In Somalia, the police have always commanded great respect. They never took part in Siad Barre’s oppression, never took sides in the bitter civil strife that followed, and even somehow maintained the goodwill of the warlords.
The reemergence of the police presented us with a splendid opportunity to turn a large piece of the security pie over to trained, competent, and respected Somalis—an opportunity the UN was reluctant to support. We were concerned that we’d lose momentum while waiting for the UN to move ahead. But when Oakley tried to persuade the UN to take on the reestablishment of the police, they refused. And when the UN decreed that it would not accept a police force that was under Somali control, Oakley dropped the job on me.
Though U.S. law has strong prohibitions against U.S. military involvement in this area, Oakley was undeterred, and he convinced General Johnston to let me help put the police back on the street. As a result, I became the head of the oversight committee formed to reestablish the force.
A superb U.S. Army military police officer, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Spataro, single-handedly put together a plan and worked with the old police leadership to vet the former police, rebuild their academy, set up the training program, arrange for equipment and uniforms to be provided, and reestablish the prisons. The Italians and Japanese contributed vehicles, uniforms, and equipment; and we arranged for weapons (“donated” in the name of Ali Mahdi, from whom we seized them) and a control system for them.
We ended up with a national police force of 4,400 personnel, operating in sixteen cities, while Oakley worked with our lawyers to establish jails, and to set up a judicial committee that put in place judges, legal representatives, and a legal code.
THOUGH BY January 1993 UNITAF had achieved its mission to create a secure environment for the conduct of the humanitarian effort, Somalia was still a dangerous place, with violence ready to explode at a moment’s notice. Obviously, in the best of worlds, the Somalis would have gladly given up their arms, turned them into plowshares, and lived blessedly in peace and harmony. Since that was not going to happen, we had to consider some less than ideal ways to pacify a warlike society awash with weapons . . . while somehow or other grappling with UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali’s demand that UNITAF forcibly disarm the factions. Still impossible, in our view. If we attempted it, the warlords would fight; Mogadishu would become a combat zone; and the bloody fighting would put an end to humanitarian operations.
An alternative proposal was to offer “incentives” for weapons. We’d throw money at the problem . . . offer them a “buyout.” On the face of it, this was a pretty good idea. But in fact, it was as much a fantasy as Boutros-Ghali’s. Not only would it have cost us a fortune, it would have fed an arms market that would have brought in even more weapons.
The solution we came up with was a program to reduce arms gradually, basing the program on increasingly tight controls on weapons, a formal agreement for their voluntary cantonment66 by the militias (with an inspection requirement), and an active effort to search for and confiscate un-cantoned weapons.
It worked. We removed all visible weapons from the streets, cantoned the weapons belonging to the faction militias in Authorized Weapons Storage Sites (AWSSs) that we watched and inspected, and disrupted the two arms markets in Mogadishu. Our sweeps captured thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition. Within days, the price of weapons skyrocketed; the gunshot wounds treated daily at the hospitals were reduced to low single digits; and the faction leaders began to participate in Oakley’s political process without fear of attack.
PUTTING A permanent lid on violence was of course not in the cards. There was no way we could avoid violent confrontations.
One incident with long-term consequences occurred in February at the southern coastal city of Kismayo.
Following Aideed’s victory over Siad Barre, General Hersi Morgan, a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College and Barre’s son-in-law, took charge of the remnants of the former dictator’s army near the Kenyan border. Early in 1993, Morgan started conducting probes in the direction of Kismayo, one of which provoked a major counterattack by U.S. helicopter gunships and Belgian light armor (Kismayo was in the Belgians’ sector). After losing several technicals and some heavy weapons, Morgan’s forces scrambled back into the bush.
They came out again on February 22. That night, Morgan conducted a raid on the city (in violation of an agreement brokered among the warlords to freeze forces in place until negotiations on a peace plan were worked out). He infiltrated his fighters, picked up weapons he’d previously stashed (undetected by the Belgian troops), and attacked and drove off Colonel Omar Jess, an ally of Aideed’s and the ruling faction leader in Kismayo. Jess, who had committed many atrocities, was not popular; and the residents welcomed his expulsion.
Aideed naturally insisted that we expel Morgan from Kismayo and return Jess to power. Though Oakley and Johnston gave Morgan and Jess an ultimatum that essentially had them revert to the situation before the raid, and the two warlords essentially complied, Aideed staged violent protest demonstrations in Mogadishu in front of our embassy compound and near UN headquarters in Mogadishu. We had to put them down.
These demonstrations had a serious impact on UNOSOM, the NGOs, and the press, who feared a renewal of civil war. Press reports, based on an incomplete view of the situation, were overblown and inaccurate. In fact, the demonstrations were more annoyances than battles.
Though Aideed was a master of political theater, his violent demonstrations were not normally directed toward UNITAF. Most of the time, he saved them, and the accompanying shooting sprees, for Egyptian forces and the visits of Boutros-Ghali. The Egyptians were not liked by the Somalis, while the UN Secretary-General was hated. In his days in the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Boutros-Ghali’s policies in support of Siad Barre had—in the Somali view—kept the dictator in power. (Since Siad Barre was in exile in Nigeria, there were also demonstrations against the Nigerian troops.)
