Making War to Keep Peace (9 page)

CHANGING PURPOSES, CHANGING PROBLEMS, AND CHANGING PARADIGMS

The policy elites positioned to take charge of American foreign policy at the end of the cold war had many ideas about the nature of the world to come—ideas that were quite different from those that had dominated American politics during the cold war.

In the past, the strategies that had dominated discussion in the United Nations and the liberal international law community emphasized the inviolability of state sovereignty, the prohibition against intervention in the internal affairs of states, and the illegitimacy of force in international relations. Each of these principles was questioned and revised or abandoned in the first years after the cold war ended, giving way to new arguments in favor of collective action through the United Nations. Actually, a state's rights to sovereign control and inviolability of its territory and people, the principle of nonintervention in a state's internal affairs, and the illegitimacy of using force in international affairs had never been accepted as binding by the Soviet Union, the United States, or most other governments. For the Soviet Union, a socialist revolution had priority over the sovereign inviolability of another state's territory.

These principles were further subordinated when Bush mobilized force against Saddam, and when the United States and other governments responded to Saddam's massive violations of human rights in Iraq and to the imminent threat of starvation in Somalia. And they would be called into question again by the Clinton administration's decision to use force to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government in Haiti. The prohibition against the use of force, which had seemed compelling to many American liberals a few years earlier, no longer seemed absolute; they were more likely to see the use of force as a variable, depending on the decisions of the Security Council and who occupied the White House.

As the cold war wound down, the view had been expressed again and again—in publications and speeches, in public policy circles, and in and out of the Bush administration—that future problems (hunger, chaos, anarchy) would transcend national boundaries and would require resolution by multinational groups acting collectively through global institutions in multilateral arenas. For the first time, experts and analysts argued
that, whenever possible, the United States should act collectively through global organizations rather than nationally or unilaterally. More and more frequently, the most inclusive and complex multilateral institution in the world, the United Nations, was cited as the preferred arena and instrument for action—on aggression, famine, starvation, and nation building; for containing civil war in the Soviet Union and “restoring democracy” in Haiti; for whatever problem was at hand.

The Bush and Clinton administrations saw almost no limits to U.S. involvement; they conceived the United States as potentially engaged everywhere in the world, as needed. Both presidents sought to deal with international crises through multilateral action coordinated through the UN.

George Bush was the first to take steps toward a system of multilateral military operations authorized by the Security Council. “What is at stake,” Bush said, “is more than one small country. It is a big idea, a world where brutality will go unrewarded and aggression will meet collective resistance.”
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It was Bush who set the precedent of greater reliance on and cooperation through the UN. He broke new ground again and again, expanding the Security Council's jurisdiction by seeking to have Saddam Hussein's violation of Kurdish human rights declared a threat to international peace and security, and sending armed forces to deliver humanitarian relief in Somalia. He stretched the UN's jurisdiction and expanded U.S. involvement with the UN.

Through his repeated moves to multilateral arenas, his resort to the use of force (in Panama, Kuwait, and Somalia), and his break with the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, Bush took the first long steps toward the new world order and set new limits. The Gulf War had involved a matter of genuine national interest, had enjoyed widely popular support, had a clearly articulated goal, and could be won by mobilizing overwhelming force—yet Bush returned repeatedly to the Security Council for approval. Just as he sought the approval of the U.S. Congress because he wanted to demonstrate his respect for the American Constitution, he demonstrated respect for the rule of international law by engaging the UN.

Since Bush already had a strong legal and moral foundation on which to base U.S. military assistance to the Kuwaitis, why did he invest
so much time and effort courting a broad group of marginally interested nations in multilateral fora? The answer lay in Bush's dream of establishing the new world order as a reality. As Laurence Martin, director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, observed:

After Bush's departure from office, Bill Clinton quickly transformed the operation in Somalia from modest, conventional peacekeeping to a more expansive nation-building role. Clinton's team had arrived in office with high hopes for peacekeeping, yet soon after the inauguration the Clinton administration joined an accelerating worldwide trend toward using force more frequently in the form of multinational operations under UN auspices and command. Clinton upgraded U.S. troop commitments to a UN peacekeeping force in Somalia and promised forces to help implement any peace agreement achieved in Bosnia. His policies quickly engaged the United States in more new conflicts than ever before.

