By John Drysdale from “Whatever Happened to Somalia?”

THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL HAS FORMIDABLE POWERS OF ARREST AND DETENTION, without court orders, if they wish to invoke them. Somalia broke all records in 1993 when the Security Council, for the first time ever, invoked the strongest sanctions that they could possibly impose on any nation or persons. It was known in diplomatic circles as Article 42 of Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

The reason for imposing these Sanctions under Security Council Resolution 814 in 1993 was the brainchild of the United Nations Secretary-General Butrus Butrus Ghali. The reason for sanctions was to help the United Nations with the arrest and detention (if not the execution) of General Mohamed Hassan Aideed. He had become a fugitive in 1993 when his house in Mogadishu and its surroundings had received three nights of intensive bombing from the air by American aircraft in retribution for the massacre earlier that year of Pakistani peacekeepers in Mogadishu. The General was said to have instigated the massacre. The bombing was designed to induce him to surrender. He did not.

Article 42 of Chapter V11 of the Charter is a blanket imposition by soldiers who can carry out military actions as they wish without any guidance on the rules of engagement. These would normally have precluded arbitrary arrest and detention without trial, no right to habeas corpus; death and injury without official injury; the seizure of property and its destruction without compensation. In fact, any violation possible of human rights, including peace enforcement, not peacekeeping, for instance. The overall aim was to establish with armed personnel in Mogadishu and surrounding areas an undefined “secure environment”, whatever that meant, without the consent of the local authorities. An infamous example of the exercise of these powers occurred on July 12, 1993. Three days earlier, the Special Representative in Mogadishu of the United Nations Secretary-General, Admiral Jonathan Howe, learned that I was to introduce to the Admiral two noteable, bearded elders from a related clan close to the fugitive General Aideed. They were Sheikh Mohamed Iman and his brother. They were accompanied by General Aideed’s ”stand in” who had flown in from Cairo, Mr. Abdikassim Salad Hassan. They wished to explain to Howe that they were in the last lap of collective discussions on how best their large respective clans could establish a renewal of dialogue with the United Nations. They were meeting they said in Kaibdiid’s two-storey Mansion, 70 meters from Abdikassim’s house.

On the morning of July 12, I was having breakfast in Shamu’s Guesthouse, together with my friend Jimmy Shanor, when we saw a spotter aircraft circling above us. It was flying not far from Qaibdiid’s mansion. We learnt later that this was the overture to Operation Michigan. American military intelligence had been tipped off incorrectly that Aided was attending the meeting in Qaibdiid’s mansion. When the agent was satisfied that everyone was present, he walked out of the mansion conspicuously signaling to a communications helicopter above. Operation Michigan had begun.

Helicopter gunships took off from the international airport with instructions to strike the building at three points: the conference hall on the second floor so that the roof would fall in on the delegates; the stairs leading from the conference hall to the ground level to block any escape; and the outside gate so that the marines, landing by helicopter, would have clear access to the building to shoot or capture anyone escaping.

The massacre went as planned. The burning roof fell in on top of the delegates. Some managed to crawl out of the rubble and jump to the ground. Most were killed some were captured. There were no armed Somalis inside or outside the building. Howe maintained that “fewer than twenty died”, the Red Cross said that 54 were killed; the Somalis said 73 were killed, listing their names, including Sheikh Mohamed Iman and his brother, and my friend Dr. Abdirahman Hassan Elmi. An internal memoranda by the UN Justice Division leaked the following to the press: The attack “raised important legal and human rights issues” That was putting it very mildly.

Huge angry crowds gathered on the approaches to the wreck of the building in fury at the carnage. A Somali with a video camera shot scenes of shattered limbs protruding through the rubble on the second floor; the shots were bought by CNN but were too horrible to be shown in public. Journalists who ventured too near to the scene were caught up in the distraught crowd and were knifed or bludgeoned to death.

Four hundred specialist Rangers were brought to Mogadishu with part of the Delta Force to capture Aideed. On October 3, they learned of a new military intelligence scoop that a meeting with Aideed present was to take place near the Olympic Hotel. Eighty Rangers and 12 Delta commanders set off in Black Hawk helicopters to land on the roof of the hotel. A black Hawk was brought down by the Somalis near the hotel. A second helicopter was hit and crashed south of the hotel. A third Black Hawk was winged, crashing near the New Port. Somalis from every direction poured onto the streets clasping their weapons and firing wildly.. Some ten hours later a relief convoy got under way. They found 16 Rangers dead and 77 wounded, while Red Cross estimates of Somali dead were 200.

Following appeals from the Presidents of Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the Prime Minister of Italy, Aideed released American prisoners and declared a cease-fire. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 878 of November 18 effectively made Aideed a free man again. The Americans sensibly pulled their troops out of Somalia in March 1994. Article 42 of Chapter V!! of the United Nations Charter was thus a total disaster from Qaibdiid’s mansion, the unspoken half of Black Hawk Down, to the Olympic Hotel, and many, many terrible incidents in between.

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*John Drysdale, a former advisor to three Somali Prime Ministers in post independence Somalia and to three successive UN special envoys to Somalia during the 1992-1993, is an authority on Somali history and culture. Three of his books about Somalia < Somali The Peninsula,>and Whatever Happened to Somalia, written during or about major landmarks in the nation's history, have become standard reference works. Drysdale was a regular British army officer serving with Somali soldiers in Burma during World War II. Later he was in the British Colonial Service and the Foreign Service, with assignments in Ghana (then the Gold Coast) and in Mogadishu. He is an accomplished speaker of Somali. During his long career as diplomat, businessman, and publisher, Drysdale has been a prolific writer and analyst of political events in Africa and Southeast Asia.

As a publisher Drysdale founded and edited the Africa Research Bulletin in Britain and the Asia Research Bulletin in Singapore in collaboration with the Straits Times Group. He was also founder of the Asean Economic Quarterly in Singapore. His book Singapore: Struggle for Success is a recommended reading for all young Singaporeans. Returning to Somaliland in mid 1990s, Drysdlae worked as an advisor to the Somaliland government under the later President Mohammed Ibrahim Egal for sometime before pioneering the very important project of Surveying and Mapping for Rural and Urban Cadastre in Somaliland. His NGO has been surveying and mapping hitherto non-existent farm boundaries in the Gabiley and Dilla Districts of South West Somaliland over the last four years.