Eritrea: One Minute a Beacon of Hope, the Next an International Pariah

How times and attitudes change. Eritrea these days seems to be a regular on those lists of the world’s worst dictatorships. But in 1995, it seemed an island of hope on a continent rife with conflict, disease, and poverty. I visited the Horn of Africa nation that year to assess developments there two years after it formally became an independent state (May 24, 1993).

After a bloody 30-year struggle for independence, Eritreans are at last free to hammer out a new future for themselves.

At the Medeber market in the capital, Asmara, they are hammering and cutting and welding that future from the remnants of their liberation fight -- taking scrap metal from abandoned, war-damaged military equipment and converting it into bed frames, stoves, ladles, pots, and the like.

It is hot, dirty work -- just like the hot, dirty war that devastated Eritrea, claiming 150-thousand lives, forcing more than one-half-million people into exile and destroying the country's economy and infrastructure. But the men and women, young and old, laboring in Medeber, like the rebel fighters who won the independence battle against Ethiopia, exude a spirit of determination as they go about their chores.

The war may be over but a new struggle is underway -- a struggle for economic development.

“We now have a better and much more realistic understanding of the challenges we face in terms of the economy. We know our problems are not going to go away overnight. and we have gained an appreciation over the past two years that the task is difficult, it's going to take time, and we'll have to depend on our own resources to accomplish it.”

Yemane Ghebreab is the Secretary for Political Affairs of Eritrea's ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice, formerly the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. In an interview in his office at party headquarters in Asmara, he acknowledges Eritrea has a lot of economic problems.

“The biggest challenge we face is to create employment in the country, to rebuild the infrastructure that was ruined over 30 years. We need to break the cycle of dependency, of depending on relief aid that the people lived on at least since (independence in) 1973. We want to break that cycle, we want to create a sense, not just a sense, to have food security in this country which is very important for a lot of people. We have half a million Eritreans living as refugees for many, many years in Sudan who would like to come back and they're coming back. One-hundred-five thousand of them are already here in this country so the task of rehabilitating all these people is very big. We have a problem with former fighters who are being demobilized. We've demobilized something like 50-thousand of them, so helping these 50-thousand begin new lives is a major challenge for us. So we face a lot of problems.”

On the other hand, Eritrea has a lot going for it. Western diplomats in Asmara marvel at the sense of national pride and political cohesion that has been forged among the country's nine different ethnic and language groups. They also say the transition government, led by President Issaias Afewerki, unlike many corrupt African administrations, is "squeaky clean."

And they say the country has a great deal of economic potential. There is gold to be mined and gas and oil to be retrieved. Eritrea also has rich marine resources from the Red Sea. Tourism could prove to be another major foreign exchange earner.

One diplomat, with years of experience in Africa's problem countries, says that for him, it is difficult not to get excited about what the Eritreans are doing. He calls them serious and hard-working and says they have a high degree of self confidence. Despite the challenges and the hardships, he believes they will succeed.

(Note: It wasn’t long after this that things began to go wrong in Eritrea --- at least in the eyes of the west. According to Human Rights Watch, “Since 2001 the government of President Afewerki has carried out an unremitting attack on democratic institutions and civil society in Eritrea by arresting political opponents, destroying the private press, and incarcerating anyone thought to challenge the government’s policies. A constitution approved by referendum in 1997 has never been implemented. No national elections have been held since independence in 1993. No opposition political party is allowed to exist. No independent labor organizations are permitted. Nongovernmental organizations have been systematically dismantled and their assets confiscated; those still operational are closely monitored. The government controls all access to information. The border dispute with Ethiopia that led to the devastating 1998-2000 war continues to fester, a circumstance the government uses to justify repressive policies.”

(One other note, my friend Michela Wrong has written a splendid book about modern Eritrea titled "I Didn't Do It for You." She spent several years as a reporter covering the African continent before turning to book writing. Her first book, equally marvelous, was about Mobutu’s Congo, “In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz.” I encourage you to read them if you haven't already.)

Odds and Ends in the Horn: Eritrea

In the 30 years of Eritrea's war for independence from Ethiopia, no city suffered greater damage than the port of Massawa. Once known as the pearl of the Red Sea, Massawa in 1995, four years after the end of the fighting, remained a scene of devastation. But change was coming, as I found when I visited the city during a May trip that year marking the second anniversary of Eritrea's independence.

The old man chatters incessantly as he leads a small group of visitors up the rubble-strewn stairs of the bomb-shattered Imperial Palace in Massawa and opens the padlocked door.

This was once a glistening, tile-covered, domed structure on the shores of the Red Sea, a pleasant if only occasionally visited retreat for Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie. It is now just a derelict home for hundreds of pigeons.

Massawa first suffered heavy damage in 1977, three years after Haile Selassie was deposed by a Marxist military regime. Ethiopian forces in the port came under attack that year from Eritrean rebels who were driven off under fierce shelling from Ethiopian ships offshore.

It was bombed again in 1990, when Ethiopian Air Force planes struck for 10 straight days after Eritrean rebels seized the port city as their 30-year war for independence neared its end.

A translator says the worst damage to the Imperial Palace occurred in the 1990 raids.

“This is 1990 by the airplane. Very badly damaged, you can see, badly damaged, you can say.”

The devastation of those brutal raids is still evident everywhere -- from the massive hole in the dome of the Imperial Palace to the rusting hulks of abandoned tanks that can still be found in several streets.

But there is also evidence of new life. The port is bustling with activity as cargo ships unload cement, steel bars, and other construction materials. There is also a new hotel in the center of Massawa and a small but growing tourist population taking advantage of what local residents describe as wonderful sailing and scuba diving opportunities in the Dahlak islands close to the mainland.

Still, most of Massawa's 40-thousand or so residents live in makeshift shacks on the outskirts of this town once known as the pearl of the Red Sea.

Others, mainly members of the nomadic Arabic-speaking Rashaida ethnic group, live in traditional tents near the seashore with their livestock. But change is coming for these people as well. A Rashaida man takes a group of visitors from his tent, past his newly-purchased pick-up truck, to fields where he has planted groundnuts (peanuts) and melons. Proudly, he plucks a ripe melon from the earth, slices it with the short, curved dagger he carries in his waistband and presents pieces to his guests to enjoy. After 20 years in exile in neighboring Sudan, the man says he intends to stay put -- to take advantage of the schools and medical services Eritrea's transitional government is beginning to open in Massawa.

Not far from Massawa, foreign companies are soon expected to begin exploring for oil and natural gas. Commercial fishing is already a rich source of income -- so rich that the government recently seized three Egyptian trawlers for allegedly working inside Eritrean waters. One source with knowledge of the case says the owners were apparently willing to risk arrest and confiscation of their vessels because, in the source's words, just two or three trips would yield hauls so lucrative they would pay off the cost of the fishing boats.

So, despite the years of hardship and destruction, one diplomat says there is new hope here along the Eritrean coast, and a bright future.

The Tortoise and the Warlord: A Somali Fable

The effort to bring Somalia's rival faction leaders together to promote political reconciliation and a lasting peace settlement was what diplomats regarded as an often-frustrating, often-faltering process. But a dialogue of sorts got under way in December 1993, and though it never led anywhere, at the time the simple fact that the dialogue was alive was considered an achievement.

On a small strip of lawn just down the lane from General Mohammed Farah Aideed's villa in an Addis Ababa hotel complex, a large tortoise munches grass contentedly, undisturbed by the parade of diplomats and other officials passing by on their way to and from consultations with the Somali faction leader.

That tortoise seems an appropriate symbol for what is going on in the reconciliation process. It has not moved for days -- and neither, it would appear, has the dialogue between Somalia's principal rivals, Aideed and Ali Madhi Mohammed. The two men have yet to hold any face-to-face talks since arriving in the Ethiopian capital last week.

But diplomats are taking solace from the fact that aides and associates of the faction leaders have been conferring informally and appear willing to keep on talking. That is considered a positive development since at one point, following a stormy session with Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi, it seemed Ali Madhi's team was on the verge of returning home and Aideed's supporters were wondering aloud why they had bothered to come to Addis Ababa at all.

