He’s Asking Too Much of Our Military : U.N. leader calls for vastly expanded U.S. responsibilities in Somalia

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is lobbying the United States to vastly expand the responsibilities it has assumed in Somalia. On his wish list, given to American officials at U.N. headquarters this week, are the following: U.S. troops should remain in Somalia until they have disarmed the feuding clans, suppressed the drug trade, cleared the north of land mines planted during years of internecine warfare, trained a local police force and generally restored order to the anarchic and famine-racked country.

Washington’s initial response to this sweeping effort to draw the United States deep into what certainly would be a dangerous, costly and indefinitely prolonged venture has been cool. It should be much more than that. The answer to Boutros-Ghali’s plan should be emphatic and unequivocal. The United States must make it clear quickly and unambiguously that it will not take the lead role in the revival of some 19th-Century colonial drama. It is not its mission to act as Somalia’s surrogate government. To do so would not be in its interest, or Somalia’s, or Africa’s.

U.S. troops have been sent to Somalia for one purpose only. As President Bush wrote in a letter to Congress a few days ago, “U.S. armed forces will remain in Somalia only as long as necessary to establish a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations.” That will almost certainly take longer than the few months some in the Administration first optimistically estimated. But so long as the mission remains limited it is achievable. To seek to do more, to foist on U.S. troops the task of disarming and pacifying a country nearly the size of Texas and whose population includes heavily armed factions that would surely become hostile, would be folly.

Boutros-Ghali is said to have indicated that only when the many new missions he wants the United States to take on have been completed would he act to send more U.N. peacekeepers into Somalia. Is there a whiff here of diplomatic blackmail?

The secretary general seems to be suggesting that he will hold off organizing a U.N. force until potential risks to its safety have been removed. The primary removal job he hopes to assign to the United States. That is wholly unacceptable. It is also unnecessary. Combatting famine in Somalia by providing the security needed to get food to the hungry is an international--not only an American--responsibility, and participation in this effort must be internationalized to a far greater degree than now exists. Meanwhile, Washington should leave no one in doubt about the limits of the U.S. mission in Somalia: It does not aim at remaking the country, only at making possible prompt humanitarian relief. If Boutros-Ghali wants more done, let him look elsewhere.