Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Subject: US TROOPS IN SOMALIA -- NEWS
From: Amos.Omondi@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Amos Omondi)
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 02:57:17 GMT
Organization: Inter-Galactic Probe No. 42


        WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Thousands of cheering Somalis welcomed U.S.
Marines and French Foreign Legionnaires Wednesday who rolled into the
inland city of Baidoa, stricken by famine and, until then, by food
thieving armed bands.
        ``I have heard nothing but joy, waving and smiles,'' said Paul Jones,
the deputy director for World Vision, one of the relief agencies working
in Baidoa.
        ``There's a lot of enthusiasm. The people were really looking for
what we saw when the Marines came in.''
        The Marines and their French allies moved quickly in delivering food
to an orphanage supported by Jones' organization. The children welcomed
their armed but humanitarian mission visitors by rhythmically clapping
and chanting ``welcome friends'' in Somali. Some clasped the outstreched
trooper's hands many times the size of their own tiny ones. Many were
smiling.
        Another military delivery of relief supplies, into the stricken
countryside outside Baidoa, is planned for Thursday. The region is one
of those hit hardest by Somalia's famine.
        The Franco-American move into Baidoa, where at least some Somali
gunmen lingered Tuesday night, went almost exactly according to the plan
outlined by Marine Lt. Gen. Martin Brantner, the director of operations
for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
        Shortly after midnight Somali time, a 70-vehicle armored convoy of
532 Marines and 140 French Foreign Legionnaires set out by road from
their base at the former Soviet airfield of Bale Dogle, which the
Marines occupied Sunday.
        Driving in darkness over rough, pitted and washed-out roads, the
overland convoy reached Baidoa at first light. Although they avoided the
most congested central parts of the city, their way was lined by crowds
of cheering Somalis.
        The convoy's objective was Baidoa's airport, a major storage center
for the relief supplies which the U.S. Air Force has been flying in from
neighboring Kenya since last August.
        As the Marines and French fanned out to secure the airport,
helicoptors bearing even more Marine reinforcements appeared after a 45
minutes, 150 mile flight from Bale Dogle. The troops moving by truck
arrived in four and a half hours.
        A ragtag, irregular Somalia airport guard force of 100 stood stiffly
at attention to turn the facility over to the Marines and French. They
had earlier stowed their weapons.
        A Marine officer saluted the guards, who had protected the vital
airfield and its supply dump against armed roving gangs for months. The
Joint Chief' current intelligence officer, Navy Rear Adm. Michael
Cramer, had earlier hailed the airfield security effort as ``very well
organized'' and ``in good hands.''
        Cramer also proved right in his earlier prediction of ``no organized
opposition or resistance to our coalition forces as they enter Baidoa.''
There was none. All the armed Somali gangs had either left town or
hidden their weapons.
        In the Somali capital, Mogadishu, the man whose negotiations with
local warlords in Baidoa earlier this week contributed to the ease of
the operation, special U.S. envoy and former Ambassador Robert Oakley,
predicted more help to the stricken city would soon be on the way.
        ``There will be a 10-truck convoy escorted from here to Baidoa this
weekend,'' Oakley promised. ``We're not sure whether it will be Saturday
or Sunday.'' Opening of a safe land route between the capital and Baidoa
had been a major objective of the military relief effort.
        But Oakley cautioned that the relief operation elsewhere in Somalia
might not go as well as it had in Baidoa and in Mogadishu, where the
first Marines landed a week ago.
        ``We can't say that the examples of Mogadishu and Baidoa will
automatically be replicated elsewhere,'' he warned, ``because there are
parts of the interior where there's more trouble, where the situation's
more tense.''
        Also in Mogadishu, American Red Cross President Elizabeth Dole toured
relief facilities supported by her organization and said she would go to
Baidoa as well.
        ``My message to the American people,'' Dole said, ``will be that they
can give their money now and that the food supplies will all get through
to the victims. A portion of it will not be ripped off in the process by
looting.''
        The Red Cross president praised the work of her organization's Somali
counterpart, the Red Crescent. ``Many of them have lost loved ones,
people who have died from starvation,'' she said. ``They have
experienced all kinds of pain and suffering, and yet they are out there
helping their neighbors, helping other Somalis.''
        Relief workers in the inland southern city of Bardera reported that
10 people were killed and 10 woulded by gunmen who raided a relief camp
there earlier this week.
        Like the southern port of Kismayo, Bardera is not scheduled to be
secured until the third phase of the current armed relief effort.
Wednesday's occupation of Baidoa only marks the completion of the
operation's first phase.



Newsgroups: soc.culture.african