Meanwhile, the U.S. Marine commander of the Mogadishu sector, Colonel Buck Bedard, ran the security of the city with an iron hand and responded quickly and decisively to all of Aideed’s provocations.
One of his more effective measures was to station Marine sniper teams in taller buildings around the city. When over the course of several nights, armed gunmen had tried to move into ambush positions near our compound, all of them were picked off by our snipers. The remaining ambushers decided to find a better way to spend their time.
Later, gunmen from an Aideed AWSS started taking potshots at passing troops. When my warnings failed to stop the shooting, the Marines attacked the compound with helicopter gunships, tanks, and infantry. The AWSS was captured with no friendly casualties.
I called a security meeting for the next day. It was a tense, confrontational encounter. “You have to make a decision right here,” I told Aideed’s generals. “Are we at war or not? Decide now. We’ll take our next actions based on your decision.”
I then threw on the table several rounds that had landed in our embassy compound from a random shooting that had originated in the AWSS we’d just attacked. “We won’t tolerate this any longer,” I told them.
The generals went off to talk, and returned much chastened. “Let us put this behind us,” General Elmi announced. “There will be no war.” He went on to explain that a difficult-to-control rogue militia had been manning the AWSS. “We regret the problems they’ve caused,” he said. “We’ll put pressure on them to stop.”
We had no more trouble from them.
MUCH OF the violence on the streets of Mogadishu comes in midafternoon, when young thugs have started feeling the khat they’ve been chewing all day. Khat leaves (a mild, inhibition-removing narcotic) were flown into dirt airstrips each morning and quickly moved to market stalls to sell before they lost their potency. All morning, we’d see chewers’ bulging checks all over town. By three in the afternoon, the gangs of hostile young men were feeling they could take o
n the world. The occasional violent confrontations with our patrols ended badly for the khat-chewers in every instance.
Thugs and shooters weren’t the only security problem. We also got thieves—incredibly brazen thieves who’d risk their lives to steal anything, no matter how little it was worth.
One night, thieves came over a wall near a squad of Marines. The thieves were gunned down before anyone realized they were unarmed.
We later turned over the perimeter security of our compound to a less effective coalition force. But then another band of thieves came over the wall at night and made their way into our building. Voices whispering in Somali woke me up. I grabbed my pistol, ran into the corridor, and watched two men fleeing out of the building. Moments later, I heard shouts and scuffling; our sergeant major and General Johnston’s aide had seized one of them.
I quickly made the commander of the coalition force responsible for compound security aware of my displeasure. Though he assured me that he’d fix the problem, I didn’t sleep well after that, and checked his positions often.
Much more frustrating were the young street urchins. Some threw rocks at our convoys and patrols—not a smart idea, given our advantages in firepower. But worse were their attempts to grab loot by swarming our trucks as they passed through the streets. Intelligence reports that kids might be used to place bombs on the trucks made a bad problem worse. After our security troops had to shoot and kill a few of the young thieves, we started looking for ways to block the kids without hurting anyone. “There must be some way to apply less than lethal force,” we told ourselves. Nobody wants to kill kids.
One day, I was walking past our makeshift motor pool at the embassy and noticed troops gathered around a truck, testing a strange device. It only took me a moment to figure out what it was—a jury-rigged electric prod attached to the truck’s battery.
I gave them credit for their innovation, but not for their judgment. The prod was not a workable solution to the nonlethal problem. I could see a CNN shot of a Somali kid getting zapped. We needed a better, more permanent answer. But when we asked the Pentagon for some sort of approved, nonlethal capability, the best we could get was small cans of pepper spray. Though these were no more potent than the pepper spray you might find in a lady’s purse back home, they came—unbelievably—with an exhaustive training program and rules of engagement. Our troops had to implement the program and familiarize themselves with the ROEs before they could use them. Bureaucracy at work . . . a spray can is a spray can.
I knew this problem would surely come back to haunt us in future operations and made a mental note to address it.
Though security was our primary mission, other demands were hardly less pressing: We ran the ports and airfields, conducted extensive psyops and civic action programs, undertook major engineer projects to repair and rebuild the infrastructure, and provided medical support.
Our medical units also had a tough task keeping our own force healthy in this harsh and dangerous environment. By the end of the operation, we had suffered eight killed in action, twenty-four non-battle deaths (one from a shark attack), twenty-four wounded in action, and 2,853 illness and injury cases (including snakebites).
ONE OF my responsibilities was to coordinate our psychological and tactical operations.
Though there were plenty of sources of “information,” the Somalis had little access to accurate news accounts. Most Somali news sources—notably, Aideed’s—were nothing but propaganda . . . much of it inflammatory. We published leaflets and a newspaper, and set up a radio station, to counter the lies. The paper and radio station, which were called “Rajo”—“hope” in Somali—made Aideed very unhappy; and he counterattacked through his own radio station. A period of “radio wars” ensued.
