Warlord Country

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The beleaguered residents of Mogadishu had brief cause for rejoicing last week. Under the gaze of TV cameras, Somalia's leading warlords, Ali Mahdi Mohammed and General Mohammed Farrah Aidid, jointly announced that the so- called green line dividing the capital into separate sectors under their respective control had been abolished. Thousands of men and women cheered as the two rivals promised that for the first time in more than a year, people were free to travel across the capital. "Today is a great day," declared Ali Mahdi, whose gangsters control the northern part of Mogadishu. "Starting from this minute, the green line is no more."

Alas for Somalis, that invisible line may yet prove to be as formidable and lasting as Beirut's infamous divide of the same name. Vandals and free-lance thugs celebrated the event in their own special way -- with looting and shooting afterward. Several vehicles attempting to cross the green line were stolen by marauding gunmen. Journalists and relief workers who ventured near the line were robbed and threatened by teenage gangsters brandishing automatic | weapons. "Whatever the two men say," observed an aide to Ali Mahdi, "the people of Mogadishu will not mix. There is too much hostility."

Hostility in Somalia is more than an emotion; it is virtually a way of life. Some details began to surface last week about one of the civil war's worst atrocities, which allegedly began shortly before U.S. Marines landed at Mogadishu. In the port city of Kismayu, 250 miles southwest of the capital, up to 200 leading members of the Harti clan, including religious leaders, businessmen and doctors, were reportedly dragged from their homes and shot during several nights of terror. The killing spree was said to have been ordered by Kismayu's de facto boss, the warlord Colonel Omar Jess, who belongs to the rival Ogadeni clan and is an ally of Aidid's. According to an American diplomat, Jess may have ordered the massacre to consolidate his control over the city before relief forces arrived in Kismayu.

The attempt by the warlords to dismantle Mogadishu's green line was intended to show the world that they can resolve their differences without outside intervention. Western observers believe a gradual reconciliation among Somalia's warring clans would be an essential prelude to the restoration of some form of responsible central authority. The commanders of the U.S.-led military force insist that their mission is limited to ensuring the delivery of food to hundreds of thousands of starving Somalis and that political reconciliation would be a serendipitous by-product. But the Kismayu reports and the green line thuggery point up the difficulty of creating even a semblance of order. With no government to speak of, even the most powerful warlords have limited influence over their satraps elsewhere and no hope at all of exercising control over free-lance bandits. As looting and extortion are reduced in areas under military protection, the warlords are losing their means of paying the gunmen -- and that only causes their authority to erode further.