Biyokulule Online

Zooming into the Past
Somali orphans welcome Bush with flowers and song
By Frances Kerry
January 01, 1993

U.S. President George Bush tours a displaced persons` camp 31 December, 1992 in Mogadishu during his two-day visit to Somalia. Children sang songs and greeted him with flowers at the camp, which is run by UNICEF.

BAIDOA, Somalia, Jan 1, Reuter - U.S. President George Bush made a New Year`s Day visit to a Somali orphanage where the sound of laughter has replaced the silence of death. He said he was proud of his troops` mission in Somalia.

“These people (troops) came in here and had a job to do, restoring hope, and restoring life, literally,” said Bush as he greeted smiling, clapping children brought back to life from the brink of starvation.

“It`s a beautiful, wonderful mission and I`m very proud of each and every one of them,” Bush added.

Bush, on the second day of a visit to U.S. troops making up the bulk of a multinational force sent in to protect relief food from marauding gunmen, was speaking in Baidoa, the town at the centre of the Somali famine.

Dressed in a camouflage shirt and cap, Bush was welcomed with singing and a garland of bougainvillaea flowers for his 30-minute tour of the orphanage, home to some 725 children who have lost their parents to war and famine.

“Welcome President Bush at Baidoa Orphanage centre and a Happy New Year,” said a hand-made banner at the entrance to the simple concrete compound where children sat in neat rows, dressed in clean, brightly coloured tee-shirts for a celebrity they had never heard of.

Baidoa, 250 km (150 miles) west of Mogadishu, became known as the City of Death at the height of the famine, which has killed more than 300,000 people in central and southern Somalia.

Bush, who flew into Baidoa by helicopter after seeing in the New Year aboard the amphibious assault vessel the Tripoli, visited a special intensive care room and saw how most of the children at the home looked a few months ago.

About a dozen recently arrived children sat on the floor, unable to eat without help, some with shrivelled legs and listless eyes. “It`s very emotional, I don`t know how to respond,” said Bush.

Aid workers said most of the children in the home were in this state or far worse a few months ago.

More than 300 people were dying every day in Baidoa in September, including more than 10 children a day in the orphanage.

Baidoa, a wretchedly poor town in the midst of a scrub plain, was ruled by gunmen who looted food aid for the starving until U.S. marines arrived in town on December 16, a week after they started pouring ashore in Mogadishu.

“I was sceptical about what the troops could do but it has worked. I am going to tell him `thank you`,” said James Orbinski, a Canadian doctor with the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Aid workers say the presence of the marines has driven the guns and “technicals” -- heavily armed pick-up trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles -- from the streets of Baidoa. The town is safe and the looting has stopped.

The death rate in Baidoa, a town swollen to 70,000 people by people fleeing hunger in the countryside, is still around 50 a day but it is falling.

“This is still a disaster, and it won`t go away in three weeks. But over the next three to six weeks, the death rate should be virtually down to that of a normal population,” said Orbinski.

Bush, who also toured the U.S. troops` base at Baidoa, praised relief staff who have worked through dangerous times.

“I told him, `Thank you for coming`, and he replied, `Thank you for what you`re doing here`,” said Zoe O`Neill, a nurse with the Irish aid agency GOAL, which runs the orphanage.

“I`m not sure any of the kids know who Bush is. Some of them know he`s an important American man,” added O`Neill, who on Friday morning was grieving for a four-year-old boy brought to the home a month ago.

Isaac Ali died just before Bush arrived.

Somalia Shocks Bush President visits Dying Children
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
January 01, 1993

U.S. President George Bush greets children at the Red Cross feeding center December 31, 1992 during his tour of the UNICEF hospital and health care center.

President Bush experienced some of the worst that Somalia had to offer yesterday, wending his way among dying children and sitting out the most serious outbreak of fighting in Mogadishu since U.S. troops arrived three weeks ago.

The president, in a New Year`s Eve visit to the East African nation, praised the 18,000 U.S. troops deployed throughout Somalia, saying they were performing their task of alleviating its misery in “A-1 style.”

