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Politics:

MOGADISHU, Somalia — The images from the bootleg video were blurred, and the sound was wobbly.

But there was no mistaking the film “Black Hawk Down” when young Somali men jumped up and cheered as the first American helicopter hit by Somali gunmen fell to the ground.

“The movie is good but overdramatized,” Warsameh Abdi said from his spot on the sandy ground in the makeshift, open-air Dualeh Cinema, a plug of khat, the semi-narcotic leaves chewed by most Somali men, in the corner of his mouth.

The film, directed by Ridley Scott and based on the book by Mark Bowden, recounts the ill-fated Oct. 3, 1993, mission by Army Rangers and Delta Force that captured senior aides to Mohamed Farah Aidid, a top warlord in the factional fighting that tore apart this Horn of Africa country 11 years ago. Eighteen American soldiers died before the mission in the heart of Mogadishu, the capital, was aborted. Hundreds of Somalis also were killed.

“In this fighting, I lost nine of my best friends in one spot,” Warsameh said on Tuesday night as hundreds of men and a few women crowded into video theaters throughout Mogadishu. They paid the equivalent of 5 U.S. cents to watch bad copies projected on a wall of the pirated version of the movie that went into general release in the United States on Jan. 18.

“It was that very helicopter,” Warsameh, a man in his mid-20s, said above the din, pointing to the Black Hawk moving across the wall. “It hovered on top of us, and shot us, one by one. I got wounded, but the others died.”

“But I don’t think there are any Somalis in the film at all.”

Although the young men cheered whenever an American was hit, there was no reaction from the audience when a Somali character went down.

Much of the film was shot on location in Morocco, and no Somali actors were used. Most of the men playing Somali militia gunmen looked like rebel fighters in the West African nation of Sierra Leone.

“The reality of the Somali character is captured in this movie,” said Mohamed Ali Abdi, who had been living at Bar Ubah junction where the battle took place. “But there is not a single word of the Somali language, no Somali music, nothing of our culture. This is absurd, but still they reproduced our sandy streets and battered buildings and the crazy way how Somalis just kept on fighting.”

The film’s “premiere” in Mogadishu comes at a time when U.S. attention is again focussed on this impoverished nation. After the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, President George W. Bush added Al-Itihaad al-Islami, a Somali Islamic group, to the list of terrorist organizations with alleged connections to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

Most people in Mogadishu say that Al-Itihaad (which means ‘union’ in Arabic) no longer exists as a para-military organization.

A three-year transitional government chosen at a peace conference 17 months ago is slowly taking control in Mogadishu, but its authority doesn’t reach to much of the rest of Somalia where clan-based factions run regional administrations.

A hard-core group of faction leaders, including Aidid’s son, Hussein Mohamed Aidid, remain bitterly opposed to the fledgling government and claim it has connections to Al-Itihaad. Mohamed Farah Aidid died in factional fighting in south Mogadishu in August 1996.

Somali refugees living in the United States have called for a boycott of the movie.

Eight years after the battle, the buildings on Hawlwadig Road have been patched up and painted over. But the streets are as sandy and dusty as ever.

The twisted wreckage in the middle of a cactus patch of one of the two downed Black Hawk helicopters is the only physical reminder of the battle. The Reer Ahmed Weheliye family that lives next door says seven family members were killed that day.-AP