National Agenda : Suspicious of U.N., Somalis Despair Over Rebuilding : Many dread the departure of the U.S. military command, which they see as key to containing chaos.

When Mohammed Farah Aidid, one of this country’s most feared warlords, was resisting pressure from the United Nations to sign an agreement with other Somali clan leaders a few days ago, his reputation soared on the streets of Mogadishu.

“Many of us don’t like Aidid,” said Ahmed Fidow, a former pilot with the defunct Somalia Airways. “But he did the right thing. Nobody trusts the U.N.”

As the day approaches when U.S. military officials hand over command of the multinational force in Somalia to the United Nations, the country is filled with dread. While most Somalis have welcomed the Americans, seeing them as a neutral force with a noble mission, they deeply distrust the United Nations.

Although Aidid signed the agreement for a formal cease-fire here, many Somalis still fear that the day the United Nations takes over will be the day that any semblance of security disappears. And with that security will go hopes for restoring a respected government in this lawless country and rebuilding the hundreds of factories, schools and businesses destroyed in the two-year civil war.

“The U.N. does not have the credibility among the Somali people to make this operation happen,” said Willet Weeks, a veteran American relief worker in Mogadishu. “The Americans have that credibility.”

The United Nations’ problems in Somalia reflect difficulties that the international body has recently encountered throughout Africa.

In the past, African countries have been among the United Nations’ biggest backers and the United States’ biggest detractors, largely because of the strong stance taken by Third World nations in the United Nations against the apartheid policies of the South African government.

The U.N.-monitored elections in Namibia were widely hailed as one of the body’s greatest successes. But with the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa now under way, Pretoria no longer is the continent’s bad guy.

Now the United Nations has moved into a sensitive area of African politics: the trend toward multi-party democracy. And in that realm, its efforts have been sharply criticized.

During the September elections in Angola, the U.N. monitoring team was widely viewed as ineffective. With only 400 monitors to cover that vast country, the organization was unable to force either side to disarm or, in the end, deliver a firm verdict on the election. More than a week after the elections, it finally concluded that the vote had been “predominantly free and fair.” Rebel leader Jonas Savimbi flatly rejected the U.N. verdict and the election results, driving the country back into civil war.

The widespread hatred of the United Nations in Somalia was evident earlier this month when U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was met with a spontaneous protest on a quick visit to Mogadishu. He was forced to cancel some meetings, and he was whisked between the airport and the U.N. compound under heavy guard.

Animosity toward the United Nations has a complex history in Somalia. Part of it stems from Boutros-Ghali’s nationality. He is an Egyptian and a former minister of state for foreign affairs in Egypt. Many Somalis still resent Egypt’s steady support throughout the years of Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre, Somalia’s former president. Siad Barre was ousted in a popular uprising in January, 1991, and the ensuing battles laid waste to the capital.

Many Somali business and church leaders direct their anger at the world body itself, which abandoned them when civil war broke out here in 1991.

“The U.N. was nowhere in sight,” a Somali businessman said. “Many of us feel they didn’t take their fair share of the responsibility for saving us.”

Boutros-Ghali “says he knows Somalia,” complained Mohamed Abdi Hussein, an unemployed civil engineer and one of Mogadishu’s intellectuals. “But he doesn’t know a single sentence about Somalia.”

Even though Somalia’s short-term future depends in large part on how well the United Nations can restore confidence in its peacekeeping abilities, many political analysts in the country have high hopes.

They see the meetings of Somali clan leaders in neighboring Ethiopia over the past two weeks as a positive sign, even though no final political settlement has been reached. And the famine that has gripped the country already is showing signs of easing, opening the way for development projects and a return to food self-sufficiency.

Professionals have begun returning to the country, hoping that the U.S. presence will end the looting and eventually create jobs. A few business leaders even have begun to invest in the country.

But signs of optimism are rare in the capital of Mogadishu, once the center of commerce and industry. It remains a dangerous, shell-pocked mess. One million of the country’s 7 million people live in this city, which is awash in guns. Looting still is the biggest economic growth activity. And not even the massive contingent of American and other foreign troops has been able to make more than a dent in the anarchy.

“This city has been destroyed to a degree such as I have never seen anywhere in my career,” said Lt. Gen. Robert B. Johnston, the Marine field commander of Operation Restore Hope. “Bandit activity is almost part of the culture. They often resolve disputes at the end of a gun, and I’m not sure we can legislate that away with our presence no matter how long we stay.”

The chief surgeon at the Digfer Hospital in Mogadishu fled to Saudi Arabia six months ago and returned last week. But the 1,000 refugees who still camp on the hospital grounds aren’t so optimistic; they are refusing to return to their homes.

“People need proof that things are better,” said an American nurse working at the hospital. “They won’t leave unless they get proof.”

Somalis are among the most resilient people in Africa. But no one knows what permanent psychological damage has been inflicted by the war and the killing.

“How do we deal with the psychological insult these people have suffered?” asked Dawn MacRae, program coordinator in Somalia for the International Medical Corps, a Los Angeles-based relief agency. “They’ve had family members killed. Their homes have been destroyed. A whole generation of children have been lost in this war.

“No one knows what effect that will have in the long term,” MacRae added. “But I don’t think people can recover that quickly.”

U.N. officials in Somalia believe that the key to peace and stability in the country is a resolution of the political crisis, which has left the nation without a functioning government for more than two years.

“If political agreement is reached, then we can begin to create a secure environment for all the people in Somalia,” said U.N. spokesman Farouk Mawlawi. And Boutros-Ghali has warned squabbling clan leaders that the world will quickly forget Somalia if they fail to make progress toward peace.

But the clan differences appear nearly insurmountable. During his rule, Siad Barre banned the word clan from the country’s lexicon. But he proceeded to reward his own clan members and allowed other clan leaders, whom he had co-opted into his government, to do the same.

The result was that clan rivalries were driven underground and, predictably, exploded when Siad Barre was forced out of office.

Some political analysts believe a federal government, with substantial autonomy for regions, is the only solution. That will work in many of the country’s cities where one clan or sub-clan dominates. But it won’t solve the problems in Mogadishu, where two sub-clans of the Hawiye people--led by Aidid and his chief rival, Ali Mahdi Mohamed--have carved the city into two fiefdoms.

Disarming the warlords in Mogadishu is one solution, and the U.S.-led forces have confiscated thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition in an effort to restore calm to the city. If the clan leaders who have held sway by force of arms were stripped of their weapons, Somalis say, it might allow more legitimate leaders, such as clan elders, church leaders and intellectuals, to come to the fore.

But, for now, the effort to take away clan weaponry has only added to the disquiet, creating uncertainty among warlords who are losing their power to the free-lance bandits who roam the streets with impunity. If the U.S. forces can’t disarm the population, many Somalis ask, who can?

“Virtually all Somalis want Mogadishu to be disarmed,” said John Marks, an American relief official who has worked in Somalia off and on since the 1960s. “And I think it’s going to come to the point where they drag the international community into helping them disarm.”