What Is the World Waiting For? : End the killing, relieve the starving and save Somalia

Somalia has become an international disgrace. Children and their parents continue to die by the thousands as relief efforts are frustrated by a vicious civil war.

The world must react--now.

President Bush and President-elect Bill Clinton talked about Somalia Wednesday in their broad discussion of foreign policy. Somalia belongs high in any analysis of the world’s trouble spots. Talk, however, must turn to action to end the slaughter and mass starvation.

Before he turns the White House over to Clinton, President Bush must encourage the United Nations to send more food, more relief supplies and many more troops.

The U.N. Security Council, after moving too slowly on the Somali crisis, finally agreed in September to send 3,500 troops to protect the airport, the port and the relief truck convoys. Until now, only 500 Pakistani soldiers have arrived--far too few to provide the protection that is needed.

Security is the first priority. The United Nations must send in thousands of soldiers who are very well-armed and willing to do battle with Somali fighters--who themselves are well-armed by way of a huge arsenal left over from the Cold War.

The United States and the Soviet Union took turns arming the small East African nation as the two superpowers competed to control that strategic region in the Horn of Africa. Both the United States and Russia now have an obligation to address the suffering that has resulted from those policies.

The tools of war are plentiful in Somalia. Grenades are piled like mangoes in an open-air market in Mogadishu, reports an Oxfam America relief worker who recently returned from what has become the starvation capital of the world. Military weapons, including antiaircraft guns, are being sold. Rows of bullets are used like bunting to decorate market stalls.

The wide availability of weapons is central to the wholesale looting of relief supplies. Thugs steal supplies by the ton, and they further cripple relief efforts by attacking convoys, killing relief workers, making death threats or extorting huge fees--in one case $10,000 twice a week--for “protection.”

The gunmen move freely because their clan leaders, specifically the powerful Gen. Mohamed Farah Aideed, have refused to allow the U.N. soldiers to leave their base at the international airport at Mogadishu.

That airport should be bustling with movement of relief supplies, but it is idle because of the lack of security. The port is full of food, but because it is closed by shelling, truck convoys have been unable for nearly two weeks to move the supplies out. These delays are costing lives.

What is the United Nations waiting for? It is time to go into Somalia with the soldiers, the arms and the mandate to end this genocidal, internecine war for control of a country that may have no future.

What is the Arab League waiting for? The member countries have plenty of arms and money. Somalia is a member. Why don’t they help to end the tragedy?

The international hesitation has already costs hundreds of thousands of lives. The world must act in concert now to begin to end the killing, relieve the starving and save Somalia.