Officials Warn of Problems for U.S. in Somalia

President Bush’s offer to send U.S. troops to famine-ravaged Somalia should pose a relatively easy challenge militarily, but it could cause some difficult diplomatic problems in the medium term, senior Administration officials said over the weekend.

Top Administration planners said that the actual military operation--designed to secure Somalia’s ports and airfields and clear the way for distribution of food--is apt to be simple, requiring only a few weeks’ time and far fewer than the 20,000 to 30,000 troops that Bush has offered.

But officials caution that once the food supplies are rolling again, the allies--and the United Nations--then would face an even more trying question: how to put together a viable government capable of running the country without increasing civil strife.

The Administration also is under something of a self-imposed deadline. White House strategists want to complete the military phase of the Somalia rescue effort before Jan. 20 to avoid saddling the incoming Clinton Administration with an unfinished operation.

Although President-elect Bill Clinton has endorsed Bush’s proposal, members of his staff have not been involved in any of the preliminary planning. And Bush officials said that Clinton has not yet appointed the key staff members needed to participate in the interim.

“It’s a complicated situation, given the U.S. transition,” a senior Bush official said. “If you do it now (send troops to Somalia), it has to be done fairly rapidly.” Even if the military phase lasts only a month, he implied, it must begin by mid-December.

Bush Administration officials said that, despite all the publicity about the President’s offer, the United States is only beginning its efforts to sell the plan to allied governments and has yet to secure commitments from them either for political backing or for contributing troops.

“We have not had any authoritative response at all,” a senior official said.

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is reviewing the U.S. offer and is expected to call a meeting of the Security Council, possibly this week, to consider the idea.

U.S. officials say that news of the plan broke as they were beginning to take preliminary soundings on how well the plan might be received. The disclosure of the effort in major newspapers and on television networks interrupted that process, one official said.

One senior official conceded over the weekend that the Administration is sharply divided over the offer to send U.S. troops, but he declined to spell out which officials were taking which side. He said the fact that the story leaked so early is evidence of the internal rift.

Administration planners and private analysts agree that the military operation itself ought to be relatively straightforward. A contingent of U.S. Marines, backed up by naval and air power, could quickly secure major ports and airfields, with added force from paratroops.

The allies then would fly in heavier weapons, such as artillery and tanks, to clear and protect the major highways to the southern part of the country, where the famine has hit the hardest. Although the followers of Somali warlords are armed, they have no heavy artillery or missiles.

“This is no big deal. A disciplined force ought to be able to provide enough order to feed the people relatively quickly,” said Rear Adm. Gene R. LaRocque, director of the Center for Defense Information, a military affairs think tank here.

“If it took us only six months to mount a campaign against (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein, this ought to be a piece of cake,” LaRocque said. He argued that the allies could accomplish the job with as few as 5,000 troops to start with and about 25 to 30 ships.

Administration strategists believe that the force should be somewhat larger, but they generally agreed with LaRocque’s assessment. “By its nature, it’s not too significant a military operation,” one senior official said.

But all sides agreed that there still are some risks. The warlords’ forces could mount a guerrilla war that would force allied troops to pursue them into wooded areas. And the military move into a Muslim country that is without a government could rouse Islamic fundamentalists.

There also is the question of how the United States and its allies would extricate themselves from the conflict once they have gotten the food-supply lines started again. Although experts said that the allied forces easily could remain for years, there is little political taste for doing that.

One proposal that Administration planners have been considering is the possibility of proposing that Somalia be governed by the United Nations itself--as Cambodia now is--or else designated as a U.N. trusteeship, with civil affairs there overseen by the United Nations.

There also are some short-term uncertainties over how quickly the United States can win Security Council approval for its proposal to send troops to Somalia and over how broad a mandate it can get.

Although most Security Council members are expected to support the U.S. plan generally, the Administration is expecting some developing countries, where anti-American sentiment is still strong, to balk at giving Washington broad authority to lead the expedition.

At the same time, U.S. officials said that there is a stronger-than-usual chance that China might exercise its veto as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council and kill the plan entirely, rather than simply abstain, as it has in some past efforts.

Beijing traditionally has been leery of supporting authorization for Western troops to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries. And the Chinese still are smarting from Bush’s pre-election move to sell F-16 fighter planes to Taiwan.

And despite some preliminary consultations over the last few days, the Administration still is not sure just how many troops the allies will contribute. Britain and France both have troops in U.N. peacekeeping units in republics that used to be a part of Yugoslavia and may prove reluctant to dispatch additional troops for another operation.

Officials said that one prospect that now seems likely is that Russia will be asked to join in any U.N.-authorized force. Some U.S. officials have suggested that such an invitation would be important, at least partly to make Moscow feel that it is being accepted by the West.

The United States told Boutros-Ghali last week that it is willing to provide between 20,000 and 30,000 troops if needed to help beat back warlord-led gangs and guarantee the distribution of international food-aid supplies in Somalia.