Peacemaking War

The drive to punish a renegade warlord pits allies in the blue-helmet force against one another

The sniping was almost as fierce in the corridors of the United Nations as in the streets of Mogadishu. Without bothering to notify Rome, Kofi Annan, the U.N.'s chief of peacekeeping operations, ordered General Bruno Loi, Italy's military commander in Somalia, to be "rotated back home" for insubordination. Annan denounced Loi for meeting with armed clansmen of Mohammed Farrah Aidid and refusing to carry out orders in the increasingly violent campaign to capture or kill the warlord. "Only the Italian government has the competence to decide who should lead our soldiers," responded Foreign Minister Beniamino Andreatta. The Italians, retorted a U.N....

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