After last week’s bloodshed, Operation Restore Hope looked a little depressed. No one was saying that U.S. troops would be home by Inauguration Day. Instead, the talk was of how complicated the U.S.-led mission was turning out to be, and how ill-prepared the United Nations seemed to be to step in as a peacekeeper. “The U.N. is dragging its feet,” complained Rep. John Murtha, who led a congressional delegation to Somalia last week. “I’d like to see the Americans out of here as soon as possible because the longer we’re here, the more involved we get.”
It hasn’t yet turned into a quagmire. But after six weeks, the image of the GI feeding the starving Somali child has been supplanted by the reality of little kids at port gates pelting U.S. military convoys with stones. Says Capt. Mike Belcher, commander of Kilo Company, to which the medic Gonzalez belongs: “My men wonder who the enemy is-and that’s tough because this is a humanitarian mission and there isn’t supposed to be an enemy.” Marine raids on local arms caches cause some resentment as well as gratitude: shopkeepers complained that since their weapons had been confiscated, they were at the mercy of marauders. Interclan warfare, which reached new heights of brutality last week, hasn’t yet drawn in the Marines. But it may only be a matter of time before they are forced to take sides. United Nations troops won’t arrive until the world body authorizes a peacekeeping force that can assume command and control. The U.N. Security Council may soon act on such a resolution now that Somalia’s 14 warring factions have signed a cease-fire and made progress on the agenda for a national reconciliation conference in mid-March.
That leaves the United States. “Now that the Americans are here, they should stay long enough to get the job done,” says Rakiya Omaar, a Somali and former codirector of Africa Watch, who initially opposed U.S. intervention. Does the job go beyond disarming the bandits who prevent the delivery of food? Should it include rebuilding roads, schools and political institutions so that Somalia doesn’t reel back into chaos? Robert Oakley, the U.S. special envoy to Somalia, won’t say how big the mandate is. But he promises that even after the U.N. coalition takes over, America will continue to provide combat support, logistics, communications and other staff. “It is not our intention to set this all up and then walk away and let it all collapse,” Oakley told NEWSWEEK. But Mogadishu is not Beirut or Saigon, and U.S. troops won’t be in place forever. Any hope of a political solution will likely be left for the Somalis themselves to work out.
