Editor's Note: This is the first installment of a new biweekly column by World Politics Review Contributing Editor David Axe. Axe is an independent correspondent who has covered conflicts from Somalia to Afghanistan to East Timor. The column shares its name with David's blog, which is at WarIsBoring.com.
On a morning late last November in Mogadishu, Somalia, a tall, toothy 65-year-old man climbed into his beat-up sedan parked in the makeshift squatter's camp he called home. Ali Mohamed Siyad, chairman of the central Bakara Market -- once the economic engine of Mogadishu, but now a mostly ruined battleground -- motored across town to my hotel for an interview. ...
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