Since then, peace deals with the warlords, including a lucrative amnesty and government contracts, have pacified the area.
The Somali government, although internationally recognised, is weak; its army is mostly a mixture of militias still loyal to quarrelling warlords.
"One guy took off 174 warlords' heads," he says, eyes widening.
European firms are set to be offered a voluntary self-certification scheme to prove that their products' mineral components were not sold by warlords to fuel bloody conflicts, under a draft EU law that falls short of campaigners' expectations.
My favourite American comic strip was Terry and the Pirates, a wonderful Oriental farrago of Chinese warlords, dragon ladies and antique pagodas that had the added excitement for me of being set in the China where I lived, an impossibly exotic realm for which I searched in vain among Shanghai's Manhattan-style department stores and nightclubs.
Don't let me buy Warlords of Draenor, please.
Not all these men are warlords, and many will drop out.
In his campaign Mr Karzai mortgaged his future government several times over for the support of a rogue's gallery of former warlords.
Besides deterring Afghan warlords from reverting to type and settling quarrels with guns rather than debates, the force is intended to secure the distribution of the humanitarian aid the country so badly needs.
In retrospect it was also a mistake to let into government warlords who had fought the Taliban but who were notorious for past abuses.
Either way, Mr Ghani's supposed strategy of marginalising powerful warlords while strengthening local government appears to be forgotten.One fear is that militias, locally called arbaki, could revert to rape, murder and other abuses of civilians, as happened during the civil war in the 1990s.
