Vietnam, Beirut Haunting U.S. Somalia Policy

The American experience in Vietnam and Lebanon is casting a shadow over U.S. policy in Somalia, raising fears that the United States could get bogged down in an occupation that ends in disgrace and disaster, says Robert B. Oakley, President Bush’s special envoy to this embattled land.

Speaking in an interview in his makeshift office in the villa of what had been the Conoco Inc. oil company compound here, Oakley said the Americans are determined to end their Somali intervention quickly “to avoid becoming a party to a conflict,” as happened in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and in Beirut in the 1980s.

The proper American role in Somalia--where a civil war led to a famine that has killed at least 300,000 Somalis in the last three years--is to establish sufficient security to allow full-scale relief operations to begin, then to turn the situation over to U.N. peacekeeping forces, Oakley said.

The goal is to remove all American combat troops within three months.

Oakley conceded that the American strategy conflicts with the plans and desires of U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who wants the Americans to stay in Somalia for an indefinite period, in part to disarm a nation in which almost half the male population carries a gun. Boutros-Ghali has also asked that the Americans create a new, stable political climate here.

“Here’s the problem with Boutros-Ghali,” Oakley said. “You see, the secretary general has rejected our offers for the peacekeeping phase until he is satisfied. . . . His position is that he won’t let us get out.”

But Oakley recalled an order he received while serving as a diplomat in Saigon during the height of the Vietnam War. President Lyndon B. Johnson, he said, “wanted us to create a new democratic system. So we hired a political science professor and wrote a constitution (on the U.S. model), helped create political parties and choose two presidential candidates.”

The plan failed, Oakley said, because it is impossible to impose one nation’s system on another. Instead, American strategists in Somalia, he said, “are trying to avoid the spectacle of Saigon.”

Speaking of the U.S. intervention in the Lebanese civil war, during which 241 American servicemen were killed in a suicide attack on a military barracks in Beirut, Oakley said it was the result of “allowing ourselves to become perceived as taking one side against the other. . . . We went to Lebanon without understanding what we were doing.”

That will not happen in Somalia, he insisted. Instead, he said, “we are all aware of the significance of Lebanon and Vietnam and are constantly thinking of the political ramifications of what we are doing.”

That is why, for example, the American forces here have not aggressively sought to disarm ordinary Somalis or even the major clans who have fought this nation’s bitter, bloody civil war. To do so, except when American troops are directly threatened, could be interpreted as taking sides, Oakley asserted.

“We are going to avoid guarding every facility in town,” he said. “We’re not going to control the streets or a block or part of a city or the whole city or the country. The great danger” for the Americans, he said, is not posed by armed Somalis but “in inadvertently taking over the country.”

Oakley noted that Boutros-Ghali is not alone in seeking to draw the Americans deeper into Somali affairs. He said the Somalis themselves are trying to manipulate him into taking a greater role in directing peace talks between the two main clan leaders, Mohammed Farah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohamed. “The Somalis would like nothing better than to entangle us like Gulliver was by the Lilliputians,” he said. “They understandably would like to get as much help as they can from us.”

Avoiding any lasting entanglement would also mean that the United States would not be providing major financial aid for the rebuilding of the country, most of which is a shambles.

“I don’t think we can or should give large financial aid,” the envoy said, adding that it is not a real solution in any case. The only lasting solution, he said, “has to be between the Somalis themselves. No other approach will work.”

Foreign forces, including those of the United States, can provide an atmosphere in which not only can food and other relief aid be delivered safely but also in which political issues can be negotiated. So he has arranged meetings between Mahdi and Aidid, once allies in a revolt against former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre but deadly enemies since 1989.

The rival warlords previously would not or could not meet because neither wanted to appear to be giving ground by asking for talks, Oakley said, adding: “The question of face becomes terribly important here. So they both welcomed us. . . . They could agree to meet because we had asked for it. No face was lost.”

He described the meeting two weeks ago as being “tremendously emotional. There were lots of tears and real embraces. There was a tremendous sense of relief that it’s over. We gave them an opportunity to do what they really always wanted to do.”

He said both leaders are under intense pressure, even from their own followers, to settle their disputes because their warring, it is clear, has helped to destroy Somalia.

Despite his disclaimers about Americans interfering and directing events, Oakley indicated that he did apply some pressure to the warlords. “I said, ‘I’m going to push both of you to come together, but I’m not going to be in the middle.’ (But) I also said that you have been given your last opportunity. Take it, or the world will turn its back on you.”

He also made certain that the two leaders understood that the United States will not tolerate any fighting that threatens American troops, he said, adding: “We made it clear that, if any of our units are attacked by the large clans, we won’t go after the tail, we will go for the head and smash it.”

This talk brought the men together, and it may lead to a political settlement of the Somali feuds.

Oakley agreed with the suggestion that if a few months pass without resumed fighting, the Somali people then will not tolerate a resumption of any combat. “But,” he cautioned, “a settlement is not going to come overnight.”