The long-term ramifications of decisions made during the Gulf War would not crystallize quickly. After the success of Desert Storm, American troops left Iraq and stayed out for over a decade as the policy to contain Saddam prevailed. No one predicted, then, that the carefully crafted international alliance to keep the peace with Saddam in 1991 would be torn asunder in 2003, casting the United Nations and the United States far apart on the world stage. Nor could conventional thinking have predicted the other, more ominous, unintended consequence: Bush's decision to send U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia to keep peace and offer protection from Saddam would later provide the pretext for Osama bin Laden's making war on the United States.

The end of the cold war left the United States stronger than ever—stronger than any other nation in the world—and the ensuing Gulf War demonstrated the power and skill of American military forces. In Washington, Paris, and other world capitals, and at UN headquarters, foreign service professionals and foreign policy strategists discussed how to use these resources at a moment when our military capacity outstripped the dangers, and the collapse of the Soviet Union created opportunities for new relations among nations. And what better place to start building the new world order than Somalia—one of the poorest countries of East Africa, beset by hunger and near anarchy?

The independent state of Somalia was born in 1960 out of the remnants of colonial empires and indigenous clans. Somalia had the characteristics of many new African nations: weak borders, a weak sense of
national identity, a weak central government, and strong subnational clans.
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Although economically and technologically undeveloped, with a dismally low gross national product and literacy rate, Somalia normally produced enough food for its population. A decade of attempts at democratic self-government ended in 1969 with a coup that brought General Siad Barre to power. Somalia's location on the Horn of Africa gave it strategic interest for major powers during the cold war, but that interest faded with the demise of superpower competition. Barre ruled Somalia by force until shortly before its problems burst onto the world's television screens.

By 1990, Somalia had become a good example of what was becoming known as a “failed state”—a people without a government strong enough to govern the country or represent it in international organizations; a country whose poverty, disorganization, refugee flows, political instability, and random warfare had the potential to spread across borders and threaten the stability of other states and the peace of the region.
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At the end of the cold war there were several such failed states in Africa, any one of which could theoretically have been considered “a threat to international peace and security”
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and thus an appropriate object of concern of the UN Security Council and a potential candidate for international peacemaking or peacekeeping.

To Somalia's complicated problems, the American foreign policy establishment brought an optimistic perspective and very good intentions. The United States had no significant national interest, economic or strategic, in Somalia and no history of significant involvement. But in late 1991, American officials were moved by the Somalis' urgent need for food, medicine, and order. Ultimately, the response to that need involved the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United States, and roughly twenty-nine other nations.

At first, this involvement took the form of a judicious, humanitarian peacekeeping mission, begun during the administration of George H.W. Bush, which avoided the temptation to overreach. During the Clinton administration, however, the Somalia mission took a more ambitious—and arguably irresponsible—direction, toward what became known as “assertive multilateralism.” It was in Somalia that the United States first
ventured onto the slippery slope between peacekeeping and nation building through the use of force, and learned a lesson about relying on inefficient and insufficient UN forces to do dirty work that we are not equipped or assigned to do.

SOMALIA'S DISINTEGRATING GOVERNMENT

By the time it attracted international attention, Somalia was in terrible shape. Barre had governed for twenty years as a typical African strongman, but he had found it more and more difficult to maintain control of the country. At the end of the 1980s, disorder intensified and violence and repression spread. In May 1990, Barre arrested his leading opponents, and his personal guards fired into a crowd at a soccer match, killing sixty-five people. He promised elections the following February, but before they could be held, rebel forces drove his government from power. On January 27, 1991, Barre fled Mogadishu. Almost immediately, the opposition split into multiple factions. The United Somali Congress (USC) named Ali Mahdi Mohamed as interim president, while another group named Umar Arteh Ghalib as interim prime minister.
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Both were rejected by Mohammed Farah Aideed, the leader of a third faction.

