In an emotional visit to an orphanage in Somalia’s famine region, President Bush said Friday that U.S. troops would not get bogged down here but would continue to fulfill their mission of ensuring that food deliveries reach the needy.
Separately, a Marine spokesman in Mogadishu on Friday raised for the first time the specter of an active U.S. military engagement in Somalia, pledging that Marines would seek out and destroy weaponry being used in a fierce inter-clan clash on the edge of the capital city.
The violent and loud battle just outside the capital city comes as an embarrassment to the U.S. forces during Bush’s highly publicized visit, which began in Mogadishu.
During his 35-minute tour of a Baidoa orphanage Friday, Bush said the United States would not leave the “Somali people to suffer the fate that they had been suffering.”
“We will do our mission and then we will finish it. And there will be a follow-on mission of peacekeeping . . . we are peacekeepers now,” Bush said at the orphanage, which provides food, education and medical care to 800 destitute and handicapped children.
But only two hours before Bush spoke, Isaak Ali, a 4-year-old who staggered into the orphange alone a month ago, died of malnutrition. He was the third child to die at the orphanage this week and the 169th since the orphanage was opened last May.
“I cried for him because he had no mother and no father to cry for him and he was a real fighter,” said Zoe O’Neill, an Irish nurse who takes care of the most infirm children at the orphanage. “Things are much better now with the (American) Marines, and it’s great Bush is here. It keeps the world’s attention on Somalia, and Somalia needs a lot of help.”
Bush’s visit to Baidoa comes on the second day of a 2 1/2-day visit to Somalia and three weeks after U.S. troops and multinational forces intervened under a United Nations mandate to restore order and provide security for the delivery of relief supplies.
At least nine of Somalia’s 12 warlords have agreed to meet next week in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa for talks on finding a political solution.
Bush said Friday that some U.S. troops would begin withdrawing by Jan. 20, the day he leaves office. But National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said a small contingent of American Marines and logistical troops could remain indefinitely in Somalia or on ships offshore.
Scowcroft, who was traveling with Bush, said it is not the United States’ responsibility to find a long-term political solution to Somalia’s crisis-although U.S. troops are organizing town elders, religious leaders, prominent women, teachers and intellectuals into local councils to try to shift power away from the warlords and foster a civilian government.
“(Military commanders) tell me that things are pretty well pacified and ought to be pretty well maintained by a much quieter force,” Scowcroft said.
That didn’t appear to be the case in a suburb north of Mogadishu, where the fighting between rival clans that erupted after Bush’s arrival continued unabated Friday.
The clash, the worst since Marines deployed in the capital Dec. 9, seems to run in defiance of the U.S. forces’ declared intention of seizing all unauthorized heavy weaponry from the streets of Mogadishu.
But that may not last long.
“Once we have a definitive location on where those weapons are, we will remove them,” Col. Mike Hagee, a spokesman for the Operations Division of Operation Restore Hope, said Friday.
The sound of 85 mm mortars, 106 mm recoilless rifles and heavy caliber machine gun fire could clearly be heard throughout the city.
The fighting also underlines the complexity of the task facing the Marines. It involves two subclans, the Habr Gedir of General Mohammed Farah Aidid, and the Murusade.
Aidid’s forces once controlled the southern sector of Mogadishu, where the Americans are situated. Under an agreement with the Americans, Aidid had withdrawn all his heavy weaponry to camps on the edge of town.
The Murusade are loosely allied to the Interim President Ali Mahdi Mohammed, whose Abgal subclan dominates the northern part of the city. They had remained largely neutral during Ali Mahdi’s Abgal subclan quarrel with the Habr Gedir.
But they had their own quarrel with Aidid’s forces, who had seized Murusade territory on the edge of Mogadishu earlier in the year.
The current battle flared, diplomats and Somali analysts said, when the Murusade tried to storm one of the weapons camps to which Aidid had withdrawn his armory.
U.S. officials admit that loyalists of Somalia’s two main warlords-Ali Mahdi and Aidid-have hid many of their most powerful weapons. And there is great concern among Somalis and foreign aid workers that the warlords will continue their battle as soon as U.S. troops pull out and are succeeded by UN multinational forces.
Bush arrived at Baidoa’s airstrip by helicopter from the USS Tripoli about 9:30 a.m. dressed in tan-colored combat fatigues and hat. The president quickly reviewed 200 captured weapons, including recoilless rifles and several “technicals”-pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns.
Bush wished several groups of U.S. Marines bivouacked at the airstrip a happy new year before traveling the 2 kilometers to the orphanage in a convoy of light armored vehicles. Hundreds of beweildered Somalis-mostly impoverished farmers and shepherds-lined the road, which was heavily patrolled by U.S. troops.
Some of the Somalis said they had never heard of Bush, although other residents gathered in groups and banged drums, danced and sang in the streets to welcome “our friend” the president.
Bush’s large, well-decked-out entourage provided a surrrealistic contrast to this ramshackled desert town, where most residents live in stick and mud huts and get around by foot or donkey carts.
“Welcome Mr. President. Welcome,” sang the 800 orphans as Bush entered the orphanage courtyard, which was bedecked with bouquets of brilliant red flowers. “Marines, you guys saved us,” the children also sang repeatedly while clapping their hands in unison.
In a brief ceremony, Bush received a brightly colored wreath and a bow and arrows from several orphans. He shook hands and mugged for photographs with the kids before briefly visiting a room where two-dozen of the most malnourished children lay listlessly on the floor eating a high-protein porridge.
Bush also greeted a half-dozen foreign aid workers, who thanked the president for sending U.S. forces to Baidoa, which only last month was terrorized by gangs of rival gunmen.
“When I arrived in Baidoa in September, there were kids dying everywhere. The violence and destruction was unbelieavable,” said Josie Clevenger, a nurse from San Francisco, with International Medical Corps, a medical assistance group. “The kids are much better now. It gives you a sense of hope.”
Last September, when gunmen looted relief supplies at will, 6,048 people died of starvation in Baidoa, a town with about 60,000 permanent residents. In December 1,560 Somalis starved to death. Daily relief supplies are now flown in to Baidoa and arrive by convoy from Mogadishu.
As Bush left the orphanage and headed back to Baidoa airport for the helicopter flight to the USS Tripoli, a half-dozen shirtless Somalis were furiously digging a grave for Ali-the 4-year-old orphan-just outside the orphanage in a makeshift cemetery.
Two U.S. Marines on patrol paused briefly at the grave.
