In­tro­duc­tion: Michael Par­enti on So­ma­lia and Op­er­a­tion Re­store Hope

“Just days be­fore he left of­fice in Jan­u­ary 1993, Pres­i­dent Bush sent troops to So­ma­lia sup­pos­edly to safe­guard food dis­tri­b­u­tion to its hun­gry peo­ple. Here seemed to be an­other wor­thy hu­man­i­tar­ian cause. But why would Bush, who spent an en­tire ca­reer in pub­lic of­fice un­trou­bled by poverty and hunger at home and abroad, sud­denly be so moved to fight famine in So­ma­lia? Why not any of the other African coun­tries in which famine raged? And why such an elab­o­rate mil­i­tary un­der­tak­ing for hu­man­i­tar­ian ‘famine re­lief’?” (“Against Em­pire.” San Fran­cisco: City Lights Books, 1995, p. 122).

Per­haps the fol­low­ing de­clas­si­fied doc­u­ments will help ex­plain why So­ma­lia was the cho­sen coun­try. The fol­low­ing doc­u­ments have been ob­tained us­ing the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act, and are posted on­line for the first time.

As of now, no doc­u­ments con­cern­ing the ini­tial con­tact be­tween Conoco and the US gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing Op­er­a­tion Re­store Hope have been made avail­able. This ini­tial con­tact came in at least 1991, as is demon­strated in “Mo­gadishu As­sess­ment Mis­sion, Oct. 17-20: Pre­lim­i­nary Re­port” (22 Oc­to­ber 1991) be­low.

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Document Collection

Conoco: “This goose lay­ing golden eggs”

“Pe­tro­leum Ex­plo­ration: Conoco Searches for Oil in So­ma­lia.” Ca­ble from US Em­bassy in Mo­gadishu to State De­part­ment Head­quar­ters. 21 March 1990. Ca­ble Num­ber: Mo­gadishu 02844. Source: Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­lease (2006-01-286) to Keith Year­man.

“The largest and most pur­pose­ful en­ter­prise go­ing on in So­ma­lia at the pre­sent time is Cono­co’s quest for oil…Conoco is in­vest­ing in oil ex­plo­ration in So­ma­lia on a scale un­matched by its ri­vals, build­ing roads and airstrips, char­ter­ing one of the na­tional air­line’s three planes full time, and send­ing seis­mic sur­vey teams to the edge of [So­ma­liland Na­tional Move­ment]-con­trolled ter­ri­tory… The ben­e­fits to all if Conoco finds oil, and the im­me­di­ate ben­e­fits to the econ­omy of Cono­co’s spend­ing, whether oil is found or not, are so ap­par­ent that no one has tried to kill this goose lay­ing golden eggs…

“The most im­por­tant part of the ‘whole story,’ per­haps, is that even if Conoco finds oil in sig­nif­i­cant amounts, there will have to be ad­di­tional steps and much more in­vest­ment be­fore So­ma­lia can ben­e­fit. The first pre­req­ui­site will be that So­ma­lia achieve in­ter­nal peace. [Pres­i­dent of Conoco So­ma­lia Ray­mond] Marc­hand ex­plains to [So­mali gov­ern­ment] of­fi­cials that if there is no peace, then nei­ther Conoco nor any­one else will be able to get the oil out. A pipeline, pump­ing sta­tion and ter­mi­nal would cost in the neigh­bor­hood of UDS 500 to 800 mil­lion…”

The Kott Del­e­ga­tion

The U.S. Em­bassy in Mo­gadishu was closed on Jan­u­ary 5, 1991, due to the se­cu­rity sit­u­a­tion in So­ma­lia. The for­mer em­bassy build­ing was heav­ily dam­aged in the fol­low­ing months. So­mali diplo­matic af­fairs were, in the in­terim, run out of the US Em­bassy in Nairobi, Kenya. In Oc­to­ber 1991, a State De­part­ment team headed by Bob Kott (of the African Af­fairs Bu­reau) was dis­patched to So­ma­lia to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­ity of open­ing a new, scaled-down em­bassy. Of par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance are two doc­u­ments con­cern­ing this del­e­ga­tion. In the first, “Mo­gadishu As­sess­ment Mis­sion,” Conoco as­sured the State De­part­ment of the del­e­ga­tion’s se­cu­rity. This drew a sharp re­buke from the Deputy Chief of Mis­sion in Nairobi, Robert South­wick. The sec­ond doc­u­ment, “Mo­gadishu As­sess­ment Mis­sion, Oct. 17-20: Pre­lim­i­nary Re­port,” stresses the role the US gov­ern­ment should play in sup­port­ing US cor­po­ra­tions in So­ma­lia, “es­pe­cially in the oil sec­tor.”

