Vengeance came swiftly. At 4:04 a.m. Somali time, the first red tracers lit up the sky of Mogadishu, silhouetting three AC-130H Spectre gunships, manned by U.S. Air Force Special Operations forces. Their mission: to pay back Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid for his deadly attack on U.N. troops week before. Their targets were the warlord’s power props-four depots of heavy weapons and ammunition and a radio station that blared 24-hour-a-day anti-U.N. propaganda. For the next hour, the sky buzzed with four AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopters firing rockets-and gunships blasting with their 105-mm howitzers and 20-mm Vulcan cannons. Shortly after 5 o’clock, with dawn breaking over the Indian Ocean, the attacks subsided. Next, a swarm of Black Hawk helicopters dropped leaflets urging civilians to turn against Aidid. By 6, the streets were beginning to fill with people. The show was over-for now.
Only five weeks after handing over the job of peacekeeping to U.N. forces, the U.S. military is back in Somalia. For the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a portion o which may arrive later this week, it’s a bitter homecoming: many of the 2,200 Marines saw active duty in Mogadishu and Kismayu back in March. They bring with them formidable firepower-Harrier jets, Cobra attack helicopters and armored personnel carriers. A bit of overkill for teaching a third-rate warlord a lesson? The U.N. special envoy in Somalia, retired U.S. Adm. Jonathan Howe, didn’t think so. NEWSWEEK has learned that after the June 5 ambush that left 23 Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers dead, Howe appealed to the Pentagon for equipment to beef up U.N. forces. “Everything from flak jackets to helicopter gunships” is how one administration official described the request. Says a second official, “He also wants tanks.”
Somalia is a glaring piece of unfinished business. What began as a simple humanitarian effort has become a mini-quagmire. “Last December, DOD was saying, ‘We can go into Somalia quickly, get out quickly and turn it over to the U.N.’,” says John Bolton, assistant secretary of state for international organizations in the Bush administration. “That clearly hasn’t happened.” Instead, the United States has had to go back and start the job all over again. “Somalia is a test case of whether we can help keep peace in the world without having to do it all ourselves,” says a Clinton administration official. But with the United Nations under siege in Bosnia, Cambodia and Somalia, who besides America is capable of picking up the slack? It’s a particularly troubling question as the Pentagon prepares this week to send 300 U.S. soldiers on a new-and ill-defined-mission to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.
U.N. troops clearly aren’t up to the task of keeping the peace in Mogadishu. Even before the ambush, most of the multinational force of 18,500 soldiers were relying heavily on remaining U.S. troops for logistics-water, communications and most food-and materiel. By NATO standards, U.N. forces are ill equipped and ill trained, easy prey for a warlord willing to test them. The same Pakistani troops who were mauled last week were virtual hostages last fall, when Aidid first agreed to their deployment, then used intimidation to confine them to their barracks. “It shows that the real bad guys in Somalia will only respect a U.S. troop presence,” says a Senate foreign-policy aide. “If you have to put in more American troops, then you’re acknowledging that the collective security of the United Nations doesn’t mean much.”
The same might be said of American foreign policy. Operation Restore Hope kept tens of thousands of Somalis from starving to death. But it did little to restore order to a country ruled by bandits and thugs, who reemerged full force when U.S. troops pulled out. That wasn’t the script the White House had in mind last month. “You have proved that American leadership can help to mobilize international action to create a better world,” President Clinton told Soldiers returning from Somalia. It was an eerie echo of George Bush’s 1991 State of the Union speech just after the gulf war. “What is at stake,” he said," is a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace, security, freedom and the rule of law." It marked a hopeful turn for a new U.S. role strong leadership in concert with multinational effort. America could finally turn in its badge as the world’s cop; that beat would fall to U.N. troops, who would become peacemakers as well as peacekeepers.
So far, the transition hasn’t worked well. In Bosnia, the 9,139 U.N. troops involved in humanitarian-aid delivery and protection have been little more than sitting ducks with at least 17 dead and 203 wounded. Last week’s events were typical cases of humiliation and tragedy. As Egyptian U.N. troops were distributing candy to local children in a Muslim neighborhood of Sarajevo, a mortar shell, probably from a Serbian position, slammed into their barracks, killing three civilians and wounding at least two Egyptians. Just outside the capital, two British U.N. armored vehicles were halted at a Bosnian army checkpoint, held at gunpoint and robbed of their weapons and ammunition. Near Travnik, British U.N. troops actually fired back at Croat forces, killing two men, after the militia attacked an unarmed relief convoy. A Spanish U.N. officer died after his patrol carrying medicine came under attack from a Croat-occupied area of Mostar.
Polka dots: How can these troops reasonably protect a half-dozen Muslim enclaves in Bosnia? The latest Western response to the Balkan crisis is a plan to shift U.N. forces, protected by NATO air power, to regions swollen with civilians and refugees. “It’s one thing to declare a safe area, but it’s another to make that [happen] on the ground,” admits Lt. Col. Barry Frewer, spokesman for the U.N. military force in Bosnia. A senior U.S. intelligence official was blunter, dismissing safe havens as little more than a “polka-dot solution” that created “six little West Banks in Western Europe with enormous problems.”
The chief reason that safe areas may be doomed is that no one is willing to enforce them properly. Russia and the United States, which back the plan, refuse to commit ground troops for what undoubtedly would be a protracted and bloody assignment. Instead of tackling the problem of how to turn U.N. troops into peace enforcers, the Clinton administration is dispatching a token force of 300 soldiers not to Bosnia, but to Macedonia, the southern republic in the former Yugoslavia that is miles from the crisis. The troops aren’t needed: 700 Scandinavian peacekeepers are already patrolling the 120-mile border with Serbia. No one has told the U.S. troops how to accomplish their mission-“to prevent the conflict from spreading,” as Secretary of State Warren Christopher put it-or what the rules of engagement are. What happens if they are attacked? Will they be reinforced or withdrawn?
‘Military professionalism’: The failure to resolve those same operational issues has stunted the development of U.N. peacekeeping-and ultimately kept the United States from stepping back as the world’s policeman. Since 1990 the United Nations has dispatched tens of thousands of soldiers with too little preparation: sent into the middle of civil wars, they are lightly armed, and instructed only to return fire. Yet their circumstances “require a level of military professionalism and discipline not commonly found in previous U.N. peacekeeping operations,” argues Thomas Weiss, associate dean of faculty at Brown University and a former senior staffer at the U.N. Secretariat. “They necessitate participation from the armies of major powers.” To meet those new demands, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has argued for “standby arrangements” from member states to provide “specially trained units for peacekeeping service.” So far, the proposal hasn’t received much U.S. support: George Bush shot it down last fall; Bill Clinton hasn’t yet addressed the issue.
Collective security is a powerful idea. “With this action, the world community moves to restore order in Somalia’s capital,” the president said in his Saturday radio address. At the weekend, a house-to-house search of Mogadishu still hadn’t found Aidid and, NEWSWEEK has learned, frustrated Pentagon officials were talking about sending in Delta Force commandos. Furious Somalis barricaded the streets of the capital and threatened Western reporters. “We all believe that Aidid is logical-he is right,” said a teenage hospital staffer. “We Somalis are all ready to die.” As gunships and Cobras attacked again on early Sunday, targeting Aidid’s residence and arms depots, the question arose, When would the United States get out this time?
The Spectre Gunship Armament: One 105-mm cannon, fires 12 rounds per minute One 40-mm Bofors cannon, fires 100 rounds per minute Two 20-mm Vulcan cannons (Gatling guns) sprays 2,500 shots/min. Range: 1,500 miles Ceiling: 25,000 ft
