Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 17, 1993 TAG: 9310170065
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: MOGADISHU, SOMALIA LENGTH: Long
But the peace overture was rejected by the senior U.N. representative in Somalia, retired U.S. Adm. Jonathan T. Howe, and senior U.N. and American military commanders in Somalia, according to John Drysdale, who resigned last month as Howe's political adviser.
A senior U.N. official said the U.N. command in Somalia opted out of the nascent peace negotiations - outlined in a Sept. 3 memo from Drysdale to Howe's deputy, Lansana Kouyate of Guinea - after Aidid's forces killed seven Nigerian peace keepers Sept. 5. The official also expressed doubt about whether Aidid's offer was sincere, noting that it was accompanied by a demand that the United Nations cease offensive actions, a step it was not then willing to take.
The largely untold story surrounding Aidid's offer and a series of secret negotiations stemming from it show how mutual suspicion and continuing military operations on both sides scuttled attempts by mediators to end the bloodletting.
In the back-channel discussions with Aidid, U.N. officials worked feverishly - and at times without their superiors' knowledge - to hammer out a peace agreement, even as helicopter-borne U.S. Army Rangers crisscrossed the skies in a fruitless search for the fugitive warlord.
Although the process made considerable headway, according to Drysdale and documents provided by him, the United Nations, Howe and his military commanders passed up what Drysdale described as several chances to make peace with Aidid and instead chose a more aggressive course.
Drysdale has called the United Nations' failure to take up Aidid on his peace offer "absolutely scandalous." A British diplomat and fluent Somali speaker who worked here in the 1960s as an adviser to the Somali government, Drysdale resigned as Howe's adviser Sept. 30 because, he said, he was distressed by Howe's emphasis on military operations against Aidid and his militia. Drysdale said he has begun to take his criticism public, and he agreed to let a Washington Post reporter read the previously undisclosed Sept. 3 memo.
"How many people have been killed since then? It's uncountable," said Drysdale, referring to the memo.
Only after the Oct. 3-4 battle with Aidid's militia forces - in which 18 U.S. Army Rangers were killed and 75 were wounded - did the Clinton administration embrace an approach similar to that outlined in Drysdale's memo, ordering U.S. forces to cease offensive operations against Aidid and dispatching special envoy Robert B. Oakley to meet with his representatives.
For months, Drysdale and other U.N. officials had advocated a softer approach. In a memo to Howe on June 7 - two days after the killing of 24 Pakistani peacekeepers and one day after the U.N. Security Council called for the arrest of the perpetrators of that attack - Drysdale warned explicitly against making the clan leader a target.
"If any direct attack on Aidid personally, such as his arrest, is contemplated, it would be an error of judgment to assume that his political opponents among the Hawiye clan would rally to the support of UNOSOM [the U.N. force in Somalia] against Aidid," the memo said. "Latent Somali xenophobia can rise to the surface very suddenly . . . Resulting widespread guerrilla war in Mogadishu would render the continued presence of UNOSOM in this city untenable."
Drysdale concluded by urging: "If UNOSOM defers any action which might be perceived as provocative, and carries out a judicial investigation of the deplorable [June 5 killings of Pakistani peacekeepers], together with embarking on a face-to-face dialogue with the political leaders concerned, the status quo ante could be returned."
On the same day he wrote the memo, Drysdale said, he visited Aidid, with whom he had a warm relationship, having once been Aidid's house guest. "I read out to him the terms of the Security Council meeting, and his reaction to it then was, `I don't trust an in-house UNOSOM investigation but I would be prepared to cooperate in an international tribunal' " to investigate the June 5 killings.
Howe, with U.S. backing, pursued a different course, offering a $25,000 reward for Aidid's arrest - a strategy he defended in an interview earlier Saturday. "This is a society that works for money," Howe said. "The people who shoot at us do it for money."
He said the decision to issue the arrest order "was a very long and considered thing," adding that he and senior U.N. military commanders anticipated that Aidid might go underground to launch a guerrilla campaign :wq! against U.N. troops. "We pretty carefully anticipated everything," Howe said.
Also controversial within the U.N. command here was a series of raids on Aidid strongholds, including a July 12 attack by U.S. Cobra helicopter gunships on a home where members of the Somali National Alliance, Aidid's faction, were meeting. Drysdale said the helicopter pilots deliberately targeted stairs, cutting off escape, and that most of the 73 dead were crushed by falling rubble.
Although U.S. and U.N. officials said the attack was aimed at destroying "command and control" elements of Aidid's military organization, Drysdale said he has learned from Somali contacts that the meeting was a political gathering with a potentially constructive agenda: the prospects for dialogue with U.N. officials.
by CNB