Officials there describe hostage-taking as a traditional tactic in tribal quarrels.

The women in the darkened lounge of the former Young Pioneer camp represent one of the problems that can only swell as the weakening empire releases ancient tribal quarrels.

When the weather broke in the spring and the passes opened, they would raid northðward, spending the spring and summer raiding for loot and cattle, but most of all for steel to use in their endless tribal quarrels.

Drop the oil from the equation and the thuggish Saddam's seizure of Kuwait would be, to the United States, just another uninteresting incident in the tiresome tribal quarrels that divided the Arabs of the old Ottoman Empire before the British made such a mess of it in the First World War.

Therefore the so called Somaliland and its claimed independence is just another problem in a long list of tribal quarrels in Somalia and should be treated with equal light as with all the other problems in south central Somalia.