Somalia on $5 a Day.

[Guest guest]

Just finished reading Somalia on $5 a Day: A Soldier's Story. ($5 was the hazard pay allowance per day for US enlisted men.)

Learned some interesting things.

1. The Somalia mission, Operation Restore Hope, was put together in a rush, mostly due to images on the TV about starving people in Somalia. Ignored was the fact that what starvation there was was primarily due to an active civil war and not so much natural causes.

2. An artificial troop ceiling was placed on American forces in the operation. This number was around 10,200. How the political geniuses came up with that number is a mystery. What it meant was that the 10th Mountain Division, which was the Army Division sent, had to curtail things like logistical support, artillery and even leave entire battalions behind, sending a disorganized and understrength unit.

3. Peace time requirements were not curtailed. Understrength as it was, the 10th Mountain still had to send soldiers back to the states to take classes and such when they were instead needed in the field. This weakened them to the point where the battalion had to reorganize from 9 platoons to 6, all of them understrength. Replacements were not forthcoming because of the troop limit number and other bureaucratic rules.

4. The unit was given an area to control and other responsibilities that should have taken a regiment, if not the whole division. The area for the battalion was the size of Rhode Island and Conneticut combined and they were expected to control several towns, protect aid centers, conduct anti-bandit patrols, etc.

5. The Somalis were at first cowed by the American and multi-national forces. However, they soon learned the rules of engagement and worked around them. This led to scenes like in the town of Kismayu where major riots broke out between rival factions. Some rioters had guns or grenades, but most just had knives, spears and sticks and threw rocks with killing force. The rioters generally left the soliders alone, knowing that if they didn't directly attack the troops, the troops couldn't really attack them. Gunmen would shoot at rival rioters and run with their faction hindering the pursuing soldiers. The soldiers would get between rioters on one street, but the riot would flow around them into neighboring streets and start all over again. The soldiers were also powerless to do anything about the mobs catching rival clan members and quite literaly disemboweling them and playing with their innards. Many people were tortured and killed in this way. Women and children were also fair game for the rioters and many were shot down.

6. While the troops did make progress, more in some places that others, it was all for naught. When the US started pulling out in 1993 and began handing power over to the UN, UNISOM II, the Somalis became very brazen. Attacks against US troops increased because they were seen as running away and thus weak, and the UN was viewed with nothing but contempt.

7. In late 1993, the Warlord Aideed in Mogadishu, a large city that had always been hostile, had some men killed by UN forces. He retaliated by brutalizing a Pakistani company. The US sent in Special Operations troops and Rangers, but not the supporting kit they needed, like more conventional troops, tanks and AC130 gunships. The result was Operation Ranger and 18 dead Americans, many more wounded and hundreds of Somalis killed. The Somalis hadn't seen fighting like that even during their civil war and they were terrified when they saw more US troops and ships coming after Operation Ranger. However, we did nothing. In fact, Aideed was flown in US aircraft to Kenya for negotiations in 1994. We left, and the Somalis, and others, saw it as weakness and lost respect for the US and its power.

8. (Last point) The international aid wrecked the Somali economy. There was some starvation in the refugee camps, but nothing like the media had portrayed. The Shabele River Valley just inland from the coast was lush with corn and other crops, and even during the height of the famine, cattle and goats were being exported to the Middle East. Food aid convoys and warehouses were being looted, but not by the starving, but by thieves who would sell the loot because the food aid was a currency. Eventually, so much aid was flowing in that farmers stopped farming and many didn't even plant new crops because free food was so plentiful that it made no sense to farm anymore. Also, many Somalis came to look at this free food as their due.

In sum, Operation Restore Hope was badly planned and had no end goal in sight. Factions were not disarmed or destroyed, bandits were not effectively dealt with, no kind of stability was truly restored, only the power of the foreign military kept a relative peace for a short time. Even so, from the very beginning, the Somalis tried to take advantage of the troops in every way they could, from demanding money for the use of things that didn't belong to the one demanding the money (like buildings), to stealing from their vehicles and even from their persons. Not all were like that of course, but many were.

As soon as the foreign threat was seen to be hollow, the Somalis went right back to their factional fighting and the country remains a mess.

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