight to the finish. Thus, unless this week's developments lead to a lasting truce, the worst is perhaps still to come. In the countryside...