projects.
These encounters were hardly ever easy, given the Somali approach to negotiating; and my frustrations quickly grew. At one point, I had to ask Oakley what these endless meetings were accomplishing.
“When they’re talking, they’re not fighting,” he answered. “We need to keep them engaged in a lot of talking.”
He was right. But it took me a while to realize that.
In time, my presence on the Security Committee allowed me to get to know Aideed’s and Ali Mahdi’s security chiefs, General Elmi and General Abdi. These relationships headed off a lot of problems and potential disasters as the operation went on.
Another prominent Somali I got to know well was Aideed’s financier Osman Atto. Atto was an old-fashioned wheeler-dealer entrepreneur. His hands were in all kinds of pots. Because continued fighting would inevitably harm the many deals he always had working, he did his best to keep Aideed on an even keel and prevent fighting. “Don’t upset him,” Osman kept urging me. “Bad for business.” (Osman and I kept in touch after I left, and he proved to be very helpful when I returned to Somalia in 1995.)
The most important of my working relationships was with General Aideed himself — not easy, given the general’s mercurial personality. Today, we’d probably call him “bipolar”—manic-depressive. I could never be sure which mood I would find when I arrived at his compound. When he was in his “statesman” mode, he was articulate and expansive, making grand pronouncements about Somali and international affairs. When he was in his “alderman” mode, he harped about petty problems and complained about our operations. But in his “dark” mode, he was scary. His own men often warned me not to provoke him when he was in this mood.
For all the uncertainties of working with him, he was far and away the one person who might have led his country. His organization was actually a minigovernment, with all the bureaucratic trappings (including — improbably — a Minister for Tourism). Like Washington bureaucrats and used car dealers, Aideed liked to hand out ballpoint pens imprinted with his political party’s logo.
“You need administration, bureaucracy, and detail to run a country,” he answered when I queried him about such things; “and only I have it.” He was right. None of the other warlords had anything like it.
Without doubt, he was a dangerous character who required constant attention, but I believed he could be handled and controlled. There were times when he was relatively easy to work with him; there were times when you had to lay the law down to him; and there were times when I had to wait out a dark mood. But I could live with all that as long as we were making real progress… and we were.
Because he was a dangerous, very high-maintenance character, many people thought we ought to just threaten him — and if that didn’t work, use force — to make him toe the line. As the UN found out later, doing that opened up lots of problems. They thought they could handle him — without having any idea what they were biting into. I thought there were other ways to deal with him.
My visits to Aideed’s lair (or to one of the other warlords’ compounds) required forming up a small convoy of two or three Humvees, with security. My driver, Corporal Watts, would usually gather up eight to ten Marines from the staff, have them don their battle gear, and mount them up for the trip.
Inside the compound, the buildings were all layered with the porches that are typical in tropical countries. Dozens of heavily armed men always swarmed about, staring brazenly at my Marines from every level of the buildings. During my meetings, the Marines stood beside the vehicles returning the stares of the cocky Somali gunmen.
Our entrances and exits to and from the compound were normally without incident — which was just as well, considering the possibilities. But one of our entrances proved to be deliciously memorable. As we were stepping out of our Humvees on this particular occasion, I was greeted by shocked faces on Aideed’s men. I turned to the second Humvee in line, which seemed to be the source of all the excitement: An African American woman Marine was standing there in her battle gear, with her M-16 at the ready, looking tough as hell.
I left to conduct my business. Forty-five minutes later, when I came back out, the stir was still at high pitch. It was obvious the Somalis couldn’t believe their eyes — an armed woman in Marine battle dress.
On the way back, I turned to Corporal Watts. “You brought a woman Marine, huh,” I said; I knew he’d set this scene up.
He smiled. “She’ll kill you just as dead as any man,” he said.
I laughed. He loved jerking the Somali tough guys’ chains.
Back to our headquarters, I drew the woman Marine aside for a quick chat. Corporal Watts was right. She’d kill you just as dead as any man could.
Meanwhile, Ambassador Oakley was moving the peace process forward. By early January 1993, he had arranged a conference in Addis Ababa, attended by all the faction leaders; and in mid-January, they’d all signed a peace agreement. He then convinced the reluctant UN to sponsor another conference in Addis in mid- March, where all the factions signed on to a plan for a transition government, the disarming of the militias, and the establishment of a national police force.
It had become increasingly clear that Oakley was essential if the Somalis were going to settle their differences peacefully. Only he commanded the trust, confidence, and respect of the Somalis. Yet even this was a long shot.
As food began to flow, and we had begun to reduce the violence and chaos in Mogadishu, an unexpected phenomenon just sort of broke out here and there in the city. The old policemen started coming back onto the streets, all decked out in their musty uniforms, to include batons — directing traffic, controlling minor problems, and promoting order. It was one of those seemingly minor events that was actually a very big tipping point. Where they appeared, vendors’ booths and makeshift markets set up. The police were security magnets, and people flocked to these newly “safe” areas.
In Somalia, the police have always commanded great respect. They never took part in Siad Barre’s oppression, never took sides in the bitter civil strife that followed, and even somehow maintained the goodwill of the warlords.
The reemergence of the police presented us with a splendid opportunity to turn a large piece of the security pie over to trained, competent, and respected Somalis — an opportunity the UN was reluctant to support. We were concerned that we’d lose momentum while waiting for the UN to move ahead. But when Oakley tried to persuade the UN to take on the reestablishment of the police, they refused. And when the UN decreed that it would not accept a police force that was under Somali control, Oakley dropped the job on me.
Though U.S. law has strong prohibitions against U.S. military involvement in this area, Oakley was undeterred, and he convinced General Johnston to let me help put the police back on the street. As a result, I became the head of the oversight committee formed to reestablish the force.
A superb U.S. Army military police officer, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Spataro, single-handedly put together a plan and worked with the old police leadership to vet the former police, rebuild their academy, set up the training program, arrange for equipment and uniforms to be provided, and reestablish the prisons. The Italians and Japanese contributed vehicles, uniforms, and equipment; and we arranged for weapons (“donated” in the name of Ali Mahdi, from whom we seized them) and a control system for them.
We ended up with a national police force of 4,400 personnel, operating in sixteen cities, while Oakley worked with our lawyers to establish jails, and to set up a judicial committee that put in place judges, legal representatives, and a legal code.
Though by January 1993 UNITAF had achieved its mission to create a secure environment for the conduct of the humanitarian effort, Somalia was still a dangerous place, with violence ready to explode at a moment’s notice. Obviously, in the best of worlds, the Somalis would have gladly given up their arms, turned them into plowshares, and lived blessedly in peace and harmony. Since that was not going to happen, we had to consider some less than ideal ways to pacify a warlike society awash with weapons… while somehow or other grappling with
