Havana Radio Rebelde Network (in Spanish) — 1155 GMT

(“Our Opinion” commentary by Orlando Contreras)

A report datelined Mogadishu — Mogadishu being the occupied capital of Somalia — received in our office this morning says rival warlords Ali Mahdi Mohamed of the United Somali Congress, who is Somalia’s interim president, and General Mohamed Farah Aideed, chairman of the United Somali Congress’ executive committee, have publicly reconciled.

According to the AFP report, they embraced and each made a speech, while the barricades that divided the city into north and south along Mecca Avenue were being lifted.

A gathering of the masses witnessed the public reconciliation of the two groups — those from the north controlled by Ali Mahdi and those from the south under the command of Gen. Farah Aideed — in front of the Assembly building. Symbolically, and apparently also in fact, an end was put to a bloody war that broke out on 17 November 1991 with the drawing of the so-called Green Line separating the city.

On top of the drought, and Somalia’s acute poverty, this war — in which other, smaller groups also participated — brought about a real famine involving incalculable loss of human life in that underdeveloped country in the Horn of Africa.

On the basis of these facts, the UN Security Council authorized intervention by a force of close to 40,000 armed troops charged with ensuring that food would get to the population in danger of dying of hunger. In practice, some 80 percent of these “multinational” troops consist of U.S. soldiers under U.S. command.

The cost of this deployment is far greater than that of all the food aid. Aircraft carriers, tanks, and other armored vehicles, the most modern U.S. Air Force planes, as well as elite airborne and landing forces, are participating in this operation. This disproportion between the forces being used and the nationality of the majority of these troops, and Somalia’s extreme and generalized poverty including that of the isolated fighters, leads one to think that this is in fact more a question of an occupation of Somalia with political and strategic objectives than of a humanitarian mission.

In point of fact, the peace agreement reached between the principal rival forces today leaves the U.S. occupation without a reason for existing, since according to official statements it was effected in view of the internal situation that was making it impossible to get supplies to the populace.

The U.S. occupation forces are being deployed into the interior of Somalia, and there have been reports of a certain number of Somali killed in engagements that are not at all clearcut.

In fact, Somalia is in urgent need of medical, healthcare, and nutritional aid; and then economic and financial aid to rebuild the country under a central authority chosen by the Somalis themselves.

The images that have been shown the world by the television networks on the scene in Mogadishu are those of children, women, and the elderly in a state of extreme starvation, on the verge of dropping dead from lack of food. In such an extreme condition, food cannot be administered directly; rather, it must be administered intravenously, and in order to do that, qualified healthcare personnel are needed. It is therefore not with Marines and tanks that such a task can be carried out.

If they are really there in response to a humanitarian policy and not to a policy of strategic occupation, the U.S. forces of occupation in Somalia should substitute medical and health care personnel for the bulk of those combat forces, in a quick operation that will prevent the Somali population from continuing to die of hunger.

Anything else constitutes military intervention for political purposes.