Still, it is debatable whether the current dialogue can be rated much of a success since the two sides are at odds over the basic principles that have to be embraced in order for there to be a meaningful peace settlement. The Ali Madhi coalition says the Aideed side must first accept the terms of an agreement signed last March by all the faction leaders, including the general -- and that means accepting that the United Nations has a role to play in helping to rebuild Somalia.

General Aideed's side, usually adept in courting the news media, has been unusually hesitant about making itself available for comment on the talks. But there has been no indication thus far of any weakening in its previous adamant opposition to UN operations in the country. During a news conference last week, one of the General's top allies, Colonel Omar Jess, read a lengthy and now-familiar list of complaints about this-or-that UN activity -- ranging from its involvement in the Somali economy to its efforts to promote the formation of representative local political bodies.

Given such a fundamental difference, it is hard to see how the rival parties can ever hope to come to any kind of an understanding that will lead to a lasting peace settlement. But the two sides have been put on notice that the international community, convinced it has gone to extraordinary lengths to promote peace, is ready to walk away from the Somalia problem unless the Somalis themselves make the most of what has been billed as their last chance to hammer out a solution. Diplomats are betting that a growing awareness among Somali leaders of the consequences of failure may be the strongest motive yet for getting the factions to overcome even the toughest hurdles.

General Aideed had earlier boycotted a UN sponsored humanitarian conference on Somalia and played a cat-and-mouse game about taking part in reconciliation talks organized by the Ethiopian government before finally deciding to travel to Addis Ababa. By so doing, the Mogadishu faction leader cast a long shadow over both efforts -- and commanded the maximum attention of the news media -- even in his absence.

Many Somalis, as well as some outsiders intimately involved in Somali affairs, say there is a simple solution to what is known as the Aideed problem -- just make the General president of the country. It's the main thing he wants.

But there is a major difficulty: General Aideed doesn't have the backing of a majority of Somalis and he has succeeded in alienating much of the international community.

The General and his loyalists insist he does have nationwide support -- over 90 percent of the population, they say. But just about everyone else disputes that figure. And even within the Aideed camp, there are those who have their doubts.

Diplomats who have met the General's supporters in recent days say some of his followers are beginning to feel they may be jeopardizing everything for the sake of the faction leader's political ambitions. Everything, in this case, includes a role in and a share of future development assistance for Somalia.

Donor nations at the UN humanitarian conference in Addis Ababa agreed they would only provide help to those parts of the country where local leaders guarantee security and cooperate in reconstruction efforts. On the surface, that threat doesn't seem to have had any impact on Aideed.

One of his top allies, Colonel Omar Jess, shrugged off the warning at a news conference in the Ethiopian capital. “We can live," he said.

The General's recent behavior would seem to mark a critical turning point in the way he is perceived at home and abroad. Many observers say the UN in particular has bent over backwards in an effort to accommodate the Mogadishu faction leader -- especially by performing what one western official characterized as a "diplomatic backflip" on its original decision to arrest him in connection with violent attacks on UN peacekeepers.

Following that reversal, repeated appeals were made to Aideed to rejoin various consultations with other Somali leaders and UN officials -- including this week's humanitarian conference.

But he boycotted that meeting and appeared to be adopting a rejectionist attitude to cooperation with the UN and other faction leaders -- a stand that prompted one senior diplomat to say it was no longer a case of General Aideed being excluded by others from the reconciliation process; he was excluding himself.

In the end, though, Aideed apparently felt he could no longer afford to pursue that rejectionist stand and risk being left out -- especially after his archrival, Ali Madhi Mohammed, decided to fly to Addis Ababa to join informal political consultations organized by Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi.

There are no guarantees the discussions will lead anywhere. But one thing is clear -- Aideed cannot be ignored. UN officials say that even though his actions have generally been discouraging and highly frustrating for the international community, he remains a potent force in the country and must play a part in forging a peace settlement.

And if he won't play, then what? Most diplomats now seem to minimize the risk of renewed civil war in Somalia but say it's a Somali choice. They make clear the international community will simply walk away from Somalia if fighting erupts again. Many Somalis fear that is precisely what will happen -- unless Aideed's desire to become president is realized. One Somali delegate to this week's humanitarian conference said that otherwise, he will never stop threatening the Somali people and those outsiders who want to help them.

(Note: The international community did abandon Somalia in 1995 after all efforts to promote a dialogue between the rival faction leaders broke down. Aideed declared himself President of Somalia in June 1995, right after the UN pullout, but his government was not internationally recognized. Aideed died in August 1996 as a result of gunshot wounds sustained in a fight with competing factions. His son, Hussein Mohammed Farah, who lived in the US for over a decade, became a naturalized US citizen and served as a US Marine, succeeded his father as his faction’s leader.)

Marines with Sticky Foam for Unruly Somalis

The US Marines who landed in Somalia in early 1995 to assist in the pullout of UN forces brought with them an array of new weapons designed not to kill, but mainly to diffuse potentially explosive situations. I visited the unit charged with handling these so-called less-than-lethal devices in Mogadishu.

Sticky foam, hand grenades filled with rubber balls and shotgun shells stuffed with wooden blocks: these have been added to the arsenal of weapons carried by US Marines into Somalia; an arsenal that, until now, has consisted of mainly more conventional and lethal arms.

Chief Warrant Officer Sid Heal, a reservist who works for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, helped train Marines to use the devices, which he says come from vendors who normally supply police departments in the United States. CWO Heal says the new less-than-lethal weapons will give the Marines options they never had before, and may help diffuse potentially bloody confrontation.

“When we are trying to do a humanitarian mission, or peace-keeping or peace making mission, it's kind of counterproductive if the only option we have is lethal force. So this provides us with an ability to control a situation without having to do things which we would try to avoid.”

The most attention-getting device in the new arsenal is known as "sticky foam," which is fired out of a fire-extinguisher-type canister carried with a shoulder strap. At close range, it can immobilize a potential attacker and literally stick him to one spot.

There is also barrier foam, which can be enhanced with pepper gas and sprayed over barbed wire to keep back demonstrators or rioters.

The other weapons in the less-than-lethal arsenal include what are called "flash-bang grenades," that use sound, light and pressure to stun. There is also the stinger grenade, which disperses hard rubber pellets, and there are a variety of new shotgun fired projectiles, including bean bags, containing tiny lead balls, and wooden blocks designed to hit potential aggressors in the shins.

In addition, the Marines will carry lasers intended to pinpoint ringleaders in a crowd, so these alone can be singled out for special attention and separated from innocent bystanders.

Though some Marines fear they will be ridiculed for carrying such exotic non-lethal weapons, CWO Heal says he believes their time has come as the worlds of law enforcement and the military draw closer together.

“I think two things are happening. First of all, in the law enforcement environment, it's getting more violent. I was on the SWAT team for five years, and the missions I was getting on the SWAT team were almost identical to the missions I've been getting in the Marine Corps… And then on the military side of the house…we're picking up a lot more humanitarian and peace-keeping and peace-making missions, and, as a result of that, some of the options that were clearly in the military arena, and some of the ones that were clearly in the law enforcement arena have combined. And now we both have interests in solving some of these problems, with some of the technology that has been developed on each side of these different arenas.”

Though the Marines will draw on these new weapons, or even their lethal ones, if they have to in order to prevent any interference with the final pull-out of UN peace-keepers and equipment from Mogadishu, they hope there will not be a need to use any of them, and that the withdrawal will go smoothly and peacefully.

(Note: But as you might recall from the earlier posted reports on the withdrawal, the final pullout was not altogether peaceful or casualty free. See http://reporterregrets.blogspot.com/2007/04/beach-boys-in-somalia.html )

Chaos Returns to the Streets of Mogadishu

Then in late October 1993, there was a fresh outbreak of fight in Mogadishu -- the worst fighting between Somalis since UN troops landed, once again underscoring the city's unpredictability, and pointing up just how tenuous calm in the Somali capital could be.

Two weeks ago, there was a mood of hope in Mogadishu. Fugitive faction leader Mohammed Farah Aideed had declared a cease-fire in his militia's attacks on UN peacekeepers and, in a goodwill gesture, released two captives, an American pilot and a Nigerian soldier. UN authorities were optimistic that after more than four months of violence, they could forge ahead with a peaceful dialogue with Aideed's faction.

But then there was fresh bloodshed this week -- the kind that brought the United Nations into Somalia in the first place.

