In this issue: SOMALI WARLORDS AGREE TO DISMANTLE "GREEN LINE" SEARCHING FOR THE LESSONS OF SOMALIA: Adan Abdulle Osman & Jirdah Hussein SOMALIA ANTI-FAMINE FORCE HEADS FOR FINAL FRONTIERS IN TROUBLED SOMALIA, U.S. TROOPS LEARN THE LIMITS OF CHARITY ____________________________________________________________________ S O M A L I A N E W S U P D A T E ____________________________________________________________________ No 45 December 30, 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 AGREE TO DISMANTLE "GREEN LINE" By Frances Kerry MOGADISHU, Dec 27, Reuter - Mogadishu's rival warlords agreed to dismantle the "Green Line" dividing their city and troops in the multinational task force prepared to patrol both halves of the wrecked Somali capital. A senior U.S. official said on Sunday Ali Mahdi Mohamed and General Mohamed Farah Aideed had also agreed in talks to halt clan fighting in and around Mogadishu and to lead a peace rally through the city on Monday. Their deal, reached after five hours of talks on Saturday, was aimed at putting into practice parts of a peace agreement struck two days after a U.S.-led multinational intervention force began arriving in Mogadishu on December 9. "All artificial lines in the city will be abolished," a copy of the agreement made available to reporters said. Hostilities would cease "inside and outside Mogadishu in areas where up to now fighting has continued." Aideed and Ali Mahdi, self-styled president of a country with no government, turned on each other in a battle for control after fighting as allies to oust former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991. Clan feuds in the capital and in other parts of the country caused a famine which has killed more than 300,000 people. The plan to take down the line which divides Ali Mahdi's northern enclave from territory in the south of the city controlled by Aideed coincided with news of a clash at a U.N. compound in the north of the city on Saturday. U.N. spokesman Farouk Mawlawi said gunmen with machine guns and rocket launchers attacked a compound housing five U.N. military observers early in the afternoon. Somali guards returned fire, killing at least two gunmen and injuring several others, Mawlawi said, adding nobody among the guards or in the compound was hurt. But the senior U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, said as the troop numbers grew, the humanitarian mission could increasingly address security problems. He said U.S. troops would fan out on streets in both south and north Mogadishu over the next few days to locate and remove heavy weapons. "Heavy weapons will be removed voluntarily, or if necessary by force, and with the agreement of Somalis," the official said. "From now on we're going to be doing more enforcement." Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steve Ritter said patrols of north Mogadishu would start in "the very near future." The multinational troops have so far held back from an aggressive search for weapons. But the U.S. official confirmed that a more rigorous approach had become possible, particularly in Mogadishu, with the increase in troop numbers. The force grew to more than 26,000 either in Somalia or offshore on ships on Sunday with the arrival of some 1,500 French troops. Foreign troops have so far not patrolled north Mogadishu and their presence in the south has been relatively low-key. Shootings, lootings and muggings have remained commonplace. The task force moved a step closer on Sunday towards completing its goal of securing eight centres in central and southern Somalia to reach into the famished countryside. A U.S. military spokesman said some 180 Italian troops and a U.S. military police escort arrived in the afternoon in the town of Jalalaksi, about 200 km (125 miles) north of Mogadishu. A separate group of 260 Canadian and U.S. troops were due to swoop in helicopters into the town of Belet Huen early on Monday. Theis will complete the network of towns controlled by the task force ahead of a New Year visit to Somalia by President George Bush starting on January 31. SEARCHING FOR THE LESSONS OF SOMALIA: Interviews with Adan Abdulle Osman, Jirdah Hussein et al. By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Copyright 1992 The Washington Post MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 26 - Twelve months ago, while the world barely noticed, two power-hungry warlords sat on opposite sides of Mogadishu exchanging insults and artillery barrages. The divided capital already was being overrun by refugees from the countryside. Virtually the only foreigners left were the unsung heroes working for relief agencies or Egyptian diplomats hunkered in their compound. An American official in Nairobi, asked for his prognosis at the time, declared that Somalia should be "paved over and turned into a parking lot." Now, one year later, Somalia has emerged suddenly and unexpectedly at the center of world attention. The United States is engaged in a military buildup that will bring up to 30,000 troops here, supported by forces from a dozen other nations. The operation, under U.N. auspices, is making possible huge food shipments for starving Somalis. But the world awakened late to the tragedy of Somalia. In the past year, up to 30,000 people are estimated to have died in Mogadishu from gunshot wounds or shelling. Across the countryside, an estimated 300,000 Somalis, mostly women, children and old people, are believed to have starved to death. The U.S.