1. “Travel of Mo­gadishu As­sess­ment Team.” Ca­ble from State De­part­ment Head­quar­ters to US Em­bassy in Nairobi. 10 Oc­to­ber 1991. Ca­ble Num­ber: State 336658. Source: Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­lease (2005-05-361) to Keith Year­man. The State De­part­ment an­nounces Bob Kott will lead a del­e­ga­tion to Mo­gadishu to “as­sess the fea­si­bil­ity of re-open­ing a small em­bassy in Mo­gadishu.

2. “Mo­gadishu As­sess­ment Mis­sion.” Ca­ble from US Em­bassy in Nairobi to State De­part­ment Head­quar­ters. 11 Oc­to­ber 1991. Ca­ble Num­ber: Nairobi 24866. Source: Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­lease (2005-05-183) to Keith Year­man. John Fox, Po­lit­i­cal Of­fi­cer at the Em­bassy in Nairobi, spoke with a source (likely Marc­hand) to “as­sess the sit­u­a­tion in Mo­gadishu as it re­gards the safety of the [State De­part­ment] as­sess­ment mis­sion sched­uled to ar­rive there next week.

“Conoco, a non-[US gov­ern­ment] en­tity, has ba­si­cally given the ‘green light’ for this mis­sion. It is not Cono­co’s call to do so. Cono­co’s se­cu­rity is ex­cel­lent. Their guards are well-paid and well-armed and the com­pa­ny’s se­cu­rity zone is ad­ja­cent to the K-7 com­pound, the fo­cal point of in­ter­est for this as­sess­ment team. In all like­li­hood, team mem­bers, un­der the Conoco um­brella, will en­counter no se­cu­rity prob­lems on the ground, do their busi­ness and go home. Then again, the se­cu­rity sit­u­a­tion could change sud­denly and dra­mat­i­cally (it al­ready has nu­mer­ous times since the fall of the Barre gover nment) and some­one could get hurt. If the lat­ter be the case, Conoco, which has no le­gal re­spon­si­bil­ity to pro­tect USG per­son­nel, will say ‘we tried our best’ and the USG is faced with both an em­bar­rass­ing po­lit­i­cal and le­gal dilemma. A mis­sion of this im­por­tance may war­rant the use of US mil­i­tary or [Diplo­matic Se­cu­rity Ser­vice] as­sets.”

3. “Mo­gadishu As­sess­ment Mis­sion, Oct. 17-20: Pre­lim­i­nary Re­port.” Ca­ble from US Em­bassy in Nairobi to State De­part­ment Head­quar­ters. 22 Oc­to­ber 1991. Source: Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act re­lease (2004-04-554) to Keith Year­man. This is a re­port on the Kott del­e­ga­tion. The pur­pose was to “eval­u­ate the po­lit­i­cal and se­cu­rity sit­u­a­tions and to ex­am­ine avail­able prop­er­ties, in or­der to give the de­part­ment the in­for­ma­tion re­quired to make a de­ci­sion re­gard­ing the re-open­ing of a small diplo­matic mis­sion in Mo­gadishu.”

“There are, at pre­sent, few Amer­i­can cit­i­zens in So­ma­lia. Conoco (So­ma­lia), Ltd., how­ever, an­tic­i­pates re-com­menc­ing oil ex­plo­ration work in south­ern So­ma­lia within the next sev­eral months. Ac­cord­ing to Conoco, this would in­volve the in­tro­duc­tion of 50-60 Am­cit em­ploy­ees into So­ma­lia. If the se­cu­rity sit­u­a­tion does not de­te­ri­o­rate, it would be re­al­is­tic to pro­ject a to­tal pres­ence of around 100 Am­c­its in south­ern So­ma­lia by the mid­dle of 1992. Such a com­mu­nity would jus­tify a con­sular pres­ence in Mo­gadishu.”

“There are, at pre­sent, only two US firms (Conoco and Turnkey) op­er­at­ing in So­ma­lia. Oth­ers, es­pe­cially in the oil sec­tor, are con­sid­er­ing re­sum­ing op­er­a­tions. These firms will some­times re­quire the type of diplo­matic sup­port best pro­vided by a per­ma­nent diplo­matic mis­sion

to be con­tin­ued……..next week