Taking on the Thugs

By Bruce W. Nelan

ONCE AGAIN THOUSANDS OF AMERIcan soldiers are donning flak jackets and moving into harm's way on a far-off continent. The soldiers of Operation Restore Hope will be spending Christmas in Somalia, and some may die there. Under the United Nations' aegis but their own flag, they will be conducting an experiment in world order: armed peacemaking, rather than peacekeeping. Anarchy rules in Somalia, and the U.N. has resolved specifically to intervene in a nation's domestic affairs to rescue a civilian population that is dying at the rate of a thousand a day, not just from bullets but from starvation as well.

As announced so abruptly by George Bush, America's mission to the Horn of Africa is intended to be a quick fix, a jolt of military muscle to make the country safe for humanitarian aid. Once the so-called secure environment for relief operations ordained by last week's Security Council resolution has been achieved, U.S. troops are supposed to hand over their responsibilities to a smaller, traditional force of U.N. peacekeepers, not yet formed or financed. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater even suggested that the U.S. military operation could be over by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

That all sounded too simple to be true. At this time of year, with wrenching pictures of starving Somalis on view, anyone who raises questions about succoring them risks being labeled heartless. Nor is there a strong case to be made against applying a moral standard to diplomacy: using military might in the name of humanitarianism is an estimable principle.

Yet Bush has sprung a very big operation on Americans without clearly defining his short- and long-term goals. Washington talks about a swift and simple job of pacification that leaves the difficult -- and in the end essential -- rebuilding of the country to others. From specific details about the military operation to large issues of global responsibility, the decision to intervene raises important questions about what it will really take to restore hope to Somalia.

In many ways, Bush's impulsive plan seems to mismatch means and ends. The narrowly conceived military action will bring food to the famished while U.S. troops are present, but what happens when they leave? And how exactly do they achieve the Security Council's prescribed goal of a "secure environment" ? Said Britain's ambassador to the U.N., Sir David Hannay: "It's like the elephant coming out of the jungle. You know it when you see it."

There is no agreement on whether the U.S.-led troops are only to guard supply routes or are to go out and disarm the thousands of ragtag fighters who are terrorizing the country. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told the Security Council he wanted the intervention force to disarm clan fighters and confiscate their heavy weapons. Officials in Washington said only that they were considering various methods of taking weapons out of circulation, but there was no way all of them could be seized. Nor is January a realistic date for departure: it will be a month before all the force's 28,000 U.S. troops arrive. General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated that two or three months seemed more likely.

In strictly military terms, the venture is not especially daring or dangerous. First to go in will be 1,800 Marines from an amphibious task force that was diverted to the Somali coast two weeks ago. They are equipped for action and backed by two dozen Cobra attack helicopters. Somalia has no planes or helicopters in flying condition, so the U.S. will control the air. Once those units take over the airport in the capital of Mogadishu, they will be joined by 16,000 more Marines, 10,000 Army infantry troops and at least 5,000 soldiers from France, Canada and other countries.

When he addressed the nation on Friday, Bush stressed the humanitarian nature of the operation. He described the suffering in Somalia as a shocking tragedy and argued that outside troops were necessary; only the U.S. could provide them. He also made it clear that the U.S. would not tolerate any opposition; indeed, the Security Council resolution suspended the rules that usually limit U.N. peacekeepers from shooting first. The Pentagon was not certain what kind of reception to expect from Somali gunmen, armed mostly with $ rifles and mortars, but spokesman Pete Williams said the U.S. was "not looking to go in with guns blazing."

In an attempt to head off armed resistance, U.S. officials are meeting in Ethiopia with representatives of the major Somali factions. Some clan leaders, including the Mogadishu kingpin Mohammed Farrah Aidid, claim that they welcome U.S. intervention; Aidid even staged pro-American parades last week. But Western analysts suspect he simply hopes to improve his own position. If he and his rivals feel power slipping away, their attitude could quickly change. Clan chieftains do not, in any case, control all the thugs marauding through the country.

Many of the incoming soldiers will turn to civic tasks like road building and providing medical care, making their presence less threatening. But if hostility does develop between the clans and the international force, relief workers worry that their efforts -- the point of the humanitarian exercise -- may suffer. "We have people out there in the bush saving lives," says Ben Foot, a field representative of the Save the Children Fund. "We would like someone to explain what is going to happen, because we're going to be in the middle of it."

Somalia is a country with no working economy, no police force, no government. Unless a contingent of peacemakers stays long enough -- which could be years -- to fashion some kind of effective national authority, the causes of Somalia's chaos will only re-emerge. Many experts doubt that military steps to guard food convoys can, or should, be separated from rebuilding the nation. The use of troops initially is a good idea, says Howard Bell, acting director of CARE-Somalia, "but only if it is put within a well- thought-out program of national recovery that involves factional leaders, community elders and clan representatives." A Western diplomat in Somalia agrees. "The troops will be able to achieve their objective of securing relief shipments," he says. "But the bigger question is, Then what?"

