Barrel of a Gun

by Al Venter

  The latrines at Baledogle, plastic ‘porta-potty’ boxes, faced each other with a modest hessian screen separating the sexes. It was the job of one of the female soldiers each morning to empty night soil into a great pit on the edge of the camp, douse it with kerosene and put a match to it; an unenviable task in that heat, but somebody had to do it.

  There was one difference in rank. At Baledogle the warrant officers – almost all of them chopper pilots – managed to set up a rudimentary open-air mess for themselves a short distance from the rest. In that remote wilderness it was an extravagance to which only a select few were invited. Since I was the first journalist to stay over in the camp, I was inducted by a ritual that also included something a little more potent with our coffee afterwards.

  The outdoor senior NCO mess – it was actually more like a mobile canteen – was operated by CW4 Dave Coates, an old Vietnam hand who, in Somalia, flew AH-1 Cobra helicopters. He was a veteran soldier typical of any army and junior officers tended to steer clear of him because he wasn’t afraid to say what was in his head. As head honcho, Dave dominated his little coterie with scant regard for rank. As he blandly stated while pouring us another ‘wee dram’ long after the others had got their heads down, he was due for his ticket anyway.

  The senior NCO mess had the only working fridge outside the sick bay and it was kept locked. That might be why there were always beer cans in the unit’s garbage bags each morning.

  Alcohol was forbidden among American forces while serving in Somalia, ostensibly because it was a Muslim country. That was nonsense of course, since the French, Australians and Italians all got a drinks issue. No Mediterranean native would start a meal without his half-litre of red, but for the Americans, one couldn’t help but get the impression that booze seemed to be a taboo left over from prohibition.

  It was the same with tobacco. The no-smoking rule at Baledogle, while not promulgated, was effectively enforced among these adult men and women serving their country thousands of miles from home. No drink, no smokes, and (for most) no sex. Small wonder then that some of the troops needed counselling halfway through their deployment.

  Naturally there were those who smoked. There were even cigarettes and Skoal chewing tobacco for sale at the base PX, but it was clear that those who partook were ‘observed’ by those who didn’t. Like outcast lepers, they’d wander about the camp looking furtively over their shoulders whenever they pulled out a pack. Since I smoked occasionally, I joined them, if only to offer moral support.

  For all that, just about everyone at Baledogle – and Mogadishu – was on first-name terms, officers included. A walk through the operations centre, where I spent quite a few days while still at headquarters, was as casual as a country club in Miami.

  Martin Culp II, Captain, United States Army, was Marty to everybody. Yet he was a senior air force officer with a good deal of responsibility for what was going on in the country at the time. A helicopter pilot himself, his job at HQ was to lead a group of officers who planned daily strikes against hostile groups in the interior. It entailed flying armed helicopters against both Aideed’s men and those Somalis who opposed him, like the Qat-chewing Colonel Morgan and the irascible Ali Mahdi Mohammed.

  If there was a line of demarcation between officers and the men and women under their command, I didn’t detect it, except routine salutes when moving about base. Culp would ask, rather than command, somebody to do something. More accustomed to British military tradition, the level of familiarity astonished me.

  There was a limit, however, and to a large extent it applied to the sexes. Any officer who used rank to entice a female soldier into his bunk did so at risk. ‘Career terminators’ was the phrase most often used, but judging by the number of women soldiers who were sent home pregnant, discipline couldn’t have been that well enforced. As they say, love laughs at locksmiths and military regulations.

  Part of the problem lay in the isolation of the base. It was a rough and tumble reality that Somalia must have been one of the few countries in which UN forces were never able to have ‘R & R’ within its borders. Even in Angola, had these soldiers been serving there, they would have been able to get away to some of the most beautiful beaches in Africa, all within a day’s drive south of Luanda.

  In Somalia, most of those who wished to escape the strain of living within an arm’s reach of some of the worst violence anywhere, had only one option and that was Kenya. Troops could sometimes get onto one of the C-130 transports that ferried supplies between Mogadishu and Mombasa. There were also flights to Nairobi.

  One of the giant USAF transports bringing in supplies to Mogadishu Airport. These aircraft didn’t linger: they came in, unloaded, took on passengers and the wounded and took off again. Turnabout would be measured in minutes rather than in hours. It was the same later in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Author’s collection)

  I met Colonel Mike Dallas, commanding officer of the 2nd Brigade HQS of the 10th Mountain Division on my first morning at the base. Small, wiry and fit, he had a pair of eyes that missed nothing. ‘Intimidating’ was how Dave Coates described him.

  Mike Dallas was the ultimate soldiers’ soldier and it showed. He tolerated no laxity, not when you’re that far from home. If an officer couldn’t do what was expected of him, he was out on the next flight.

  Colonel Dallas was one of the first of the American field commanders to arrive in Somalia and had been instrumental in putting together this expeditionary force while the unit was still at Fort Drum, home base in upstate New York. After I left, he returned to the Horn for a second tour, and again, was one of the last to leave.

