[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 173 (Friday, November 3, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16677-S16679]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           RETURN TO SOMALIA

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the former U.S. Ambassador to 
Somalia, Frank Crigler, had an op-ed piece in the Washington Post on 
Somalia.
  The first few paragraphs may have been written tongue-in-cheek. I am 
not sure. If not, Ambassador Crigler is wrong.
  But the remaining three-fourths of his op-ed piece are correct.
  When he talks about ``the Somalia disaster,'' if he is referring to 
what we did, there is no question that hundreds of thousands of lives 
were saved. I do not count that a disaster.
  Some mistakes were made. We had a retired American military officer, 
acting for the United Nations, who made some decisions that probably 
looked correct from a military point of view, but would not have been 
made had he consulted with former Ambassador Robert Oakley. That 
decision resulted in the needless deaths of 19 American service 
personnel, 1 of whom we saw dragged through the streets on our 
television sets. The combination of this repulsive action, and our 
being there to help save lives, caused many in Congress to say that we 
should pull our troops out. In reality, in 1993, there were more cab 
drivers killed in New York City than American service personnel killed 
in Somalia.
  Ambassador Crigler describes the Somalia action as ``George Bush's 
embarrassing last hurrah,'' my own guess is that history will view it 
as his finest hour. George Bush made the right decision, a courageous 
decision. Without that decision, many lives would have been lost, and 
the attitude in the Moslem nations of the world, would have hardened 
against the United States. They would have rightly sensed that if 
Somalia had been a white, Christian, or Jewish nation, the United 
States would have responded. Ambassador Crigler says that the Somalia 
action ``was Bill Clinton's first big foreign policy flop.'' There is 
some truth to that. It is difficult to move from Governor of Arkansas 
to become the most influential person in foreign policy, particularly 
if you have not been interested in foreign policy that much prior to 
this occasion. Had Bill Clinton been able to explain to the American 
people why we were there and that we were going to stay there for a 
while until some semblance of order was restored, the American people 
would have understood, and American leadership would have become more 
trusted in the world.
  In terms of the three basic lessons that Ambassador Crigler mentions, 
he 

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is right on No. 1: ``Overwhelming military force can help to halt 
fighting, end suffering and save lives. Hundreds of thousands of lives, 
in fact.''
  He is right on No. 2: ``You cannot do peacemaking unless you swallow 
the risk, go where the fighting is and dirty your shoes.'' One of the 
difficulties of our foreign policy right now is that there has been a 
real reluctance to recognize that risk-taking is part of leadership. 
You cannot maintain stability in the city of Chicago without having the 
police take risks, and you cannot maintain stability in the world 
without those in the Armed Forces also taking risks.
  Lesson No. 3 is: ``Even overwhelming force cannot solve another 
people's political problems. They must do that for themselves.''
  I do not question that, if it is properly understood, but it could be 
used as a reason for not acting responsibly in Bosnia, for example. No. 
3 needs to be rephrased in order to be universally applicable.
  I ask that the article by Ambassador Frank Crigler be printed in the 
Record.
  The article follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Oct. 15, 1995]

  Return to Somalia--In a Land Americans Want To Forget, Some Modest 
                            Signs of Success

                           (By Frank Crigler)

