FT933-1807 _AN-DIVB9ADLFT 930922 FT 22 SEP 93 / Africa's lunatic asylum: US ends in Somalia are admirable, but do not justify the means By EDWARD MORTIMER 'The UK gov-ernment said last night its forces would fire on civilians being used by IRA gunmen as 'human shields', des-pite casualties among women and children on Thursday when British helicopters fired into a crowd.' Just imagine the worldwide outcry that would greet that news item. Imagine, especially, the storm of indignation that would sweep across the US. It would surely end, once and for all, any talk of a 'special relationship' between the UK and the US. Now read the item again, substituting 'United Nations' for 'UK government' and 'Somali militiamen' for 'IRA gunmen'. I did not make it up. It was the opening sentence of a report from the FT's Africa correspondent, published 10 days ago. I tried this trick on several US officials and commentators in Washington and New York last week. Needless to say, they did not like the analogy, but they floundered somewhat in trying to explain what was wrong with it. 'But in Northern Ireland you'd be killing your own people, your kith and kin,' said one. 'Aha,' I replied, 'so is it perhaps their skin colour that makes Somali women and children expendable? If so, won't black American leaders soon have something to say about it?' Apparently not. Black leaders were to the fore in urging the US to go in and save Somalis from starvation, complaining that the UN had become exclusively obsessed with a 'white man's war' in Yugoslavia. Therefore, I was told, they are not well placed to call for a pull-out now. War and 'warlordism' - disrupting the production and distribution of food - were the main causes of famine in Somalia. Everyone seems to agree about that. That is why armed intervention was deemed necessary to end the famine. The first UN force (Unosom I), dispatched in August 1992 to supervise and protect food deliveries, failed to overawe the warlords. So in December a stronger force (Unitaf) was sent in, authorised by the UN Security Council but under US command. Initially the US wanted to concentrate only on food deliveries. It was the UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros Ghali, who insisted that the warlords must be disarmed at the same time if the operation was to have any lasting effect. By the time the US command handed over to the second UN force (Unosom II) in May, the US had come round fully to Mr Boutros Ghali's view. In fact the US view now seems to be that all remaining problems in Somalia are the fault of one particular warlord, General Mohammed Farah Aideed. 'On food, we have done very well,' said US defence secretary Les Aspin on August 27. 'On security, we have made progress.' Somalia, he said, is now 'generally peaceful', except for south Mogadishu, the Aideed stronghold. 'The danger now is that unless we return security to south Mogadishu, political chaos will follow the UN withdrawal . . . The danger is that the situation will return to what existed before the US sent in the troops.' The US retains two separate forces in Somalia. There are logistics troops, which are part of Unosom II and under its commander (who is a Turkish general, but chosen for the job by the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Colin Powell); and there is the 'quick reaction force' (QRF), composed of combat troops which remain under US command but back up the UN force when necessary, at the request of the UN special representative (who is another American, Admiral Jonathan Howe). It is the QRF which retaliates when UN troops are ambushed or fired on by General Aideed's forces, and which, therefore, has inflicted most of the casualties on Somali civilians. This complex command structure results from the unwillingness of the US to do what every other contributor to UN forces has to do, namely place its combat troops under a commander of another nationality. Presidential Decision 13, which is supposed to define the availability of US forces for UN peacekeeping and other duties, has been held up by prolonged argument within the administration on this very point. In the case of Bosnia, President Bill Clinton has insisted that if US troops do go in to help enforce a peace agreement they will do so under Nato and not UN command. (His aides say it is agreed within Nato that the French General, Jean Cot, who commands the present UN force in Bosnia, would also command the Nato troops; but it remains to be seen whether Mr Clinton is really prepared to try and sell that arrangement to Congress.) Meanwhile, the arrangements in Somalia ensure that the UN is identified, in the eyes of local opinion and of the world, with a peculiarly American modus operandi. Somalia is not another Vietnam, or even another Panama; still less another Gulf war. It is like a grotesque re-enactment of all those by the inmates of a small lunatic asylum (on the lines of the French revolution as portrayed in Peter Weiss's play Marat-Sade). The objectives are admirable, and in this case untainted by any discernible US national interest. But several hallowed American principles are at stake: The battle is one of good against evil, and evil has to be incarnate in one man (Gaddafi, Noriega, Saddam and now Aideed). US casualties must be as low as possible, but US military superiority must make itself felt, no matter how great the 'collateral damage'. Any attempt at a negotiated solution constitutes 'appeasement', if not 'betrayal'. Whoever questions the method is assumed to be urging abandonment of the entire enterprise. Countries:- SOZ Somalia, Africa. USZ United States of America. Industries:- P9721 International Affairs. Types:- CMMT Comment & Analysis. The Financial Times London Page 24