  We exchanged letters afterwards, when he’d been transferred to the Pentagon. A few years later I spotted him in a CNN newscast leading a unit on its way to Haiti. His eagle will have been replaced by a star by now, or who knows, perhaps even two. A healthy cut above the average senior military officer that we writers are likely to meet in present-day US military postings, Mike Dallas perfectly fits the stereotype of an American commander in foreign parts.

  It was interesting that journalists who covered the Gulf War were expecting cigar-waving, loud-mouthed, leather jacketed smart-asses in uniform when they first set foot in that military theatre, especially among aviators. Then, when there was a lull in the fighting, the generals decided that it might possibly be in everybody’s interest to introduce some of the young combatants to the scribblers. Most journalists who had never had any kind of contact with military people before – except in the movies – were astonished.

  Instead of a bunch of gung-ho war heroes, they discovered a body of quiet, efficient and, more often than not, self-effacing airmen. The majority had just returned from sorties over Iraq and had seen a lot of action. Quite a few had been seriously shot at, yet there were very few in their ranks who took themselves too seriously. Rather, most declared, it was a job that needed to be done. More to the point, commented several, what was happening just then in Iraq was the culmination of all their training and frankly, they enjoyed doing it. Not a word was said about the extraordinary measure of dedication that made the whole thing work.

  They still chewed their gum, liked root beer with a float, enjoyed Sunday football, spoke to their families back home almost every day and some would even admit to being extremely nervous whenever the situation over the battlefield became awkward. When asked about this operation or that, or what they thought might have transpired behind enemy lines, there emerged a very balanced and well-educated crowd of young men and women who were not only professional in their approach to what they did, but actually enjoyed the challenge.

  Moreover, there wasn’t one among them who did not have a thorough grasp of the situation, not only on the battlefield, but also in the world around them.

  What also came to light was that the majority were university graduates, quite often a good deal better educated (and better-informed) than the journos who were throwing cynical questions about. Some of the hacks in our pack were so churlish t
hat it made some of the older professionals cringe.

  There were several developments that surprised us all while working with American forces in Somalia. One was the decision by the US Congress to pull out most of their troops halfway through the campaign.

  From an initial deployment of 28,000 soldiers in the Horn of Africa, the American in-country command was finally left with just 6,000, a large proportion of whom were not combatants. Also, they were very much on their own because, with some notable exceptions, the support they got from the majority of UN contingents was lukewarm. One observer called it a strategic coitus interruptus.

  Perhaps it was inevitable that Somalia should revert to anarchy even before the last American chopper had pulled out.

  What is not generally accepted about the American effort in Somalia is that while Washington had men on the ground in this vast north-east African state, it was they and not the rest of the multinational force who ran the show. The Americans took a while to get their act together, but after that everything became proactive. For a start, US forces played a vital role in separating the factions and if any of the warlords stepped out of line, he took a beating.

  UH-60 Blackhawk assault helicopters regularly hit rebel positions in Afghoi, Jilib, Belet Uen and Marka. The recalcitrants were dealing with hard men armed with some serious weapons. History, one of the unit commanders told me, had long since proved that the only response to such people was strong and sustained action.

  The bloody battle that eventually ended Washington’s role at the vanguard in Somalia was the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident that resulted in the loss of 18 American soldiers – several of them Special Forces as well as some air crew – all of whom were involved in trying to capture one of Somalia’s most notorious warlords.

  By some accounts, the Americans were lured into an ambush that appears to have been planned a long while ahead, which also gives the lie to reports that Somali rebel leaders were incapable of planning. Suddenly, from nowhere, up popped hundreds of Soviet-supplied RPG-7s. While they weren’t used to best effect, it was numbers that counted in the end: thousands of irregular Somali fighters ranged in full tilt against a squad of young Americans who did what was necessary when the chips were down.

  The weapons used by the Somalis against the American troops – in particular, the RPG-7s – had been smuggled into Somalia by forces hostile to the United States in the months prior to that fateful day. We have to accept that it required considerable effort because much of this activity took place under the noses of the occupying force.

  Within days of that event – which involved some American soldiers being dragged naked through the streets of Mogadishu – the Pentagon had made its decision: it was time for the troops to come home. Once the American force had been reduced, there was no possibility that the UN could control developments as effectively as before. As a consequence, the international community was faced with another UN fiasco.

  For those of us involved on the periphery of conflict in Somalia, and who experienced combat in other parts, regarded the country as arguably more dangerous than the majority of the minor wars of the 1990s. The uncompromising and brutal nature of the Somali way of life ensured as much.

  At a conservative count, conflict within this East African society has so far cost about half a million lives. There are some aid organizations who maintain that you could probably double that tally. In truth, nobody can be certain of the real figure because there wasn’t anybody keeping tabs.

  Even along the beaches to the north of Mogadishu there were the remains of crashed aircraft that had been forced down. Some of these planes had been on the daily Qat run. (Author’s collection)

  The bottom line has always been the excesses of people like Aideed. Kill or be killed were the watchwords of these factional heads that neither recognized nor were circumscribed by any convention. Geneva might have been on another planet.

