The sheriff and the warlords: When the UN wants to end a war, it must stay until the job is done, argues Richard Dowden

THE AMERICAN bombing of Mogadishu is looking increasingly like an act of petulant revenge for the previous killing of the Pakistani soldiers. It will almost certainly fail to 'restore normalcy' as President Bill Clinton calls it, and is likely to turn the United Nations peace- keeping force in Somalia into an army of occupation. It also raises fundamental questions about the future of the United Nations' role in the world's civil wars.

At present, the UN has three large- scale involvements: former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Cambodia. In the first two, it is faced with the question: how far do you go? In both cases, the UN originally came to protect emergency food for people starving because of civil wars. In both cases, it has become clear that to get the food through, the UN has to stop the war. Can the UN do that, and if so, how?

One option is the choice the UN took in Angola - it pulled out and let the misery caused by civil war take its course. The UN has also failed to take action to stop appalling civil wars in Azerbaijan, Sudan and Liberia.

The 'let them fight it out' school is not made up entirely of cynics. Some sincerely argue that if two sides want to fight it out, there is nothing the rest of the world can do to stop them. But against that argument are the cries of men, women and children who do not want to fight anybody but are innocent victims, driven from their homes. Their faces of pathetic grief on our television screens evoke the natural response - something must be done.

It seems incredible now that only last November, Marrack Goulding, then head of UN peace-keeping, was grappling with the question: 'Can UN troops guarding a convoy of relief food shoot their way through a road block?' Within days he had his answer. Almost out of the blue, the retiring Bush administration casually hinted that it was thinking of sending the Marines to Somalia. It was a 'do- able' operation and the Marines would be home by the end of January.

It is important to remember the genesis of US involvement, especially the terms on which it went into Somalia. When US forces handed over to the UN in May, statements from Washington implied that Somalia had been embroiled in war when they went in on 9 December and that thousands were starving because fighters were stealing food from relief convoys.

The truth was slightly different. First, there was a ceasefire between the two local protagonists, Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohammed. It had held since March 1992. Second, the starving were largely in one area, around Baidoa and Bardera, west of Mogadishu. The worst of the dying had happened three months before. Food was now getting to these areas, but only after long, difficult negotiations with the warlords, and some food - about 10 per cent - was being stolen. The rest was getting through.

What was clear was that the UN had been ineffective in Somalia. Its staff had fled early in 1991 with the other diplomats, and despite a mandate from the Security Council, the UN force had delayed several months before going in. By December last year, it consisted of a few elegant but ineffective Pakistani troops holed up at Mogadishu airport, protected by local fighters. Meanwhile, other relief agencies had effective operations on the ground. There was a strong element of big brother America showing the UN how to get things done.

Rejecting the option of cordoning off the famine zone and making it a safe haven, the US decided to make a frontal beach landing at Mogadishu. In terms of the mandate the Americans gave themselves, creating a safe environment for food deliveries, going to Mogadishu made little sense. The Red Cross was quietly landing food unmolested on beaches south of Mogadishu and trucking it inland. If, as many suspected, the landings at Mogadishu were to get the spirit of the Gulf war back on television, it rebounded with squirming embarrassment as the first waves of Marines had to push through the massed photographers and cameramen.

By going to Mogadishu, the Americans took on more than they bargained for. They found themselves taking over a country. On the whole, Somalis welcomed that. But Somalis are difficult people, proud to the point of xenophobia and aggressive and fearless when moved to anger, which happens easily.

Some accepted the Americans because they were tired of the warlords and faction-fighting. The fighters simply stood down in the face of superior US firepower - and waited.

Once in the capital, the Americans had only one option: to stay until Somalia had a new government. That meant disarming the country and then running it until an acceptable Somali leadership emerged.

Robert Oakley, the US special envoy and a Vietnam diplomatic veteran, had no intention of doing that. He said that forcible disarmament was too imperialistic. He also said that a new leadership had to emerge naturally from the Somalis themselves. Uncle Sam was not there to impose a solution.

New Somali leaders might indeed have emerged if the Americans had stayed and held the ring until they were in place. They would have probably killed men, lost men, had to put down 'anti-imperialist' movements and, most difficult, Washington would have had to explain all this to the US public. But having gone in, that was the only honourable option.

Of course, when the US forces left, Washington spoke of mission accomplished and the green shoots of an emerging new Somalia. That was far from the truth. They had presided over a lull in the fighting, then handed over to the UN. Political progress had been minimal. No attempt had been made to develop and empower a new leadership and the warlords, who should have been tried as criminals, were still at large, their armouries intact.

It was a poisoned chalice for the inadequate and unpopular UN. It was only a matter of time before the shooting started again, for two reasons: first, to most Somalis the UN was still the contemptible little army and that wicked Egyptian Boutros Boutros- Ghali - there is a historic mistrust of Egypt in Somalia. The other reason why only the Americans could have completed the job is not publicly talked about, or spoken of only in coded language. Somali society is deeply racist. Americans, Australians and Canadians are generally respected and feared. Pakistanis, East Europeans, Asians and others in the multilateral force are despised. They became easy targets for the fighters.

For the Americans to return and bomb parts of the Somali capital in revenge for the deaths of 23 Pakistanis, and then send the Pakistanis back in on the ground, is certain to result in the deaths of more UN troops. It will become a spiral of revenge.

In the atavistic wars of identity between paranoid neighbours that seem to be the curse of the last years of the century, the UN can either walk away - as it walked away from Angola - or it can take on a peace-imposing role. This cannot be done by the American sheriff riding into town and picking off the baddies. It will require long-term commitment and soldiers in blue helmets prepared to shoot first and die in a cause they have no part in. And they have to stay until the job is done, even if that means recreating UN mandated territories and ruling them for a while. To go in - or just fly over - and blaze away, then walk away, is a betrayal that can only make matters worse.

(Photograph omitted)