In this issue:
* U.N. DECLARES ATTACK ON UNDP HEADQUARTERS SUCCESSFUL
* CLINTON RECONSIDERING SUPPORT FOR UNOSOM HARD-LINERS?
* AIDEED IT MY WAY
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S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E
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Vol 2, No 21 September 1, 1993 ISSN 1103-1999
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Somalia News Update is published irregularly via electronic mail and
fax. Questions can be directed to
[email protected] or to fax
number +46-18-151160. All SNU-marked material is free to quote as
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U. N. DECLARES ATTACK ON UNDP HEADQUARTERS SUCCESSFUL
(SNU, Uppsala, September 1) IN ONE OF THE MOST MUDDLED PRESS-RELEASES
the UN has ever issued the attack by U.S. special forces on the UNDP
headquarters in Mogadishu this Monday has been declared a success.
"We searched the right buildings, not the wrong ones. We are
absolutely not embarrassed. We will not apologize for it", said Major
D. Stockwell, U.N. military spokesman. However, an unnamed U.S. State
Department official was quoted as saying that "only the
professionalism of American troops had prevented casualties that
could have turned an embarrassing farce into a tragedy".
The press-release:
"Eight employees of the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) in south Mogadishu were detained this morning in a cordon-and-
search operation carried out by the members of the Quick Reaction
Force operating as part of the United Nations Operation in Somalia
(UNOSOM II). According to a United Nations spokesman, the UNDP staff
members were later released after their identity had been verified,
but there had been no mistake in searching the buildings and a number
of small arms had been confiscated during the operation.
United Nations employees in Mogadishu were housed in an approved
area patrolled by UNOSOM II soldiers so as to ensure their safety,
the spokesman said. The workers detained today had been living
outside of that area, and had been in jeopardy from the militia of
Somali warlord General Mohamed Farah Aideed, and "potentially from
UNOSOM operations".
The spokesman stressed that there would be further operations
aimed at re-establishing security in Mogadishu, in order to
facilitate the levels of disarmament and reconciliation that had
been achieved elsewhere in Somalia."
CLINTON RECONSIDERING SUPPORT FOR UNOSOM HARD-LINERS?
(SNU, Uppsala, September 1) PRESIDENT CLINTON'S ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
regarding the U.S. support for UNOSOM's present policy to capture the
warlord Aidiid, would seem to indicate that the American President is
ready to reconsider the soundness of that approach. President Clinton
spoke at press-conference given jointly by him and the Caribbean head
of state on August 30.
"Q: Mr. President, if the Bosnian peace agreement is
reached in Geneva, how many American forces would you be willing to
offer to help enforce that agreement? How long would they be
required to serve? And what would be the risk to those forces?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, whether I would be
prepared to do that or not depends on whether I'm convinced that the
agreement is both -- is fair, fully embraced by the Bosnian
government, and is enforceable. That has been a source of concern
for our military planners all along -- about, you know, whether we
could have something that would be enforceable.
But I made clear last February, and I will reiterate
again, the United States is prepared to participate in a multi-
national effort to keep the peace in Bosnia. But I want to see what
the details are, I want to get the briefing on it, I want to know
that it will be enforceable. But I'm certainly open to that, but I
also want to know who's responsibility it is to stay for how long.
It's a little bit different than the situation in
Somalia, for example, where you really have two problems that relate
to one another. There needs to be a lot of nation-building in
Somalia from the ground up -- a lot of institution-building. We did
go there to stop the starvation and the violence and the bloodshed.
But it's also true that the absence of order gave rise to all those
problems.
And so we're still trying to fulfil our original
mission in Somalia. This is a very different sort of thing, but I
certainly think it can work. A multinational effort to keep the
peace, if it is enforceable and the understandings are there, can
clearly work. You can see that in the long-standing success we've
had in our participation in the aftermath of the Camp David
agreement"
(....)
"Q: Mr. President, in Mogadishu some of the
humanitarian relief workers say that the U.S. raid early this morning
was a blunder; and, in fact, the U.S. military is making their job
more difficult. What do you say to those who are there to help? And
will the U.S. forces remain there long enough to capture Aideed? Is
that a target for you?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, the United Nations operation
set that as their objective, and they asked us for our help in that
regard.
