warlord

noun

1. A military commander or bandit leader wielding civilian power in an area where the government is weak.

   “Afghanistan's first major battle of the post-Taliban era ended tonight when the soldiers of the warlord besieging this strategic city south of Kabul ran out of ammunition and fled the battlefront in clouds of dust, cursing the warlord to his face for his callousness in committing them to a fight they were doomed to lose.”

   ““I’m not a warlord … I’m a liberator of the people,” he said. That’s the problem: So are they all. More than four million people have died in Congo’s wars since 1998, making it the most lethal conflict since World War II.”