Bush began his visit with a greeting to about 1,000 Marines and Air Force troops who turned out to see him on the grounds of the former U.S. Embassy, once the largest and most modern in sub-Saharan Africa.

The site, ransacked and ruined during Somalia`s civil war, now serves as the base for the Marines.

The president then visited a feeding center and toured a small hospital with sick and malnourished patients near the capital.

After seeing some of the needy and being briefed by aid workers as he walked through the center, Bush said, “It`s just too emotional for me to see this.”

“I thought I had the most respect possible before now, and now it`s even greater,” Bush said of the relief effort.

Bush spent the night aboard a Marine helicopter carrier, the USS Tripoli, two miles off the Somali coast. Meanwhile, clan fighters traded mortar fire in the western suburbs of Mogadishu, lighting up the New Year`s Eve sky in the heaviest shelling in the city since U.S. Marines landed on Dec. 9.

Col. Fred Peck of the Marines said the shelling was apparently over an arms cache, but said he could not identify the groups involved in the fighting, three miles northeast of the U.S. Embassy compound.

“It`s not the first firefight but it`s definitely the largest one we`ve seen since we`ve been here,” he said.

Last night`s firefight illustrated once again the difficulty that the United States and the United Nations face in trying to patch together the shattered nation.

In what seemed an appropriate gesture on a visit intended to emphasize the U.S. relief mission, the first Somali Bush met was a doctor, Hawa Abdi Diblawe, who heads the Lafoole hospital and feeding center. Lafoole means “place of bones” in Somali.

Diblawe, a white medical coat over her long traditional Somali dress, guided Bush around the outdoor center, where rice, beans and oil are cooked in large vats on fires and served twice a day to the destitute. Around the feeding station stand makeshift twig and plastic igloos built by the 4,000 people in the camp for protection against the heat and rain.

A few months ago, six people were dying daily from starvation, Diblawe said. Now the death toll is down to one or two a week.

Bush entered a school, made of corrugated tin, to be greeted by dozens of tiny children sitting quietly on the sand floor. Outside a sign read “We need peace and education.” Another sign said, “We Somalis never forget George Bush.”

There were no desks or chairs, only several tattered school books.

The president, wearing fatigues and looking flushed from the heat, also toured the center`s hospital, walking along a hallway in which dozens of Somalis lay on the floor too weak or ill to move. In one room were malnourished children, two of whom were not expected to live, Bush was told.

Both the feeding center and the hospital are financed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the main supplier of relief food in Somalia since the country collapsed. The feeding center, 13 miles west of Mogadishu, was chosen for Bush to visit because it showed an effort by Somalis to help themselves, officials said.

Security for Bush`s 44-hour visit was a daunting operation. Marines seized weapons caches, took over one building from which snipers could target the former U.S. embassy and pocked its 55-acre compound with gun pits and machine gun posts. Bush was transported from site to site in a helicopter guarded by helicopter gunships.

Sharpshooters were deployed on rooftops and Bush was tightly cocooned among Marines and Secret Service agents when he moved around on the ground. For security reasons, Bush is spending both nights of his visit aboard the USS Tripoli.

“This mission you all are involved in is historic,” Bush told hundreds of cheering sailors and Marines aboard the Tripoli last night. “It`s right and it`s God`s work and you`re doing it well.”

In a peace message to the Somali people, broadcast in a Somali translation by radio, Bush said U.S. and other forces engaged in Operation Restore Hope had come as friends on a U.N. mission and not as invaders.

The United States could not and would not impose political solutions on Somalia, Bush said. “You must take charge of your own fate and come together to rebuild your country.”

Two years of clan warfare and gun rule since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre have shattered Somalia into fiefdoms. About 350,000 Somalis have died because of fighting and famine, and 2 million more are at risk.

Operation Restore Hope is aimed at protecting relief operations in Somalia. Yesterday the operation`s commander, Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston, reportedly told Bush that the mission was ahead of schedule.

U.S. commanders are saying that the United States may not have to deploy all the 28,000 troops they had originally planned for the operation.

In addition to the 18,000 U.S. troops in and around Somalia, 7,000 troops from other countries were taking part in the operation.

