Great Expectations

By Jill Smolowe

THE FIRST IMAGES CAST an antic light on Operation Restore Hope. As Navy SEALs waded ashore in the moonlight, their faces blackened with camouflage paint, their bodies braced for confrontation, they were met and blinded by the glare of television lights. But the farcical aspect of the first live military landing soon faded as the troops fanned out from their beachhead into the anarchic city of Mogadishu. By daylight, the airport was secured, the city port occupied, and for the first time in two years, most of the firepower belonged to friendlies. Though it had barely begun, the U.S. operation had already raised great expectations among Somalis that peace might actually come to a starving land that had been ruled for the past two years by rival clans and wild kids with guns.

The sense of a dangerous mission rapidly gave way to a more human drama. Everywhere the U.S. troops turned, they found themselves hemmed in by Somalis eager to touch American flesh, gesture their relief, smile their thanks. People skills seemed more important than military ones as the need to establish a friendly rapport battled with the demand to maintain order. In those first hours, it was hard not to be swept up in the euphoria. Declared Fatima Mohammed, 32, a mother of seven: "I'd like the U.S. troops to stay here for life."

And that is precisely the problem that may bring this humanitarian mission to a rancorous and divisive ending. The U.S. troops, backed by soldiers from 10 other nations, are digging in to do a job that their leaders suggest will end in a matter of weeks or at most a few months. The Bush Administration has repeatedly stated that the sole objective of Operation Restore Hope is to open up a food pipeline to feed the starving, not to wage war on the country's armed gangs or impose political solutions. The Somalis, however, expect nothing short of a Marshall Plan. They want the Americans to stay long enough to fix not only their diet, but also their broken government and lawless society. Between the objective and the dream lies much room for disappointment and misunderstanding.

As the operation slowly got under way, the 3,000 U.S. troops found themselves spread thin, trying to answer a host of competing demands. Most of the capital's armed thugs crept away, but soldiers had yet to impose more than a veneer of security. On Saturday, U.S. combat helicopters destroyed three armed Somali vehicles that had opened fire on the American gunship. Relief workers groused about poor communications and stalled food shipments; more urgent were the calls for help from Good Samaritans trapped in their compounds in outlying towns where marauding gunmen were still stealing, fighting and killing. Somali clan leaders pitched hard for at least a yearlong commitment, and Somali children vied for attention. "There is a lot of confusion as to who is in charge," observed a U.S. relief worker.

The reality, as always, is different from, and harder than, what military planners imagined. Washington is already enlarging the political scope of the U.S. mission. Before the first troops landed, Robert Oakley, the U.S. special envoy, held a series of meetings in Mogadishu that resulted in reports that he had no intention of entering into negotiations with Somalia's warlords, but would simply inform them of U.S. military aims and lay down a deadline to withdraw their gunmen. By Friday, Oakley had brokered a temporary reconciliation between the country's two most powerful clan leaders, General Mohammed Farrah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohammed, who had not spoken in more than a year. Emerging from their meeting at the U.S. liaison office, the two warlords agreed to an immediate cease-fire and ordered their fighters to leave the capital, though no one believed their hostilities have ended for good.

The people of Somalia know that the immediate threat is less the rivalry of the factional leaders than the abundance of weapons. Order cannot be restored permanently until the country's thugs are separated from their sophisticated caches of weapons, which range from AK-47s to surface-to-air missiles and technicals, the Mad Max vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns and antiaircraft weapons. Residents do not mistake Mogadishu's relative calm for peace; they know that the thugs have simply redeployed to the bush.

The U.N. resolution is purposefully vague on the issue of disarming Somalis, yet this is already proving vexatious. Both Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have offered no specific guidelines on how far the troops ought to go in seizing weapons from the local populace, leaving commanders on the ground to figure out the details. Both have stressed, however, that troops will take whatever action they deem necessary when threatened. Pressed on more general plans for disarmament, Oakley said, "We plan to negotiate with the Somalis and have them do it."

It is impossible to tell whether that is sound strategy or a recipe for disaster. When Aidid and Ali Mahdi made their tentative peace, neither called on his followers to surrender their weapons. A U.S. senior official said that "Aidid has parked his heavy weapons in Ethiopia." Meanwhile, the gung-ho attempt of some of the vanguard troops to seize weapons slowed perceptibly. French troops initially searched Somali cars for weapons; by week's end they were searching only for the heavy guns that used to be carried on technicals. "It would be inconceivable to disarm Mogadishu," said a senior French army officer.

The rules seemed porous and confusing. Marines understood they were authorized to seize any weapons in their zone of security. Four soldiers, drawn by gunfire to a gutted six-story building down the block from the U.S. embassy, discovered a large arms cache that included boxes of ammunition, heavy machine guns and a howitzer. They prepared to confiscate it when a Somali man stepped forward to argue that the building belonged to an Aidid ally. He demanded to speak to someone higher up. When Corporal Robert Parrish reached his platoon commander by radio, he was instructed, "Get in your vehicles, and leave the area." The astonished Marines left; the weapons stayed.

The souring can-do spirit reflected the deepening tensions that settled over the capital within 36 hours of the troops' arrival, as sniper fire and gun battles resumed. For the most part, foreign troops saw none of the fighting. "When Somalis are fighting Somalis, we do nothing," Oakley said. "They can do whatever they want to each other."

But on Saturday came the first exchange of fire between American troops and local gunmen. A Somali armored personnel carrier fired on two U.S. Cobra gunships, which returned the fire, destroying three armed vehicles and causing several Somali casualties.

