In this issue: SOMALI WARLORDS MOVING GUNWAGONS FROM MOGADISHU FRENCH TROOPS WOUND THREE SOMALIS NEAR BAIDOA SOMALI MUSLIMS SEEK FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAMIC STATE SOMALIA-SHAMBLES GUNMEN LOOT FOOD AS TROOPS LEAVE SOMALIA-NEXT FAMINE ____________________________________________________________________ S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E ____________________________________________________________________ No 44 December 27, 1992. ISSN 1103-1999 ____________________________________________________________________ Somalia News Update is published irregularly via electronic mail and fax. Questions can be directed to antbh@strix.udac.uu.se or to fax number +46-18-151160. All material is free to quote as long as the source is stated. ____________________________________________________________________ SOMALI WARLORDS MOVING GUNWAGONS FROM MOGADISHU By Alistair Lyon MOGADISHU, Dec 21, Reuter - Two Somali warlords started to haul their "technical" battlewagons out of Mogadishu on Monday under a U.S.-brokered peace deal, a U.S. officer said. A French military spokesman announced plans for 350 French legionnaires and 150 U.S. Marines to move into the famished inland town of Hoddur on Friday, Christmas Day. U.S. military spokesman Colonel Fred Peck said hundreds of Marines would leave Mogadishu at dawn on Tuesday for Baidoa, Somalia's famine capital and the launchpad for planned task force deployments to other hungry towns. "It's a big convoy packed to the gills with all the equipment they need to go north," Peck said. Relief agencies have been pressing the multinational force to act swiftly to curb lawlessness and gun rule, particularly in north Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia where clan gangs have looted food aid meant for the starving. A U.S. officer said militia leader Mohamed Farah Aideed had moved 30 to 40 technicals out of south Mogadishu on Monday and his chief rival, Ali Mahdi Mohamed, would move a similar number from the north on Tuesday. "This is a Somali agreement and it's being coordinated by the Somalis," said Marine Colonel Michael Hagee. "That in itself is a large step forward." Freelance bandits and factions not aligned with Aideed or Ali Mahdi would be told by radio and newspaper announcements to get their technicals out of town fast. "What we are trying to do is to get the factions to bring their arms under control so we do not have a confrontation between the combined task force and the Somalis," Hagee said. Ali Mahdi and Aideed agreed on December 11 to move "all forces and their technicals" outside Mogadishu as part of a seven-point peace plan reached two days after the multinational force reached Somalia to secure relief routes for the starving. U.S. officials said any technical sighted after the accord had taken effect would "automatically be considered a threat." American and French troops have in the past opened fire when they have perceived a direct threat from technicals. In the latest such clash, French troops shot and wounded three Somalis after a battlewagon fired on their observation post four km (two miles) northwest of Baidoa on Sunday night. "A French sniper stopped the vehicle dead and there was an exchange of fire," Colonel Jean-Paul Perruche told reporters. He said a French platoon sent to reinforce the post traded fire with gunmen one km (600 yards) south of the position. More French troops went in with two U.S. helicopters in support and found three wounded Somalis armed with AK-47 assault rifles. Seven other gunmen in the pickup had fled. There were no French casualties. One Somali had serious stomach wounds. Perruche called the attack deliberate but said he did not believe it was aimed specifically at French troops. "It seems to me that some people of the region of Baidoa are not very happy at the presence of U.S. and French forces in this country. Before they had all the power to terrorise and rob the people. Now they cannot act like that," he said. U.S. and French troops took the famine-hit town of Baidoa, dubbed the "City of Death," last Wednesday. Perruche said a joint U.S.-French force, under French command, would push on to Hoddur, 150 km (90 miles) north of Baidoa, on Thursday and enter the town on Christmas morning. FRENCH TROOPS WOUND THREE SOMALIS NEAR BAIDOA By Paul Holmes MOGADISHU, Dec 21, Reuter - French troops wounded at least three gunmen when they came under attack in southern Somalia, a French military spokesman said on Monday. Relief agencies urged U.S.-led forces to push into lawless north Mogadishu and force weapons off the streets. A French military spokesman said troops opened fire when 10 gunmen in a "technical" battlewagon charged towards their observation post near the inland famine town of Baidoa under cover of darkness on Sunday. "It was a concerted attack," said Colonel Jean-Paul Perruche. He said a French sniper stopped the vehicle in its tracks. The three Somalis, found with Kalashnikovs by French paratroops, were taken to hospital, one with severe stomach wounds. No French soldiers were hurt and the other gunmen fled. The clash highlighted continued insecurity in Somalia, where U.S.