Bush insists he has no longer-range political or economic plan. Addressing the Somalis last week, he said, "We come to your country with one reason only: to enable the starving to be fed." Once the food flows freely, Bush says, the U.S. will go home.

However short-lived it turns out to be, this military peacemaking still sets a double precedent. For the U.N., it is the first intervention without even pro forma permission in an independent country. For the U.S., it is a major military action in the name of morality: addressing a situation that does not threaten American national security and in which the U.S. has no vital interests. It is, as Bush said, a purely humanitarian action. But then why in Somalia and not in Bosnia? Or Liberia or Sudan?

The short answer is because Somalia is doable, as the President likes to say, and the others are not. Bush is still smarting from the criticism that he was too slow to help the Iraqi Kurds in the aftermath of the Gulf War. He is also aggrieved that U.S. supplies airlifted to Mogadishu since August have been stuck in warehouses or stolen at gunpoint in the streets. Secretary- General Boutros-Ghali has made sharp references to the West's habit of ignoring Africa, and has demanded "a countrywide show of force."

Bush could have opted for something less dramatic. The day before Thanksgiving, his advisers gave him three possibilities: expand the U.N. peacekeeping force by adding 3,500 troops to the 500 Pakistanis hunkered down at the Mogadishu airport; provide air and sea support for a U.N. intervention force; or send in a U.S. division under U.N. auspices -- the Pentagon's surprising proposal. Bush went straight for option three, so quickly that the meeting lasted only an hour. "The number of deaths was going up," explains a senior official in Washington, "and the number of people we were reaching was going down." While there is no scale on which to calculate how much suffering is enough to justify unleashing the nation's armed forces, Somalia's horror pushed Bush out of his usual caution into a determination to prevail.

The U.S.-U.N. relationship became the first item of debate. Washington has consistently refused to entrust its soldiers to U.N. command, but this time Bush conceded a supervisory role to both Boutros-Ghali and the Security Council, not least because the President expects the U.N. to pick up where he leaves off. The Bush Administration would not have undertaken any deployment of its forces without firm assurances that blue helmets would replace the Americans in short order.

More questionable was Bush's decision to announce a speedy cutoff for U.S. participation. It makes the operation less controversial at home, but could complicate life for U.S. commanders in Somalia and the peacekeepers who will replace them. The clan chiefs and gang leaders know that the big U.S. force is a lame duck, and they may delay, obstruct or simply dodge the Americans while they are there.

^ Some experts interpret going into Somalia as a test that, if it succeeds, might encourage further involvement in the jigsaw of republics that used to make up Yugoslavia. The difficulty of ignoring the merits of Bosnia's claim to help apparently led Washington to plan a call this week for armed enforcement of a much violated two-month-old ban on military flights over the Balkan republic. Others counter that helping Somalia will ease the pressure to intervene in the Balkans by proving the U.S. is not stymied everywhere.

Government decision makers contend that the two cases are different. "Saying we're doing it here because it's easier isn't a very good answer," admits a senior official. But it is the truth. The U.S. has the overwhelming military advantage in Somalia, while it faces vastly less favorable odds in Bosnia. Says a State Department official: "To pacify the situation in Bosnia to ensure relief is virtually impossible and would require enormous numbers of troops. In Somalia you can plan an operation that will be effective." Thomas Carothers, an international lawyer in Washington, notes that the cause of humanitarian intervention is taking a giant step forward precisely because Somalia is a disaster area. "Weak countries allow you to be daring, because the risks are lower," he says.

The time limit Bush is imposing and the seemingly low risks blunted criticism of the operation, though there was some congressional grumbling about the lack of consultation. One key Congressman, John Murtha of Pennsylvania, who heads the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, was firmly against the move. He saw "no overriding American national interests" in Somalia and thought the intervention would drain the armed forces of funds for personnel and training.

That kind of uncertainty is likely to persist. Few Americans will argue out loud that helping starving Somalis is a bad idea. And if there is to be a U.N.-centered world order, the U.S. should be willing to send its soldiers into humanitarian efforts as well as those that serve national interests, such as Desert Storm. But for this kind of military intervention on behalf of suffering people to become an accepted pattern in the world community, the test case must succeed. If the U.S. gets stuck in the anarchy of Somalia, or if it departs in haste, leaving renewed chaos and starvation behind, such principled actions will look much less acceptable in the future.

With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister and Bruce van Voorst/Washington and Andrew Purvis/Mogadishu