Article by Pietro Petrucci: “Li’l Yanks” – Published in L’Espresso (Italian news magazine) during the UNOSOM War
Clinton wants the United Nations to place the country [Somalia] under trusteeship so it can directly administer it with 2,800 U.S. personnel. He has already dispatched a team of lawyers to rewrite the constitution.
“Last December the Bush Administration forced the United Nations to intervene in Somalia and launched Operation Restore Hope. Now, on the wave of a small war against General Aidid, the Clinton Administration wants to push the United Nations into placing Somalia under trusteeship. The mandate will be formally executed by the United Nations, but in fact it will be the Americans, both military and civilian, who will direct the reconstruction of the Somali institutions from the foundation up.”
This is what an anonymous U.N. official, who has decided to reveal to the world the secret plans of the White House in the Horn of Africa but who does not intend to lose his job, says.
According to the plan, Clinton’s “Somali Project” consists of returning Somalia to the situation that existed in 1950, when the United Nations recognized the right to independence of the former Italian colony but also that the Somali people were unprepared to exercise such a right.
At that time it decided to give Italy a 10-year trusteeship “to prepare the country for independence” by giving it a constitution, parliament, army, and police force. The experiment was called AFIS (Italian Trusteeship in Somalia), and it was not a great success. According to the Americans, it must be tried again after 43 years.
The plan, the U.S. source says, has been carefully studied and will employ 2,800 civilians in Somalia. Many events which have occurred lately such as the arrival in Mogadishu of 2,200 Marines and a new U.S. naval contingent could not be explained as other than a large project about to be implemented. The military aside, the White House sent a team of officials who are preparing to take over all the key posts in UNOSOM II, the U.N.’s contingent in Somalia. These include the “political counselor” to U.S. Admiral Jonathan Howe, Boutros Ghali’s special envoy in Mogadishu, and the arrival a few weeks ago of career diplomat April Glaspie, last U.S. ambassador in Baghdad before the Gulf war.
In Mogadishu they say that the enterprising Mrs. Glaspie is already at work: she is making the rounds of the Somali regions to consult the traditional chiefs of the principal tribal clans on the future institutions to be set up in the country. The United Nations has given very important assignments–such as supervision of disarmament and judicial administration to two other U.S. officials. As for the team of U.S. lawyers who arrived in Mogadishu and to whom the press attributes the duty of studying the best way to try General Aidid, it in fact consists of a group of experts assigned to draw up a plan for reconstructing the Somali state.
Some confirmations come from Mogadishu sources, where tensions are high and military operations still under way. These sources are also strictly anonymous:
“It is absolutely evident that the Americans intend to maintain a monopoly over UNOSOM II. They have done everything necessary not to share the power of decision making with anyone, beginning with the Italians, who risk to finding themselves in an ever more uncomfortable position: they are on the front line but only to execute the strategies of others.”
On the idea of a trusteeship, another source said:
“It is not wrong in and of itself, but where does the United Nations find 3,000 officials capable of understanding this country and administering it with competence and equity?”
The Farnesina (Foreign Ministry) does not divulge much either. But the unexpected recall to Rome of the Italian ambassador to Mogadishu for consultations smacks of the necessity for the Ciampi government to decipher the intentions of the United States and decide whether it is advisable for Italy to request an equal role, or assume a lower profile. A military source says:
“It is useless to have illusions. If the U.N. command asks the Italians to actively participate in round-ups, the Somalis will begin shooting at us, too. The policy implemented a few days ago has a risk factor that no one can pretend to know a priori.”
If the U.S. decision making process embarrasses Italy, it sounds like a death knell for all the military-tribal power magnates dislocated in south-central Somalia beginning with Ali Mahdi Mohamed, the lord of north Mogadishu and Aidid’s major rival. Ali Mahdi, euphoric after the first air raids against south Mogadishu and under the impression of being able to take advantage of the misfortune of others, has become restless with the passing of time.
However, everyone knows what the man is like. One year before the Americans and the United Nations accused Aidid of crimes against humanity, a July 1992 “Africa Watch” report placed the two Mogadishu butchers, Aidid and Ali Mahdi, on the same level, accusing them:
“…of having deliberately forced on the Somalis atrocious and unnecessary suffering and having caused the death of innumerable innocent.”
More astute than his rival, businessman Ali Mahdi never criticized the sectioning off of south-central Somalia which began last December. On the contrary. The tribal leader of north Mogadishu entrenched himself in a sphere of shadow, trying to pass himself off as a peacemaker, both to generals and foreign diplomats, as well as to the Somali factions which had not been involved in the massacres which took place in the capital.
He only stuck his head out after Aidid’s flight, reclaiming the illegal title he had given himself and which no government in the world recognizes: “interim president.”
The Somali History Archive 