The Road to Hell (42 page)

For months, U.S. Marines had handled security at the airport, making sure that nothing interfered with the withdrawal. In the course of the morning, that duty was officially passed over to Egyptian soldiers, the transfer acknowledged with a quick handshake. And as journalists fanned out to watch the activity, the UN military spokesman, New Zealander Chris Budge commented, “Let us know where you're going so that there will be no problems with the efficient security elements that will be in place after the Americans depart.” Budge couldn't hold back a smirk.

At 10:15
A.M.
, Major General Thomas Montgomery boarded a helicopter and left. At 11:30
A.M.
a dozen massive helicopter transports arose from the beaches and took to the air in formation like a line of pigeons alighting from a telephone wire. They kicked up plumes of sand that could be seen all around the city. And then Lieutenant Dave Walcott, the last man boarding the last amphibious vehicle leaving the shore, said his final words to journalists: “We accomplished our mission: the safe withdrawal of our troops.” Then, speaking to the assembled journalists, he said, “I suggest
you get out of here while you can.” It was not what the military PR brass wanted from their last soldier, but it was precisely what the press had come for.

The lieutenant was as unrealistic as he was quotable, emblematic of the Americans' total isolation from the country they had come to save. Since January, the Americans had sequestered themselves behind layers of security at the airport and along the beaches and had been quietly slipping away ever since. Many of the remaining soldiers were just there to cover the rear guard of the pullout. There wasn't much they could offer the press in terms of homespun American reflection on the events of the past sixteen months.

“How do you feel about leaving?”

“Can't wait to get out of this shithole.”

“How long you been here?”

“Nearly two weeks now.”

For most, their only contact with Somalis had been with laborers, employed to fill sandbags and with shopkeepers at a place called Walmart, an area at the end of the airport runway where Somalis had built souvenir stalls and cut holes in the fence through which they sold trinkets and bits of Africana, ebony statues of no particular ethnic origin. Carvings of Shaka Zulu with his spears and shield were big sellers, so the Somalis whipped up thousands of them, and neither buyer nor seller was the least bit concerned that Shaka had no connection at all to Somalia.

Pohalski and her colleagues on the sand dune were an exception. They'd been in Somalia since mid-October, arriving to shore up American troop strength in the wake of October 3. They'd been there long enough to know that there was more to Somali than the people who dragged the dead bodies of their comrades through the streets. Curious about what lay outside their barracks, they were full of questions about Somalia.

But there was no way that they were ever going to see what was out on the streets. From the day they arrived, their main job had been not to embarrass the U.S. government, to serve as a symbol that America wasn't backing down. At the same time, they were to stay as far from potential harm as possible. On October 3, Operation Restore Hope had become Operation Don't Fuck Up Again.

O
n the streets of Mogadishu, the American withdrawal barely caused a ripple. Few Somalis turned their heads as the American choppers took to the sky. There was no reaction to Harrier jets booming overhead as a warning
to potential last-minute troublemakers. Somalis know an empty gesture when they see one.

Likewise, there was little reaction on the streets to the “peace” accord signed the previous day with much UN-generated hoopla in Nairobi by Aydiid and rival AH Mahdi. The ceremony in Nairobi seemed designed to mimic the signing of the Israeli-PLO accord on the White House lawn the previous fall. The former fugitive warlord and his murderous rivals had attained the status of statesmen in record time.

The accord repudiated “any form of violence as a means of resolving conflicts” and set up an April 15 meeting in Mogadishu to establish a national reconciliation conference to be held on May 15. The conference, predictably, was never held.

The only thing that was certain was that the United Nations got what it wanted; a semblance of an agreement to accompany the American departure. The UN was just happy to get the signatures, and the warlords had a nice time in Nairobi. They stayed in first-class hotels, were given phone and secretarial services by the UN (for a cost of $50,000 a day), and did a lot of shopping. Aydiid himself had been in Nairobi for months, staying at Nairobi's five-star Serena Hotel until he was asked to leave because he and his entourage were frightening the tourists. He moved to the Intercontinental. Several Somalis commented that $50,000 a day was a bargain compared to the nearly $3 billion that was spent in Somalia, and it might be more economical just to keep them there.

W
hen the Americans left, the press returned to the Sahafi Hotel and began packing up their gear. Satellite phones were folded up and video decks stowed away. Reporters filed their last stories and checked onto flights back to Nairobi. Most of what followed in Somalia did so without the world's attention. There were no Pakistani journalists in Somalia, no Egyptians, Indians, Zimbabweans, or Malaysians running around asking their troops what they thought of the situation here.

The press and the military together agreed to close a chapter on Somalia. Neat packages make for good newspaper copy and academic conferences. But in Somalia, today, there is nothing left. No electricity, no plumbing, no infrastructure, no wires on the poles. Except for some graffiti and prefab buildings, there is little evidence that more than 100,000 American soldiers marched through the country over sixteen months. Back in the States, plans were being made at academic institutions to ponder the mechanics of peacekeeping. The “lessons learned” from Somalia
are certain to be enumerated many times. Politicians will speak of “another Somalia,” with the same intonation they once used for “another Vietnam.”

Some of the people who were affected by the exercise had more basic questions. Families of the dead Somalis and peacekeepers can never be sure why their loved ones died. It's difficult to explain that policymakers were pushing for precedents, trying to establish the limits of Chapter VII power, seeking to define the Mogadishu Line between humanitarian intervention and political involvement.