A planned peace march triggered a new round of inter-factional fighting between General Aideed's gunmen and those of rival Mogadishu faction leader Ali Madhi Mohammed. That violence in turn created an overall atmosphere of lawlessness in the Somali capital and sparked a renewal of bitter inter-clan skirmishing. Even after that died down, there was still more tension than hope in the air.

The sudden turn in events and the change in atmosphere once again demonstrated what seem to be the main characteristics of this city -- first, that events remains totally unpredictable and, second, that peace here is always precarious.

What is more, the security situation now also appears to be uncontrollable -- even by the United Nations, which has tried, both through military operations and through diplomatic dialogue, to bring a sense of calm and order to Mogadishu.

UN troops did not intervene in the latest clashes. Officials felt that would be provocative -- and that one or the other parties involved in the fighting would undoubtedly see UN intervention as an effort to take sides. So UN authorities appealed for restraint -- and held contacts with various clan and faction representatives.

But when the gunfire finally subsided, a military spokesman had to acknowledge it was not really certain why the violence had diminished. Maybe the gunmen just got it out of their systems, he said.

Neither of Mogadishu's main rival faction leaders has much good to say these days about the UN operation.

General Aideed feels UN troops should have intervened in the latest fighting and failed to do so because they were happy to watch Somalis killing Somalis, a charge UN officials vehemently deny.

For his part, Ali Mahdi is upset with the United Nations because it has failed to disarm the General's militia -- and because it dramatically reversed its past policy of trying to apprehend the fugitive faction leader and opted instead to pursue a dialogue with his representatives.

That dialogue still has not begun -- and Aideed loyalists insist it cannot until UN authorities release the General's aides and other supporters held in UN detention.

Despite the threatening words and the worrisome resumption of hostilities, UN officials and diplomats remain hopeful that they can still, somehow, manage to get the factions to reconcile peacefully and, more importantly, to disarm voluntarily.

“If we can do that," said one diplomat, "then we can leave here feeling good about what we have accomplished; if we cannot," then he said, a civil war is likely once US and other troops pack up and return home early next year as planned.

Officials say it is now up to the people of Mogadishu themselves to choose. This past week, they got a glimpse of what could happen if they make the wrong choice -- a return to the kind of anarchic factional and inter-clan fighting that plunged Somalia into chaos and famine and prompted the international intervention here in the first place.

(The top photo, which I have used before, is taken from the roof of the Sahafi Hotel; the second photo is of journalists sheltering in the corridors of the hotel as gunfire rages outside.)

Tense Times and Trigger Fears in Mogadishu

In mid-October 1993, the US troop reinforcements ordered to Somalia by President Bill Clinton were almost at full strength. Their main mission was a simple one and no great secret: protect the American forces already deployed in the country until they are ready to go home. I reported from Mogadishu at the time that it sounded like an easy job, but there were still many dangers and fears that things could still go horribly wrong.

There was no masking the tension etched in the face of the young American machine-gunner as his patrol car pulled out of the heavily-guarded UN compound in Mogadishu. The soldier's grip on his roof-mounted weapon was menacingly tight as he barked orders at a passing reporter's car to stop so that a three vehicle US convoy could get by. To him, it seemed, everything and anything unrecognizable was a potential threat. It was an unnerving posture that the soldier kept up as he swiveled his gun back and forth throughout his brief journey to a nearby US outpost.

The American's caution was understandable. US troops do not venture out much anymore into the debris-littered streets of Mogadishu -- not since the bloody fighting that claimed 18 American lives and prompted President Clinton to order the withdrawal of nearly all US forces from Somalia by the end of next March.

To ensure the safety of the American military personnel still here, Mr. Clinton ordered in several thousand additional troops. Most of the reinforcements have now arrived -- including what is called an amphibious readiness group based aboard US naval vessels stationed offshore.

But like the US forces already in Somalia, military officials make clear the new arrivals are not expected to do much more than defend themselves until the time comes to leave.

These days the most visible US presence outside of the UN compound, the airport, and the military bases is in the skies over the Somali capital. Helicopters buzz about incessantly -- prowling the skyline day and night, keeping an alert eye, often at low level.

But there still is danger in the sky for Americans. This week, despite a ceasefire, someone fired at least one rocket-propelled grenade at a patrolling US Blackhawk helicopter. Pilots have been warned to stay alert.

Besides the helicopters, dark, lumbering US AC-130 flying gunships occasionally drone over the city. These aircraft packed with weaponry have stopped test-firing their cannons at night on the outskirts of Mogadishu as they did soon after arriving, but they do drop flares from time to time, even in daylight, causing Somalis below to look up in puzzlement.

Many Somalis wonder about the increase in American forces. And in south Mogadishu, stronghold of fugitive faction leader Mohammed Farah Aideed, that means they usually say the beefed-up presence is an unnecessary waste. Like their leader, they think the money used for the military effort could be better spent on relief projects.

UN military spokesmen dismiss such criticism. They say the additional troops do not represent a threat and should not be perceived as one.

Still, even aid workers and other foreigners in the capital wonder -- and worry a lot -- about the potential repercussions of deploying fresh US armed forces in Somalia. While the Americans are no longer hunting for General Aideed, attempting to apprehend his militiamen or raiding their suspected command centers, there is nonetheless fear trouble could be lurking ahead -- not of the intentional, but rather of the accidental sort, as could have happened had that nervous young American machine-gunner inadvertently triggered a burst from his weapon. Officers acknowledge their men are very much aware of the need to take particular care in these days of relative calm in this war-weary city.

(On the last step leading to the roof of the Sahafi Hotel in Mogadishu; in bulletproof vest)

A Nigerian Soldier’s Story: “I am a man. I (am) supposed to get human rights.”

Nigerian soldier Umar Shantali, held captive for more than a month by supporters of fugitive Somali faction leader Mohammed Farah Aideed, met reporters in Mogadishu in mid-October 1993 for the first time to describe his ordeal. It was not a pleasant story but it did have a happy ending.

The 20-year-old soldier from northern Nigeria smiles a lot now and beams with enthusiasm as he thinks about returning home to see his parents and his girlfriend.

But six weeks ago, on September 5th (1993), Umar Shantali thought he would soon be dead when Somali militiamen opened fire on his unit's checkpoint in Mogadishu.

“I am fighting with them, fighting with them. At long last, my ammunition has finished so I don't have forward movement. So what I can do? I start prayer to my Lord to save me from the fire, to save me from the killing of Somali supporters of General Farah Aideed."

Seven other members of the Nigerian UN peacekeeping patrol were killed. But trooper Shantali, who sustained no wounds in the gunfight, survived -- thanks to a man who heard him praying and took him into his house.

Thirty minutes later, though, men he describes as members of General Aideed's militia came in a car and took him prisoner. It was to be the beginning of a terrifying ordeal -- one in which he says he was intentionally crippled by his captors who twisted one of his legs until the ligaments snapped to prevent him from escaping.

In the days that followed, he says he was beaten, threatened, kept naked in chains in a windowless room and not even allowed to go to the bathroom.

“They use chain, both my hand and my leg, and tied it. Those clothes, the one they give me on that day, they have remove it. I stay longer, getting to a month, without clothes. So I suffer a lot. I suffer a lot."

Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross were eventually allowed to see him and to give him some food and other supplies. But even then, he says his guards took half of what he was given and he was warned not to describe his treatment as bad.

Last week Mr. Shantali was released as a goodwill gesture by General Aideed, who also freed a captured American helicopter pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant.

Since then he has been recuperating from his ordeal at a military hospital in Mogadishu where doctors say he will enjoy a complete recovery. Is he angry at the treatment he received?

“Yes I am most annoyed because I know I am a man. I supposed to get human rights."

Umar Shantali says as a good Muslim he must forgive his captors. But still, he says he cannot put what happened out of his mind. Mr. Shantali expects to be flown home shortly to be reunited with family and friends and to rejoin his army unit, which has already gone back to Nigeria.

The Battle of Mogadishu, October 1993

What is often called “the battle of Mogadishu” occurred in mid-October, 1993. It is perhaps best known as the incident at the center of the book and film “Blackhawk Down.” US forces tried to capture leaders of warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed’s faction, triggering widespread violence in which 18 US soldiers died (with as many as 15-hundred Somali casualties.). A US helicopter pilot, Michael Durant, was captured by Aideed loyalists and held 11 days before his release. A Nigerian soldier, it is often forgotten, was also captured and eventually released. I made in to Mogadishu in time to witness the releases and reported the move led to a kind of expectant calm.

