It’s Thankless--and Crucial : U.N. humanitarian campaign still offers the best hope for Somalia

Seldom if ever has the United Nations taken on a more thankless task than the one it faces in trying to pacify Somalia and allow its 7.5 million people a chance to live secure and productive lives.

The East African country has been ravaged by two years of factional fighting and a brutal famine fueled by the depredations of at least 15 warlords and their militias. An American-led multinational effort last December rescued a relief effort that was being strangled by the militias, probably saving tens of thousands of lives. In early May the United States handed over command of the multinational forces to the United Nations. A month later 23 Pakistani peacekeepers were killed in an ambush blamed on the forces of Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, the most powerful of the warlords.

That incident led to open warfare between the United Nations and Aidid. A U.N. arrest warrant on war crimes charges has been issued and a $25,000 reward offered for Aidid’s capture. U.S. helicopter gunships have been used to attack Aidid’s munitions dumps and suspected hide- outs. In response Somali gunmen have targeted U.N. peacekeepers, killing at least 35 and wounding 137 in less than a month. On Monday, following another attack on an Aidid facility, Somalis turned on foreign journalists, killing at least two.

It’s clear now that the peacekeeping mission assigned U.N. troops in Somalia has been transformed willy-nilly into a peacemaking operation, with all the evident added dangers that involves. The new risks are not just to U.N. personnel but to civilians as well, at least 20 of whom were shot dead a month ago when Pakistani troops without warning fired on a street demonstration. So long as the United Nations’ confrontation with Aidid is focused in heavily populated Mogadishu, peril to civilians will remain high. Yet the essential humanitarian basis of the U.N. intervention remains valid. The people of Somalia deserve better than what ambitious warlords and their gangs of armed thugs have brought them. Their only hope for getting better comes from continuing the U.N. operation.