A more controversial incident took place Thursday evening, when jittery American and French troops fired at a Somali van as it raced through a control point, ignoring orders to stop. The vehicle crashed into a wall. Two people were killed, and seven were injured. Early reports suggested the vehicle was an armed technical, but the next day French commanders said the van had been unarmed. Colonel Fred Peck, spokesman for the U.S. coalition, was unapologetic. "I don't have to recall to you what happened in Beirut," he said, referring to the 1983 bombing that took the lives of 241 U.S. troops. "We acted in what we thought was an appropriate fashion."

Somalis who witnessed the accident were less forgiving. "They seem to be restoring the terror and trouble," said a man who would not give his name for fear of reprisal from the foreigners. Seemingly unimpressed by the scale and attendant dangers of the pacification effort, he complained of French troops entering his home uninvited. "Why do they go into people's houses without our permission?" he said. "Are they here to restore peace?"

That question was echoed by frustrated relief workers who no longer enjoyed the protection of their own armed fighters and were not yet feeling the benefit of the Marines' presence. On Thursday seven vehicles owned by nongovernment organizations were hijacked. "They tell us not to carry any weapons, then they refuse to offer us any protection," said a relief worker. "Well, thank you. We still have to work in this place." The U.S. later issued a clarification, permitting the aid organizations to carry small arms.

More serious was the delay in moving troops into the countryside. Original plans called for units to relieve Baidoa, one of the chief feeding centers, 150 miles from Mogadishu, within a few days. Fighting there had intensified as gunmen, flushed from the capital, turned on one another and terrorized the town with killing and looting. "This is the direct result of the Marines shirking their duty," said Rick Grant, a spokesman for CARE. "This is bordering on criminal negligence. Our people are at extreme risk." Relief workers barricaded themselves into their compounds, but local citizens, - starving and in the line of fire, had nowhere to hide. It was unclear if the delayed deployment of U.S. troops reflected continuing security problems in Mogadishu or concerns about the mounting lawlessness in Baidoa. On Friday Lieut. General Robert Johnston, the U.S. commander of the mission, told relief agencies that the Marines expected to move into the city in a week to 10 days.

From the start, the relationship between the foreign troops and Somalis has been ill defined, leaving ample room for misunderstanding. When a group of heavily armed Marines disgorged from an amphibious assault vehicle stenciled with the name BRAT PACK and tried to secure an airfield hangar, they baffled non-English-speaking Somalis with orders to "Get down on your knees!" and "Spread your arms!" At least one Somali found the treatment inexplicably rude, given that the men were unarmed. "If you are a human being, it's not good for you to be lying on the ground," he said. "I would like to entertain these foreigners with open arms, but I very much regret this problem."

The real work of bringing food to starving people has barely begun. On Saturday, the U.S. escorted its first food convoy, a group of four trucks that delivered its cargo to northern Mogadishu. American helicopter gunships and armored personnel carriers escorted the shipment, which had been idled in port for several days, reportedly because of a disagreement between U.S. troops and U.N. peacekeepers over who was in charge. Other relief shipments remained blocked in the city, in large part the result of bad communications between soldiers and relief workers.

The possibility of confrontation will increase sharply when the foreign troops push inland toward the famine belt. The situation to the south, in Kismayu, was grim. Sixty people were killed last week during clashes between two local factions, and all but a handful of relief workers had to be evacuated. Of mounting concern is what the thugs plan to do once the foreign troops reach these cities. Will they turn their firepower on the soldiers? Or will they continue running as the U.S. units advance, pushing into villages that until now have been spared the worst of the fighting? "We are very concerned about the bandits' being driven out of major population centers by the Marines and setting on people in the countryside," says Nicolas de Metz, coordinator of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).

The U.S. troops face logistic difficulties as well. Given Somalia's / primitive airports, shallow ports and unpaved roads, troops will have to improvise as they go. "This is a classic bring-your-own operation," says one four-star Army logistician. That means supplying their own night lights at the airport, radar systems for air-traffic control, generators -- and then fuel to run them. Logistics managers are sending three times the normal spare parts, worried that sand could be a constant problem.

Nutrition and hygiene must also be imported. The military will have to desalinate or purify every drop of water drunk by troops. Water consumption for a 16,000-member division is roughly 300,000 gal. daily. The troops have been immunized for a wide range of diseases, including yellow fever and typhoid, and truck-mounted pesticide sprayers are being brought in to do battle against flies and mosquitoes.

If getting up and operating is proving a problem -- and it will take at least until sometime after the new year for the full force to be actively engaged -- getting back out promises to be worse. There is pronounced Somali resistance to turning the mission over to U.N. peacekeepers. Somalis feel that the U.N. team already in the country has been neither impartial nor adequate. They also nurse ill feelings toward U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali, who once had dealings with the ousted dictator Mohammed Siad Barre. "They practiced deceit, secrecy, deception and outright bribery," charges Mohammed Awale, an adviser to Aidid, "adding to the fragmentation of Somali society." Restoring the U.N.'s credibility may be a surprisingly tough part of the mission.

Then there is the breathless reverence for all things American. Now that the U.S. has arrived, Somalis expect miracles to follow. If the U.S. fails to satisfy at least some of those hopes, there will be bitter recriminations from both sides for a long time to come.

With reporting by Andrew Purvis and James Wilde/Mogadishu and Bruce van Voorst/Washington