-led humanitarian mission, Operation Restore Hope, was launched after hope was already lost for hundreds of thousands of desperate Somalis. The military operation is less than three weeks old, and relief for the most destitute Somalis in the villages is still a long way off. But many of those grappling with the crisis already are asking what lessons Somalia holds for the world. Sifting through the ruins of Somalia in search of answers becomes complicated by the desire to affix blame. Many Somalis, and some critics of past U.S. government policy, hold Washington largely responsible for making Somalia a Cold War pawn and showering a brutal dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, with millions of dollars in aid and arms. Moscow, too, is partly responsible, since Somalia was first a Soviet client, and most of the weapons used in the slaughter are of Russian design. Almost everyone involved blames the United Nations, for failing to foresee the tragedy in Somalia and failing to move more forcefully to prevent it. When dictator Siad Barre fled in January 1991, the United Nations pulled out its staff and did not return for almost a year. Ultimately, however, Somalis themselves are responsible. It may have been the superpowers that supplied the guns, but it was Somalis - driven by clan hatreds, swayed by misguided leaders - who pulled the triggers. Somalis at independence inherited a country hailed as a model for African stability. It was a country without ethnically differentiated tribes, where people shared a common language; a common religion, Islam; and a common culture and history. But instead of being known for unity and stability, Somalia has become synonymous with chaos, anarchy, famine and despair. "I am an old man - I remember when Somalia was flourishing," said 76-year-old Jirdeh Hussein, a respected businessman from the northern region who throughout the worst of the shelling remained in his home in the now devastated area known as the Green Line. "Nobody thought Somalis would destroy their country in this way." Asked to explain the violence, Hussein said, "We have tribal feeling - every tribe wants to kill the other." Somalia's first president, Aden Abdullah Osman, has watched the country disintegrate from his banana and grapefruit farm in the small village of Genale. He is 81 years old now and still so widely respected that, throughout the worst of the violence, his property - unprotected by armed guards - has remained untouched. Asked his view of his country's tragedy, he hung his head and said: "Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. It makes me want to cry." "I left a peaceful Somalia," said Osman, who served as president from 1960 until 1967, and was later imprisoned for 3 1/2 years by Siad Barre. "I left Somalia with a good situation. . . . I am not a tribal man. I am a Somali man." With warlords ferociously battling each other for power, and young militiamen engaged in banditry and looting, the old president said: "They are all mad here. . . . Now nobody can do anything to control this situation." "At the end of the day, this mess is a Somali mess," said Somali human rights activist Rakiya Omaar, also a northerner. "When we criticize other people, that is not to say Somalis are not to blame. This would not have happened if not for the greed and ruthlessness of Somali politicians and businessmen." Whatever forces and factors were at work to destroy Somalia, and whichever parties share the blame, one thing appears certain: Somalia's most lasting legacy may be to alter forever the internationally accepted view of military intervention for humanitarian purposes. When Somalis began their slaughter, the world stood on the sidelines arguing over legalities. James Jonah, a senior United Nations official, said the world body was not set up to act in such disputes unless authorized by the Security Council. Western countries, then caught up in trying to mediate the war in the former Yugoslavia, said Somalia was primarily an African problem, and they cited the principles of national sovereignty and nonintervention that were held sacred at the time. A decade and a half ago, Tanzania invaded Uganda and toppled Idi Amin Dada, a brutal baffoon who was slaughtering his people. Rather than being applauded, Tanzania was condemned by the Organization of African Unity, which saw the invasion as a threat to sovereignty on this politically fragile continent. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia and toppled the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, Hanoi was accused of acting out of expansionist self- interests and was slapped with economic sanctions and political isolation for more than a decade. But the world seems to be moving toward a more accepted view of "humanitarian intervention" as a principle of diplomacy, and Somalia has emerged as the first test case. Rather than being criticized for the military intervention in Somalia, the United States and the other partners in the military coalition are being criticized primarily for not having acted far earlier, before so many thousands died. It is a lesson with implications elsewhere around the globe, in places like southern Sudan, Mozambique, Liberia and even Bosnia. "The great lesson here is that the only way we're going to prevent this is to intervene early and decisively," said Sam Toussie of the International Medical Corps, a Los Angeles-based relief group. "The earlier you intervene, the less residual damage, the less the cost." "We had to wait until it got to this point," Toussie said. "Like the Sudan nightmare - how long will we let that continue? . . . Are we willing to go in on a humanitarian basis? What are the rights of individuals versus the rights of nations?" Paul Mitchell, spokesman for the World Food Program, said: "It's not like these emergencies are new. Southern Sudan is as bad as Somalia. Mozambique is on a par with Somalia. "We have other places that have this combination of insecurity and the inability to deliver relief - in Afghanistan, in northern Iraq. You have to respond much quicker. . . . It's a whole new area in terms of relief - we're really writing the first lines of the first new chapter here in Somalia." Somalia might at first glance seem an unlikely test case for humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War world. It is a sparsely populated, inhospitable country with few natural resources. In its heyday, it exported bananas to Italy from plantations in the southern coastal region and camels and sheep to the Middle East. There is speculation that Somalia sits atop large oil reserves; indeed, before the country slid into chaos, major oil companies were here signing contracts for exploration, mostly in the north. But Somalia's value always rested in its location on the Indian Ocean offering a convenient window onto the Middle East. That location put Somalia at the center of U.S. military planning maps during the early 1980s, when U.S. forces had access to the Somali base at Berbera. In exchange, successive American administrations were willing to overlook the brutal excesses of the Siad Barre regime. By 1990, however, the United States had grown tired of Barre. And when guerrillas of the newly formed United Somali Congress, under the leadership of Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, began closing in on Mogadishu for what would be a final assault, the dictator could no longer turn to his old friends in Washington for help. But the United Somali Congress at that time was already showing the strains that would eventually lead to the all-out bloody shelling war. Aideed, the overall military commander who launched his campaign from base camps in Ethiopia, found his position as preeminent opposition leader challenged by a group of businessmen and politicians inside Somalia who were trying to negotiate a peaceful exit for Barre. Barre fled Mogadishu in late January. Ali Mahdi Mohamed, a businessman and hotelier, became the interim president, and Aideed was named chairman of the United Somali Congress, formalizing the split responsible for so much of Somalia's suffering. The two rivals engaged in a series of brief but bloody battles throughout the summer and fall of 1991, until their feud escalated into a three-month heavy artillery duel from November until earlier this year. In retrospect, Somali observers and relief officials say the feud between Ali Mahdi and Aideed could have been avoided if someone with authority - such as the United States or the United Nations - had stepped in in 1991 to mediate. "The factions were very much crying out for someone to broker the peace, and they made various efforts to reach out," said Rakiya Omaar. "Had someone made a concerted effort to get them together, much could have been saved." Had the civil war been prevented, mass starvation also could have been averted. Aideed's guerrilla army chased Siad Barre's forces to the Kenyan border and battled them back and forth, across the country's traditional agricultural area of the south-central region. The rival armies looted food and livestock from peasants and committed countless acts of vandalism. The fighting displaced farmers who flocked into towns such as Baidoba, Baardheere, Merca and Mogadishu. All across Somalia today, from Baardheere in the west to Kismaayo and Merca on the coast, feeding centers and displacement camps are filled with once able-bodied farmers who, in better days, provided for their families. Their stories are all familiar: their farms were looted, their sheep and goats killed or stolen; they had almost nothing to eat for months. And finally, they walked. They walked for days, across many miles, to escape the violence and