UN authorities reported only one overnight incident of violence: a mortar exploded just outside the main gate of Mogadishu's military airfield, killing one Somali and injuring seven others.

But a spokeswoman said it was the United Nation's assessment that while the explosion was very close to a UN held position, it was a case of Somali-vs-Somali violence -- and that the attack had not been directed against peacekeeping forces.

There was no elaboration offered on why UN officials came to that conclusion.

But the decision to downplay the incident was clearly part of the United Nations effort to respond to General Aideed's recent conciliatory attitude. The big question now is how UN officials will answer the faction leader's decision to release American pilot Michael Durant and Nigerian soldier Umar Shantali, his most important gesture since declaring a ceasefire.

Although UN authorities insist no deal was made to win their freedom, General Aideed coupled their release with an appeal for the freedom of some of his supporters who have been detained by the United Nations, a group that includes some of his closest advisors.

Diplomatic sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say they believe a reciprocal gesture may be in the offing -- and while any detainees who are freed may not include General Aideed's top aides, these sources insist it would still be an important sign of the UN's interest in cementing the current ceasefire and moving away from confrontation to dialogue.

These sources note other steps have already been taken to improve the overall atmosphere -- including a halt to test-firings just outside the Somali capital by flying US gunships -- as well as a cessation of low-level helicopter patrols over the city.

But the decision to effectively call off the UN hunt for Aideed, who is wanted in connection with a June massacre of Pakistani peacekeepers, and to shift emphasis back toward political reconciliation among Somalia's various factions, is the most significant move thus far.

Diplomatic sources say it was not an easy decision. “It took a hard swallow for everyone," was the way one source put it. But they note General Aideed, with gestures like the prisoner release, appears genuinely interested in responding to what he considers an admission of error on the part of the United Nations and the United States.

They say the fugitive faction leader has good reasons of his own to act now, including what are described as internal problems within his faction and clan. The sources believe the General's supporters, while loyal, are nonetheless war-weary, and they say some, especially elders of the General's clan, believe they stand to lose out in the long run, both economically and politically, by continuing to resist the United Nations while other clans cooperate.

The sources say they think the General now sees an opportunity to turn his military achievements to political gain and to reassert his bid to become Somalia's president. They say his representatives, in talks with US special envoy Robert Oakley this past week, made it clear they want back into the political process. The sources say what is crucial now is to establish a regular channel of communication between General Aideed's forces and the United Nations.

Other clan and faction leaders are said to be deeply worried about Aideed's possible re-emergence and rehabilitation and are starting to band together in opposition to him. The great unknown, diplomatic sources say, is whether they can all compete for the country's political future without once again resorting to violence.

Shot in Somalia: The Story Behind the Scars

First, let me tell you what it felt like to be shot.

Fragments from the bullets that come my way mix with wood splinters and shards of dishware and bits of glass as the dining table where I sit explodes.

I throw myself to the tiled floor in the dining room of Mogadishu’s Sahafi (Journalists’) Hotel --- not because of any injuries but as an instinctive reaction to the loud burst of machine gun fire that has caused the explosion of debris.

I crawl to the nearest wall where I wait until the shooting stops.

Then, from across the room, a voice asks: “Are you okay?”

I look down and see blood on my pants. “I’m okay...but there’s blood on my pants.”

A bearded man in jeans runs over. Part of a network TV crew that had been eating across the room, he pulls a large knife from his pocket and carefully cuts away the legs of my trousers. After a quick glance he says: “You’ve been shot through the legs.” I say it can’t be so.

But I am now aware of a throbbing. Like a bee sting. Or glass cuts. The sensation runs from my knees up through my thighs to the wall of my stomach. It does not really hurt. More of a discomfort.

Suddenly a group of uniformed Nigerians burst into the room, surrounded by journalists. The Nigerians are in a state of shock. An oh-shit-what-have-we-done kind of shock. The guy from AP asks what my middle initial is and how to spell my last name. I am already a story.

It was the evening of March 9th, 1993 and I had been in Mogadishu for two weeks, a kind of preparatory visit before actually moving fulltime to East Africa that summer.

Earlier in the day, I had been to Mogadishu’s port and filed a story on efforts to rebuild the Somali economy. I was tired as darkness fell and went to take an early dinner.

And that’s when it happened.

Unbeknownst to me, a Nigerian soldier, part of a peacekeeping contingent stationed at the Sahafi hotel, had a bad day. He was pissed about something, about someone, about who knows what. Witnesses say after visiting the unit’s post on the hotel roof, he stormed into the parking lot and hopped up into a military vehicle where a machine gun was mounted. They say he gripped the weapon and pulled the trigger, as if he were thinking “oh, if only I had so-and-so in my crosshairs, I’d let him have it.”

Only the weapon was loaded. And when he squeezed the trigger, he actually fired off five rounds of 7.62 ammo. (Officially, it is said he had an accident while clearing the weapon.)

The bullets went across the Sahafi parking lot and slammed into the wall of the hotel’s dining hall annex. They blew a hole in the wall but, good for me, the bullets splinter at that first impact and only fragments enter the room itself, sprayed wildly.

One fragment, the largest, obviously bounces off the floor because it penetrates the flesh behind my right knee. A second apparently bounces off the ceiling and slams down into the top of my right thigh. Other fragments come into the room more or less straight and pass across the top of my left leg, leaving a narrow bloody groove. Finally, a smattering of tiny bullet particles pepper the wall of my stomach, barely penetrating the skin.

The Nigerians are running around the dining room in the wake of this PR disaster, saying they are trying to organize transport to get me to the closest medical aid station --- the one up the road run by the Swedes.

But these guys are having serious problems getting their act together. (These are the same trigger-happy Nigerians who delayed my arrival at the Sahafi by nearly 24 hours two weeks earlier when they engaged in a daylong firefight with….well with no one, it seems. They just opened fire at some unspecified threat and kept firing, for hours, shutting down the entire area around the Sahafi in central Mogadishu, leaving me stuck at the airport. I was taken in by some French aid workers and Foreign Legionnaires who put me up overnight at their house in another section of the city.)

The other journalists saw the Nigerian’s confusion. The same TV crew in the dining hall when I was hit, guys from ABC, get their Land Cruiser and we pile in for the short ride up the street to the Swedish Field Hospital. (The Nigerians show up later.)

We interrupt the Swedes’ dinner. But never mind, they leap into action. I am X-rayed. Intravenously tapped. Probed. Then they pluck out the big fragment behind the knee. What about the one in the top of the thigh? We leave it. They say one day it may migrate to the surface of the skin. (It hasn’t yet.)

No one notices the little bits in my belly. (An AP photographer takes pictures and later gives me prints and negatives.)

Then the kicker. As they discharge me, I am handed a note. It says I should report back to the Swedish Field Hospital on March 15th --- in six days time to see the doctor. (I still have the paper.)

I am, well, incredulous. I know little about gunshot wounds but I do know enough to know the big danger is from infection. They have given me no antibiotics to take back to the hotel and take in the coming days. They say I received an injection of antibiotics. Obviously they thought it was enough. But wait. What about clean dressings? Not one. Where am I to find those? My journalist pals come through, promising they have stuff in their first aid kits. But wait. Am I going to even stay here another day?

We go back to the Sahafi. We are not fired upon even though we have violated one of the cardinal rules of life in Mogadishu: never go out after dark.

Though people laughed about the incident, as journalists usually will, most were deeply affected. Many got drunk that night. They plied me with booze but I was still on an adrenalin high and couldn’t sleep. A newly-arrived reporter from a major East Coast newspaper sits up with me most of the night, obviously shattered and wondering what he was doing there. As one of my fellow reporters later notes, this could have been a major disaster if the Nigerian soldier’s weapon had been aimed a couple inches higher, striking me in vital organs, or to the left, where the table of ABC guys were seated.

The next day, the Nigerian commander shows up at my room. Wearing wraparound I’m-so-cool sunglasses, he apologizes and presents me with a potted plant. I wonder where he found it. There are no florist shops in Mogadishu. As for his apologies, I refuse to accept them. (I hear later the soldier who fired the shots is badly beaten by fellow troops. I have never been able to confirm this. Frankly, I don’t care one way or the other.)