       Baidoa, Somalia.--Last month, far away from this forlorn 
     ``City of Death'' where anarchy and hunger had once claimed 
     tens of thousands of lives, Gen. Colin Powell said some 
     remarkably upbeat things about our military misadventures in 
     Somalia. That Powell was willing to talk about the subject at 
     all was newsworthy. Most people would just as soon forget the 
     Somalia disaster.
       For Republicans, Somalia was George Bush's embarrassing 
     last hurrah; for Democrats, it was Bill Clinton's first big 
     foreign policy flop. And for the average American, it was one 
     more example of foolish leaders getting our fine young troops 
     killed in places they never should have been sent.
       But for Colin Powell, Somalia had been this nation's first 
     grand attempt at humanitarian military intervention, and it 
     taught some lessons worth remembering--some we might want to 
     review as we debate sending our troops to Bosnia on yet 
     another rescue mission.
       Powell's argument, in a nutshell, is that we were right to 
     answer the 911 fire alarm when the Somalis' house was burning 
     down. But we should not have hung around afterward pretending 
     to solve domestic squabbles we didn't understand.
       ``Where things went wrong is when we decided, the U.N. 
     decided, that somehow we could tell the Somalians how they 
     should live with each other. At that point we lost the 
     bubble,'' Powell said in an interview with The Washington 
     Post, offering an odd but apt description of the tragic 
     sequel to Operation Restore Hope.
       It's now been six months since the last U.N. peacekeeping 
     troops retreated in frustration from Somalia. Almost all 
     civilian relief agencies and non-governmental personnel left 
     with them or soon after. Almost everyone predicted that 
     without their help, Somalia would quickly sink back into its 
     nightmarish misery.
       Little was left to show for the enormous investment in 
     time, money and human lives we and our allies had made trying 
     to put this East African Humpty Dumpty back together. The 
     country still lay in ruins, with no functioning government, 
     no public services, no viable economy, no judicial system. 
     The feuding clan warlords who had trashed it still ruled in 
     their fiefdoms, unbowed and uncompromising, making and 
     breaking alliances among themselves.
       What surprised me when I returned here a few weeks ago, 
     however, was that Somalia had refused to relapse into its 
     earlier spasms of violence. Inexplicably, the truce U.S. 
     Ambassador Robert Oakley compelled the feuding warlords to 
     sign back in December 1992 (with the robust backing of nearly 
     30,000 heavily armed allied troops) generally seemed to be 
     holding. People were not starving again. As Powell himself 
     noted, ``There has been no image of swollen-bellied kids on 
     our CNN screens [after all].''
       Somalia Lesson No. 1: Overwhelming military force can help 
     to halt fighting, end suffering and save lives. Hundreds of 
     thousands of lives, in fact.
       I wanted to see what was happening for myself, so when one 
     of the warlords invited me to come take a look, I jumped at 
     the chance. Five others--among them a respected U.S. 
     historian, two clerical types looking for a responsible 
     agency to distribute medical supplies from their parishioners 
     and an American entrepreneur hoping to sell a telephone 
     system--accepted his invitation as well, all of us willing to 
     risk being ``used'' for public relations purposes in order to 
     judge the state of things first-hand.
       Our host was the most celebrated warlord of them all, a man 
     with a PR problem to rival that of Attila the Hun: Gen. 
     Mohamed Farah Aideed. But his people told us that 
     ``President'' Aideed (his clan confederates had bestowed the 
     title on him in June, shortly after the last U.N. 
     peacekeepers fled) wanted to make a new start with Americans.
       At the outset, anyway, Aideed's new Somalia seemed a lot 
     like his old one. When en route to Africa, we'd heard reports 
     that his heavily armed militia forces had captured Baidoa as 
     part of a major new military offensive. Trapped there as 
     virtual hostages were said to be 23 foreign relief workers 
     (including five Americans) loosely affiliated with U.N. aid 
     agencies.
       Unanimously, our group determined that we were not going to 
     let our visit be used to sanction hostage-taking, and we sent 
     word ahead that we wouldn't budge from Nairobi until the 
     United Nations itself assured us the relief workers were safe 
     and sound. Soon a reply came back via the United Nations that 
     everything had been sorted out and the ``hostages'' were free 
     to go where they pleased. So we proceeded directly to Baidoa, 
     hoping to help evacuate those who wished to leave and then 
     get on with our own visit.
       But there were no grateful relief workers in sight when we 
     landed, no welcoming committee, no explanation. Instead, 
     armed militiamen trundled us off to the general's field 
     headquarters and dumped us without ceremony in the middle of 
     a presidential Cabinet meeting. It was instantly apparent 
     that a high-level debate was raging over what to do with the 
     unfortunate relief workers, our friends from the United 
     Nations--and now ourselves.
       On one side of the debate were ranged an assortment of 
     senior ``state security'' agents whose type I knew well from 
     my previous service in Somalia (I realized I had not missed 
     them one bit). The agents, we learned, had discovered 
     evidence that some of the foreigners were suspiciously cozy 
     with trouble-making dissidents in Baidoa. This group was 
     urging Aideed not to release them until charges were 
     thoroughly investigated.
       Ranged on the other side were, let's say, an 
     ``internationalist'' faction concerned about the 
     embarrassment of yet another incident with the United 
     Nations, particularly in the eyes of the distinguished guests 
     who had just arrived. This group was urging a more statesman-
     like approach on Aideed, and we did what we could to 
     reinforce their arguments.
       With occasional concessions and much posturing, the debate 
     ran on for two more days. In the end it was Aideed who 
     stepped forward with a grand face-saving compromise, 
     dismissed the rumors, released the detainees and even 
     apologized to the United Nation and to us for the 
     ``misunderstanding'' his overzealous security agents had 
     caused. Maybe we were going to see a ``new'' Somalia after 
     all!
       As for us distinguished visitors, we felt we had validated 
     another timely precept:
       Somalia Lesson No. 2: You can't do peacemaking unless you 
     swallow the risk, go where the fighting is and dirty your 
     shoes.
       As promised, Aideed made himself quite accessible, so we 
     took advantage to question him more closely about his Baidoa 
     offensive. He bridled when we used the word ``capture,'' 
     however. He had only come to mediate a local clan dispute, he 
     insisted, not to impose his rule or grab territory. There was 
     no need to ``capture'' a town whose people had long ago 
     joined his camp.
       He pointed out, and we had to agree, that we had seen no 
     signs of recent fighting in Baidoa and that its streets and 
     shops were full of people peacefully going about their 
     business.
       He reminded us that he had spent most of the previous day 
     and night in marathon meetings with local clan elders, 
     working to untangle the strands of their dispute (the very 
     one in which our relief workers were alleged to have 
     meddled).
       He also reminded us that we'd watched thousands cheer his 
     promises of political peace, regional autonomy, a free market 
     economy and multiparty elections at a rally staged to welcome 
     him at the Baidoa soccer field. Did they look to us like 
     ``captured people?'' he asked.
       (We granted him these points, although I still suspect what 
     we saw was more akin to Powell's doctrine of overwhelming 
     military superiority: Deploy enough firepower, and even your 
     bitterest enemies will turn out to cheer for you.)
       With the ``hostage'' crisis resolved, our group was finally 
     able to take the closer look we'd come for. In and around 
     Baidoa, much of what we saw looked like the same old Somalia 
     to me--battered buildings, broken-down trucks, burned-out 
     warehouses.
       But if you squinted just right, you could see some 
     encouraging signs too: City streets were crowded, tea shops 
     thriving, markets bustling. Goods seemed plentiful for those 
     who could pay, and people seemed relaxed and friendly to 
     outsiders.
       Later, on the highway down to the coast, we found buses and 
     trucks piled high with passengers coming from somewhere, 
     merchandise going elsewhere. But we also saw more signs of 
     serious fighting between two subclans whose dispute Aideed 
     claimed he was attempting to resolve, and sensed more 
     nervousness on the part of our escorts.
       But in the agricultural heartland at Afgoi and along the 
     Shebeli River, we passed sorghum fields carefully banked and 
     plated, sesame and cotton growing tall, citrus for sale in 
     heaps on the highway, barrels of ripe tomatoes on donkey 
     carts bananas ripening, camels copulating and cattle 
     fattening for shipment to Red Sea butcher shops.
       And in Mogadishu at last (where some areas were still ``off 
     limits''), we pushed through incredible traffic jams and ate 
     at crowed restaurants. Ships were loading bananas in the 
     port. The central market was 

