I was in Mogadishu.(and Baraawe and Balcad) There is no comparison between Somalia and Kosovo outside of the tenuous connection of interclan warfare to religion based ethnic war and the fact that the U.N. was completely ineffectual in resolving the conflict in either location. While both Muhammed Aidid and Milosevic share certain traits, their roles in the conflicts differed greatly. Aidid rose to power as the most capable war chief in an already existing conflict, while Milosevic fanned the fires of hatred and shaped the conflict(s) to suit his own ambitions of power. Hopefully Milosevic can at least emulate Aidid by shuffling off this mortal coil with a bullet between his eyes. In Somalia it was (is) a struggle for power between several almost equally matched forces. In Kosovo it has been Serb regular military forces and roving special action groups purportedly facing the guerrilla forces of the KLA, but in reality, rarely if ever confronting them. While the Serb regular military conducted a methodical "cleansing" of Kosovo by dispossessing and uprooting the Kosovars, the special action groups have selectively rounded up, tortured, raped, and executed the Kosovars as suited their whims and appetites. The boys and women facing the Serbs are unarmed, unlike Somalia, where it was a common sight for us to see a twelve year old with a RPG launcher and his eight year old brother carrying the extra grenades.
I don't need PBS to tell me about Somalia and while I've never been in Kosovo, my short time in Bosnia was enough to tell me all I'll ever need to know about Milosevic and his Serb "special action groups". |