-led forces have intervened to keep pillaging gunmen and feuding clan militias away from food for victims of Africa's worst famine this century. Relief agencies on Monday piled pressure on the U.S. military to extend their security umbrella to north Mogadishu, nominally controlled by warlord Ali Mahdi Mohamed. "It's literally teeming with AK-47s and teeming with technicals," said Mark Thomas, spokesman for the U.N. Children.s Fund (UNICEF). "Any military presence at all would help as long as it is a show of force. They said it would happen soon but would give us no definite date," Thomas said. U.S. troops who secured Mogadishu port and airport at the start of Operation Restore Hope on December 9 have escorted food convoys across the bombed out Green Line that divides the capital but do not operate patrols in the north. Relief agencies have withdrawn virtually all their foreign staff from the enclave because of the insecurity. Thomas said the Irish aid agency Goal told a U.S. military liaison officer at a daily meeting on Monday that it was considering suspending operations in the north. "UNICEF supports what Goal said about insecurity. We cannot send more supervisory staff in until the situation improves," Thomas told reporters. U.S. Marines and their coalition allies have established security bridgeheads for the relief operation in Baidoa and at a military airfield in Bali Dogle and on Sunday swept ashore to do the same in the southern port of Kismayu. But U.S. commanders say their mission is not to disarm a country awash with weapons after two years of clan killing and gun rule. Overall commander General Joseph Hoar said last week that security would improve as more troops arrived. Sunday's attack on the French observation post, northwest of Baidoa airfield, occurred a day after U.S. and French troops seized six battlewagons and disarmed 45 heavily-armed gunmen who had massed at a compound just outside Baidwa, 250 km (150 miles) west of Mogadishu. A Marine patrol in Mogadishu also shot and hit a gunman in a technical who trained a machinegun on them near the Green Line on Sunday. It was not clear if the man was killed. "We're not in the investigation business," said Navy Commander Jim Kudla, a U.S. military spokesman. "The squad perceived a direct threat to them, they fired and that's it." SOMALI MUSLIMS SEEK FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAMIC STATE By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Copyright 1992 The Washington Post MERCA, Somalia - At the run-down port in this steamy coastal town, scores of workmen, shirtless and sweating, struggle under silver tins of cooking oil and heavy sacks of rice. They are unloading a Red Cross barge, under the watchful eye of a handful of sullen sentries, some with red-and-white Arab-style kaffiyehs covering their heads, all with AK-47 automatic rifles dangling from straps on their shoulders. The port guards are members of the Islamic Union Party, or Ittihad, Somalia's armed Muslim fundamentalist group, which has established a toehold here in this Indian Ocean trading post where, according to legend, Islam first touched Somalia's shores. Since their arrival here earlier this year, the fundamentalists have been credited with establishing a strict security system that has all but eliminated wholesale looting of relief food meant for the country's millions of starving people. Food still gets stolen in Merca, usually from truck convoys the moment they exit this port. But inside the port's perimeter, the Union Party exercises strict discipline and control. "For security, they are good," said Jama Ali Kahin of the Somali Red Crescent relief group. "They are popular because before they came there was a lot of looting." Elsewhere around the country, cities have been torn by anarchy, looting and clan violence; in the few pockets where the fundamentalists have moved in, they generally have managed to impose order on the chaos. The Union Party arrived in the small Wadajir district of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, six weeks ago and imposed its own strict brand of sharia, or Islamic law, and, said Somali journalist A.M. Ali, "it was very, very successful - no theft, no problem." In accordance with sharia, however, Ali and others said, looters captured by Union Party members in Wadajir had their hands amputated. "They are harsh, but they are extremely structured and they are disciplined," said Rakiya Omaar, a human rights activist and former executive director of Africa Watch. "People are sick and tired of war, they are sick and tired of looting, and no one is providing social services." The Union Party is still considered a minor faction in Somalia, a fringe movement at best that so far has attracted little popular support. But its method in Merca, in its northern stronghold and elsewhere has been to move into locations where there is a power vacuum and win converts by demonstrating how a return to Islamic fundamentals can bring an end to the kind of violence and banditry that have wracked this country for nearly two years. The fundamentalists' goal in Somalia, according to a Union Party spokesman here, is to establish an Islamic state based on sharia. "Islam and sharia," said spokesman Abdulkadr Abdulle. "We want people to obey the sharia." But now, the Union Party feels a threat from an unexpected source: the intervention in Somalia of U.S. and other foreign combat troops who have come to protect relief supplies and help feed this country's starving millions. The Bush administration and U.S. military officials have called the