I would remind you that I understand the problems with
this, but the United Nations believes, and has ample evidence to
support the fact, that the supporters of Aideed murdered a
substantial number of Pakistani peace keepers and are behind the
deaths of four Americans. So we have to deal with that. And I am
open to other suggestions. I think the United Nations should be open
to other suggestions.
To date, we have tried to be cooperative with the
policies that have been jointly developed. We have not been just
simply driving this. We have really tried to work within the
framework of the U.N. to prove that this thing could work over the
long run. We've also tried to make sure that everyone understood
that this is not all of Somalia we're talking about. We're talking
about one part of Mogadishu. In much of the rest of the country, the
U.N. mission has continued unimpeded and successfully. I don't think
anyone wants to change the fundamental character of it.
And so, would I be willing to discuss that with our
people and with anyone else? Of course, I would. But I think it is
very important to point out that what provoked this was people
involved with Aideed killing the Pakistanis first and then the four
Americans".
AIDEED IT MY WAY
Will the Somali warlord win?
By S.J. Hamrick
(Excerpts from article in New Republic, August 9) IN MOGADISHU,
RENEGADE SOMALI WARLORD Mohamed Farah Aideed continues to disrupt the
U.N.'s humanitarian mission. Since May, when the United Nations
Operation in Somalia replaced the U.S.-led coalition, Aideed's
snipers and the rocket grenadiers of his Hawiye subclan in south
Mogadishu have ambushed and killed thirty-nine U.N. soldiers. One
hundred twenty-seven have been wounded. So long as Aideed and his
defiant militiamen make south Mogadishu a killing ground for U.N.
peace keepers sent to preserve lives, including their own, the U.N.
and Washington are confronted with a dilemma: Are the U.N.
multinational units to remain mere peacekeeping patrolmen, manning
the checkpoints and roaming the streets? Is their power, like their
weaponry, more symbolic than real? Or are they to become, or to be
augmented by, more fiercely equipped troops, ready, able and willing
to go after hostile Somali forces? International peacekeeping by a
multinational committee of civil servants, diplomats, generals,
bureaucrats and journalists will inevitably have its problems, even
in the best of times.
In the case of Somalia, the many participants may agree on the
principle of the U.N. mandate for the restoration of civil order but
remain uncertain or divided about tactics. And Somalia has proved the
worst of times. At UNOSOM headquarters in south Mogadishu words have
flown as furiously as shrapnel these past weeks. The French and
Italian commanders were unhappy with Turkish General Civik Bir's U.N.
command structure, which excluded them from military strategy
sessions. The U.N. was angry at the unsoldierly-like behavior of
General Bruno Loi, commander of the Italian forces. Italy, livid at
the U.N. for demanding Loi's recall, threatened to withdraw its
troops. The foreign press corps, four of whose members were killed by
Somali street mobs on July 12, was openly contemptuous of UNOSOM's
claims of bringing security to the streets and minimizing Somali
civilian casualties.
The United States might have shared with U.N. headquarters in
New York the lesson learned in Vietnam about the folly of conducting
war by an executive committee of far-away wise men or of claiming
victory by press release. But Washington, a stranger to U.N.
peacekeeping operations, is cautiously feeling its way. So is the
Pentagon, which was willing to put a toe in the water, but little
more. Only 1,158 of the American troops in Somalia are combat units--
the quick reaction force of the 10th Mountain Division--and they
remain under the command of Major General Thomas Montgomery, not Bir,
who commands the remaining 3,881 Americans, all of whom come from
logistics units.
Following Aideed's June 5 ambush and murder of twenty-three
Pakistanis, the U.N. gave UNOSOM a mandate for hot pursuit. Asking
for orders from a headquarters 5,000 miles away to search out and
destroy a battlefield enemy who has killed twenty-three of your own
may seem odd, but UNOSOM's operations manual is the U.N. Charter, not
Clausewitz. Sadly, UNOSOM responded by foolishly putting a price of
$25,000 on Aideed's head for his capture. This bit of Wild West
amateurism publicly trivialized the U.N.mission and its soldiers and
made a local hero of Aideed. It also betrayed but didn't resolve the
U.N.'s dilemma in trying to reconcile two irreconcilable roles.
Aideed and his militia must be dealt with. The question is how.
American forces may have provided the answer on July 12, with a
deadly helicopter strike against Aideed's compound. The Italians
angrily objected, convinced the United States' obsessive pursuit of
Aideed had sacrificed U.N. non-partisanship and compromised its
broader humanitarian goals. The Italians insisted the U.N. should
open a dialogue with Aideed, even though the warlord's snipers had
ambushed and killed two Italian soldiers on July 2.
