Mogadishu line
Mogadishu line proper noun: the point at which foreign involvement in a conflict shifts from peacekeeping or diplomacy to combat operations.
Proper noun
the Mogadishu line
- The point at which foreign involvement in a conflict shifts from peacekeeping or diplomacy to combat operations.
- For long before the United States was forced to confront the horror of its dead servicemen being dragged naked through the dusty streets of Mogadishu, ‘the crossing of the Mogadishu line’ came to be a test of the international community's resolve in dealing with intractable violence of the...2000 April 29, Peter Beaumont, “Injustice of the peace”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
- I was surprised. I was also happy. It suggested to me that the Mogadishu line—that invisible mark across which US troops would never again step—had been erased.2003 July 5, Fergal Keane, “Good news: the United States has decided to cross the 'Mogadishu line'”, in The Independent, archived from the original on 06 Aug 2022
Origin of Mogadishu line
In reference to the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993.
Questions about Mogadishu line
- What does Mogadishu line mean?
- Mogadishu line means the point at which foreign involvement in a conflict shifts from peacekeeping or diplomacy to combat operations.
- What part of speech is Mogadishu line?
- Mogadishu line is a proper noun.
Words near Mogadishu line in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Mogadishu line (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “Mogadishu line.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mogadishu_line. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.