Return of Somalia's Warlords "This has blown up in our face, frankly." This blunt assessment by John Prendergast—a former adviser to the National Security Council and the State Department who is currently working for the International Crisis Group—wasn't about the January bombing of villages in southern Somalia by the United States. Prendergast was speaking some eight months ago about the clandestine American project of funding the warlords to try to quell the rise of radical Islamist forces in the northeastern African country.

He told the June 8, 2006, New York Times that through the C.I.A.'s program of helping to fund weapons for Somali warlords the United States had "strengthened the hand of the people whose presence we were most worried about"—the I.C.U.

Since the 22-year dictatorship of Mohamed Said Barre was ended in 1991, Somalia has been a country without a state. The transitional government, formed in late 2004, is the 14th attempt to create a government since the Barre regime collapsed. Throughout the period after Barre's fall, factions of the former national army have formed into rival warlord-controlled militias. The warlords split the capital into fiefdoms and have waged bloody battles for control of the country.

Officially, Washington denies funding the warlords, although aid workers with the Red Cross and other organizations in Mogadishu told the June 5, 2006, Newsweek that they had seen "many Americans with thick necks and short haircuts moving around carrying big suitcases." Worldpress Org