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 )