From the Ashes, a Chunk of America Beckons in Somalia

[milmor_1]

Its difficult to know what forum to post this thread in, so I thought Chit Chat to be the best.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/wo...gewanted=print

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
MOGADISHU, Somalia, Sept. 23 — They call her the “Black Hawk Down” lady.

And in the corner of her dirt yard, beneath rags drying in the sun and next to a bowl of filthy wash water, she keeps a chunk of history that most Americans would probably like to forget.

It is the battered nose of a Black Hawk helicopter, from one of the two that got shot down in Mogadishu on Oct. 3, 1993, in an infamous battle that killed 18 Americans, led to a major foreign policy shift and spawned a big movie.

The Black Hawk Down lady stands fiercely at her gate and charges admission to see it.

“You, you, you,” she said on a recent day, jabbing her finger at three visitors. “Pay, pay, pay.”

American military officials, who were sent e-mail messages with pictures, said the nose piece did appear to be from one of the Black Hawks brought down that day. But they said they had no interest in retrieving it, for a memorial or any other purpose.

So it remains a strange tourist attraction in a strange and war-weary place, where bazooka guns hang in the market next to slabs of fly-bitten goat meat, and children at school casually recite passages about massacres in English class. And just as the Black Hawk Down episode has special significance for Americans, it does, too, for many Somalis, who take enormous pride in having humiliated a superpower that day.

The Black Hawk Down lady’s real name is Hawa Elmi. She grew up a nomad, herding camels in Somalia’s deserts, and never went to school. She moved to Mogadishu in the 1960’s, when it was a showcase of Italian architecture, a gem along the sea.

She is 66, loud and excitable. The other day during an interview, every answer came in shouts.

On the afternoon of Oct. 3, 1993, Ms. Elmi said, she was sitting in her yard, minding her own business, when a helicopter slammed into the back of her house. A task force of Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos were trying to snatch the henchmen of one of Mogadishu’s most notorious warlords, Mohammed Farah Aidid. But the mission quickly went sideways — a soldier slipped off a rope while rappelling from a helicopter, a rescue convoy got lost in the maze of Mogadishu’s streets and Somali militiamen plucked off two Black Hawks with rocket-propelled grenades.

The neighborhood closed in on the trapped Americans, and by the time the battle was over, 18 elite American soldiers were dead and dozens were wounded and approximately 1,000 Somalis had been killed.

A few days later, President Clinton began drawing up plans to pull out the troops.

Ecstatic Somalis ransacked the wreckage, stripping the helicopters and melting down the metal. Some people even ripped insignia patches off the bodies of the soldiers to keep as grim souvenirs.

Maxamed Cali Geedi, who fought for Mr. Aidid years ago, still carries a set of insignia from an American sergeant’s uniform.

“To remember my friends who were killed,” he explained.

But Ms. Elmi had a different plan. Her husband had died a long time ago, and she had six children to feed. Two of her older sons were killed, she said, when the helicopter crashed. She dragged the cracked nose piece, about five feet across but actually pretty light because it was made of fiberglass, back to her house. She lives in the middle of a neighborhood named Tokyo, because it is so packed. It is a warren of tin shacks and sandy streets, as shot up and smashed by cannon fire as the rest of Mogadishu.

Ms. Elmi began humbly, charging neighborhood boys the equivalent of a few cents to get a peek at her one exhibit, the last known chunk of wreckage from what Somalis refer to as Ma-alinti Rangers, the Day of the Rangers.

But after the movie “Black Hawk Down” came out in 2001 — and pirated copies found their way to Mogadishu — business boomed.

“So many people came, I cannot count,” she said. “White people, brown people, black people.”

When asked why they come, she snapped: “How should I know? Do you think I am mind reader?”

The entrance fee is now around $3 for foreigners; locals get a discount and pay 75 cents.

Anthony C. Zinni, a retired American general who helped oversee operations in Somalia in 1993, said he thought it was a little weird that residents in a city littered with so much war wreckage would pay anything to see this. “Nothing, however, about Somalia surprises me,” he added.

Ms. Elmi said that foreign visitors (most likely journalists and aid workers) usually tipped well, but that many times rude militiamen barged in and refused to pay at all.

Those days are largely over. Mogadishu is now ruled by Islamist clerics who have delivered a level of order and stability that the city had not seen for years, though that may not last. Part of the reason they rose to power was that the Islamists tapped into anti-American sentiment by challenging warlords backed by the United States.

Some people say they fear the Islamists will impose a draconian version of Islam in Somalia, which up until recently had been relatively secular.

But Ms. Elmi said she loved the Islamists. And she has her own reasons.

“They bring peace,” she said. “And peace brings tourists.”

[Woodmonkey]

Interesting story.

Also, the same was said of Hitler as a reason many backed him - that he brought peace and prosperity.