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The reality, as always, is different from, and harder than, what military planners imagined. Washington is already enlarging the political scope of the U.S. mission. Before the first troops landed, Robert Oakley, the U.S. special envoy, held a series of meetings in Mogadishu that resulted in reports that he had no intention of entering into negotiations with Somalia's warlords, but would simply inform them of U.S. military aims and lay down a deadline to withdraw their gunmen. By Friday, Oakley had brokered a temporary reconciliation between the country's two most powerful clan leaders, General Mohammed Farrah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohammed, who had not spoken in more than a year. Emerging from their meeting at the U.S. liaison office, the two warlords agreed to an immediate cease-fire and ordered their fighters to leave the capital, though no one believed their hostilities have ended for good.
The people of Somalia know that the immediate threat is less the rivalry of the factional leaders than the abundance of weapons. Order cannot be restored permanently until the country's thugs are separated from their sophisticated caches of weapons, which range from AK-47s to surface-to-air missiles and technicals, the Mad Max vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns and antiaircraft weapons. Residents do not mistake Mogadishu's relative calm for peace; they know that the thugs have simply redeployed to the bush.
The U.N. resolution is purposefully vague on the issue of disarming Somalis, yet this is already proving vexatious. Both Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have offered no specific guidelines on how far the troops ought to go in seizing weapons from the local populace, leaving commanders on the ground to figure out the details. Both have stressed, however, that troops will take whatever action they deem necessary when threatened. Pressed on more general plans for disarmament, Oakley said, "We plan to negotiate with the Somalis and have them do it."
It is impossible to tell whether that is sound strategy or a recipe for disaster. When Aidid and Ali Mahdi made their tentative peace, neither called on his followers to surrender their weapons. A U.S. senior official said that "Aidid has parked his heavy weapons in Ethiopia." Meanwhile, the gung-ho attempt of some of the vanguard troops to seize weapons slowed perceptibly. French troops initially searched Somali cars for weapons; by week's end they were searching only for the heavy guns that used to be carried on technicals. "It would be inconceivable to disarm Mogadishu," said a senior French army officer.
The rules seemed porous and confusing. Marines understood they were authorized to seize any weapons in their zone of security. Four soldiers, drawn by gunfire to a gutted six-story building down the block from the U.S. embassy, discovered a large arms cache that included boxes of ammunition, heavy machine guns and a howitzer. They prepared to confiscate it when a Somali man stepped forward to argue that the building belonged to an Aidid ally. He demanded to speak to someone higher up. When Corporal Robert Parrish reached his platoon commander by radio, he was instructed, "Get in your vehicles, and leave the area." The astonished Marines left; the weapons stayed.