“I'd really like to know what was going on out there,” Sergeant Hamen said from atop his sand dune the day before he left Somalia. “I mean, what do we tell our kids? Was this a war, or what?”

*
It was the first time the medals had been awarded since Vietnam.

*
According to a report in the
Los Angeles Times
just before the December 9, 1992, intervention, “Officials caution that once the food supplies are rolling again, the allies … would face an even more trying question: how to put together a viable government capable of running the country without increasing civil strife.”

*
The Guardian
, May 20, 1996, p. 12.

*
Despite the partisan anti-UN hysteria that arose in the States after October 3, that was never the case. At no time was the QRF under UN command. They were commanded on the ground in Somalia by Lieutenant General Thomas Montgomery, who answered to CENTCOM in Florida, commanded by General Joseph Hoar. Hoar answered to General Colin Powell.

*
The best explanation of the difference between Chapter VI, peacekeeping, and Chapter VII, peace enforcement, was articulated by British colonel Allan Mallinson , writing in
Jane's Defense Weekly
, October 28,1995. Mallinson is responsible for the development of the British army's doctrine for operations other than war.

Peacekeeping is politically centered. The essence of peacekeeping operations is that UN troops op' érate in support of diplomacy, acting as a third party, transparently applying principles that sustain the belligerents' consent to international intervention. This facilitates dispersal and freedom of movement, essential for a peacekeeping force, and keeps force levels low, aiding operational endurance.

On the other hand, peace enforcement is ultimately about using force to compel compliance in the absence of consent: the probability is that one, or more, of the belligerents becomes the de facto enemy, and the intervention troops themselves become combatants. In these circumstances an approach akin to warfighting is required, with peacekeeping principles supplanted by the principles of war; notably surprise, concentration of force and offensive action.

*
Among other things, Resolution 834

Strongly condemns the unprovoked armed attacks against the personnel of UNOSOM II on 5 June 1993, which appear to have been part of a calculated and premeditated series of cease-fire violations to prevent by intimidation UNOSOM II from carrying out its mandate as provided for in Resolution 814 (1993)….

Reaffirms that the Secretary-General is authorized under Resolution 814 (1993) to take all necessary measures against all those responsible for the armed attacks referred to in paragraph 1 above, including against those responsible for publicly inciting such attacks, to establish the effective authority of UNOSOM II throughout Somalia, including to secure the investigation of their actions and their arrest and detention for prosecution, trial and punishment.

*
In the early days of the military operation against Aydiid, most people seemed to accept the UN version of events without question. The following June 8, 1993, editorial from the
Buffalo News
is typical of the mainstream American reaction:

The slap in the face a Somali warlord has given the United Nations is a direct challenge that can* not go unanswered if the international organization is to be viewed as anything more than a paper tiger, there or anywhere else …

All evidence indicates the murders stemmed from a deliberate ambush set up by gunmen loyal to Somali strongman Mohammed Farah Aidid. The attack in the capital city of Mogadishu came as the UN troops, there to guard food distribution, went to check out weapons warehouses controlled by Aidid, who was told of the inspection ahead of time and did not object.

Such a cowardly and brazen attack on U.N. peacekeepers cannot be merely condemned; it must be punished …

Whether in Bosnia, Somalia or any of the trouble spots in which peons wreak carnage carrying out the orders of others, the United Nations must be able to go directly after those in control. That is the most effective way of stemming the violence that not only threatens U.N. peacekeepers, but that also keeps local inhabitants under the thumbs of unelected warlords.

†
War Clouds on the Horn of Africa: A Crisis for Détente
. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, 1976.

*
Was UNOSOM trying to close down the radio station or was it a legitimate inspection of arms storage sites? After the October 3 debacle, the UN did authorize an independent report on the violence in Mogadishu (S/1994/653). That report said: Opinions differ, even among UNOSOM officials, on whether the weapons inspection of 5 June 1993 was genuine or was merely a cover* up for reconnaissance and subsequent seizure of Radio Mogadishu.”

*
I've reviewed transcripts of more than forty broadcasts from the months prior to the incident at Radio Mogadishu and found a few instances where they were only slightly more provocative. On the whole, it was much less inflammatory than much of what passes for debate on American talk radio.

*
John Drysdale ,
Whatever Happened to Somalia?
(London: Haan Publishers, 1994), p. 168.

*
It was on this day that four journalists who went to view the destruction were killed by angry Somali mobs. Hansi Kraus of AP, and Dan Eldon, Hos Maina, and Anthony Macharia of Reuters were chased and beaten to death.

THE SELF-LICKING ICE CREAM CONE

—Frantz Fanon,
A Dying Colonialism

The statistics on sanitary improvements are not interpreted by the native as progress in the fight against illness, in general, but as fresh proof of the occupier's hold on the country.

T
he United Stated abandoned Operation Restore Hope in Somalia immediately after the fiasco of October 3, 1993. From that point on, nothing the Americans did was meant directly to affect the situation on the ground; everything was aimed at minimizing negative political fallout back home until they packed up and left five months later. With the Americans happily out of the picture and hostility raging in Mogadishu, the rest of the UN mission was doomed. It was only a matter of time before inter' national will, and, most important, international funding, would dry up.

Any doubt about that was sealed two weeks after the American departure when a plane was shot down in Kigali, Rwanda, killing the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi and setting off what may be the worst concentrated massacre in human history. Journalists followed the events. Money followed the news. And NGOs followed the money. Somalia was forgotten, except by the UN, which continued operating in Mogadishu as if they were going to be there forever.