Marine Col. Mike Hagee told reporters that the need for more U.S. troops could be scaled back due to the “tremendous response” from those other nations.

“Gen. Johnston has recommended ... that somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 troops that were scheduled to come, now not come,” Hagee said.

U.S. commanders say some of the U.S. troops in the region can start going home by Jan. 20, when President-elect Bill Clinton takes over from Bush. The commanders intend to hand over control of the relief operation to U.N. peacekeepers once there is a “secure environment” in Somalia.

U.S. troops stayed busy on New Year`s Eve, landing in the port town of Merca, quelling a food riot near Beli Dogle, setting up permanent shop in northern Mogadishu, and expanding their patrols in the capital and elsewhere.

Today the president travels to Beli Dogle and Baidoa, two distribution points that have been secured by U.S.-led forces. Tomorrow Bush leaves Somalia for Moscow, where he and Russian President Boris Yeltsin will sign a historic nuclear arms reduction treaty.

In Somalia, Bush sees hope, despair
Compiled from Wire Reports
St. Petersburg Times
January 02, 1993

Baidoa residents cheer as a vehicle from the 10th Navy Expedition unit arrives early December 16, 1992. U.S in Somalia. and French troops from the Second Foreign Legion Airborne Regiment drove into the famine-stricken town of Baidoa shortly after dawn. The convoy met no resistance from warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed`s gunmen who have terrorized the area for months.

Two hours before President Bush arrived at the orphanage Friday morning, Isaak died. He was little more than 4 years old. Four months ago, Isaak had staggered naked into the orphanage courtyard, a starving, sickly child without parents or siblings and a history known only to himself.

Friday, Isaak`s body lay under a shroud in the orphanage medical center, just a few feet from hundreds of mostly healthy-looking children who welcomed Bush to the heart of Somalia`s famine zone with songs, a gift of ceremonial weapons and a wreath of brightly colored flowers.

The sharp contrast between Isaak`s lonely death and the festive splash of color that greeted the president seemed to capture both faces of his visit here.

On the one hand, Bush`s New Year`s Day tour of Baidoa was a personal triumph, a chance to show the world that U.S. forces under his command had purged Baidoa of the looters and clan warriors who only a few weeks ago were robbing food convoys at will and gunning each other down here at the rate of up to 50 casualties per day. Children are getting their daily mix of cornmeal, soybeans and sugar.

But Bush`s visit also showed how far Baidoa has yet to go. Bush arrived Friday in a ruined city where two to three children at the central orphanage still die each week of disease or starvation, security remains a relative term, and many people would like the Marines to stay forever.

Wary after a brief bout of sniper fire at a U.S. checkpoint Thursday night, Marines staged a formidable show of force throughout Bush`s visit, securing intersections along his convoy route with sandbagged machine-gun posts and cross-hatching the skies with Cobra helicopter gunships. The president made the 1.25-mile trip from the airport to the orphanage in a Marine light-armored vehicle.

But Bush, for the most part, emphasized the achievements of the U.S.-led military intervention.

“It`s a beautiful, wonderful mission,” Bush said in remarks to reporters at the orphanage, which he visited after spending time with Marines based at the airport and viewing captured Somali weapons. “They`re restoring hope, they`re restoring life, literally.”

Wearing camouflage desert fatigues, Bush said U.S. troops will leave Baidoa and other cities in Somalia as soon as their mission is complete, but he offered no details on when that might be.

He added, however, “I don`t think there will be any leaving of the Somalian people to suffer the fate they had been suffering. . . . We`re not going to leave these good Somalis in the lurch.” Bush said he is confident that other countries will pledge sufficient peacekeeping forces to prevent chaos from returning once U.S. combat forces leave.

National security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who accompanied Bush, said in an interview that “not too much more” time will pass before the first U.S. combat troops can begin pulling out of Somalia.

Military commanders “tell me things are fairly well pacified and ought to be pretty well maintained by a much quieter force,” Scowcroft said.

In Mogadishu, wishing the men and women serving a happy new year, a sunburned Bush told them, “You ought to be very, very proud of the way it`s begun.”

