That is one possible scenario. The Somali operation, which could be authorized by the United Nations Security Council as early as this week, will be a singular use of American power, dragging Clinton into uncharted political territory. When President Bush abruptly changed course last week and offered a division of U.S. ground troops as part of a multinational peacemaking force, he did so purely on humanitarian grounds. American national interests are not at stake in Somalia, unless simply doing good is suddenly considered to be a vital U.S. objective. And if it is, then why do it only in Somalia? Why not send troops to stop the killing in Bosnia, Cambodia or southern Sudan? The answer seems to be that, in Somalia, U.S. military intervention might actually work.
Unlike the other charnel houses of the new world order, Somalia has no government to oppose intervention or allies to aid the resistance. It has no jungle, swamps or forested hills from which guerrillas can lash out at foreign intruders. It has no functioning air force and no real army, only ragtag gunmen who are far better at abusing helpless civilians than at standing up to determined invaders. Like the desert of Kuwait and Iraq, the hardscrabble Horn of Africa is a nearly ideal laboratory in which to test the theory that a high-minded application of force can right some of the world’s wrongs.
That doesn’t mean the experiment will necessarily succeed. Some Somali might resist intervention and take out their anger on foreign relief workers. Outside troops can eventually stop most of the fighting, but they cannot compel Somalia’s warring clans and subclans to make peace with each other. Many Western relief officials have reservations about the use of force. “We don’t like the concept of shooting people in order to feed others,” said Rony Brauman, president of France’s Medecins Sans Frontieres. To some in the Third World, intervention by an American-led coalition smacks of imperialism. “It’s very easy to say, ‘Bring in the Marines, bash up the blackies’,” Pakistani Brig. Gen. Imtiaz Shaheen, commander of a 500-man unit in Mogadishu, told the BBC.
This small group, the only U.N. force deployed so far, has been unable to protect food supplies, and last week, attacks by gunmen crippled the relief effort. A ship full of wheat was driven off by shellfire as it approached Mogadishu, the capital. U.N. relief officials were robbed at gunpoint in the southern port of Kismayu. Vast quantities of food were stolen by gunmen or given to them in exchange for protection. The International Red Cross cut the daily ration of food served at its kitchens in Mogadishu to a pathetic 523 calories per person. Many Somali complained of the chaos. “If you have a gun, you are a man; if you don’t, you are nobody,” said Hassan Ali Mirreh of the Somali Salvation Democratic Front, which operates mainly in the northeast. “The country needs somebody from the outside to intervene.”
It was becoming clear that the situation in Somalia had deteriorated to the point where something stronger than the usual humanitarian effort was called for. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali sent a letter to the Security Council warning that “the situation is not improving.” Bush’s decision to get tough came at National Security Council meeting the day before Thanksgiving. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, startled other participants by arguing that if the United States had to get involved in Somalia, it should go all-out. They proposed committing a division-size ground force-15,000 to 25,000 troops, backed up by about 10,000 support personnel outside Somalia. They insisted that U.S. troops should be part of a multinational effort with an American in overall command. Bush decided to offer such a force. The depth of his concern over Somalia had surprised the Clinton camp when Bush met with the president-elect in the Oval Office two weeks ago. Last week Clinton reacted cautiously but supportively. After visiting a Thanksgiving dinner at a shelter for abused women and children in Little Rock, he said it was “high time” for firmer U.S. action on Somalia.
The U.N. Security Council will decide, probably this week or next, what kind of force to send to Somalia. Its options include a U.S.-dominated contingent, like the one that was deployed in the Persian Gulf, or a collection of smaller units more closely directed by the Security Council, like the peacekeepers currently in Bosnia. In any case, the Americans need allies; they hope to extract troop commitments from countries like Britain and France. “Nobody has said no,” reported a State Department official. “But nobody is lining up yet.”
If it decides on intervention, the United Nations will set a precedent. “We all recognize,” said a U.S. official, “that if an international force on the scale we propose is committed to Somalia, against the opposition of the local warlords, then in effect you are seeing a takeover of a country by the international community.” But it wasn’t clear that key warlords would fight intervention. The strongest of them, Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid, has opposed foreign interference, but last week he suddenly tried to align himself with Washington. He lost ground recently to Gen. Mohamed Said Hersi Morgan, the son-in-law of the dictator whose overthrow nearly two years ago started the disintegration of Somalia. Aidid’s main rival, Ali Mahdi Mohamed, has long supported intervention. Now Aidid described the U.S. plan as “constructive.”
The first U.S. troops in Somalia would probably be Marines. The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit-1,800 men from Fort Pendleton, Calif.-was in the Indian Ocean last week, heading toward the Persian Gulf but available for Somalia. After Marines establish a beachhead, air-mobile army units, such as the 82nd or 101st Divisions, would fan out to take control of key roads, airfields and feeding centers. Washington’s plan is to withdraw its forces once order has been imposed-perhaps after two to four months-turning Somalia over to U.N. peacekeepers, who would remain on duty until the country can govern itself.
Disengagement may not be that easy. With Somali government and society in a state of almost total collapse, security may have to be furnished by outsiders indefinitely, and the job could be too tough for typically unassertive U.N. peacekeepers. Creating a new Somali government may require an unappetizing choice among warlords-“pick one and hold your nose,” as a senior U.S. official puts it. “Let’s be frank: colonialism would be better than this situation,” says Ali Mirreh of the Democratic Front, a longtime resident of Nairobi, Kenya. But if intervention leads to a drawn-out occupation and makes Somalia a semipermanent ward of the world, Bill Clinton could find himself stuck with a very bad bargain.
