and complicated that he wanted someone with Zinni’s wealth of operational experience, both in combat and in humanitarian missions, to run it. The practicalities of integrating all the pieces of this mission meant that the chief of staff was going to have to back up the chief of operations (in planning and logistics and the like). Operations was where all the action was going to take place.
To Zinni, this was great news. “I don’t care about seniority,” he told Johnston. “I want the operations job.”
The next day he packed his bags, went up to Washington, and joined the CENTCOM[58] CINC, General Joe Hoar, for the flight to Hoar’s headquarters in Tampa. There they linked up with General Johnston and got a briefing on the operation. Afterward, Zinni was to accompany Johnston back to his headquarters at Camp Pendleton, California, for a week of planning. They were to deploy to Somalia on December 10.
The plane ride from Washington to Tampa proved to be invaluable. Zinni had known Joe Hoar from his first days in Vietnam (he had first met Hoar in the Rung Sat), and the two had remained friends ever since. Hoar was a savvy operator who had earned a tremendous reputation as the CENTCOM commander. For the duration of the three-hour flight, the two men went over the mission.
Zinni had recommendations based on his recent experiences: techniques, tactics, and organizations (like UNHCR) they’d need to employ if they were dealing with refugees or displaced persons; using Civil Affairs to set up a Civil-Military Operations Center (CMOC) like the one created in Operation Provide Comfort to connect with the NGOs and the UN; using psychological operations (such as avoiding military terminology in order to better convey the humanitarian message).
Hoar listened carefully to Zinni’s ideas — most of them totally new to him: Refugees? The third world? NGOs? UN?…
At CENTCOM headquarters, Hoar, Johnston, Zinni, and the staff went over the situation in Somalia and the planning so far.
The Somali people occupy the actual “Horn” of Africa, and are the majorityin northern Kenya, Djibouti, and the now Ethiopian province of Ogaden. They are a clan-based society, with five major clans and numerous subclans, unified in language and ethnic identity, separate in customs, lineage, and history. Somalia became a nation in 1960, following a period as an Italian and British colonial possession and a post-World War Two UN mandate. A weak, fractious postmandate government lasted for nine years, but collapsed in 1969 when the first President was assassinated and a military dictator, Siad Barre, took over. Barre’s rule began well enough for the country, though his early alliance with the Soviets did not sit well with the West. It paid many of his bills, however, and brought in modern weapons.
The good times ended in 1977 when Barre attacked Ethiopia to regain Ogaden. This was a tragic miscalculation — not least because Ethiopia was itself a Soviet client state. The Soviets, forced to choose, tilted toward Ethiopia; and the disastrous war and defeat (in 1978) that followed pitched Somalia into a steep decline.
Barre switched sides from the Soviets to the West, and a period of apparent progress followed — only to be eaten up by corruption, and by the increasing repression of clans other than Siad Barre’s own Marehan. As the repression grew to violent assault and terror, the Siad Barre government rotted from within. The clans fought back, and the nation drifted into civil war. (The conflict started in 1988, but only became general in 1990.)
Civil war devastated the country. It was a nation awash in Soviet and Western weapons. Most were ultimately used to kill Somalis. Hundreds of thousands of refugees left the country; hundreds of thousands more were killed in the fighting, or died of starvation and disease. By 1992, half the children born since 1987, and twenty-five percent of the country’s children overall, had perished. Institutions of government had vanished. Factional feuding among clans only added to the misery.
Millions were still at serious risk.
Siad Barre was driven from power in 1990, but kept fighting in southern Somalia near the border with Kenya, in what was called “the Triangle of Death”—the area between the towns of Baidoa and Bardera, in the interior, and Kismayo, on the coast. Faction leaders controlling the various regions fell to fighting each other. The strongest of these was General Mohammed Farrah Aideed[59] of the Hawiye clan… but there were many others.
In January 1991, Mogadishu, the capital, was divided between Aideed and the businessman, politician, and local warlord Ali Mahdi Mohamed (previously allies against Siad Barre), after Ali Mahdi turned against Aideed. This was a not totally surprising turnaround. Both were members of the Hawiye clan (yet from different subclans: Aideed was a Habr Gidr and Ali Mahdi was an Abgal; significant differences in Somalia’s fractious clan system), and both were also leaders of the same political faction, the United Somali Congress (USC) — but in Somalia, betrayal is the mother’s milk of politics.
That same month, the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu was evacuated in a last-minute, dramatic rescue by Marine helicopters launched from amphibious ships participating in Operation Desert Shield.
For several months, the two sides faced off against each other, Aideed in the southern parts of the city and Ali Mahdi in his base in the city’s north. Aideed, who was the more experienced and effective military commander and had the benefit of better and heavier weapons (taken from Siad Barre’s warehouses), held the stronger position; but fighting between the two warlords was only sporadic. Law and order completely broke down in the city; armed gangs roamed everywhere. No one could control them. Serious fighting finally broke out in September 1991 and raged for several months, leaving little of value intact in Mogadishu.
In May 1992, Aideed finally defeated Barre, who escaped to Kenya, and later found exile in Nigeria. Aideed had proved to be a formidable commander, with powerful credentials to lead his country. He had — as he saw it — liberated Somalia from the dictator Siad Barre, a triumph that entitledhim to take Barre’s place as the national leader. Other faction leaders saw things very differently; and fighting continued. This worsened the famine and destruction throughout the southern part of the country, especially in the Triangle of Death. (The northern provinces, at the actual Horn of Africa, were relatively unaffected and in effect have operated as a more or less independent state.)
In 1992, the UN started a humanitarian operation called UNOSOM (UN Operations Somalia), which proved to be powerless and ineffective — too weak to put down the violence… or even to provide security for the relief workers. Looting prevented most UN and NGO food and relief supplies from reaching the intended beneficiaries.
In late August of that year, the U.S. also started a humanitarian operation, called “Provide Relief,” that airlifted food and medical supplies from Kenya to remote sites in Somalia. Provide Relief aircraft flew nearly 2,500 missions and delivered more than 28,000 metric tons to airfields in southern Somalia. The operation saved lives, but an airlift could not carry nearly enough food and medicine to seriously ease the famine and disease.[60]
By the fall of 1992, Somalia was a lawless, devastated land ruled by fifteen warlords with their militias and by roving gangs of armed bandits. These traveled around in “technicals,” pickup trucks with crew-served weapons mounted on their beds. (They got their name from the relief agencies who had hired out the gangs for protection and charged it off to “technical assistance.”) The relief agencies and NGOs were subject to extortion, pillage, threats, and even murder, sometimes by the very guards they hired.
By November, the chaos and violence in Somalia had made some kind of international action inevitable. After much discussion within the Bush administration and the UN, it was decided that a large military force was needed (modeled after the recent Desert Shield/Desert Storm coalition against Iraq), consisting of at least two American divisions, supplemented by other U.S. and foreign forces. This force would operate with UN approval (under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, authorizing peace enforcementusing “all necessary means” including deadly force), but it would not be a UN-commanded operation. The operation was called “Restore Hope.”
The American concept for Restore Hope foresaw the quick establishment of security on the ground, allowing the relief agencies and NGOs to operate freely, followed by a rapid transition to a UN-led peacekeeping operation (though the U.S. expected to continue to supply logistics and support services and a quick reaction force). But there was to be no attempt to disarm the warlords or seriously alter the political landscape.
However, the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, had different expectations. In his view, Restore
