From Wikipedia's article on Aidan Hartley

Aidan Hartley (born 1965), formerly was a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, assigned to Africa.

Hartley was born in Nairobi in 1965. Hartley covered the tumultuous Africa of the 1990s - wars in Somalia, famine in Ethopia, genocide in Rwanda. He is the author of The Zanzibar Chest: A Story of Life, Love, and Death in Foreign Lands, which was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He is currently a columnist for The Spectator, and a correspondent for Unreported World.

In this piece in his "Hearts and Minds and Holy War" series filmed near the end of 2006, Aidan traveled to Mogadishu to meet with the leaders of the Islamic Courts Union at the height of their power, and interviewed the leaders of the Islamic Courts as well as dozens of ordinary people throughout Mogadishu.

Shortly after he left Mogadishu, the Ethiopian army rolled into Mogadishu and ended the Islamic Courts Union's rule.

He returned last month to investigate reports of horrific atrocities committed both by the Ethiopian backed Transitional Federal Government and the Ethiopian military in his latest piece, Warlords Next Door. (skip past Hiraan.com's promotional bits before the videos begin)

I have been closely following the events surrounding the rise of the Islamic Courts and the Ethiopian army's invasion, and Aidan definitely provides his lifetime of experience in African and specifically Somali affairs and delivers a truly insightful and though provoking piece.  He really caught my attention in how he nailed the state of things in his 2006 piece, and this piece on Warlord Next Door brought things full circle.

For those of you who do not know about the war in Somalia, this is a critical piece of journalism that you cannot ignore.  This forgotten conflict must get out there and be known and understood.