Somalia Mission for U.S. Armor: Hurry Up and Wait : Africa: A political decision to avoid provoking warlord Aidid idles the American firepower. Card-playing gunners want action.

Along the soggy perimeter of the U.S. Army’s new Victory Base on the outskirts of this capital Monday morning, a crack team of tank gunners sat beside their 71-ton war machines, boasting of enough firepower to obliterate Somalia’s best-armed clan militias and restore order within days.

They were playing cards under a leaky tent flap, shaking their heads.

“If we do have a purpose, give it to us,” said Cpl. Michael Jones, a gunner from Louisville, Ky., whose M-1A1 tank bears the handwritten message “Rescue 911.”

“They said we came here to protect our troops. Now I know how to do that. Send ‘em all home--now.”

Such, it seemed, was the sentiment throughout the front-line ranks of the U.S. Army’s 2nd Platoon Charlie Company, 64th Armored Regiment, First Battalion. It was becoming increasingly clear that the primary mission of the awesome military force assembled here, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, for the final stage of America’s intervention in war-ruined Somalia may be to do little or nothing.

After weeks of debate here and in Washington, senior U.S. and U.N. military officials in Mogadishu said that plans to deploy the heavy armor in a massive projection of U.S. military power on the streets of the capital have been temporarily shelved.

That was largely a political decision, the officials said, that came after Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid called the plans a “provocation” that would reignite his guerrilla war on the 7,400 U.S. troops now in Somalia.

Until their unilateral cease-fire six weeks ago that is still holding in the capital, Aidid’s militiamen killed two dozen American soldiers in five months of escalating combat, including 18 who died in a fierce Oct. 3 firefight.

That October incident caused the Clinton Administration to break off its unsuccessful manhunt for Aidid but also to send in heavy armor and post several warships just off the Somali coast to protect the troops still here.

The implications of that decision, like the entire U.S. military involvement in what began as a humanitarian mission, were steeped in irony.

To execute the primary mission of protecting all U.S. forces in Somalia until the last soldier heads homeward by President Clinton’s March 31 deadline, military and political experts said the most effective strategy now will probably be that employed by the tank crews of the 2nd Platoon Charlie Company at the perimeter of Victory Base.

In fact, Victory Base itself, which this week was teeming with engineering crews and private contractors hammering away at new concrete-floored tents, mess halls and command structures, symbolized the strange mission that appeared to lie ahead for a force that includes many hardened veterans of the Persian Gulf War.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to them,” Maj. Ed Donnelly, operations officer of Victory Base’s armored task force, conceded Monday. “They’re sent out to build this place up, and it’ll be finished just about the time they leave.”

It made no sense at all to Sgt. Robert Turner, a Charlie Company tank commander who plunged deep into Iraqi territory less than three years ago in the war to liberate Kuwait. He now finds himself on guard duty, bunkered into the Victory Base compound with 1,200 other American combat troops.

“At first, I thought this was a plan to feed the people. Now it seems it’s just to play spades and eat MREs (meals ready to eat),” he said. “It seems to have lost the focus.”

Army Spec. Scott Epler, another Gulf War veteran, interrupted.

“If they let us loose, it would be done in a week,” he said, looking up from the card game. “We were told when we first got here that we’d be out there shooting everything in sight. Now we’re just sitting here waiting for someone to shoot at us.”

Turner pointed at the tank beside them, a state-of-the-art and almost impregnable weapon, loaded with thousands of rounds of machine-gun ammunition and tank shells that could incinerate Somali combat vehicles in seconds and destroy entire city blocks.

“If this thing isn’t firing,” he said of his tank, “this thing is just a big taxi.”

The regiment’s commander, Lt. Col. Bob Clark, tried to put the best face on the mission, stressing that the mere presence of so powerful a force as his is a critical deterrent, instrumental in maintaining the relative peace in Mogadishu. And that, he said, is the mission of the new Joint Task Force in Somalia.

“If they (the Somali militiamen) don’t respect it, there’s something wrong with them,” he said.

Clark also stressed that the mission is providing valuable training via almost daily exercises in urban-terrain combat in a secured, abandoned neighborhood across the street from Victory Base. And even young gunners in Charlie Company confirmed the value--and the personal thrill--that accompanied their first live-fire exercises on a practice range south of the capital.

But Sgt. Maj. Michael Mapel, the operations point man of the Georgia-based regiment, confirmed that “these guys want to go out and do some mounted operations. They definitely want to get out. Even back home we never sit this long or move this short of a distance.”

But U.S. and U.N. military commanders in Mogadishu are planning a phased operation that would begin with a limited deployment of Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to open a key supply artery through the city called 21st of October Road.

The road, named to commemorate the date of the military coup that brought ousted Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre to power in 1969, is blocked by two checkpoints under the control of Aidid’s militia. The barricades are flimsy, and Maj. Gen. Carl F. Ernst, the U.S. commander of the Joint Task Force that includes the heavy armor, has been advocating the limited armored operation, which other military officers agree would open the road within minutes.

U.N. military officials, however, have insisted the political fallout would be potentially devastating, particularly if it resulted in a new round of anti-American warfare that would counteract the new armored force’s primary mission.

“We could easily open it up, but a lot of civilians would be killed in the process,” said one U.N. military official who asked not to be named.

“We don’t want this to be a Hamburger Hill, where you take the hill and then give it up,” added another. “Twenty-one October has become more of a political symbol than a military need. It would be nice to have that road open, but, if you can operate with it closed, maybe you don’t need it open.”

That logic has prevailed, the officials added.

“The plan is there, but it’s on the shelf now,” a senior U.S. military official said. “That could change, but I doubt it.”