Background Briefing Subject: Somalia - UNITED SHIELD

Attributable To: Senior Military Official

Thursday, March 2, 1995, 5:30 p.m.

I thought what I might do... Just so you have the pieces... I know your folks over there are reporting a lot of this, but I might just run through some of the details of the last 24 hours and give that to you in terms of the withdrawal operation. And then cover a couple of other points with you, and then we'll see if you have any questions.

The Italian Marines... We started this operation -- Somalia time, about

2 o'clock in the morning -- with the Italians leaving first. All three of their mech companies departed. A very orderly departure. In fact, it was characterized as being a textbook withdrawal.

The first Pakistani ship departed at 7:30 this morning with 504 Pakistanis. The U.S.-leased equipment departed on the RO/RO at about 1540 Somalia time. At about 1620, the last 1,034 Pakistani troops departed by sea. So, at 1620, all of the equipment and all of the UNOSOM forces, that we had come to provide the final cover for, had departed.

We had the two Marine rifle companies then depart -- one actually left before the last group of Pakistanis did -- about 1600. You'll recall, we put the two rifle companies in at the New Port. The first one left at 1600, the other one about 1630. So they were the first U.S. Forces to leave -- those two rifle companies.

By about 1630 Somalia time, the remainder of the U.S. Forces, which you see here, had moved from the New Port and consolidated down here at Green Beach, which is where the LCACs came in to pick up all of the remainder of our Forces, which were these. We were not all, obviously, concentrated here. They were down the beach, to stay disbursed in case we had anything happen. But we loaded the LCACs. There were 15 LCAC loads. There were 28 of the assault amphibious vehicles -- the AAVs -- with personnel. That's what remained that had to be pulled out.

It took about four hours to do the total withdrawal of the U.S. Force that I'm talking about now. The last to leave, obviously, were the AAVs. They provided the final cover. The LCACs are vulnerable because they don't have any protection, so the AAVs provided the protective ring as all of that equipment was pulled out, then, the AAVs were the last. They just swim right out into the water and proceed back out to the amphibious ships.

During the time that this operation was going on, the AC-130 was in the area, flying feet wet -- close enough if anything had happened. We also flew some helicopter sorties in support, just to be sure that good coverage was provided of the withdrawal effort.

The withdrawal effort itself was incident-free. We did have one Marine who had a very, very slight injury. His weapon malfunctioned and fired -- didn't hit anybody, didn't do any damage to him, just the concussion from it. It caused him some damage. It's unclear to me what kind it was, but he wasn't seriously hurt. But that's the only incident, I know of, involving a U.S. Marine.

There were four incidents involving U.S. and Somalis, while the U.S. Forces were ashore, however. I think, all of them have been reported. On the 1st of March, we had a Marine sniper engage a Somali who was firing an RPG at their position. This was down near the Green Beach area. A single Somali came out of this general area and didn't come inside the security perimeter. The Marines spotted him, fired some shots over his head as a warning. He knelt down, loaded his weapon, stood up and fired at the Marines. The weapon went over their heads and impacted in the water. As he fired, he was hit by one of our Marine snipers. It was unclear what his fate was, but he was later retrieved by some other Somalians that hauled him away. That was one incident.

There was a second incident involving a technical, in the vicinity of this ramp area at the airport over near this side in which the technical aimed and started firing at the Marines. One of our AAVs engaged the technical and it drove off. There appeared to be some injuries from that on the ground. Some Somalis came and picked up those injured. It's unclear to us the fate of those Somalis either.

Q: That was yesterday too, General?

A: That was on the 2nd of March, that was about 5:30 in the morning.

Then, later today, we also had two other engagements with Somalis who also had RPGs. One of them up near the New Port area itself -- up in this area. They'd been harassing the U.S. troops with this RPG and been pointing it at them. It finally came to the point we fired some warning shots at them, [and] they continued to threaten U.S. Forces, so they were shot before they fired on us. Again, the fate is unclear of what happened to that Somali.

That same sort of an incident, again, happened down near the Green Beach area, later in the day. This was about 4 o'clock, as I remember, Somali time. We had another single Somali down here, with an RPG, that was about to fire on our positions, and he was hit and didn't appear as though he died. He did fall to the ground but was moving and was pulled off by some other Somalis.

Those are the only four incidents we know of. I think the Marines used restraint in this operation. These were cases where they were clearly threatened. They were actively fired on in two of the incidents, and about to be fired on in the other two. So they, obviously, took the proper course of action to ensure that we didn't have any casualties.

All in all, I think, I would characterize this as an extremely successful coalition operation. All of the equipment we went there to remove as a coalition was removed. All of the UN troops that we went in to provide the final cover for -- the Bangladeshis as well as the Pakistanis -- were withdrawn, according to the plan. The plan was completed substantially earlier than we originally forecast in terms of timing. I attribute that to the solid planning done by the coalition forces with the UNOSOM forces.

I would offer a special thanks to the Italian Marines who, obviously, deserve a "well done" for a textbook operation on their behalf. The Marines -- the MEU commander, in particular, was extremely pleased with the performance by the Italian Marines.

There were other countries involved, obviously, besides Italy. The United Kingdom, France, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia had forces in this operation -- or ships. So it was because of all of these various countries doing their part that allowed this thing to take place in the short period of time that it did, and the successful operation that it was.

Q: Can you give us some view of what the port looked like as they withdrew? Were the fences overrun immediately? What was the scene?

A: I have gotten no reports that as we withdrew down the beach -- which occurred in daylight -- that there was any massive overrunning of the port area. Now, you recall, there were large -- you saw pictures -- there were large containers, the sea vans that were double stacked all the way around the perimeter up there. It would be a little tough to get over those. Obviously, the only entry way would be through the gate area, which had a lot of barbed wire and so forth across it.

