In 1991, the Somali government led b y Mohamed Siad Barre was brought to a violent end by a civil war. Barre, an army general who had seized power in 1969 through a coup d etat and had ever since ruled the Horn of Africa nation with an iron fist, was chased out of the capital, Mogadishu, in an orgy of death and destruction. The war had started in the northern parts of the country in the mid-1980 s but had gradually spread to the south. The uprising in the North was spearheaded by the Somali National Movement (SNM), an insurgency whose members hailed mostly from the Isaaq clan. Barre s...