Meanwhile, laying in bed, I discover the bullet bits lodged in the surface skin of my itchy belly. I flick them out, one-at-a-time, with a fingernail.

That next day, US officials show up, having heard of the shooting incident. A detachment of Marines with Public Affairs Officer Cynthia Efird (now US Ambassador to Angola and one of the finest foreign affairs specialists I have ever known) whisk me to the US Army Field Hospital at Mogadishu Airport to be examined. The medics there tell me the Swedes did a fine job and I am good to go. I am given a hefty supply of antibiotics and some bandages and told it would be best to get out of the country fast because it is difficult to keep wounds clean here. I agree. My room at the Sahafi is about as clean as anything can be in Somalia, but part of the room (a kind of balcony linking the bedroom with the bathroom) is exposed to the outside and dust blows in throughout the day and night. And the view from my balcony is of a graveyard where dogs and other animals graze. The air is full of windblown particles…of what?

Ms. Efird arranges passage for me on a WFP flight that afternoon from Mogadishu to Nairobi and drops me at the airport. A colleague based in Nairobi arranges commercial flights for me from the Kenyan capital to Frankfurt and on to Washington.

The WFP flight has a Russian crew. I sit with the loadmaster in a kind of bunkroom between the cockpit and the cargo area. There is a samovar on board --- and vodka. And I speak Russian. It is a good flight.

But at Nairobi airport, a problem. Airport officials won’t let my colleague onto the tarmac to help me to my connecting flight or even to tell me what airline and where to go. I have to walk, legs heavily wrapped, to the terminal. A Kenyan baggage agent takes pity on me and leads me to his office. He phones around and finds out what flights I am on, then carries my luggage up stairs and down corridors to the proper check-in area. I stumble along slowly but make it.

The European airline upgrades me to business class and treats me wonderfully. At Frankfurt Airport, I go to the medical clinic and have my bandages changed. Then I go check in at the US carrier taking me to Washington. They are about as sympathetic as Somali warlords. The plane is full. No upgrade. No extra legroom.

At Dulles Airport, my wife is waiting. Thank God.

My editor sometime later suggests that perhaps I no longer want to make the planned move to Nairobi later that summer. Maybe I would prefer Europe, someplace safer.

Bugger that. The family has voted. We want Africa. And so we go. No regrets. Not then. Not now. My only regrets are for those whose lives I encounter and for whom I can do so little.

(And speaking of regrets, this footnote: not longer after we move to Nairobi, one of the first things I do is go to the Ngong Hills funeral of a young journalist --- one who didn’t survive Somalia. He was a young guy I had met in Mogadishu that February-March period in 1993. I helped him write his first-ever newspaper article to go with the photos he was already making a name for himself with. That young journalist was Dan Eldon, murdered by an enraged Somali mob while trying to photograph the aftermath of a US bombing strike. He was just the first of a number of colleagues whose paths crossed mine and whose lives were lost. I will never forget them. Nor should you. They paid the ultimate price for trying to bring you the real story. I hope you all appreciate that and keep it in mind. Phrases like “scattered exchanges of small arms fire and mortar blasts” are not just words on paper to the journalist who experiences them.)

Down at the Port in Mogadishu: Busy, Busy

The dramatically improved security situation in Mogadishu in early 1993 was accompanied by a revival in economic activity with private Somali merchants competing with multinational forces and international relief agencies for docking space at the ports. I went to the main port in March 1993 to see the activity:

The port of Mogadishu is a busy place these days. Naval vessels offload supplies for the multi-national coalition forces that have been trying to restore security; relief ships bring in much-needed humanitarian assistance.

But there is also a growing amount of commercial activity -- and during the past two months, more than two dozen dhows and other small vessels have been allowed to dock with private cargoes destined for the marketplace in Mogadishu.

Bob Harari of the World Food Program (WFP) calls that a promising sign.

“That is a good thing because it means that the traders are seeing Mogadishu as a more commercial place and a safer place and that is the whole object of why we are here.”

Mr. Harari should know. He has been involved in the WFP program designed, in his words, to kick-start the Somali economy. It's a scheme known as monetization. It's a complex word -- but it's really a rather simple concept.

Instead of giving away donated food, it's sold to local merchants -- and the money, in this case Somali shillings, is plowed back into public works projects.

“The WFP monetization program is a program whereby certain specifically allocated food commodities are sold to the merchants in Somalia as a means of a, helping to kick-start the economy (and) b, as a means of making local currency funds which are then dispersed on a practically return basis to quick action projects, labor intensive projects of the rehabilitation type.”

Though the program was delayed because of security problems, it has within the past several weeks put hundreds of metric tons of sugar, wheat flour and butter oil into the marketplace, generating nearly two billion shillings in sales. That's about half a million dollars which has been committed to road repair projects, garbage collection and more -- projects which have put unemployed Somalis back to work.

Diplomats and relief workers would like to see the program expand out of Mogadishu elsewhere into the country, but overall they hail the scheme -- and a Somali businessman who has taken part in it, and who asked to remain anonymous, says it has proven to be a good deal. He reports making a 15 to 20 percent profit on sales of sugar and flour, though he says fellow merchants who bought butter oil at the WFP auctions can at best only hope to break even since that commodity is not in much demand.

And what product is most in demand these days? The businessman says without hesitation, it is pasta -- a popular food that reflects Somalia's past links to Italy. It's in such demand and so potentially profitable that some risk-takers try to bring truckloads down from the north overland -- even though most of the time the shipments are hijacked.

This businessman isn't that risk-oriented but says he could double his money if he could get a shipload of pasta into port.

Which points up the biggest problem down at dockside in Mogadishu -- the lengthy delays commercial vessels must suffer before getting permission to berth. They have the lowest priority after military and relief cargoes.

Abdul Fatah is busily supervising the offloading of a dhow from Dubai packed with such commercial products as electrical wire, plastic tubing, mattresses and refrigerators. He says he waited offshore for more than two weeks before he could dock. Still he says it was worth the wait.

“Business always is good.”

But he qualifies his optimism. He says only as long as there is peace can there be business. If there is no peace, he says, no business.

For the moment, the situation in Mogadishu is secure enough for the marketplace to thrive. But as diplomats and coalition military officials constantly warn, that can change at any time.

Note: Later the same day I filed this report, 3/9/93, I was shot. I hope to provide a report on that incident, with photos, next. It will mark the first time I have ever written in detail about what happened. And I will post some never-before-seen photos.

Behind Bars in a Lawless Land: At Least The Warlords Didn't Steal the Bars

In early 1993, Somalia was a country best known for its violence, lawlessness and lack of civil authority. That's why I was astonished to discover that there was a functioning prison in Mogadishu -- a facility complete with prisoners, guards and a warden. I paid a visit in March 1993:

The central prison of Mogadishu is a 19th century fortress-like structure of crumbling stone and rusted iron bars perched on a wind-swept hill overlooking the harbor.

Behind its padlocked gates, in a sun-baked yard, some 30 prisoners crouch in the shade of two trees, quietly talking, watched by club-toting guards. Most are described as violent bandits and thieves -- some caught by the small Somali police force, others seized by troops of the US-led coalition.

Though the prison has a capacity of 12-hundred, and was the largest in Somalia, there are currently just some 60 to 70 men being held. They are being detained until there is a fully-functioning judicial system capable of disposing of their cases.

The warden is 52-year-old Colonel Abdulahe Mohamed Hirsi, who has run the facility since 1970. He greets visitors in a barren office, a small, dusty high-ceilinged room with scattered traces of faded blue paint on its pock-marked walls.

The Colonel laments the poor condition of his domain. And he complains that the coalition forces patrolling Mogadishu don't bring food often enough or even sufficient enough to feed the prisoners and the guards, and that they don't bring any water or fuel.

Although he is said to be allied with General Mohamed Farah Aideed, one of the country's most powerful faction leaders, he says he has no one else to turn to -- no Somali authorities -- for help.

But the warden takes evident pride in having kept the prison largely intact and minimally functional in recent years -- even though during the worst of the civil strife that tore apart Somalia he had to release prisoners because of a lack of food. He says if he and his staff of unpaid guards had not remained behind, looters would have stripped away such meager features as the prison's rotting doors, windows and bars.