intervention strictly humanitarian, a response to the searing images of emaciated, starving women and children digging into the ground for a few extra grains of rice. But to the Muslim fundamentalists, the intervention is akin to an invasion, whose ultimate goal is to crush the budding Islamic movement. "Of course it's an invasion - nobody asked us," Abdulle said. "Strange enough, the Americans during the Reagan administration used to help (ousted dictator Mohamed) Siad Barre. But when the war came to Mogadishu, they left. Now they are coming with 30,000 men. Most of the guns are from the United States. Most of the mortars that destroyed Mogadishu are from the United States." During Siad Barre's rule, according to Abdulle, Islam was suppressed as the regime tried to impose the ideas of the West. After two years of bitter clan warfare that has created one of the modern world's worst famines, Abdulle said, "Now, we are seeing the whole society wants Islam as a way of life. . . . Everybody is saying they want sharia. We have tried capitalism - it failed. We have tried communism - it failed. We know there is no other solution but Islam. "That is why the West is intervening," he added. "Because they see Islam coming to power in Somalia." His viewpoint is shared by other fundamentalists and their sympathizers. "We are very suspicious," said Abdikhadir Abdi Gutali, a reporter for Qaran, one of Mogadishu's daily newspapers. "We worry they will be here a long time, and maybe make a new colony." During the 12 days since the first Marines came ashore, the troops have been greeted like conquering heroes. But if there is any opposition from any sector, if the initial heady expectations wear thin, it will likely come from these fundamentalists. Union Party adherents are not saying they will fight the American intervention. They concede that the arrival of U.S. troops here is still widely popular among a people beaten down by continuous warfare and hunger. But that popularity, they predict, will change. "We want to orient our people," Abdulle said as other Muslim clerics and Koran scholars seated around him nodded their heads in agreement. "If the society becomes ready, maybe we'll fight." Abdulle said the Union Party already is working to turn Somali opinion against the U.S.-led intervention. "We know how to propagate. We know our society," he said. "We go to the markets. We go to the old people. We write." The prospect of Islamic fundamentalists waging a holy war against U.S. Marines on a faraway, hostile shore immediately raises the image of Beirut in the early 1980s, where U.S. troops first arrived as "peace keepers" and later became the target of terrorist bombs and mortar attacks. Here in Somalia, the threat looks distant. The intervention is still welcomed, the fundamentalist movement still considered small. But it is a threat that lurks in the minds of many American military and diplomatic policy makers. During the recent Somalia aid conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, special U.S. envoy Robert Oakley told a reporter he was "sure" the American military presence in Somalia would be used as a propaganda tool by the fundamentalists. But he said he also was certain that an "overwhelming majority" of Somalis would reject the fundamentalist appeal. Other analysts are not so certain the fundamentalists can be easily dismissed. They point out that in neighboring Sudan, the fundamentalists were considered only a minor irritant, but through discipline and sheer tenacity they have managed to outlast the old dictatorship and establish in its place one of the world's staunchest Islamic republics. Here in Somalia, in the view of some foreign and Somali analysts, the fundamentalists' anti-American message may find a more sympathetic audience depending on how long the U.S. forces stay and how effective the troops are at meeting the heightened expectations for change. "If they don't meet the expectations of the people, the only way to challenge the Americans will be through fundamentalism," said Hussein Mursal, a Somali working with the Save the Children Fund. Omaar said the fundamentalists may be a small minority now, but "you don't need a lot of people. . . . They are potent. They are extremely disciplined, and they are answering deep-seated social grievances." "Somali people like the Americans," journalist Ali said. "I don't think (the Union Party) or any other organization can fight against them. People are welcoming them." But, he added, "maybe in the long run, the fundamentalists will grow in number. This fundamentalist way of Islam in Somalia has just started." SOMALIA-SHAMBLES By MORT ROSENBLUM AP Special Correspondent Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Stripped of their killing gear, the Darth Vader war wagons are harmless heaps. The roadside burial mounds level off with the rains. Doors once bolted in fear now open, more every day. In a moldering hut under the papayas at the United Somali Congress compound, a sort of government seat for one of Mogadishu's warlords, a green computer screen blinks. Slowly, people are picking up the pieces. But very slowly. Despite touches of normalcy, Somalia is in such shambles that those who try to help find the country in a league with Humpty Dumpty. "It may never be put back together again," said James Fennell, a CARE veteran, explaining how betrayal and