find food. Most of the victims of the violence and famine have been Somalia's women and children, who largely have been without voice in the current tragedy. About two months ago, a group of women on both sides of this divided city tried to stage a peace march, to meet and link hands at the notorious Green Line in a show of unity. They were prevented from doing so when young men with guns opened fire over their heads. "We women are the victims," said Sahra Mohamed Noor, a women's activist with the local charity and relief group Iida. "We are a majority, but we are the victims," she said. "Who is going to look after the handicapped? Women, because they will be our husbands. Who will be the widows? Women. What is the profit of war to a woman or her children? Nothing. Who were the victims of the shelling? The woman in the market, the woman at home with her children." Noor suggests that perhaps one of the unspoken lessons of Somalia is that the voices of women were never taken into account, not in the war councils or political sessions where strategies were plotted and vendettas pursued. "The men didn't do their jobs, and the women and children suffered," she said. "Not all of us are looters," she said, referring to the majority of Somalia's population, the women and children. "Not all of us are warlords. Not all of us are involved in these things. . . . There will be no war to happen like this in the future. There will be no tribalism like this in the future. Everybody has found out what this (violence) has done. Right now," she said, "the world can help us, if we help ourselves." SOMALIA ANTI-FAMINE FORCE HEADS FOR FINAL FRONTIERS By Frances Kerry MOGADISHU, Dec 27, Reuter - The U.S.-led task force is pushing ahead to secure the last two towns it needs to spread out into Somalia's hunger zone. By going into the towns of Belet Huen and Jalalaksi, the foreign task force will have reached its target of seven towns by the time President George Bush arrives for a New Year visit on December 31. There were also signs that the mission was toughening its stance on arms and lawlessness, a key cause of a famine which has killed more than 300,000 people. The Canadian contingent of a force now numbering more than 23,000 troops either in Somalia or in ships offshore said on Saturday it would guard food distribution points from looters. And U.S. Marine Colonel Fred Peck, a task force spokesman, said foreign forces were making an "aggressive attempt" to impose order in the places in their control. U.S. military spokesmen said Marines shot at least three Somalis in a pick-up truck on Friday, when one of the occupants fired at them with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. It was not clear if the Somalis had been killed. The push over the next two days takes Italian troops into the hinterland for the first time. Some 180 Italians, escorted by U.S. military police, were due to enter Jalalaksi, 196 km (120 miles) north of Mogadishu, by dark on Sunday. An advance group was 80 km (50 miles) outside the town on Saturday afternoon, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Steve Ritter said. A separate group of 260 U.S. and Canadian troops was set to land soon after dawn on Monday in the town of Belet Huen, north of Jalalaxi and near the border with Ethiopia. They will pour from UH-60 helicopters in an "air assault" mounted from a former Soviet airfield at Bali Dogle. The force in Belet Huen will swell to more than 845 troops, mostly Canadian, by the New Year. The Canadians will be the first troops to guard food distribution points since the multinational force began arriving on December 9. "If you don't put guards in distribution centres people are going to come in and get food," Colonel Serge Labbe, commander of the Canadian forces in Somalia, told a news conference. There have been isolated reports over the past two weeks of food aid being looted soon after being escorted to distribution centres by foreign troops. U.S. troops, by far the biggest contingent, say they cannot guard "every grain of wheat." The force has fanned out over an area of southern and central Somalia and aims to spread out from its eight bases to reach into the famished hinterland. David Stables of the aid agency CARE said U.S. Marines who arrived in the southern town of Bardere on Thursday would escort a convoy of 40 tonnes of food to the village of Darjani, 15 km (eight miles) outside town on Sunday. "This village has been unreachable since mid-October because of bad roads and mines. The American sappers are sweeping these roads," Stables said. CARE says more than 100,000 in the countryside around Bardere need food aid. They have got little in the last two months, largely because of mines laid in a battle for Bardere in October between two clan factions. Stables said the town was relieved to see the Marines. "People are happy in Bardere. They don't mind getting out at checkpoints because they know what the Americans are looking for," he told Reuters. Although task force commanders have said it is not their job to disarm Somalis, spokesman Peck said foreign troops were taking a more active stance as the force grew. "When they come across weapons they're not sitting back, they're going in and taking them away," he said. IN TROUBLED SOMALIA, U.S. TROOPS LEARN THE LIMITS OF CHARITY By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Foreign Service Copyright 1992 The Washington Post MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 25 - Little more than two weeks after the U.S.