Why did he stay on despite the obvious difficulties? Colonel Hirsi says he did so because, as he puts it, this is his home and because it was his duty. With the security situation now vastly improved because of the presence of foreign troops, he says he looks forward to a better future. By remaining as warden, he hopes he is doing his part to make that possible.

Mogadishu: Rambo Can't Help

As part of that introductory visit to Mogadishu in early 1993, I looked at health-related issues, noting that while there had been dramatic improvements resulting from humanitarian relief operations, United Nations officials still described the situation as an emergency with the status of children in particular precarious.

Most of the men and women wait stoically. But the cries of the children are haunting -- sick children suffering from malaria and measles, from respiratory disease and diarrhea.

They are gathered, several hundred in all, in a rubble-littered street in the heart of Mogadishu, next to a cathedral whose desecrated hulk bears testimony to the brutality of the civil war that took Somalia to the brink of total self-destruction.

They are waiting to enter a clinic set up by a multi-national group of volunteer military and civilian medical specialists, who over the next several hours will do what they can to alleviate the misery of the ailing with drugs, injections and minor surgical procedures.

The clinic is set up inside another war-scarred building known locally as the old cinema, a theatre that once showed such American-made movies as "Rambo," a saga of combat violence that remains a local favorite.

But films are now something of the past and doctors, nurses and medical aides are more popular this day, and the Somalis watch expectantly as one of the foreign physicians -- this one, an American Navy doctor -- moves quickly through the waiting throng, deciding just who will be allowed inside.

Ron Linfesty says mothers and children are his priority. He explains how he works.

“The key is, you can see a sick baby. He's lethargic, some of them are very thin. You can see infections and these are things you go through first and you try to find them and then you take them in to be seen by the doctors early on because otherwise you start seeing everybody and a lot of people just don't need to be seen by the doctor. You're wasting resources.”

Still, it is a painful process to watch, knowing that the decisions he makes could well determine which of those in the crowd live or die.

Dr: "What's wrong with him?

Interpreter: "Chest."

Dr: "What's wrong with his chest?"

[Somali voice]

Dr: "He's coughing?"

Dr: "It sounds like he's probably got pneumonia."

Such is the incredible extent of the health crisis in Somalia that in Mogadishu alone the odds are against most infants surviving until their first birthdays. According to a newly released study, conducted jointly by Somali health workers and one of the international humanitarian groups working in Somalia, 54-point-four percent of the babies born in the capital die within their first 12 months of life. Just over a third fall prey to the debilitating effects of diarrhea. Measles, pneumonia and malnutrition are the other leading causes of infant mortality.

Shawn Campbell is the executive director of Samaritan's Purse, a private relief group working in the old cinema clinic. He says malaria is also rampant -- and he reports another growing problem: tuberculosis.

“There's a lot of TB (tuberculosis), which is one of our great concerns right now simply because to begin people on TB treatment we need to see them on a regular basis otherwise we can't start them and it's been startling to us to find how many have TB.”

This is the second time the team has set up its clinic in the old cinema and the doctors are able to conduct a limited amount of follow-up with patients they've seen before. Some were, in the words of team members, in desperate shape when first examined but are now responding to treatment and looking much better. They say that gives them a great sense of satisfaction -- even though they know so much more needs to be done, so many more need to be helped.

Somalia 1993: Confiscating Weapons and Not Making a Dent in the Arsenal

In February 1993, I made my first visit to Somalia. This was just weeks after US forces landed on the beach outside Mogadishu to provide security for humanitarian relief operations. Soon after arriving (a chaotic shoot-em-up in the center of Mogadishu actually kept me from getting from the airport to the Hotel Sahafi for almost 24 hours), I wrote that one of the first jobs of the US-led coalition was to confiscate and destroy weapons held by Somalis. I reported on what turned out to be a fruitless exercise.

On almost any day in Mogadishu, the distant, dull thud of explosions can be heard over the din of the bustling city. While the blasts are often mistaken for renewed fighting, they are in fact something quite different -- ordnance experts with the US-led multi-national force in Somalia are destroying confiscated weapons.

The scope of the ongoing effort is staggering. With nearly three-thousand weapons seized in Mogadishu alone since December, Marine Colonel Fred Peck, the US military spokesman, makes almost daily announcements listing the kinds of arms falling into coalition hands.

“Two rocket launchers, two recoilless rifles, one four-barreled machine gun, four large caliber machine guns, one mortar, eight 122 millimeter rockets and a large amount of ammunition."

But those are only the more conventional kinds of weapons. At a US ammunition dump near Mogadishu's main airfield, Army Lt. Colonel Jack Herron eagerly describes some of the more unusual items that have also been taken.

“Well, outside of like bows and arrows, we've come up with 1888 German calvary carbines which are rather unusual to find in this part of the world. We've got a .458 Winchester magnum sporting rifle which is good for lions and tigers and bears..."

These weapons, along with some old machine guns, some swords, a rocket launcher and, yes, a bow and arrow, are on display near a trailer where hundreds of automatic rifles are stored. Strewn about in the sand behind the trailer are dismantled machine gun mounts, cannon barrels and ammunition magazines.

While the weapons are generally quite old and in poor condition, Army experts say many could easily be put back into use. So every few days, the confiscated equipment is taken out to dusty desert sites where it is destroyed, often with captured explosives.

Some of the arms are American made; some originated in the former Soviet Union -- which is no surprise since both countries had in the past provided substantial military aid to Somalia. But any kind of weapon manufactured anywhere in the world at any time can be found here.

Before the US led intervention last December, that huge variety of killing tools could be found for sale in Mogadishu's open air arms market. Coalition forces have closed it, but Somalis say if anyone is really desperate to buy a gun, private deals can still be arranged easily.

Knowing that -- and knowing the weapons' seizure and destruction process has been going on virtually non-stop for the past three months -- leaves Colonel Herron feeling somewhat frustrated.

“What you're picking up here is probably not more than a drop in the bucket of what's laying around in this country. The people have lots and lots of this stuff. The world has been funneling weapons into this place for years and years. So, are we making a dent? -- not much of one, I don't think."

The coalition has now begun saving some of the more modern and better maintained weapons that are uncovered. They are being held for that day sometime in the future when order once again prevails in Somalia and when the country once again has a recognized and accepted government and the need for a military force of its own.

On the Front Line in Southern Sudan 1994: Blood and Heat

And then this trip in November 1994, again to a part of southern Sudan quite close to the Ugandan border. As I noted at the time, one of Africa's longest-running wars was going on in southern Sudan, one of the least followed yet most violent and costly conflicts of all times. It was a conflict that was ethnic and religious, a conflict that had left the south a place of death and displacement, of starvation and suffering. In the original broadcast version, the opening lines were punctuated by the sound of explosions recorded during the trip. I’ll leave in the original notations. Hopefully I will one day soon post the audio tracks for this and other key reports.

Opens with shellfire] Day after day. [More shellfire] Week after week. [More gunfire]Month after month. [Still more guns] Year after year -- the fighting in southern Sudan goes on. It has gone on for the last 11 years and for 28 of the last 38 years since Sudan's independence. [More shooting]

Over one million people have died in the south over the past decade, most of them civilians; hundreds of thousands more have been displaced. Most of these now live on the edge of survival, vulnerable to starvation and disease as well as the fighting. They are completely dependent on relief supplies from the outside world, an outside world that often seems to have forgotten about this, one of the longest-running conflicts of all time. [Big boom]

The fighting is between the mainly Arab and Muslim fundamentalist government in Khartoum, which is bent on spreading Islam throughout Sudan, and southern rebels, who are predominantly Christian and black and who want to determine their own future. The rebel movement has been weakened in recent years by splits that led to the establishment of rival factions.

But the Sudanese government -- which declared a unilateral ceasefire during a recent mediation effort by neighboring countries -- is again pressing an offensive aimed at wiping out the main rebel force, the Sudan People's Liberation Army or SPLA, led by John Garang.

Nimule, on the border with Uganda, is one of the SPLA's last strongholds, and is considered a key target of the latest round of government attacks -- attacks that have included bombing raids by Sudanese aircraft and long-range shelling.

Kuol Manyang is the rebel area commander.