Fighting broke out among the factions, refugees multiplied, and famine developed. In December 1991, UN secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar consulted with the OAU, the League of Arab States (LAS), and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in an effort to find a peaceful solution to the conflict. Perez de Cuellar dispatched his undersecretary-general for political affairs, James O. C. Jonah, to the area, but no peaceful solution was forthcoming. War and anarchy spread, interrupting the normal cycles of planting and harvesting, thus causing famine. By January 1992, the International Red Cross was reporting a widespread danger of starvation in Somalia.

On January 23, 1992, in Resolution 733, the Security Council called for a cease-fire, an arms embargo, political reconciliation, and increased humanitarian assistance for the nation. Pictures of starving Somalis appeared on television screens in Europe and America, and humanitarian organizations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) stepped up efforts to deliver food. UN observers were dispatched. They and the
NGOs reported the proliferation of armed profiteers, warring clans, and blocked ports, which made it difficult and dangerous to get food through to the hungry.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali's appointment as secretary-general in January 1992 put a French-educated Egyptian, with decades of interest and experience in Africa in general and Somalia in particular, at the helm of the United Nations.
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Boutros-Ghali's appointment was strongly backed by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and French president François Mitterrand and was supported by U.S. secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger. Boutros-Ghali also had the support of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM), the Socialist International, and the OAU. He believed that Africa deserved more attention, and made it clear that Africa would be a high priority for the UN.

Some Security Council members regarded the spreading war in the former Yugoslavia as a more urgent humanitarian and strategic problem than Somalia, but that view was not shared by either the new secretary-general or the Bush administration. Two key members of the Bush team—Eagleburger and Bush's national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft—were determined that the United States not become involved in the former Yugoslavia, a country they knew well and in which they had long personal service. The two crises competed for attention throughout 1992. In both countries, spreading military conflicts were causing widespread human misery and death, although the problems were very different.

In February 1992, representatives of the OAU, the OIC, and the LAS persuaded two of the warring clan leaders—Ali Mahdi and Aideed—to sign a cease-fire agreement that promised security for humanitarian assistance and deployment of military observers from each of the principal factions. Boutros-Ghali named Mohamed Sahnoun, a skilled Algerian diplomat, as his special representative for Somalia.

Sahnoun's Assessment

By the time Sahnoun arrived in Mogadishu in March 1992, 250,000 to 300,000 Somalis had died of hunger and malnutrition. Most of the nation's livestock had been lost, and half a million Somalis had taken refuge in neighboring countries—mainly Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti.
Women and children were dying at the rate of roughly three thousand a day, and four and a half million people were in urgent need of food. The ICRC estimated that two million people were at risk of death from starvation.
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But the rivalry between Aideed and Ali Mahdi intensified, and the cease-fire did not hold. In June, Sahnoun reported, “Somalia is today a country without central, regional, or local administration and without services: no electricity, no communication, no transport, no school, no health services.”
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In the south, clan warfare and starvation were widespread, agricultural cycles were disrupted, and basic services had been devastated by bombardment and war. In the north, major cities were without electricity or running water, and violence was ubiquitous. The tools and equipment necessary to live were missing, broken, disrupted. Displaced people needed food, medical assistance, and security. UN personnel, NGOs, journalists, and others on the ground documented the breakdown of authority and order and the resulting anarchy, in which gangs engaged in extortion, profiteering, and intimidation. Faction leaders were unable to control armed youth and fighters. Chaos reigned.

Sahnoun summarized the situation: “Lawlessness, banditry, and looting have taken the place of major fighting and open factional hostilities. Marauding armed groups, loyal to no particular warlord but only to themselves, pose a grave threat to the safety of international personnel as well as the local population, and hinder the effective delivery and distribution of humanitarian supplies.”
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On April 24, 1992, acting under Security Council Resolution 751, the UN launched an emergency humanitarian assistance program dubbed the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM I), to expedite the delivery of food and deploy fifty unarmed military observers to monitor the cease-fire.
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But this first effort fell far short of the mark; lawlessness and disorder only intensified through the month of May, making it nearly impossible for help to reach the Somalis. In early July, Aideed said he would permit the UN's fifty unarmed observers to monitor the cease-fire and speed the delivery of food.
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But UN flights to Mogadishu were suspended that month, and Boutros-Ghali announced plans to send five hundred UN military personnel instead.

