The Heart of the Matter : Feeding Somalia’s Starving May Be The First Step to Recolonization

Less than two years after Africa’s last colony--Namibia--gained its independence, the United Nations may have taken the first step on a slippery slope leading to de facto recolonization of collaps ing African states. And the United States, which seemed to be on the verge of abandoning Africa, may soon find itself more deeply engaged in the continent’s affairs than ever before.

The U.N. Security Council had compelling reason to authorize the deployment of a U.S.-led military force to ensure the delivery of food to Somalia. During the past year, as many as 300,000 people may have already died. Up to 2 million more are believed to be at risk.

Still, as U.S. troops ready to go ashore, it is important to prepare for the probable consequences of “success.” The armed rabbles posing as armies in Somalia are no match for U.S. troops--and the warlords who lead them know it. That is why Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid, whose forces have been most responsible for threatening relief workers and delaying deployment of a previous U.N. peacekeeping contingent, has welcomed the intervention.

President George Bush says the U.S. mission will be strictly limited. The problems begin when it becomes time to think about pulling out.

The United Nations--and Washington--will have to grapple with the issues that created the crisis, including, most fundamentally, the question of what is “Somalia” and how should it be governed. It is not clear they will be any better prepared to deal with these issues in a few months than they were when the country began to collapse in early 1991.

Most foreign powers will be eager to install a new government in Mogadishu as quickly as possible. Efforts to hold early Western-style, multiparty elections, however, would almost certainly exacerbate the clan divisions that fuel the civil war. And Aidid cannot be counted out as the probable winner.

If a new government were installed, it is doubtful it could survive without massive international assistance. There would be no guarantee that renewed fighting would not break out as soon as U.N. peacekeepers departed. For these reasons, it is a very real possibility that the United Nations will eventually establish some form of trusteeship over Somalia that will have to be kept in place for an extended period of time. Herein lies the danger of recolonization with a humanitarian face.

In effect, a trusteeship would require the United Nations--and the United States--to take responsibility for the country. New police and security forces would have to be formed, basic services re-established, infrastructure rebuilt and jobs created. This would be directed by a cadre of international bureaucrats--de facto modern-day colonial, albeit humanitarian, governors.

Obviously, this new colonialism would differ radically from that of the early 20th Century--no one would seriously question the Somalis’ right to self-determination, and the new colonial authority would be the United Nations. Recolonization, moreover, would be welcomed by the Somalis.

But it would revive Africa’s cycle of dependency. The historical pattern is all-too clear. The early 20th-Century colonizers were replaced, after World War II, by the superpowers. Now that the Soviet Union is no longer, the humanitarians are rushing in. In all these cases, the intervention of outsiders prevented the development of autonomous and self-sustaining societies in Africa. It was decades of dependency that led to the breakdown of Somalia.

Furthermore, a “successful” humanitarian trusteeship in Somalia would inevitably create demands for similar trusteeships in other parts of Africa. The U.N. Security Council has sought to preempt this issue by arguing that the absence of an effective government in Somalia makes the situation there unique. But this tactic is unlikely to work. Somalia is an extreme case, but it is not unique.

The end of the Cold War has shaken the foundations of political order in Africa. Without the largess formerly provided by great power patrons, Africa’s rulers have been unable either to buy off or to repress their opponents. Government, as we know it, no longer exists in most of Angola, Liberia, Mozambique, southern Sudan and Zaire--and several other African countries, including Cameroon, Ethiopia and Togo, could soon join the list. With reporters flocking to Africa to cover Somalia, it is only a matter of time before they turn their attention to humanitarian crises unfolding in countries nearby.

The constituency for continued humanitarian intervention--and for benign recolonization--will be a powerful one. In the United States and other developed countries, a vast network of church and relief groups now exists. They could become 21st-Century analogues to the missionary and anti-slavery societies that supported the Great Scramble for Africa in the late 19th Century. They could end up in an odd political alliance with the U.S. military Establishment, which is on the lookout for a new global mission to justify its intervention capabilities. In Africa, this constituency is also likely to draw support from an expanding network of African-American political leaders.

Most of these groups are sincerely responding to real needs in Africa. But their efforts may have unintended consequences. Campaigns for increased humanitarian intervention could increase the continent’s dependence on the international community--and prolong the conditions that have created crises such as in Somalia.

Despite protests of some African diplomats and intellectuals, there will also be many Africans who will welcome the new outsiders in their countries. They have learned well the lesson that intervention equals more aid. And one of the whispered secrets of the post-Cold War era is that a lot of the “victims” of superpower competition now long for the good old days when geopolitical gamesmanship could usually be counted on to bring in a few more million dollars. The danger may be that African political leaders will become as adept at exploiting the West’s humanitarian sensibilities as they were at manipulating Washington’s fear of communism.

What is to be done? First, an effort must be made to ensure that the international and indigenous relief groups that have been on the ground since the crisis began are not pushed aside by bureaucrats, generals and self-promoting political leaders. The Security Council ought to be seeking ways to ensure that representatives of these groups have a strong input into efforts to develop plans to put Somalia back together.

Instead of concentrating on creating a government that resembles the governments that Foggy Bottom and Turtle Bay diplomats are used to working with, the United Nations should give traditional forces in Somalia an opportunity to reassert themselves. Warlords such as Aidid are not representative of the country’s clan elders. Many of these elders have been seeking ways to end the fighting. But the international diplomatic community has mostly not taken the time to try to understand and work with them. Rushing to hold elections would probably hinder clan reconciliation.

Finally, the United Nations and United States should take the lead in pushing African leaders to address the fundamental issues of sovereignty, borders, human rights and principles of government that are at the heart of Africa’s civil wars. Efforts to impose internationally proscribed constitutional structures on the continent will not work. A strategy creating incentives and pressures for African leaders to take responsibility for their continent’s problems will work, if accompanied by serious commitments both to rebuild and strengthen African civil society and to create African institutions with the capacity to respond to political conflicts and humanitarian emergencies.

As well-intentioned as the U.S.-led rescue of Somalia is, the result may be the re-establishment of dependency rather than self-sustaining government, the heart of the matter for Africa.