U.S. Troops Sweep Into Somali Port : Famine: Marines and Belgian forces stream ashore unopposed. Their mission is to secure Kismayu as a vital part of the food-distribution network.

American and Belgian troops surged ashore at Somalia’s southern port of Kismayu today in a major stride forward in the U.S.-led effort to bring peace to this bloodied, starving land.

“The Seals are on shore. I think they’ve already met CNN,” Navy Capt. John W. Peterson told reporters in the press pool aboard the U.S. amphibious assault ship Juneau. He said that 224 U.S. Marines and 100 Belgian paratroopers would immediately move to secure the port and airport to make way for relief flights to land later today.

The first U.S. Marines in amphibious armored vehicles streamed ashore unopposed at 6:30 a.m. Minutes later, Belgian commandos piled out of helicopters onto a pier.

Cobra helicopter gunships prowled Kismayu beaches as F-18 Hornet fighters and A-6 intruder attack planes from the U.S. aircraft carrier Kittyhawk screamed overhead.

Peterson said the display of military might was “to dissuade anyone from doing anything foolish.”

Kismayu, about 240 miles southwest of Mogadishu, has been the site of serious looting and killing since U.S. troops came ashore in the capital Dec. 9.

Belgian Lt. Col. Marc Jacomin, leader of the mission, told the Associated Press that he planned an immediate meeting in Kismayu with the local warlord, Col. Omar Jees, a renegade officer of the old Somali army.

“We will try from the outset to fix some rules just to secure as much as possible--not just the city but the largest perimeter possible around the city and airfield,” Jacomin said.

Kismayu is the third general area occupied by the U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope since the Marines first landed by sea and air in Mogadishu. Another large detachment pushed inland Tuesday to Baidoa, hub of a large starvation zone.

Both earlier advances and the one today are part of a plan to secure major urban areas and then begin distribution of food and other relief throughout central and southern parts of the country where needs are greatest.

That region has been most devastated by Somalia’s two-year civil war and the famine that has accompanied it. International relief agencies estimate that at least 300,000 people, most of them children and old people, have died of hunger in that time.

At almost the same time that Marines and Belgians landed in Kismayu, a 20-truck convoy--with 15 heavily armed military vehicles riding shotgun and two helicopter gunships prowling overhead--was to leave here for Baidoa with enough food to feed 350,000 people for more than three weeks. Announcement of the convoy was made by Paul Mitchell, spokesman for the World Food Program, which is supplying the aid.

The five-hour, 160-mile Baidoa expedition is viewed by relief organizations, U.S. diplomats and military commanders as a key element in the success of the operation, which is led by the United States and sponsored by the United Nations.

“This is an important step for us,” Lt. Col. Fred Peck, the Marine Corps spokesman, said in a Saturday afternoon briefing. “Goal No. 1 is to secure ports and airports and then move out into the countryside.”

Baidoa, together with 20 nearby distribution points, is the second of what eventually are planned to become eight regional aid centers across the whole famine region. Relief workers say that until recently, 300 people a day were dying in the Baidoa area alone, a statistic that has dropped to 50 a day, mostly because the most vulnerable people among the population have already died.

Opening up Kismayu is the next essential step toward widening the aid distribution system, officials have said.

U.S. special operation forces were in the major southern port last week, establishing a secure landing zone and making it clear to warring local faction leaders that no opposition would be tolerated.

The Marines’ landing was unopposed, but before the U.S.-led forces arrived, aid workers based in the port reported serious clashes among rival clans and a spurt of looting in a sort of last-minute binge of lawlessness.

After the advance operations team arrived, Kismayu had quieted somewhat. U.N. spokesman Ian McCloud noted that “this is good news and is due to the presence of (the special operations troops) and flyovers” by U.S. warplanes and helicopter gunships.

The underlying strategy in Baidoa and Kismayu will be the provision of massive amounts of food on a regular basis to reduce its value as booty to the ever-lurking looters and exploiters.

In other words, according to McCloud, “the strategy is to put so much in so regularly that the market will collapse and the food won’t be worthwhile to steal.” A secondary tactic, said the World Food Program’s Mitchell, “is to try to bypass the old structure” that allowed village powers to expropriate food shipments.

Peck said the rationale of delivering as much food as possible as fast as possible is used by policy-makers to explain why Marines and troops from other nations are not providing on-site security at individual food distribution points.

After an earlier, smaller air shipment of grain was delivered to Baidoa, looters and even village leaders took the food before it could be distributed. “Some went for sale,” said a relief worker at the scene, “some was taken by gunmen, some went to rich friends of the elders, and one elder kept a 120-pound bag for himself.”

A second Baidoa incident Saturday involved a lone gunman who robbed a small distribution point of 10% to 15% of its grain.

“These things are going to happen,” Peck said. “If you try to guard every place . . . you’re only going to get to one or two.”

The “idea is to accept some losses but to discourage such activity as much as possible . . . to get so much food out there it loses its value,” Peck said.

At the same time that Peck was extolling this approach, he repeated what military officials have been saying since the first troops got here: There are constraints on what the forces can do because of a lack of manpower.

Of the projected 28,000 total forces expected to land in the country eventually, only 5,911 were on the ground Saturday, officers said. There were 7,656 more aboard ships in the harbor or operating offshore.

As the number of ground forces rises, including an expected 10,000 service people from other countries, the presence of troops will be more solidly felt, Peck indicated.

Some officials speculated that soldiers might also change their rather pacific tactics, which now call on them to disarm Somalis only if they threaten the foreign forces.

There are signs that dissident Somalis are probing and testing the tolerance and determination of the forces.

In Mogadishu, snipers fire on compounds where the Marines and a smaller contingent of Army forces are quartered, including the huge, walled complex that used to be the U.S. Embassy.

“We take rounds nearly every day,” Peck said. “It’s a good thing they’re such bad shots.”

No American service person has been hit yet, but harassing fire at motorized street patrols has increased in recent days and is drawing closer to the patrolling vehicles.

One military source said things have gotten so dangerous just outside the airport, where Army combat engineers are garrisoned, that their patrols have been cut back and may be ended altogether.

The source said that a counter-tactic, particularly one that could be followed as more troops land, would be to shoot back more and disarm gunmen.

But Peck repeated the official line that the mission is to establish a secure zone for delivering food and not to disarm the population. He said that the overall strategy of using peaceful persuasion rather than force is working.

He said about 100 Somalis met with U.S. forces outside Baidoa Saturday and surrendered their “technicals” and weapons.

This was a promising advance, because the “technicals”--pickup trucks mounted with heavy weapons, including anti-aircraft rocket launchers--are considered a serious potential threat to the foreign forces.