Aideed and greatly lessened the danger of continued violence. It was time to bring him into the process and persuade him to sign on to Oakley’s program.
Aideed (still UNOSOM’s most wanted man) was hiding out in the labyrinths of Mogadishu. Getting to him was not going to be easy.
On the day of the meeting, our armored SUV was escorted by Marines to the old UN headquarters, where we were to be turned over to Aideed’s security. As we were waiting for Aideed’s gunmen to appear, a large, excited, and very curious crowd gathered around us. Though they made our Marine security nervous, they didn’t actually threaten us.
We soon had other things to think about, when Aideed’s hard-looking, heavily armed fighters came speeding into the intersection, hanging from technicals. Their leader was the largest Somali I’d ever seen, at least six and a half feet tall with bulging muscles. A man of very few words, he directed us to pull our vehicle between the technicals; and we raced off at high speed through a maze of back alleys and side streets. It was like a movie: Keeping up with the speeding technicals required blasting through intersections, countless near misses, and breathtaking two-wheel turns.
We suddenly found ourselves rushing into a large plaza, heading straight toward a screaming multitude of Somalis.
“What do you think?” Bob Oakley asked.
“Ambassador,” I said, “they’re either going to kiss us or eat us.”
As we got closer, we realized they were actually cheering us. The gathering in the plaza had obviously been staged by Aideed.
Eventually, we turned into a compound and came to a stop in front of Aideed’s temporary headquarters, where his chief lieutenants and a broadly smiling Aideed were standing ready to greet us. A bank of cameras off to the side videoed every move. As we stepped out of the SUV, the giant, taciturn security goon came up and put together what for him must have been a major speech. “No more shooting,” he said, with evident emotion, grabbing me by the hand. “No more. Too many people will die.” He had clearly had his fill of fighting.
“We’ll all do our best,” I answered, as the hugely grinning Aideed wrapped his arms around me like a long-lost relative and then ushered us down the ranks of his officials for their greetings. I hoped the cameramen didn’t catch all that. Taking photo ops with Aideed would not make us popular back home (where the media had followed UNOSOM’s lead in demonizing him).
Inside the headquarters, we followed Aideed into a large conference room. His party’s banners were hanging on the walls; pens and stationery with his logo were neatly placed at each seat. After an exchange of small talk, we got down to business with a group of people who were surprisingly somber. I’d expected them to be upbeat at the very least; and I wouldn’t have thought twice if they’d been gloating. They’d been hit hard, but had hit the U.S. and UN even harder; and now we were again treating them like leaders with a legitimate place in the political process. And yet they did not rejoice in their triumph; they were subdued and solemn. They recognized the terrible tragedy we had all suffered. It was clear that the loss of ten thousand Somali lives during the past four months was weighing heavily on all of them.
Aideed maintained the serious tone — though without altering his long-held positions: The release of the UN-held prisoners was still a pressing concern, and so were the big questions about his own status and UNOSOM’s unceasing accusations against him. He made it abundantly clear that UNOSOM and the Secretary- General were as evil in his eyes as he was in theirs (though he pointed out that he did not oppose the UN itself). He welcomed the U.S. back into the peace process, and would further welcome an independent commission to look into the causes of war — headed by former President Jimmy Carter and with members who were not appointed by the UN Secretary-General.
Following an in-depth debate of the program Oakley had put together earlier that month, Aideed gave it his reluctant consent, adding that he hoped to work within the earlier Addis agreements. Oakley’s policy was correct, he said in conclusion: Governing Somalia should be left to the Somalis.
What form that governing might take still remained a very open question, as was the part the UN and the U.S. would take in the process of answering it.
Before we left, I wanted to satisfy my curiosity about the fight on October 3 that became known as the Battle of Mogadishu (dramatically captured in the book and movie Black Hawk Down).
“Could you tell me the story from your side?” I asked Aideed.
He was more than willing to do that.
As he began his account, his respect for the military skill of the special operations force—“those dangerous men at the airfield,”[67] he called them — was obvious.
The special operations forces had focused their attacks on Aideed’s meetings with his top staff. As a protective measure for his meetings, Aideed had ordered machine guns and RPG launchers to be positioned on neighboring roofs, with orders to concentrate fire on the helos if the Americans attacked. He knew American forces would rally around a downed helicopter and be easier to fix in the fighting. He had furthermore put out a standing order to attack any reaction force coming out of the airport. The UNITAF Marines had multiple reaction forces that could respond from several directions, but now the principal reaction force always came from the airport. For that reason, it was important to cut that off if he was attacked by the special operations forces.
Aideed’s tactics had all been purely defensive… but that’s not the way they’d played on television. Even worse in the eyes of the world, they’d worked.
This did not excuse Somali atrocities; and Aideed acknowledged that no apology could make up for Somali mobs brutally dragging dead soldiers through the streets. But he also was careful to point out that he had immediately taken control of the prisoner, Warrant Officer Durant, and had adhered to Geneva Convention requirements in his treatment of him.
It was obvious that there were two widely different versions as to what happened and who was responsible for the violence. Even investigations and inquiries have presented different views.
Our return ride to the rendezvous with our Marine security force took us through another screaming crowd. Soon after that, we returned to the States.
And so my practical involvement in Operation Continue Hope, as the U.S. had named the UNOSOM II phase, ended.
In the coming days, Oakley was busy planning the Addis conference and working out implementation of his overall program. Though he asked me to be ready to return, the focus was shifting from security (which had been my responsibility) to politics and humanitarian relief. In his mind, the security situation was under control.
I returned to Quantico to watch developments from there.
It quickly became clear that the Clinton administration wanted out of Somalia. The final nail in that coffin came when they announced that all U.S. forces were to be pulled out by March 1994. In my mind, Oakley had been used to achieve a cease-fire and provide a decent interval to allow the administration to cut its loses and pull out. The U.S. was not going to follow through on the Oakley program to put the peace process back on track.
On a more positive note, at least the fighting had stopped and the ravaged country had a few quiet moments to catch its breath.
As for the question of Aideed’s war crimes guilt: Months later, in February 1994, a UN commission of inquiry into responsibility for the June 5 clash published its findings. It concluded that both sides had been at fault.