But Bush, a former Navy pilot, knew what was really on their minds. “That`s great,” he said, “but how long?”

The hundreds of hand-picked soldiers, sailors and airmen who had gathered on the tarmac of the airstrip in Mogadishu cheered, while the Marines barked and whooped.

“I wish I knew the answer,” said Bush to groans from the baked, dusty crowd. “I do know it`s not an open-ended commitment,” he added. There were more cheers, but not as loud as before.

Bush flew to Baidoa by helicopter Friday morning from the Marine amphibious ship USS Tripoli, where he spent the night after visiting U.S. troops and relief workers Thursday in Mogadishu. In Baidoa, Bush offered New Year`s Day greetings to troops guarding the airport and examined 200 weapons and armed vehicles confiscated by Marines since their arrival here several weeks ago.

After spending the morning in Baidoa, Bush ate lunch with troops at the Belia Dogle air base before returning to Mogadishu`s international airport for a few farewell remarks.

At Belia Dogle, Bush told soldiers, “I view you as peacemakers, but what I hope will follow in a relatively short time is peace keeping.

“We`re not only welcome here,” he said, “they`re going to be sorry to see us go.”

At Mogadishu`s airport, Bush noted he had “about 19 days” left as president and said, “One of the great joys of being president has been working with the U.S. military. Each day you`re here, I think you can be proud of what you`ve done for mankind.” Then he plunged into the enthusiastic crowd of soldiers to shake hands and pose for photographs.

But the highlight of the president`s visit was his trip into Baidoa, now a dusty grid of roofless houses, sandy roads and flimsy market stalls that is home to an estimated 60,000 people. In general, Somalis here appeared delighted by Bush`s visit, though it was not entirely clear that everyone understood who he is.

Mohamoud Imam, a Somali who runs the orphanage for the Irish relief group Goal, said the children under his care “only know that a big man from America is coming here to visit.” But he added, “They know America and they know the Marines.”

While Iman and other educated Somalis praised Bush for including Baidoa on his itinerary, they differed with the president on at least one key policy question. “We`d like to have the Marines maybe 12 months,” said Iman, who was a building contractor before his business was destroyed in the war.

“If they leave without leaving something behind, it`s a waste product,” Iman said. “They have to leave something behind - they have to leave a police force.”

Bush arrived at the orphanage under a glorious African sky. Banners welcoming the president hung from the building, a pastel former secondary school where 800 orphans sleep together on wooden pallets in long, dark rooms off a central courtyard shaded by ornamental trees.

When Bush stepped into the courtyard at 10:30 a.m., the children lining the area erupted in carefully orchestrated cheers, while a smaller delegation presented him with a bow and arrow, two spears and a small hoe. Orphanage staff noted they have had some practice with visiting dignitaries, having hosted both Sophia Loren and a delegation of American congressmen in recent weeks.

Bush, for his part, did not visit the orphanage so much as occupy it. Marines set up machine gun positions on the perimeter and the roof, where one Marine stepped on a weak spot and fell 15 feet into one of the rooms below without injury.

But for all the celebration and spectacle that attended Bush`s visit, the president also got a poignant glimpse of the real Somalia. That occurred when he stepped inside the darkened infirmary, where 22 children lay listlessly beneath flimsy blankets, trusting to fate and the tender mercies of nurse Zoe O`Neill.

“When I came, 12 a day were dying,” said O`Neill, a Catholic nun. “It was a different scene, you can`t imagine.”

O`Neill had hoped that Isaak might be one of the lucky ones, but chronic diarrhea proved too much for his tiny frame. “He was a fighter,” she recalled. “We thought he was going to make it.” - Information from Scripps Howard News Service and the Washington Post was used in this report.

Somali children wait for food at a feeding center, December 17, 1992. Some 530 US Marines and 140 French Foreign Legionnaires arrived December 16, 1992 in Baidoa, escorting food convoys out of the city to other areas suffering from famine.

A Somali boy tries to guide his donkey cart around a "technical" vehicle patrolling October 17, 1995, through the streets of Baidoa, recently overrun by forces loyal to warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed. Aideed is trying to extend the territory under his self-styled government.