TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121492/12149929.000

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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 26

Taking On The Thugs


The U.S. promises to feed the hungry and restore hope in Somalia,
but Bush's military operation could be the wrong way to do the
right thing

By BRUCE W. NELAN - With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister and Bruce
van Voorst/Washington and Andrew Purvis/Mogadishu


    Once again thiusands 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.