When he summoned me to his compound to complain about our broadcasts, I told him we’d tone down our broadcasts when he toned down his own inflammatory rhetoric. He agreed.
Another victory for nonviolent engagement.
The months to follow would show that the UN had failed to learn this lesson. Instead of countering Aideed’s hostile media blasts in kind, they tried to close down his radio station. Freedom of the press has to work both ways; we don’t shut down radio stations just because we don’t like what is broadcast. The resulting confrontation was the opening of the violent war between the UN and Aideed.
ALL THE WHILE, we did not want for VIP visitors—including President George Bush.
President Bush visited us on New Year’s Day, a few days before he was to leave office. It was a grand sendoff.
General Aideed even sent a huge cake as a welcoming gift, all adorned with a portrait of the President and Aideed standing side by side beneath U.S. and Somali flags. The cake, uneaten, stayed in our admin office for several days until one of the troops noticed that it was the only thing around the place that never had flies on it. He was right. I told him to get rid of it.
The best moment of Bush’s visit came when he visited our troops. The President really connected with our guys. As he walked through their ranks to a microphone, their enthusiastic cheers visibly moved him, leaving him visibly close to tears.
I’ll never forget that scene.
Unfortunately, the President did not bring with him the news we’d hoped for—plans for the UN to assume our mission. Though we’d been led to believe that talks had been going on, we were disappointed to learn that nothing had been arranged with the UN. The Clinton administration would have to pick up on the transition from us to them. This was not a job you want to drop on a brand-new administration.
AS FEBRUARY turned into March, our efforts were increasingly focused on stabilizing the positive environment UNITAF had created and promoting the political agreements Oakley was skillfully piecing together. During this time I met frequently with Aideed, the other warlords, and the various committees, trying to keep things calm and to hold agreements together.
The UN, meanwhile, continued to fight us hard on the transition and handover front. While this process dragged on, I worked on the plan to turn over the mission to them.
The Secretary-General had presented us with a series of nonnegotiable demands. Unless we agreed to them, there’d be no transition. For starters, he wanted UNITAF to stay after UNOSOM II took over. He wanted full U.S. involvement in any follow-on UN operation. And he insisted on a U.S. Quick Reaction Force, U.S. logistics support, and a senior American leader to act as his special representative to head the operation. He got everything he asked for.
Even so, the UN was painfully slow to take the reins of the operation. In February, Boutros-Ghali appointed a respected Turkish lieutenant general, Cevik Bir, as the UNOSOM II force commander. An American Army major general, Tom Montgomery, became his deputy. Another American, Jonathan Howe, a four-star admiral and President Bush’s former Deputy National Security Adviser, took over from Kittani the job of Boutros-Ghali’s special representative. Robert Oakley left Somalia on March 3 in order to make way for Howe. Oakley was sorely missed.
The official handover date was March 26, but we continued to run the operation until we finally left on May 4. In effect, the UNITAF staff commanded the new UNOSOM II force. The UNOSOM staff simply sat on their duffs, refusing to accept command, but kibitzing over all our decisions and actions. It was weird to have two staffs officially overseeing the same force. In fact, we were actually commanding both forces, ours and theirs, while they were sitting there trying to set policy for future operations.
The UN plan that they intended to implement was vastly different from Oakley’s. Where Oakley was steering a course that encouraged the Somalis to determine their own fate, UNOSOM II had a specific political outcome in mind. They sought to rebuild the nation of Somalia into a thriving democracy of their design, with the UN dictating who would participate in the political process. (They intended to exclude General Aideed, for instance.) We saw trouble on the horizon. In our view, the UN plan was overly ambitious, and grossly underestimated the power and suppor
t of the faction leaders, as well as the historical Somali animosity toward the UN. It was a recipe for disaster.
By the time Oakley left in March, the atmosphere on the political front had drastically changed.
We turned over the command to UNOSOM II on May 4, 1993. UNOSOM arranged a grand ceremony with dancers and singers.
After the ceremony, I drove with Bob Johnston to the airport. As our two Humvees wound through the narrow streets, he was very quiet, deep in thought. Suddenly he ordered a stop, and had the vehicles pull over to a nearby curb where several children were standing. At his direction, we got out of the vehicles, and he gathered all our pens and pencils and gave them to the kids (who all seemed pleased to get them). After his little act of charity, he slowly swung his gaze around. Something was obviously weighing on his mind.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked.
He looked up at the bright sunny sky. “I give this place thirty days,” he said, “and then it’s all going to go to hell.”
Thirty-one days later, his prediction came true.
BACK TO QUANTICO
Zinni quickly resettled into his job as the MCCDC deputy commander at Quantico, but with events in Somalia never far from his thoughts. As he resumed the old routines, he stayed in close contact with Bob Oakley, participating with the former ambassador in Somalia-related speaking engagements and conferences on humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.
His Marine Corps career, meanwhile, continued to advance. Back in Somalia, he had been selected and frocked as a major general. That is, he was entitled to wear the rank but would not receive the increase in pay or the actual grade until his number for promotion actually came up several months later. The promotion meant he would be reassigned sometime within the year—hopefully back to the operational forces and possibly command of a division.