Abstract

The `Warlord' Speaks

This article presents information related to world politics. The United Nations (U.N.) took its price off the head of Mohanuned Farah Aidid, the intransigent chairman of the Somali National Alliance, last November 17. Since then, Aidid has been very busy doing something that looks suspiciously like what the U.S. State Department thinks it should be doing in Somalia; building a nation. American troops were sent to Somalia in December 1992, ostensibly to force an end to a two-year-old civil war and to feed hundreds of thousands of Somalis who were starving as a result of that war. The idea was that the Americans, in cooperation with the U.N., would help Somalia make a transition to a Western-style democracy. But things didn't go quite as planned, and the strongest clan leader, Aidid, became an implacable enemy of the American and U.N. troops in his country.