bloodshed among clans had rent the fabric of Somali society. Seifulaziz Milas, a Mozambican sociologist with the United Nations, was slightly more hopeful: "Somalia could rebuild itself, but not any time soon." While the world looked elsewhere, a half million Somali children died or starved past the point of mental recovery. The ruling class is dead or in exile. Somalia, in the sense of a nation, is gone. Now, Fennell said, outsiders must focus on the various pieces: getting farmers home to villages; reopening schools; turning on power and water; sweeping the streets of teen-age killers and other riffraff. Toward this limited goal, some signs are encouraging. The fall's rains were good, filling catchments and soaking parched fields which have sprouted lush grain. Donated seed and tools are trickling out to farmers. A few former traffic cops in Mogadishu are back at work in hopes that someone will finally pay them. Somali exiles are venturing home to trade, bringing cigarettes and spare parts. Donkey convoys carry garbage to be burned. Pharmacies are opening with the rudiments of medicine. Where Islamic mullahs have taken charge, kids carry schoolbags instead of AK-47s. Mogadishu's water is back on. A tiny clan fought 11 battles over two years to control the city's pumps. The U.N. refused to compensate them; they refused to turn the valves. After months, the U.N. agreed that clan members would be paid to run the waterworks. Along the Green Line between north and south Mogadishu, the well-connected and well-protected are restoring buildings among the blackened ruins of the gracefully arabesque whitewashed downtown. If a tenuous peace among clans can hold, the Green Line may disappear. Many of these developments are because Somalis are fed up with craziness and want something more. Some can be traced directly to the arrival of U.S. Marines, followed by other U.S. and multinational forces. World attention, at long last, has settled on Somalia. The media, along with the aid industry, is also pumping cash into the economy. Television and print coverage of Operation Restore Hope, in its first stages, should cost about $20 million, as much as the largest relief agency, CARE, spent here over the year, Fennell said. The sudden income is a mixed blessing. As people still die by the thousands for lack of a handful of food, and entrepreneurs are pocketing millions of dollars by cornering the market on essentials such as fuel and food staples. Free-spending foreigners have distorted an already shapeless economy. At Mogadishu airport, a porter hefted a visitor's bag 200 feet to a taxi. Handed a dollar bill, he threw it on the ground. "That is no money in my country," he said. He wanted $20. At the Islamic orphanage in Baidoa, the visitor gave $20 to the administrator, who beamed as though given an extra month's budget. Supplies range from short to non-existent, and profiteers gouge outsiders who pay any price. In Baidoa, gas is $40 a gallon and rising. But Somalis who benefit from foreign cash are a scant fraction of the 6 million people who survived the war and famine and now must try to shape themselves into a functioning society. In urban areas, swarms of people amble the streets in search of an odd job to help them scrape by another day. With neither industry nor government running, the prospect is dim. In the countryside, farmers sit idly by cleared and watered fields, waiting until relatives, or relief workers, come through with enough seed and a hoe so they can get back to work. Everywhere in between, herders follow their camels back toward their traditional wild pastures, trusting Allah more than the Marines to keep the peace. Before Somalia imploded, two-thirds of its export earnings came from livestock. But the fighting wrecked veterinary services, closing the crucial Persian Gulf market because of the fear of rinderpest, an infectious livestock disease. What happens next depends on how much foreign troops can scatter bandit gangs and whether principal clan leaders can find common ground for any sort of lasting government. It is anyone's guess. For the present, the signs can be read in any way. The road to Baidoa is dotted with a dozen makeshift roadblocks, grim little checkpoints of junk metal and old tires. Last week, someone decorated one with purple boughs of bougainvillea. For travelers who had seen the road in another time, it was a cheery note of hope. Two days later, the deep purple had faded in the sun to a crisp brown, and most of the petals had dropped to the ground. GUNMEN LOOT FOOD AS TROOPS LEAVE By Aidan Hartley MIIDOW, Somalia, Dec 17, Reuter - Somali gunmen began looting relief food minutes after the departure of U.S. and French troops who escorted it to starving bush villages on Thursday. On their first mission into the villages surrounding Baidoa, the inland town where they arrived on Wednesday, U.S. Marines and French legionnaires accompanied a convoy of 10 trucks carrying grain for the relief agency CARE. Troops in four armoured vehicles and trucks mounted with missile launchers and machine guns, backed by a Cobra attack helicopter, delivered the food to four villages up to 24 km (15 miles) northwest of Baidoa. But within minutes of the convoy moving on, Reuter reporters saw armed men move in to start removing bags of grain from village hut stores. It was this sort of incident that led to the U.S.