U.N. Must Not Hesitate Now : Many more Somalis will die if it delays or falters

Rice, beans, sorghum and tons of other foods sit for weeks in Somalia’s main port while thousands of children and their parents die of starvation caused by drought and civil war. These U.N. supplies, which literally can mean life or death for 1.5 million starving Somalis, are not being distributed quickly because relief workers cannot protect the goods from armed looters.

To guard the food, and improve the survival chances of a generation of Somalis, the United Nations is finally sending in troops. The first wave, 500 Pakistanis, are arriving this week on American military transport planes. To help the troops get into place, 2,100 U.S. Marines are supervising the operation from four ships off the coast. The Marines aren’t intervening directly, but they are providing crucial support for the U.N. troops as they work to secure the port.

The port is important because ships are needed to deliver the hundreds of tons of relief supplies necessary to stop the starvation. The airport is also critical, although planes cannot possibly deliver the huge amount of food needed over the next 100 days.

Securing the port won’t be easy. The U.N. troops are heavily outnumbered--by as many as 40,000 Somalis who carry weapons left behind in the Cold War competition of the United States and the former Soviet Union over Somalia’s strategic location on the Horn of Africa.

The United Nations plans to send 3,000 more troops, most likely from Canada and Belgium. Every additional soldier is certainly needed, but Gen. Mohamed Farrah Aideed--a warlord who controls half of the capital--refuses to go along with the U.N. action. If the United Nations hesitates, and it mustn’t, Aideed’s refusal will condemn millions of Somalis to death.

Aideed represents one of a dozen tribe-like factions battling for control of what is left of Somalia, which has no functioning government. These factions misuse relief supplies to bolster their position and feed their families as their neighbors die. Still more food is lost to looters.

The U.N. troops, with the help of the U.S. Marines, could prove to be a key in ending starvation in this desperate country.