The word warlord is a general pejorative term that refers to a person who has de-facto military control of a subnational area by virtual of military force which is personally obedient to the warlord.
The nation of Somalia is ruled enirely by groups of rival warlords. The republic of Afghanistan, despite the overthrow of the previous Taliban government, also remains largely under warlord control.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump