Regional Outlook : Now It’s Their Turn : When the U.N. takes control of Somalia today, it begins a $1.5-billion experiment. ‘We are here to re-establish a nation,’ says the new commander.

Brig. Gen. Ikram ul-Hasan, a strapping Pakistani infantry commander, leaned on the podium at U.S. military headquarters in Somalia and, in crisp British English, announced to the world that it was “a great honor and privilege” for him and his 4,761 Pakistani soldiers to take over responsibility for security and stability here in the Somali capital from the U.S. Marines.

Never mind that Ikram’s own country was plunged into political uncertainty when Pakistan’s military-backed president dismissed the elected government and deployed troops on the streets of Islamabad just two weeks earlier.

At Mogadishu Airport the same day, Nigerian Lt. Col. O. Oyinlola proudly told The Times that the 562 soldiers in his 254th reconnaissance battalion also are committed to patrolling the streets here until the Somalis can elect an interim government to replace the anarchy that has left 300,000 dead during more than two years of starvation and civil war.

Never mind that Oyinlola’s own nation remains unstable under a military dictatorship--at least until scheduled elections in June.

Those are but two of the many ironies as U.S. military commanders formally hand over control of Somalia to an unprecedented U.N. military force today.

In fact, the multinational U.N. force now charged with helping resurrect Somalia from the oblivion of starvation, war and utter destruction back into the community of nations is as unique as its mission.

It is, according to many analysts, nothing short of a $1.5-billion, two-year experimental cure in a world spinning dangerously into a new age of regional instability and isolated anarchy--an attempt to forge the soldiers of more than 20 nations into a U.S.-assisted military force authorized, in effect, to act as a national army until Somalia is revived.

It is the first time in the 47-year history of the United Nations that the world body officially has given a multinational force full authority to act both as peacekeepers and as peacemakers in a sovereign, though leaderless, state.

It is also the first time since Germany’s defeat in the Second World War that German soldiers will be deployed overseas--a 1,600-man combat support unit scheduled to join the multinational force in Somalia in June.

“We are here to re-establish a nation,” said Lt. Gen. Cevik Bir, the Turkish commander of the multinational army that is still assembling toward its expected strength of 28,000 troops. The exercise, he added in an interview, will serve as both a potential model and a possible deterrent for other nations now teetering on the brink of Somalia-style anarchy.

“And, for the first time in the history of the United Nations, our force has been tasked with the peacemaking role,” said the Turkish commander of his army, which will also include about 2,600 American logistics and supply troops and a 1,300-man U.S. Army Quick Reaction Force. “We simply have no blueprint for this.”

If the mission serves as a model for other troubled nations, it will also carry lessons for Pentagon planners as they search for new ways to work within the United Nations to assert America’s role as the world’s sole surviving superpower--ways, it is hoped, that stop short of intervening with the kind of massive forces America sent into Somalia last December and into the Persian Gulf in 1990.

Bir’s powerful deputy commander is a senior, active-duty U.S. Army officer--Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery--who also will have sole command and control over the Quick Reaction Force meant to assist the United Nations in what Bir called “the worst-case scenarios.”

U.S. military involvement in the United Nations’ Somalia operation, though, goes far deeper.

Dozens of U.S. Army and Marine Corps veterans have been given U.N. blue berets and are now serving in several of the force’s most critical command slots in Mogadishu. They include combat officers like Army Col. Ed Ward, who, as the chief of military operations for the U.N. force in Somalia, has been using an Army team to draft the blueprint for the experimental mission.

A retired U.S. Navy admiral, Jonathan Howe, has been placed in charge of the United Nations’ civilian reconstruction, development and humanitarian aid mission in Mogadishu--a clear effort to coordinate the force’s delicate peacemaking operation with such critical U.N. civilian projects as recreating Somalia’s national police force and court system.

Given the litany of precedents, there is little wonder that most veteran Somali analysts and most Somalis themselves remain deeply skeptical about the United Nations’ prospects for success in a still-violent land.

In their eyes, this is the same United Nations that sat paralyzed in Mogadishu before the U.S. Marines arrived late last year while hundreds of Somalis died every day from starvation, and dozens more from gunshot wounds, in the south-central famine belt.

Moreover, many Somalis resent and distrust several of the countries represented in the new peacemaking force: Italy, for example, which is Somalia’s former colonial ruler; Egypt, which appeared to take sides in Somalia’s brutal clan war, and France, which is still viewed as a colonial power throughout much of black Africa.

Privately, many aid agencies and front-line U.S. Marines express deep fears that the results of their efforts to lay the foundation for Somalia’s reconstruction will begin to erode under a more aloof international force in which the two largest contingents are expected to be Pakistan and India.

“Everyone’s afraid that within a matter of just days or weeks, these guys are going to look more and more like an occupation army than a humanitarian peacekeeping force,” said one veteran American aid worker in Mogadishu. “If they come down hard when they’re tested, it’s just going to make things worse for everyone here.”

And, almost universally, the Somalis themselves complained bitterly to U.S. and U.N. officials in Mogadishu last week that the American commanders were turning their nation over to a Third World force that will abandon the ambitious projects and the earnest commitment begun by America’s high-tech military.

“To them, it’s an outrage,” said one Western official in the Somali capital. “They say, ‘Why do we have to get Third World countries involved in Somalia?’ Of course, the answer is, ‘Why did the Somalis let 300,000 of their own people die and turn their country into a wasteland that the outside world had to help save?’ The Somalis can be a bit arrogant about such things.”

The grass-roots resentment that is accompanying the change of command also has a darker side--a shared short-term assessment by U.N. and U.S. military commanders here that the Somali bandits and warlords who were largely suppressed and checkmated by the massive U.S.-led force will soon test the resolve and ability of the new peacemakers in town.

“We’re going to be tested. We expect to be tested, and we have plans to react,” said U.S. Army Col. Ward.

Ward’s planners do not expect a full-scale popular insurrection--although they do not rule out another round of warlord-sponsored demonstrations and riots similar to those that rained rocks, burning tires and volleys of sniper fire on Marines patrolling the capital in late February. But they do expect tests of the international force.

Already, Somali gunmen have fired on Tunisian sentries, Italian patrols and French checkpoints. Last week a sniper opened fire on a clearly marked U.N. Land Rover in the heart of Mogadishu. The driver, coincidentally, was U.S. Army Maj. Dave Stockwell, who will be serving under the blue beret for the next year as Gen. Bir’s official press spokesman. An Orange County resident, he miraculously escaped the attack with only a minor head wound from the bullet fragments.

Against the backdrop of such potentially lethal tests, the most immediate concern among Mogadishu’s experimental new force is the capability of ground troops such as the Pakistani infantry brigade that replaced U.S. Marines as the capital’s principal peacemaking force.

It was to reassure the Somalis and the outside world that Brig. Gen. Ikram took the podium last week and answered a flurry of questions on subjects ranging from religion to military rules of engagement.

“Before leaving Pakistan, we had a very deliberate session on the rules of engagement. . . . Every soldier down the line has been briefed,” the general responded when asked about concerns that his soldiers would use the same techniques they employ in Pakistan, where the army often opens fire with live ammunition to suppress street violence.

His troops will live by the same rules that governed the U.S. intervention, firing only if they feel their lives are in immediate danger, Ikram declared. “We will act boldly, aggressively and firmly. . . . But I anticipate there will not be a situation requiring the use of really brutal force.”

Ikram indicated that he also expects his troops to be tested by the Somalis in the early weeks of the operation, noting, “We are prepared for the worst, and we have everything in place.” But he praised his men for the restraint they showed in their first few days on the streets of the capital last week and predicted that the religious bond of Islam between his nation and Somalia will, in the end, cement a close relationship with the more than 1 million residents of Mogadishu.

“The greatest bond between us and the people of Somalia is religion,” Ikram concluded. “And that will serve us.”

For many Somali intellectuals and clan elders, however, religion may be a two-edged sword. Traditionally, Somalis have practiced a moderate and secular form of Islam, and several voiced fears that Pakistani forces will attempt to impose their own brand of fundamentalist Islam, particularly in areas where there is already a small but growing native fundamentalist movement.

But Bir, himself a secular Muslim who has served extensively with American and European military commanders in senior NATO posts, insisted during the interview that all the U.N. contingents will operate under the same rules.

In fact, the Turkish general said he is so confident of the professionalism of the armies joining in his landmark mission that his logistics chiefs gave little thought to the fact that what will probably be the two largest contingents--Pakistan and India--are traditional enemies who have fought three brutal wars in the past three decades.

T he commander expressed optimism that his mission will succeed--despite the additional challenge of a mandate that requires his peacemaking force eventually to pacify and control the entire nation with fewer troops than the Americans used to occupy just 40% of Somalia.

“We are ready,” he said with a confident smile.

“As difficult as the challenges may appear to be in Somalia, it may well be an easier test case for the U.N. than a lot of other places staring us in the face all over the world--Bosnia, for example,” agreed one diplomat in the region. “Here, at least, you’re not facing a First World army. The closest thing that might be looming out there is in the central region of Somalia, but even that, there’s maybe 15 tanks, maximum, and a ragtag band of fighters.

“So, when you look around and say, ‘Where is the U.N. going to start?’--well, it’s got to start someplace that’s relatively easy. And Somalia is even easier than, say, Angola or other trouble spots in Africa.”

And few seem to doubt that there will be more Somalias.

In his final press conference here, Robert B. Oakley, a now-retired veteran diplomat who served as U.S. special envoy in Mogadishu during most of the U.S. intervention in Somalia, rattled off a list of emerging disasters just in Somalia’s own back yard--Zaire, Angola, Mozambique and, potentially, even Kenya. Perhaps the most critical lesson of Somalia is that the nations of the world should act to help now, rather than waiting for hundreds of thousands to die, Oakley concluded.

“It is cheaper to act now,” he said, “certainly in terms of human life.”

And his replacement, U.S. envoy Robert T. Gosende, took it a step further.

“We have got to evolve a system where we, collectively as a community of nations, agree on a course of action before it becomes necessary to send in two divisions of armed forces,” he said in an interview last week.

“I hope the new world order will lead to some sort of system where 300,000 people don’t have to die before we can do something to help. But we’re just not there yet.”

Somalia’s U.N. Forces

Troops from around the world will patrol Somalia after the United Nations assumes full command this week. Although a U.S. contingent remains, a Turkish general will take the helm. Here are some of the many nations contributing peacekeepers, as of last week.

1 Pakistan: 4,761

2 United States: 4,669

3 Italy: 2,558

4 Germany: 1,600 (scheduled to arrive in June)

5 Morocco: 1,295

6 Canada: 1,209*

7 Australia: 1,122*

8 France: 1,100

9 Belgium: 926

10 Saudi Arabia: 680

11 U.A.E.: 639

12 Nigeria: 562

13 Turkey: 300

14 Egypt: 235

15 Botswana: 206

16 India: 174**

17 Sweden: 162

18 Zimbabwe: 160

19 Kuwait: 138

20 Tunisia: 133

21 Greece: 110

22 New Zealand: 67

* Australia and Canada will be reduced to a small contingent after their forces depart on the heels of the U.S. combat troops.

** India has indicated it will contribute a full brigade of up to 5,000 soldiers, but New Delhi has yet to take official action approving it. SOURCE: U.N. command