From: antbh@strix.udac.uu.se (Bernhard Helander)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african,alt.current-events.somalia,alt.activism
Subject: Somalia News Update, No 45
Date: 30 Dec 92 12:46:36 GMT
Organization: Uppsala University
NNTP-Posting-Host: strix.udac.uu.se

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. 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african