“The government forces are preparing now to move toward Nimule and they are determined to come and whatever peace people are talking about in Khartoum is not working with them. They are talking peace while preparing war. On our side we are determined to defend our territory and I am sure they will not make it.”

[Sound of rebel radio communications ordering up attack]

At the front line, along the Aswa river some 15 kilometers north of Nimule, rebel gunners prepare to retaliate for the government's latest shelling raids on the town. The Sudanese forces, numbering about four thousand, are dug into positions around an abandoned hospital. They have heavy artillery and tanks, but their advance on Nimule has been stopped -- by the rebel destruction of the only bridge across the Aswa, by counter-shelling from the SPLA, and by shortages of reinforcements and supplies. [More gunfire]

As the rebel guns open up on the government positions, SPLA soldiers at a rocky observation post chatter excitedly as they watch round after round explode among the sudanese forces. Thick columns of smoke rise from the government trenches. Occasionally spurts of flame are visible. There is no way to know how many casualties there are among the government troops, but it seems there must be many.

As the SPLA attack tapers off, the government's guns begin to retaliate. [Big boom] One shells from a Sudanese T-55 tank slam into the SPLA observation post, sending soldiers and a handful of foreign observers into bunkers, reeling from the shock of the explosions. A British journalist is wounded. [Sounds of reporters attending to wounded colleague in bunker.]

A 25-year-old rebel soldier named Moses Lemi Moi loses two fingers, severed by shrapnel. He shows no signs of pain as blood streams down what is left of his hand. He says it is his first wound in eight years of fighting. Another rebel, Simon Mading Atem, suffers a potentially serious wound in his groin. It is the second time the 26-year-old soldier has been injured. He has been fighting for the past ten years. He sits in a pool of blood that grows in size as he is later evacuated by car over a bumpy dirt-road to Nimule hospital.

The commander in charge of the rebel forces at the front is Obuto Mamur Mete. He says there is nothing unusual about what happened this day. It is just another day of fighting.

“This is actually, this is routine to us here especially here on this front and the rest of the front and what is happening here is also happening in Morobo. And it's all over the south.”

And all over the south, the suffering goes on -- day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.

The conflict in Sudan was more than just a civil war. Rebels and foreign officials alike said it was one that also posed a direct, destabilizing threat to neighboring countries like Uganda.

When Sudanese government forces open up with their artillery on rebel positions in and around the town of Nimule, one place the explosions are surely being heard is in Uganda. That's not just because Nimule is located on the border between the two countries. It's because foreign officials say the town is strategically more important to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni that it is to John Garang, leader of the major southern Sudanese rebel group, the SPLA. They say the rebels can always abandon the town and retreat into the bush in the event of a government advance to the frontier.

But a Sudanese takeover of Nimule would give Khartoum a direct door into Uganda -- one through which it could attempt to destabilize Mr. Museveni. It is an assessment of the geo-political realities in this part of Africa that is shared by the SPLA commander in the Nimule area, Commander Kuol Manyang.

“Some people may view it as a war between the SPLA and the Khartoum government. But the Khartoum government has more than that (in mind) and their intention is to conquer the region, topple the governments in the region and reinforce Islam in these areas because they are Islamic fundamentalists.”

The rebel commander maintains that even if the SPLA is defeated, the fighting still won't stop.

“They (Khartoum) will still pursue their objectives and that is into Uganda, Kenya and Zaire -- even Central African Republic. They will do so.”

Ugandan officials have already accused Sudan of supplying arms and other military equipment to rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rag-tag group that has been fighting in northern Uganda for several years. After a recent government offensive, the Ugandan rebels were forced to flee into Sudan. Ugandan military sources claim the rebel leader, Joseph Kony, subsequently met a Sudanese military delegation to prepare for his return to Uganda and a renewed effort to destabilize the northern part of the country.

For its part, Uganda has been accused of supporting the SPLA rebels in Sudan. Commander Kuol Manyang will not confirm or deny receiving such assistance.

“There is nobody that is alone in the world. Even Khartoum government is not alone, has friends of its own. And we also have friends."

Another rebel commander, Obuto Mamur Mete, charges that Khartoum's friends include Muslim fundamentalists from Arab countries who have actually joined the ranks of government forces fighting in southern Sudan. He indicates several were killed during a recent attempt to cross the Aswa river, the current front line in the war.

“They came very close to our forces under the cover of the gun and then when they came up to a distance of 120, 150 meters, then they got up and shouted "Allahu Ahkbar" -- all of them. And I think our forces did not give them time to finish calling "Allahu Ahkbar."

The commander says these fighters believe that God will help them on to victory. But he says the Mujahedin as they are called forget that there is but one God and, in his words, that the rebel soldiers too are the sons of God.

(The first two photographs shown here were taken by journalist and friend, Scott Peterson, author of "Me Against My Brother," which chronicled his experiences in Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda. He writes about the shelling incident on pages 214-215. The red kerchief used as a bandage on the rebel soldier was one I had been wearing that day.)

The Abandonment of Kaya: A Glimpse of Southern Sudan 1993

Posting that picture yesterday of myself writing outside a tukol in Bahr el-Ghazal province in Sudan reminded me of a couple of trips into that country which I wrote about but failed to post. The following was from my first trip into southern Sudan in August 1993, triggered when the UNHCR rep in Nairobi got word of the sudden exodus of thousands of Sudanese amidst heavy fighting between rebels and government troops in the southwestern part of the country near the border with Uganda and Zaire. I went to the tattered, largely deserted, rebel-held border town of Kaya.

A handful of soldiers from the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA) sit, relaxing and singing under the rusty corrugated metal roof of what was once the Mama Helena Bar in Kaya. They are among two dozen or so rebel fighters who are now the only visible occupants of this dusty SPLA-held border town.

Civilian residents, about 25 thousand of them, have fled into nearby Uganda, joined by thousands of other Sudanese from the surrounding countryside driven from their simple mud-and-thatch homes in fear of the fighting that has come dangerously close.

These SPLA rebels, with automatic weapons, hand grenades and bayonets by their side, do not seem despondent about the apparent threat they now face. But the threat is evident in the almost daily bombing raids staged by government aircraft on rebel positions just outside Kaya and in the recent loss of nearby Morobo, another town commanding the main relief supply route to the interior in this part of Sudan.

One of their senior commanders, Pitia Diligor, says it is all just a temporary setback caused by the government side's violation of a cease-fire agreement. He says Kaya will not fall and that the rebels will retake Morobo.

“We have now contained the situation. Our plan is to push them back.”

Commander Pitia cannot say when that might happen -- and his officers admit they feel defenseless against the government's air attacks without surface-to-air missiles.

But unless they break the government hold on the main road, they say relief supplies can no longer reach hundreds of thousands of famished Sudanese civilians to the north and west.

Panos Moumtzis, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, accompanied a small group of reporters and cameramen into Kaya. He says the sight of an abandoned town and the prospect of further hardship for southern Sudanese civilians is depressing.

“It's sad seeing a completely emptied town with nobody inside and the fact that the entire population fled a war because of fear of being attacked and persecuted and we would like to appeal for one more time to the government of Sudan to suspend any military attack in civilian held areas purely on humanitarian grounds. And we hope that this would be respected and there won't be any further fleeing or running away of refugees either to Uganda or Kenya or Zaire.”

Tens of thousands of southern Sudanese have taken refuge in neighboring countries as a result of the decade old war between the mainly Christian soldiers of the SPLA and the armed forces of the Islamic government in Khartoum.

The rebels and their supporters complain bitterly that this war has been largely overlooked by the international community.

The spiritual leader of Kaya's inhabitants, Episcopal Sishop Seme Solomona, asks why that is?

“I don't know what is happening with our own case in Sudan. Whereas in Somalia, there is intervention. In Bosnia, there is intervention, but we're just left to die like that and that really annoys us very much in the Sudan. I don't know whether we in the Sudan are not worth other people in the world or we're just left like that.”

The Bishop, now with his people in Uganda, says unless there is international intervention, he believes that one day the entire population of southern Sudan will have been, in his word, exterminated.

Still, the rebels do not lack for optimism. Although their movement has also been hurt by internal splits, the song they sing is of eventual victory -- a victory in which they will soon drive all the way to Khartoum and put an end to all their problems.

The main group of refugees from Kaya moved to Uganda. We visited two border camps just set up inside Uganda near the town of Koboko.

