Hope’s limited time frame and scope would not provide enough security, disarmament, or political change to allow the UN to take responsibility for nation building in Somalia. He wanted the U.S. to embark on a full-scale nationwide disarmament program before there could be any transition to UN peacekeepers.
This ambiguity between the U.S. and the UN understanding of what had to be done came to haunt both the U.S. Restore Hope operation and its UN successor, which came to be called UNOSOM II.
The force designed to bring initial order to Somalia’s chaos was General Johnston’s JTF:
The Marine piece would consist of a Marine Air Ground Task Force, centering on the 1st Marine Division, with logistics and air components. The Army had designated the 10th Mountain Division as their part. The Navy was going to bring in maritime preposition ships and a carrier; and naval P-3 aircraft, flying out of Djibouti, would also be available. The Air Force brought in C-130s and a number of other aircraft to augment Marine Corps air. There were also special operations components.
General Hoar was additionally looking at a coalition involvement that would include participation from African, Gulf region, and Western countries. (He called this “a 3-3-1 Strategy.”) Because Somalia was both an African and an Islamic country, it was politically important for CENTCOM to be seen in Africa and in the Islamic world as encouraging their involvement. He also wanted one other Western force as a leavening factor; and the Canadians had already committed to sending a brigade. (Later, the numbers of other participating countries exploded. By the end of the operation, there were twenty-six of them.)
Once the various pieces of the force had arrived in Somalia, they had to be fused together. The CENTCOM and I MEF staffs had already put in much work on that, as well as the more obvious issues of deployment, logistics support, and bases (General Hoar wanted to use regional bases in Kenya and Djibouti as support bases, for example). Sequencing in a large force into the Horn of Africa’s slender infrastructure was not going to be easy.
The biggest problem faced by the planners, however, was that they didn’t yet understand exactly what had to be done once the forces were on the ground. This was an unusual mission, and few of them really understood its nature. Like General Hoar, they’d had no experience dealing with NGOs and the UN, much less bringing order to a failed third world nation… and saving lives there. Though shooting, killing, and destruction were seen as inevitable, this was in no way a typical combat mission. They were groping badly trying to comprehend it.
Here Zinni brought his greatest contribution.
After a day at CENTCOM headquarters, Zinni and the rest of the I MEF staff left for Camp Pendleton. By then, he had a basic understanding of the situation in Somalia and the mission they’d be mounting to deal with it. Yet, at the same time, the situation on the ground was breaking fast, and there was no clear picture of what was actually happening there or what had to be done.
The following week was spent on round-the-clock frantic planning and coordination.
Zinni, Johnston, and key members of their team took off on a C-141 for Somalia on the ninth of December. A Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) had meanwhile been positioned off Mogadishu in amphibious ships and would land to secure the port, airfield, and U.S. Embassy that day. The command team’s C-141 landed on the tenth.
Tony Zinni:
A few hours out of the Mogadishu airport, we received a call that the French government had decided to participate in the operation and had dispatched a general to Mogadishu from Djibouti, where there was a French base; but the French government had insisted that their general be the first on the ground. Bob Johnston’s reply was, “Bullshit”; and, as the coalition commander, he ordered the French to stand off as we landed. They complied.
This little show of hauteur had nothing to do with the French military, who were superb troops (and often suffered for their government’s arrogance). I knew from operations like Provide Comfort that they were worth their weight in gold on the ground and we welcomed their participation, despite the initial flap. They did not let us down.
It was hot when we landed (Mogadishu is not far from the equator); and the airport was a wreck, with old Soviet MiGs and other wreckage trashed and in piles off to the side, but Marines from the MEU were already in positions to defend it. We were met by the MEU commander, Greg Newbold,[61] who gave us a quick brief on the situation:
During the night before the MEU’s landing, he reported, he had sent in SEALs to recon; somebody had somehow got wind of it and reported this to the Western press who were hanging out in Mogadishu. They came running down to the beach with their klieg lights and cameras for a brilliant media welcome to the SEALs as they swam in. It was a very confused — and later very notorious — moment. (It further convinced me we needed to get a better handle on what was going on here.)
Though Aideed had promised that the Marines would have no trouble during their landing (the airport and port were in southern Mogadishu — Aideed territory), Newbold took no chances.[62] He immediately seized the port and air- field and put out security, pushing out looters and vagrants, then flew up to the abandoned U.S. Embassy compound and seized it.
We came in right behind them, and we immediately began the inflow of forces. Troops would soon be flying into the airfield, marrying up with prepositioned equipment, now being off-loaded. Other units would quickly follow. The Canadian ships were on the way. We expected to spend our next days setting up the command post, receiving troops to rapidly begin operations, and coordinating with the other efforts on the ground.
After the brief from Newbold, we moved to helicopters to fly the short distance to the U.S. Embassy compound. The sights from the helo as we flew over the city were overwhelming. The place was devastated… like Stalingrad after the battle. The people we could see seemed to be mostly combing through the ruins, searching for food or anything else of value.
As we touched down at the embassy compound, the devastation became more immediate. The effects of the destruction and wanton looting of the buildings and grounds were everywhere. For now, the Marines had set up a hasty security perimeter around the compound, and were in the process of clearing out dead bodies and debris. A few refugees who had taken up residence were also being removed. The embassy itself was completely gutted. The rooms were blackened from fires and full of trash and human waste. Even the electrical wiring and granite floor tiles had been torn out; every window was broken. Though our troops were hard at work clearing the mess, we knew it would be a long, hard task to get this place ready for operations.
We actually had other alternatives. The UN headquarters, for instance, was in a posh, intact housing compound; and one like it had been offered to Bob Johnston, but he had declined. It was our embassy — and a symbol of U.S. determination to reclaim its property.
He also did not believe in special frills or comforts for the command element; we ate MREs like the troops and were the last to receive service facilities such as shower units.
As I curled up the first night on the concrete floor of the room where I was sleeping, I wondered how this country could have fallen into such chaos and self-destruction. We faced a daunting task. The infrastructure was either destroyed or else practically unusable. It would take a major engineering effort to improve the roads, airfields, ports, and storage areas — not to mention electrical and water systems. The crude hospitals in Mogadishu were treating forty-five to fifty gunshot wounds on average per day; but these numbers sometimes reached one hundred fifty.
Outside Mogadishu, food and other critical supplies could not get through to the needy. One convoy of twenty-five trucks had started out from Mogadishu the week before we arrived to deliver food to starving Somalis in Baidoa in the Triangle of Death. In order to get out of the city in the first place, the convoy had had to give up three trucks to pay off extortionists; it had lost twelve trucks to hijackers on the roads; and eight trucks were looted as they arrived. Only four trucks made it back to Mogadishu. None of the starving received the food the trucks had carried.