I haven't seen any report that reflects that there was a massive overrunning, but we know from what we saw at the airport -- that once people get in -- the looting is going to start. I haven't seen anything that says that there was... You all may know more about that from your reporters than I do.

Q: ...a lot of gunfire in that area after the abandonment by U.S. Forces?

A: I have nothing -- in the information that I have from CENTCOM -- that tells me what happened at the port. That will become more clear as time goes on, I guess, from the folks that remain.

Q: The port turnover was not orderly, right? It was not, "This is now your territory," as you looked at Aideed or Ali Mahdi's people?

A: As soon as we got our rifle companies out, we withdrew down the beach to start the evacuation. We had completed our mission.

Q: The 13th MEU, aboard the ESSEX, is due to finish its rotation in April. Will they come back sooner? Are they heading back now to San Diego, do you know?

A: Let me look, I might have something on that.

Q: Also, it's a long shot, but if you would happen to know the last guy who left and turned out the lights, where he was from? [Laughter]

A: I'd love to tell you it was General Zinni, but I suspect he was one of the last ones out, but I can't tell you exactly... We'll see if we can find out.

Q: A radio reporter. [Laughter]

A2: While the General is looking for that, if you're going to mention in your articles the contribution of the countries, I'd like to add Kenya as one we'd like to...

A: That's a good point. While they didn't have forces, they certainly did a lot in the bed down of our forces. And they, obviously, played a key role and were critical to making this thing work. We wouldn't have been able to bed down all the aircraft that supported the operation. So while their support some people would say, wasn't direct -- it clearly was in terms of bed down.

I thought I had the withdrawal schedule here that talked to it, but it doesn't have it on there.

Q: While you were doing calculating, as we look at the two mech companies the recon and the rifle companies -- is there any way to translate that into numbers?

A: About 1,600 people -- 1,500 to 1,600.

Q: That's what drew down the beach...?

Q: 1,500 to 1,600 just Americans?

A: These are just the Americans, that's right. This was about 350. The combination between these two was about 1,700 -- almost 1,800. So you're talking maybe 120 in each of the rifle companies, something in that ball park. So we're talking around 1,600 that came out here.

Q: You talked about the four engagements that our Marines had. Did the Italians have any engagements?

A: None that I know of. None reported to us here.

Q: There was never any need to engage anybody with sticky foam, rubber bullets, and all that other stuff...

A: They didn't see any opportunity. We talked earlier, they never got close enough, which is exactly what we hoped would happen. It turned out that the Mogadishu police did play a role. We were talking about that when I first came in -- about how they were going to intercede between the Mogadishans and our Forces. That, in fact, did happen.

The Aideed forces also attempted to keep Somalians away from the U.S. Forces. That played a key role, I think, in us not getting into a situation where any of those less-than-lethal weapons -- non-lethal weapons -- had to be used.

Q: Will there be any naval presence at all off the coast for any period of time, or air?

A: Our plan is to withdraw this force as quickly as possible. The mission is complete. There's no reason for us to maintain forces off the shore of Mogadishu.

Q: What happens to all the U.S. equipment that's on the international transport ships? Is that going to be "repatriated," so to speak?

A: The equipment that's on the RO/RO is coming back to the United States. The helicopters that we talked about the other day -- which were OH-58s and AH-1s -- were brought back to the United States by the AN-124s that brought them back. So that equipment is being reprobated to the U.S.

Q: Have the air assets in Kenya begun to withdraw?

A: They have not, yet, because literally, the amphibs -- the AAVs -- are still swimming back. Everybody's not back on the ships yet. We're off the beach.

Q: Taken before the final withdrawal.

A: No, we... There was some talk about... The thing looked like it was going well, "Maybe we can [deport]?" We said, "Everybody stay right where you are until this thing is finished. Let's do it right." There wasn't anybody rushing to get home, it's just they were trying to get back to other commitments.

Q: Do you have any guess as to how many men would have been in the final AAV as it pulled away?

A: Twelve to 15. We'll try to get the name of the last person off the beach. Probably, somebody knows that. I don't know it yet, but I can find out.

Q: Can you comment at all on the scale of this operation versus the scale of the couple of operations we're looking forward to the next couple of months in the Baltics?

A: Yes. let me just say one thing about this operation before I talk about that, just for one second. That's a NATO operation there -- a UN operation not something we're engaged in. We're engaged because U.S. Forces may be involved. As you know, the President has said that if UNPROFOR withdraws, that we will commit forces, but we want to review the plan thoroughly before we decide to execute the level of forces that we will commit to the operation.

Let me just say one other thing about this operation. One of the things that made this relatively -- I won't say "easy," but "easier," is the fact that the UN really did their part. You recall we had UNOSOM forces spread out in a number of places in Somalia. Over a period of time, the UNOSOM forces consolidated and withdrew. That made it a lot easier, because in the final stages we were dealing with one location. In fact, we were worried about... They had not only withdrawn to Mogadishu, but withdrawn to the airport and the New Port by the time we went ashore.

So UNOSOM -- the UN forces -- really did their part. They thought this thing through ahead of time, and, over a period of time, they just made it a lot easier. So, when it got to this stage... Much simpler than what we're talking about, possibly, in Bosnia, where the forces there are separating the warring parties. They're monitoring that. So it's a little more difficult for them to pull back and consolidate and remove themselves to a port where they might be taken from such as we did here. So there's just a different kind of an operation.

This just says the ESSEX ARG with the 13th MEU embarked -- out-chopped CENTCOM -- on the 11th of March, which means it's headed home. I'm not sure how many days it will take it to get there, but it leaves the CENTCOM area of operation on the 11th of March.

Press: Thank you.

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