Intelligence evidence suggests the Italians had in fact opened
a covert channel to Aideed prior to the ambush, and had even told him
of their July 2 deployment. The U.N. command, however, was kept in
the dark about the troop movement until the ambush, when the
surprised Italians broke their silence and called for help. The
Italian purpose in all this remains obscure, but then logic isn't
always crystal clear in the tumultuous Italian parliament either.
Italy has deep roots in southern Somalia, once Italian Somaliland.
Italians have formed the largest foreign community in the south and
have always felt they understood the Somalis and the peculiar Somali
circumstance far better than others. When Siad Barre's Soviet
alliance in the 1970s made other Western diplomats unwelcome, Italian
diplomats were always well received in Mogadishu's inner councils,
able to discuss and even dabble in Somali internal affairs, just as
Italian businessmen have always been particularly resourceful in
finding their way through the maze of Somali ministries and state
trading firms.
Aideed, like Siad, is an Italian-trained ex-Somali army officer
who speaks Italian far more fluently than English. He is also a
product of his era, educated in part in Siad's primitive barracks.
Siad's perception of the United States was that despite American
military power, U.S. resolve, unlike that of the USSR, could be
intimidated. Public opinion and Congress were the key, the media was
the instrument. Vietnam proved that the public and Congress, easily
distressed by American casualties, could weaken t he country's
resolve. So did the U.S. failure to come to Somalia's aid during the
disastrous Ogaden war against Ethiopia in 1977, in which Aideed
served as a Somali army officer.
Like Siad, Aideed is adept at double dealing. At the Addis
Ababa peace conference in March, he agreed to Somali national
reconciliation--and then promptly did everything in his power to see
that it would never happen. As Somalia's ambassador to New Delhi in
the 1980s, he gained some familiarity with his country's foreign
policy, which depends on playing off one power against another: the
United States against the USSR; China against both; moderate Arab
countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia against Libya and Iraq.
So it's not surprising that Aideed, with his back against the
wall in southern Mogadishu, should seek to find some basis for
dialogue with the more sympathetic Italians. What is surprising is
that the Italians would think some common ground might be found with
Aideed. If the Italians believe themselves so much more adroit in the
present circumstance than the clumsy, heavy-handed Americans, they
could begin their rapprochement by offering Aideed political asylum
in Italy.
Aideed's purpose seems obvious. With a force of some 2,000 men,
he can't hope to defeat the U.N. troop coalition, with its 21,800
peace keepers from twenty-five nations. Instead he has made UNOSOM
pay a price in casualties. As the bloody costs mount, he may gamble
that the U.N. will be fractured by an erosion of public support and
the withdrawal of some nations, as Italy threatened briefly, and be
forced to come to terms with him to save lives as well as the
coalition. Perhaps he's drawn a lesson from the ineffectual U.N.
peacekeeping effort in Bosnia and the reluctance of Europe and the
United States to commit combat forces. If not in Bosnia, why in
Somalia? Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who called last week
for U.S. troops to "pack up and go home ," may make Aideed a prophet.
But the warlord isn't a genius--he's as brutal in his policy vision
as was Siad. In the meantime, the other dozen or so Somali warlords
watch and wait.
Should Aideed succeed and the U.N. acquiesce, he would remain
the chief power broker in Mogadishu. Whoever controls its deep-water
port, airfield, highways and commerce controls much of the south.
U.N. plans for a transitional Somali government built on a n
effective police force and judicial system are difficult enough to
imagine. To believe the U.N. could succeed in the face of Aideed's
murderous ambition is impossible. The issue at stake in Mogadishu
isn't merely Somalia's future but the integrity of Chapter vii of the
U.N. charter as an instrument for resolving future crises,
particularly in Africa. If the principle of collective humanitarian
action can be overthrown by a back street brigand and killer like
Aideed, then it's not worth the paper it's written on, to say nothing
of the lives it has already claimed.
S.J. Hamrick served in the State Department from 1960 to 1980.
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SNU is an entirely independent newsletter devoted to critical
analysis of the political and humanitarian developments in Somalia
and Somaliland. SNU is edited by Dr. Bernhard Helander in Uppsala,
Sweden.
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