On July 27, the Security Council passed Resolution 767 (under
Chapter VI of the UN Charter, which does not authorize the use of force), requesting the secretary-general to make use of “all available means,” including an airlift, to deliver humanitarian supplies. In August, at Boutros-Ghali's request, the Security Council passed Resolution 775, increasing UN forces in Somalia by three thousand (although these forces were never deployed).
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The United States was also taking direct aim at the problem: In mid-August, President Bush announced that he was sending unarmed aircraft loaded with food to Somalia, and he followed up a month later with four U.S. ships. Eventually, Aideed agreed to allow the deployment of the additional troops to protect food supplies and to permit deliveries of food, but the promise was kept only briefly.

Mohamed Sahnoun saw Somalia's problem as fundamentally political, and he believed that the restoration of indigenous leadership and authority was essential.
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He consulted widely, relying on personal contacts with local leaders and groups to organize a conference attended by representatives of all the regions. But the situation got worse. In mid-September, after an American plane carrying food was fired on, the United States suspended its airlift. A UN food warehouse in Mogadishu was looted. Siad Barre's forces, trying for a comeback, gained control of Bardera, the site of a large relief camp, and forced UN relief workers to close the airport that supplied it. In Mogadishu, the airport was shut down by armed gangs that demanded high fees for the privilege of landing. Five hundred Pakistani soldiers were pinned down, unable either to guard the airport or to defend the relief convoys. By this time, Robert Kaplan wrote in the
New Republic
, Somalia's political culture was “in such crisis that it won't even let you feed the inhabitants unless you send in the Marines.”
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Sahnoun remained convinced that the breakdown of order and political consensus was the problem, and that political reconciliation—not adding forces—was the answer. In fact, he believed that the UN management itself was creating problems. In a memo to Boutros-Ghali, he reported:

• that most UN agencies were unable to complete their assigned tasks or do what was required to mount a massive relief effort;
  
• that some UN agency personnel were hardly leaving Mogadishu;
  
• that most UN agencies were reluctant to coordinate their activities with UNOSOM;
  
• that much of the food shipments were stolen and marketed by guards or looters;
  
• that troops from member states were too slow in arriving; and
  
• that the Russians had violated the international arms embargo with UN connivance, outraging some Somali factions. (UN personnel arrived on the same plane as Russians and Russian equipment for Ali Mahdi.)
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By this time, it was clear that General Aideed's faction was the one to be reckoned with in Somalia. But Sahnoun explained to the secretary-general that trying to disarm Aideed's clan alone, rather than targeting all clans at once, was a recipe for continuous civil war. Sahnoun thought he saw signs of progress in getting the local leaders to find common ground. “We have tried to move quickly to reinforce these positive trends,” he wrote.
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But Boutros-Ghali had different ideas. So instead of receiving help from the Secretariat, Sahnoun received two critical messages: one questioning his presence in the Seychelles, where he had organized a conference of political leaders to promote political reconciliation, and a second ordering him to refrain from criticizing UN agencies or personnel.

On October 26, 1992, Sahnoun resigned under pressure, attributing his departure to “bitter experiences with the UN bureaucracy.”
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A few months later, he reflected that “those who foolishly have been pushing for a greater buildup of forces without any kind of strategy bear a heavy responsibility in the tragic events of recent weeks in Somalia.”
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Sahnoun believed that animosities against the UN would spread quickly in Somalia. American journalist Michael Maren later confirmed Sahnoun's account of what went wrong, including the incompatibility of Boutros-Ghali's emphasis on a centralized military solution through the UN with Sahnoun's approach, which relied on local leaders. According to Maren, “UN headquarters in New York wanted something bigger and more sensational than one Algerian diplomat talking peace with Somalia's clan leaders…. Boutros-Ghali wanted his massive intervention; Sahnoun
stood in the way. And Sahnoun's early successes in getting the factions to talk became a threat to the secretary general's plans.”
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