Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 6, 1993 TAG: 9310060145
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
U.S. military analysts said the problem is not that the guerrillas have acquired more sophisticated weapons or that their leader, fugitive warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, has expanded his urban army significantly. He has not.
What has changed, experts said, is that the militiamen are far better organized than they were when the United Nations took over the Somalia operation in May and far more ready to use such weapons as command-detonated mines that make it more difficult for U.S. forces to attack.
More significant, they also have learned - to the Americans' horror - how to shoot down U.S. helicopters, an easy enough job for any guerrilla group once it understands hovering choppers' vulnerability.
As a result, defense analysts said the military situation in south Mogadishu has shifted from a security problem that was manageable with routine patrols to an urban guerrilla war that may be resolvable only by a costly - and highly risky - house-to-house sweep by U.S. Rangers.
"If they're looking for some sort of military solution, it's going to take a hell of a massive force and the risk of a lot of collateral damage," said Bernard Trainor, a retired Marine Corps general now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
"If you look at it, we have Americans who don't know the language, are facing a foreign culture and who have very little solid [information], in an urban setting that is growing increasingly hostile," Trainor said. "The recipe for disaster is written all over this one."
Raoul Alcala, a former key Pentagon strategist, agreed, adding that the only real way out of the situation in Somalia now is to press for a political solution that would let Aidid participate in Somalia's political rebuilding.
"We've been using relatively high-tech, but very risky tactics," Alcala said, "air assault operations in a built-up area in which the enemy can hide easily and intelligence isn't all that good. We are playing to the strengths of the Aidid forces."
Moreover, experts said, the extra troops and mechanized equipment President Clinton has ordered sent to Somalia - about 400 soldiers, with tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles - may work temporarily, but for the longer haul U.S. forces still face some serious disadvantages.
Don Snider, a strategist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, conceded the extra tanks and fighting vehicles may provide better protection the first time they are used. But he predicted Aidid soon will bring out his anti-tank weapons to counter them.
"It's not a long-term solution," he said of the president's new move.
by CNB