Is Somalia's Rebel Aidid Another Mad Mullah?

MOGADISHU, Somalia - It was more than 80 years ago that a radical Islamic cleric called the Mad Mullah taught the British some hard lessons about the perils of fighting a guerrilla war on Somalia's inhospitable terrain.

For two decades at the beginning of this century, Mohamed Abdullah Hassan ambushed British troops and managed to evade aerial bombardment.

In his unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the British protectorate in Somalia, the Mad Mullah ended up killing more Somalis than British soldiers. But by the time he escaped in 1920 to Ethiopia, where he died, he had become a hero in Somali folklore and a statue was erected in his honor in front of Mogadishu's now-destroyed parliament building.

Many here believe Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a factional militia leader battling - and evading - the United Nations and the U.S.-led international military force that it commands here, has become a modern-day version of the Mad Mullah and may even have pretensions to the same folk-hero status.

"This guy is crazy," said a U.S. official involved in the hunt for Aidid, who is the subject of a U.N.-arrest warrant.

Aidid's many Somali supporters see the same thing, but through their own prism. When Ahmed Rage Abdi, 75, a senior elder of Aidid's Habr Gedir subclan, said, "Maybe Aidid will be another Mad Mullah," he did so with an admiring chuckle.

For 87 days, Aidid, like Mohamed Abdullah before him, has evaded capture and launched a bloody guerrilla war against what he has called foreign military occupation. While Mohamed Abdullah's holy war against the British principally was religious in its appeal, Aidid's - though embracing the Muslim faith that almost all Somalis share - is rooted more in nationalism.

U.S. forces spearheading the campaign against him, like the British eight decades earlier, are relying on air power - and so far finding it ineffective.

Casualties continue to mount on both sides, and one-time public boosters of the military campaign against Aidid now are openly wondering whether he will ever be caught, and whether he may end up winning through attrition.

"It's like a remake of `The Fugitive,' " said a U.N.-military officer. "We're using a sizable military force with technology designed to fight wars to do a manhunt in a city of 1 million."

And in the war of attrition, many U.N. and U.S. officials concede that Aidid has had a pretty good week.

Aidid's militiamen recently ambushed Nigerian soldiers serving in the U.N. contingent. The toll: seven Nigerians dead, seven others wounded and another captured and still held captive.

That attack was followed by what appeared to be another carefully planned ambush - this one using heavy weapons, such as 106mm recoilless rifles that destroyed a Pakistani M-48 tank. Aidid's militia suffered heavy casualties, but the battle turned into a public-relations disaster for the United States after U.S. military officials acknowledged that U.S. helicopter gunships had fired on Somali crowds that included women and children who were described as "combatants."

Aidid has made it a common practice to use women and children in battle, military officials say, and, as one U.N. officer put it, he "has been remarkably effective at it."

While fighting raged in the capital, the U.S. Senate debated whether U.S. troops should remain in Somalia.

It passed a nonbinding resolution requesting presidential notification for future military operations here after mid-November, but the debate itself underscored Americans' unease over a military commitment - involving about 3,100 support troops and 1,800 combat troops - that many see as having few clear goals and no definable end.

By emerging unscathed after such a tumultuous week, despite the formidable forces and high technology arrayed against him, Aidid has shown himself adept at fighting a war of attrition - the sort of conflict in which survival is all that counts.

"I think at the moment he may be winning," said one frustrated U.N. official.

"Nobody believes time is on his side, but if (the U.N. operation here) doesn't get off its ass and start doing something, I think the international community is going to get tired of this soon."

U.N. and U.S. officials depict Aidid as a hunted man, a fugitive living in constant fear of arrest, suffering from high blood pressure and hypertension and unable to sleep nights because of ubiquitous helicopter patrols.

As part of what appears to be a disinformation campaign to discredit Aidid, military officials whisper to reporters that their manhunt has forced him to move around the city in various disguises, often dressed as a woman.

But people who have seen him in recent days and weeks describe a man who is confident, self-assured and certain of ultimate victory and vindication.

"He's worried, naturally," said Rage, who heads a "supreme council" of 25 Habr Gedir elders and says he has seen Aidid in the last two weeks.

But, he said, Aidid "is convinced that he will win. For him, it's a principle thing. He said, `I may be killed, but I don't care, because I am fighting for my people.' "

He added that Aidid "sleeps very well," unconcerned about the helicopters, and "will not be arrested - ever."

Aidid is so confident of victory, Rage said, that the warlord has turned down two offers from Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi to follow the Mad Mullah's example and go into exile in Ethiopia.

Eritrea is said to have made a similar offer but, Rage said, "Aidid doesn't want to leave his country."

A U.N. official who has seen Aidid recently while trying to arrange negotiations with Aidid's faction said the militia leader was "totally confident."

"He's driven 18,000 troops off the streets, in his view," the official said. "He's driven the force commanders and political chiefs out of their buildings and into the (fortified U.S. embassy) compound. That's quite a victory for one man."

All those who have had recent contact with Aidid say - and U.N. officials tend to agree - that he will not be apprehended without a fight and that casualties on both sides may be heavy. Osman Ato, Aidid's chief financier, said Aidid's bodyguards are equipped with surface-to-air missiles and other heavy weapons to ensure that any arrest attempt is bloody.