  In a peculiar way, the Somalis seem always to have been adept in dispensing violence. Since the end of World War II, they have fought with each one of their neighbors. Indeed, they continue to do so and have since expanded their revolutionary interests abroad. It tells you a lot that several Somali nationals – all of them Muslim fundamentalists – were arrested in Europe following acts of terror. One Somali youth was taken into custody in 2007 under British anti-terrorism laws after police found in his apartment containers of a chemical used in the July 2005 London bus and Underground blasts that left scores dead.

  In Somalia itself, there was never a ‘front line’. Most of the time, battles just ‘happened’, sometimes at a cross-road, or because of a woman or perhaps a dispute over Qat. But for the presence of a UN force during the initial stages, losses would have been far greater, though as soon as the last of the Blue Helmets had departed, the bloodletting escalated once more.

  If the drama that we encountered was sobering, the succession of conflicts that followed the departure of the Americans and their Allies defied description. No fewer Somalis died with their throats cut while they slept or were stabbed in the back in the marketplace than in outright battles, which often took place outside a village, in any one of the dozens of towns, or on the roads linking them.

  Others were killed, sometimes in their hundreds, in a single firefight on the imaginary ‘Green Line’ that ran through Mogadishu and which was originally supposed to separate the combatants. With time, the war seemed to borrow some of its jargon from the Beirut of the 1980s.

  Earlier, while the warlords maintained a strangle-hold on food distribution centres – as well as access to foreign aid compounds – they milked the situation until it haemorrhaged. Not that it mattered much in the end because the monster that was created by all these shenanigans ended up feasting on itself.

  Within a short time after the Americans left to fight in Iraq, there was still more violence and more bloodletting. In fact, in the past decade and a half, it has got much worse…

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Somali Aftermath

  The Battle of Mogadishu (also known as the ‘Battle of the Black Sea’) or, for the Somali people, Ma-alinti Rangers (‘The Day of the Rangers’) was a clash that was part of Operation Gothic Serpent. It was fought early in October 1993, in Mogadishu. Involved were forces of the United States supported by UNOSOM II against Somali militia fighters loyal to the warlord Mohammed Farrah Aideed.

  FOR ALL THAT WAS HAPPENING just then in Mogadishu, as Third World, or more pertinently, African conflicts go, there were a number of significant firsts for this so-called Somali peacekeeping force. In fact, apart from the Americans and, to a lesser extent, some of the European countries, it was a presence-under-duress, much like Darfur and the Congo today for those involved in still more horrific debacles.

  Women played a significant role throughout the Somali campaign. Often under threat in an Islamic community that sometimes regards females as inferior chattels, they served in many capacities. They did duty as helicopter pilots – both in gunships as well as at the controls of medevac aircraft – and as members of British air and ground crews, Australian military police and convoy escorts.

  Additionally, there were female Scandinavian and Canadian flight engineers, medical personnel, health specialists, drivers, general duty soldiers, guards, and the rest, and all these women played sterling roles in keeping the wheels of a fairly extended military operation oiled. In American military uniforms still more women performed all these duties and more. In fact, while there were quite a few sceptics to start with, even among some of the developed countries, the women soon proved to be every bit as competent as the men with whom they were deployed.

  Somalia was also the first conflict in which both aid personnel and the media took the first tentative steps either to arm themselves demonstrably or, at very least in order to stay alive, acquire weapons for guards who were hired for their protection. While there were critics who were opposed to these actions and very vocally condemned them, they simply weren’t where it was all ha
ppening. For a start, from their comfortable offices in Europe, North America and elsewhere, they couldn’t even begin to appreciate the serious threats that some of these people faced.

  By the time Operation Restore Hope was in full swing, there were hundreds of helicopters operational in Somalia, the majority American. Most were stationed at the main US Army base at Baledogle, about 100 miles north of Mogadishu: the facility also included a large US Marine chopper contingent. (Author’s collection)

  My old friend and colleague Mohammed Amin managed the Reuters Television and News Service in Somalia from Nairobi and was candid enough to admit that he had done the unthinkable and acquired four AK-47s at $100 each for the protection of his crews. His journalists weren’t armed, he told me, only their guards. Not that these weapons didn’t prevent three members of a Visnews team, including Dan Eldon, from being hacked to death by Somali militiamen in mid 1993. Three months later, five CNN drivers were slaughtered in broad daylight by a militia band; they had been armed.

  Other journalists, though reluctant to be drawn on the matter, were known to have been carrying weapons, but they would skirt the issue when questioned. Not to carry a weapon for self-defence in the streets of Mogadishu, or Kismaiyu in the early days of the UN presence, could lead to serious consequences, such as getting yourself murdered, one of them explained.

  While I was in Mogadishu, a French journalist who approached the US Military Headquarters compound next to the American Embassy was accosted by a Somali with a pistol. Without warning, the gunman shot the Frenchman in the arm, an event that took place within sight and sound of a US Marine guard post.

  The journalist fell to the ground and seconds later the Marine on duty killed the Somali with a burst of automatic fire.