[[Page S 16679]]
     teeming, protected by its own private police force. The Somali shilling 
     was trading at stable rates--with no protection at all. And a 
     half-dozen crude newspapers were circulating freely.
       Most hopeful of all, we saw practically no guns on the 
     street and heard almost none at night. Disarmament, the 
     elusive goal of American and U.N. peacekeepers, finally 
     seemed to be occurring in their absence, perhaps 
     spontaneously.
       To be sure, the only schools operating were Koranic 
     schools. The only regularly scheduled air service carried 
     bales of khat, the Somalis' narcotic of choice. The only 
     telephones were satellite links. The only electricity came 
     from noisy private generators, though it was often shared 
     among neighbors. The only water came from private wells, and 
     there wasn't much of it.
       Hospitals were dismal and might as well have been closed. 
     Drugs cost a fortune. Rubble and wreckage still choked the 
     streets. Some buildings had been cleaned up windows replaced 
     and shell holes patched, but we saw little major renovation. 
     And the big problem on everyone's mind was how to create jobs 
     for the youngsters who'd gone to war instead of to school. In 
     a word, there was more poverty than progress in Aideed's 
     ``new'' Somalia--but at least no one seemed to be starving.
       Was this just a ``show'' for foreign guests, as several 
     Aideed critics whispered to us? Or were Somalis themselves 
     finally putting their nation and their political system back 
     together again, absent our help?
       As Powell observed of the people here: ``They had been 
     solving their political problems for a thousand years before 
     Jeffersonian democracy came upon the scene.''
       Somalia Lesson No. 3: Even overwhelming force can't solve 
     another people's political problems. They must do that for 
     themselves.
       When we lunched with Aideed one afternoon before leaving 
     Baidoa, I read him some excerpts from The Post's interview 
     with his old adversary. He was fascinated. It was no surprise 
     that he agreed with Powell's central point: We should have 
     stopped while we were ahead.
       But what bothered Aideed wasn't so much our arrogance as 
     our ignorance. ``I think if Americans had tried to understand 
     our system, our traditions, our history, our way of life 
     before sending troops and experts into Somalia to change 
     everything,'' he reflected, ``we would still be close 
     friends.''
       Perhaps. But it was fortunate for Somalia that Americans 
     hurried to lend a helping hand, even as we were slow to 
     understand how a nation can collapse in turmoil and misery. 
     Had we delayed our intervention until we ``understood'' the 
     conflict's root causes, many thousands more would have died 
     and clan warfare might yet be raging.
       Gen. Powell would probably agree.

                          ____________________