-led armed intervention in Somalia to protect famine relief, and it was an indication of the problems the eventual 35,000-strong force will face in the gun-swamped country. In the hamlet of Musibe, Reuter photographer Yannis Behrakis said he saw several men, one carrying a gun, in a pick-up truck piled with bags of food 10 minutes after the troops left. The pick-up quickly drove away. "Some villagers came running, waving their hands for help. They said the men had come to loot the food the Americans had just brought," said Behrakis. In nearby Miidow village, this reporter saw a gunman near the village food store which had just been filled with a truckload of grain delivered about 30 minutes earlier under armed guard. The man, carrying a semi-automatic rifle, ran off when he saw the reporter's approaching car. A woman stood nearby shouting in Somali and villagers looked agitated. Sidow Ali, who said he was an elder of the village, told Reuters through a translator the man was from a gang which had come to loot food. "He wanted to take 10 bags of food. When he saw your vehicle he ran away...he was waiting for his friends," Sidow Ali said. SOMALIA-NEXT FAMINE Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. By MORT ROSENBLUM AFGOI, Somalia (AP) -- In a headlong rush to save people, aid workers have neglected the animals and the farms, exposing Somalia to a potentially worse catastrophe next year, agriculture experts warn. Already, sleeping sickness and rinderpest are killing cows that managed to escape rustlers during two years of war. No one sprays the deadly tsetse fly. Veterinary services have collapsed. "They just forgot the animals," said Omar Ali Ainanshe, a British-trained veterinarian whose drug stocks are down to some human pain pills. "Somalia is finished without its livestock." At the same time, irrigation canals off the Shebele and Juba rivers are choked with mud. Relief agencies are reaching only a small fraction of farmers with seed and tools for the coming rains. "There is no coordination, no systematic coverage to get seed to villages," said Hassan Khalifa of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. "Without it, they can plant nothing." Khalifa, a Sudanese agronomist with 30 years' experience, works with a Kurdish livestock expert, Talid Ali, at FAO's tiny mission in Mogadishu. Both have received only modest promises of funding. "You can feed people now, but if you don't save their animals and crops, what do they eat next?" Ali said. "Two-thirds of Somali exports are livestock. Without this, there is no income." The International Red Cross, spotting the problem early, set up feeding centers early this year in this bustling crossroads on the Shebele, just west of Mogadishu. "We felt that farmers had to keep up their strength," said Horst Homborg of the Red Cross. "And we also wanted to attract people back to the farms so they did not settle in the city." Other agencies agree. "The most important thing now is to get people back to their fields so they have food in June and don't have to move again," said James Fennell of CARE in Baidoa. Before the September rains, the Red Cross distributed seed to 250,000 Somali farmers, and other voluntary agencies reached scores of thousands more. Corn and maize should be harvested next month. But Khalifa said the donors need a massive program now so that farmers can plant before the longer rainy season which begins in June. He needs at least $3 million and cannot get it. "We must coordinate," he said. "Agencies want to help, but some know nothing about Somali agriculture." He said one agency imported the wrong kind of seed, which can weaken local varieties. For Ali, saving the livestock is an even greater priority. He estimates that $28 million is needed urgently to set up animal health facilities and vaccinate cattle against rinderpest. Nearly 80 percent of all Somalis depend on camels, cattle, sheep or goats for their livelihood. During drought, families survive on milk, meat and the cash they earn from selling their animals. An outbreak of rinderpest could deplete Somali herds and spread to Ethiopia and Kenya, he said. Since tsetse have not been sprayed since 1988, he added, cattle are dying fast from sleeping sickness. In Afgoi, the crisis is clear. Over the last two years, more than half the cattle in the region were lost to drought, disease or theft, according to Ainanshe. Drugs can prevent and cure cattle of sleeping sickness, but none are available. "I have had nothing for seven months," the veterinarian said. "No rinderpest vaccine since 1990." At the livestock market here, herders find the animals offered are in bad shape, and they are getting worse. Ali Haj Mohamed lost 40 camels to sleeping sickness in the last year. His last 100 suffer from a skin disease he cannot treat. Ainanshe knows why: Herders use the wrong drug for ticks. There is nothing else. Dore Bale Alim, now who looks 75 at 60, dropped quickly from rich to well-off, and he is plummeting toward ruin. Before the fighting started, he had 150 cattle. He lost 40 to sleeping sickness. More died for lack of grazing. He had to sell some to survive. Rustlers took a cut. "Now I have 50 head," Alim said. "If things continue as they have, I will be down to zero. Then we will starve." ________________________________________________________________ Posted by Bernhard Helander in Uppsala, Sweden.