They come with containers of water and food, goats and chickens, tables, chairs and beds. A steady stream of men, women and children take what they can with them as they flee fighting that has drawn ever closer to their homes in Sudan. They are seeking refuge in Uganda -- and over 30 thousand have come so far, including the entire civilian population of the Sudanese border town of Kaya.

Chaggasohn Aki, the aid worker from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is in charge of one of the new refugee camps in Uganda. He says most of those who have arrived left their homes because they were scared by recent Sudanese government bombing raids.

“The main reason why they came across, they were scared of the bombing on the outskirts of Kaya and that is the main thing, the fact which caused them to run away from there because they were scared since the bombing was coming closer to their town of Kaya -- that's why they came all out of the country.”

The camp he runs just outside the Ugandan town of Koboko is known as the water dam place or “Kochi," the name of a small river running nearby. Several hundred families are now living there in what was once an open field. Some have tents. Others have constructed makeshift shelters from logs and tree branches. Still others sit in the open -- exposed to the rain that falls almost daily in the late afternoon and turns the ground into a sea of mud, exposed to the nighttime cold that many, especially the children, lack the clothing to fight off.

Chaggasohn Aki says the refugees are getting enough food and there are sufficient medical supplies to meet their health requirements. But, he says, he needs more tents.

“If they could send us more tents I think it would be better because you have seen how it has just rained. It is cold at night.”

The other camp is nearby and is called Gbenga. It is located in a largely forested area and for over a couple of kilometers refugees to the left and right of a dirt road running through the camp have carved out living space for themselves among the trees.

Some of the more enterprising have set up little open-air shops, selling cigarettes, drinks and food. Local Ugandan officials say they don't anticipate too many problems in absorbing the refugees. They say most of those coming from Sudan are from the same ethnic group as the people living on the Ugandan side of the border.

In fact, one official describes the coming of the Sudanese as what he calls "a kind of return match" -- and recalls how many Ugandans fled into Sudan in 1979 during the fighting that accompanied the overthrow of Idi Amin, the former Ugandan dictator who had a home in the nearby district capital of Arua.

The refugees say they are waiting for calm to return to their side of the border before they return home. It's not clear when that might be, but their spiritual leader, Episcopal Sishop Seme Solomona of Kaya, is building a home for himself in Uganda and does not sound too optimistic about going back soon.

“We're very tired, we're exhausted, we've lost everything and we just are here for our lives now.”

More than 300 thousand refugees from Sudan are now in Kenya, Uganda and Zaire -- all driven from their homes by the decade old war between the mainly Christian rebel movement and the armed forces of the Islamic government in Khartoum.

Perfect African Moments Remembered

In January 1996, I was asked to reflect on my experiences as I prepared to move from Nairobi to Johannesburg, a move my family readily agreed to in order to extend our stay in Africa. I noted, as became the unofficial motto of the East Africa Correspondents Association, that reporters often joked about covering the five D's -- the dead, the dying, the diseased, the displaced and the depressing. Add to that another D for dangerous. But there were and still are moments of rare beauty:

Like the haunting voice of a young Somali boy singing for visitors at a Koranic school in a remote town in southwestern Somalia.

Or the cries of a quail in the half-light of dawn in a Kenyan game reserve.

Or the fearsome pounding thunder of a huge male chimpanzee proclaiming to all within earshot that he is the boss, even though his turf is a cage in an animal orphanage in Burundi.

That orphanage, founded by renowned conservationist Jane Goodall, was the location of one of the more unusual and light-hearted moments I have experienced in more than a quarter century of reporting. It came when I jokingly attempted to interview a baby chimpanzee being held by Aly Wood, one of the supervisors at the facility. The chimp decided to eat the microphone.

Alex: “Hello Mr. Chimp! [sound distortion as chimp bites off end of foam windshield on microphone followed by laughter] That's okay, I knew that was a likely occurrence. "

Aly Wood: “And that's 'Miss' Chimp anyway."

Alex: “We've just lost the end of the microphone windscreen but it's no problem."

On that trip to Burundi another journalist and I thought we had uncovered a side of life not previously known about the small hilly country. It was something that came up as we drove down through northern Burundi towards the capital, Bujumbura. After going through the usual border immigration formalities, a later customs checkpoint and a security roadblock, our car was stopped by a policeman yet one more time.

He first examined the car papers, then walked to the front of the vehicle and motioned to the driver to turn on the headlights...then the turn signals, left and right...then to sound the horn, then to turn on the windshield wipers.

A car safety check? In Africa? Where overloaded vehicles with no brakes and bald tires are commonplace? Could this be a story? Wow! Safety-conscious Burundi, indeed!

But the whole idea collapsed several kilometers further towards Bujumbura...where in a death-defying display of obvious disregard for safety, we saw dozens of bicyclists, sometimes five to a vehicle, clinging to the back ends of trucks, hitching rides up some of the tortuous hills that characterize the northern Burundi countryside.

The riders, shrouded in thick black exhaust belching from the rear of the trucks, could easily have been dislodged by potholes or debris and fallen into the paths of oncoming cars.

An altogether different and even more dangerous truck ride was one I and a small group of reporters experienced in southern Sudan.

“I'm riding in the back of a truck that carries a very large four-barreled machine gun, heavy-duty machine gun I'm told by the forces of the Sudan People's Liberation Army who seized this truck from the government side, the Sudanese government side, and are now using it to ferry men and equipment from their base in Nimule, which is right on the Ugandan border, a distance of about 15 kilometers to a point we're approaching now which is the frontline right along the Aswa River. Some 37 hundred Sudanese government forces, we are told, are dug in positions around what used to be a hospital. The bridge across the river Aswa right in front of that hospital has been blown up by the rebels and the government forces cannot advance."

But the government side could shoot -- and shoot they did after the rebels opened up with heavy artillery, mortars and machine guns. From a number of stone bunkers on a hill off to the side of the main line of fire we watched the exchange.

Initially the only hint of danger came when one of the reporters in our party discovered she was sharing her bunker with some unwelcome wildlife.

“Hey do you guys mind if I come over to your bunker? There are two snakes keeping me company here."

But soon our position became targets of the Sudanese government gunners. Tank shells began thundering closer and closer until finally there was a direct hit. Two Sudanese rebels were wounded, one loosing at least one finger, sliced off by a shell fragment. A British reporter took another fragment in the back of his leg.

Because of the shelling there was no way our party could return to where the truck was parked. So we began an arduous trek overland to safety.

There is nothing glamorous or romantic or particularly thrilling about being shot at, or tending to a wounded colleague, or dealing with death. But it is something journalists in east Africa must learn to deal with. It is a reality.

There is also violent death. And for violent death on an unparalleled scale, nothing can compare to what happened in Rwanda in 1994 and no journalist could possibly have been fully prepared for the horror of what we experienced there. I tried to be as dispassionately professional as possible as I toured my first massacre site, in a church complex in a remote village called Nyarubuye, a village that was virtually abandoned by all but the dead; a village set among lovely rolling hills; a village marked by wild explosions of colorful flowers.

The pain and suffering and emotional impact came through as I narrated my initial impressions on tape.

“The stench is really overwhelming and I've put a mask on so that may muffle my voice. But in this courtyard there are easily a hundred bodies, all of them very badly decomposed. Many of them with obvious hack marks. And here is a room of horror: dozens upon dozens of bodies, piled on one another. This village, we are told by a woman who lives here, was a predominantly Tutsi village and that this massacre was carried out by predominantly Hutu Interahamwe, the dreaded militia whose name is so associated with the unspeakable atrocities of this war. For a place of such idyllic beauty, it will certainly be remembered for one of the most unspeakable horrors of this war."

Perhaps because of the truly awful nature of what happened at places like Nyarubuye, it was especially uplifting several weeks ago when I and one of the other journalists who had been to that massacre site were able to witness what could best be described as evidence of a rebirth in Rwanda.

At a church in the capital, Kigali, we watched two former rebel soldiers exchange wedding vows. The couple had agreed to marry if they survived the civil war and the genocide that followed. The ceremony was a bit stiff and formal. But things loosened up later at the reception. Traditional dancers and musicians performed to the delight of the guests.

As my colleague and I sat there and listened, we looked at one another and smiled. It was as perfect an African moment as there could be.