-led military force arrived to quiet factional fighting and mass looting in large sections of Mogadishu, banditry and small-scale armed robbery seems to be increasing in areas outside U.S. control. The gangs of gunmen that controlled this city, extorting protection money and stealing food from international aid organizations, have turned to carjacking and robbery instead. "It's switched to a kind of everyday, common-thievery street crime," said an Irish aid worker here. And it can happen to anyone. A Marine this week left his M-16 rifle, his seabag and pack unattended when, according to U.S. military spokesman Col. Fred Peck, "a Somali grabbed and ran. . . . They took all of his possessions," which were recovered only when U.S. troops searched the trunk of a car at a checkpoint. U.S. military officials insist that their troops are not here to act as a police force for Somalia. But in a country without government or laws, many expect the Americans - as the most powerful armed faction - to perform just that role. "We're still in that vacuum," said a United Nations spokesman. Mogadishu's new contradiction - more security in town but more common crime on its fringes - has led to confusion for foreign relief workers and journalists who must navigate between the two zones. At checkpoints, U.S. troops will seize heavy weapons, such as rocket- propelled grenade launchers or machine guns - but in the mean streets outside the American perimeter, a heavy gun or a rocket launcher is still the best deterrent against thieves. Many of the relief workers who began traveling without guns in the first days after the American troops arrived have now started to re-arm in the face of the perceived rise in lawlessness. According to an agreement between the aid agencies and the U.S. forces, the relief groups are allowed to have only light weapons in their cars, and then only if they are not visible from the windows. One problem, some relief workers say, is that for trips out of the capital, light arms simply are not good enough. Mike McDonagh, team leader of the Irish aid group Concern, said a security vehicle full of Somali gunmen hired by his agency passed an American checkpoint and had a grenade-launcher confiscated by U.S. troops. "My bazooka was taken yesterday by the Americans - I'm not going to get it back," he said. "I'm going to have to get another one." For traveling to areas in the countryside where bandits are still rife, he said, "three Kalashnikovs (automatic assault rifles) would be no good." Crime is rising in part because of greater opportunity. With more foreigners, including journalists, in the city, there are simply more people around to rob. "There's still a lot of lawlessness, as you all know, because some of you have been the victims of it," Peck told reporters on Thursday. "We hope to expand to the other areas of the city as rapidly as we can." Many of the robberies have taken place in the no man's land now commonly referred to as the "green line" - a zone between the forces of Mogadishu's two main warlords that has been reduced by months of intensive shelling into a deserted maze of rubble, partially destroyed buildings and twisted metal. Marines have been conducting periodic foot patrols in the area, but for the most part the zone remains largely unpoliced and in the hands of marauding bands of freelance gunmen. The green line has been the site of recent carjackings, particularly as relief vehicles must traverse the dangerous streets in crossing from the southern sector of the city, controlled by Mohamed Farah Aideed, to the northern sector, in the hands of a rival, Ali Mahdi Mohamed. Relief groups with operations on both sides of the divided city, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), have reported an upsurge of lawlessness in northern Mogadishu. The aid agencies are urging the U.S. military to expand their perimeter and establish some kind of a presence in Ali Mahdi's zone, which now seems to have become a haven for looters. The situation is said to be similar, even worse, in rural areas outside of the major towns where American and other foreign forces have established a presence. The towns of Baidoa and Baardheere have now been declared secure and gun-free. For example, in Baidoa, the local commander there has instituted a "gun check" at the entry to the town where new arrivals leave their weapons and pick them up when leaving. But the roads outside are said to be still teeming with highway bandits and car thieves. ________________________________________________________________ Posted by Bernhard Helander in Uppsala, Sweden.