Keeping the Peace? You Gotta Be Kidding!

The Geek has always had a sneaking fondness for Somalia. Not that he wants to go there--at least any time soon. He's not that masochistic.

Still, he's gotta love a place where (according to one legend--the Ethiopians have another one) coffee was discovered by a shepherd who noticed the goats were friskier after eating the beans of one particular type of bush. Also, a people who formerly settled political differences by battles of poetry rather than barrages of bombs has a real appeal.

As anyone who has been half-attuned to the news knows, the geographic expression known as Somalia has been going down the tubes again in recent weeks. Multiple clan militias, remnants of the ousted Islamic government, thugs for hire, and assorted other bomb throwers and gun slingers have been exchanging fast moving pieces of metal with the Interim Government and its Ethiopian military supporters.

In the middle civilians have been dying in very large, but disputed numbers.

The US and the UN support the Interim Government but neither is willing to dispatch peacekeeping forces until a political settlement lowers the amount of lethal debris in the air. For the US this position is quite understandable given what happened back during the early days of Bill Clinton.

(Remember that was the "humanitarian relief" mission that escalated until our forces were in direct combat with the number one warlord of the day. The operation came to a humiliating end when an overconfident air assault by Rangers led to a debacle highlighted by video of a naked American corpse being dragged by screaming and dancing locals through the dusty streets of Mogadishu.)

The UN Security Council essentially has passed the buck to the African Union, which is the successor to the 1960s creation known as the Organization of African Unity. The African Union, which is currently operating a relief mission in Somalia, has promised 8,000 peace keeping troops. So far approximately 1,600 have arrived from Uganda with another contingent of 1,500 from Burundi expected as soon as "technological and financial" problems can be solved.

The African Union has fallen in love with the idea of keeping the peace in the Darfur region of Sudan. The new infatuation means that the AU is trying to pressure the UN to do the peace keeping in Somalia.

In spite of all the hand-wringing in Africa and New York, Somalia has suddenly become the red headed stepchild of the peace keeping family.

Why and so what?

The why is almost straightforward. Somalia has not had a working central government since 1991. Over the past sixteen years mere anarchy has descended to unmitigated violent chaos with a brief time out for inefficient Islamist repression. Everyone is tired of Somalia. More importantly, no one sees a quick, easy, or effective solution to the mess.

In comparison Darfur looks almost like a no-brainer. While the underlying ethno-linguistic-religious split between the Arab Muslim north and the African Christian south have existed for decades with sporadic and quite bloody violence, the most recent flare-up has been around for only a few years.

According to outsiders the body count has been massive (ca 200,000) and the refugee exodus enormous. The Sudanese government takes a different view alleging that only 9,000 have died and that the refugees are the result of natural not armed forces most notably a drought.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Many of the refugees are the result of the violence particularly that caused by Islamist militias. Many are the result of famine (some of it produced this time as in the past by government policy) and drought.

Get a grip on this. Refugees more than body counts capture the political attention of the West, of the European Union and the US. Footage of starving women and children moves people to move politicians. National politicians, particularly once the magic word "genocide" is employed, move the UN.

Darfur is happening! Darfur is glamorous! Darfur is with it!

Somalia is passe. Yesterday's cause. The orphan with no tomorrow.

The result is that while the UN and the AU point fingers at each other and demand, "You first," the Security Council has established its largest ever peacekeeping force, a 26,000 man combined AU-UN golem.

The largest, and probably the most expensive peacekeeping effort launched by the UN, this operation will carry a Chapter VII mandate, which means it can use lethal force for purposes other than immediate self-defense. Translated this means that the operation will be a peace imposition not a mere peacekeeping affair.

So, we ought to be able to sigh in relief and smile at the prospect of peace-soon-to-come in Darfur. We can imagine scenes of happy farmers returning to their fields and homes, schools opening, hospitals providing good care, and all the other accoutrements of peace, love and flower power.

Wait one!

There are two flies in the Jello.

The first fly is the African Union, whose chief diplomat has announced that no matter what the UN might be thinking, the combined force will be under African command and control. This isn't simply a small insect in the desert. No. It's more like a bolus in the punchbowl.

It means that there is no real possibility that any Western nation will authorize the dispatch of military or police assets to the joint operation. It means that while the West will be (as the AU diplomat states) expected to pay the costs and furnish equipment and supplies, no western direct command and control will be allowed.

Back up a step or two. What might be the real goal here?

The real goal is the second fly in the Jello. Sudan is a nation-state with all the consensually accepted features of a functioning nation-state including membership in the AU. It is also an Islamic state as are many in the AU. (Think Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt among others.) In short, the fix is in.

Any authentic peace imposition and keeping mission in Darfur would have one of two results if the peace were to be long lasting. Darfur would have to become at least an autonomous region within Sudan. Or, the Sudanese regime would have to be changed.

Neither alternative is acceptable either in Khartoum or many African capitals. Sudan is not alone in facing internal, separatist movements. This is not surprising given that the vast majority of the lines on a map designating borders were drawn by European bureaucrats or military men more than a century ago to meet the their needs not the human realities on the ground.

Given the dismal record of the majority of African manned and commanded peacekeeping mission under the AU and its predecessor the OAU, it can be confidently expected that Darfur will be pacified in a way that meets the interests of Khartoum, not the folks in Darfur. A close look at the same record shows that the locals will be lucky if they are not robbed blind, raped, assaulted, or killed.

The big winner in this beauty contest may be Somalia. The tribes and clans who live in the area have shown both remarkable resilience under extreme stress and an equally remarkable persistence of cultural and historical trajectories. If the writings of the early British explorer of Somalia (and first European to penetrate Mecca during the haj and live to write about it) Richard Burton and descriptions of Somali life in recent years are compared, the only changes have been the introduction of AK-47s in lieu of flintlocks and the importation of Wahhabist Islam in place of the earlier laid back local form.

Left alone, the Somalis will rediscover their own mechanisms for peacekeeping and political change, the councils of clan elders and the battle of poets.

You gotta like people who see poetry as the ultimate weapon.