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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 32

OPERATION RESTORE HOPE

Great Expectations


As Operation Restore Hope begins, Somalis want the U.S. to stay
long enough to fix not just their diet but also their society

By JILL SMOLOWE - With reporting by Andrew Purvis and James
Wilde/Mogadishu and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    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 deor 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.