Establishing the 'Right to Intervene'

The humanitarian intervention in Somalia has drawn remarkably widespread support, even from many people who strongly opposed the war in the Persian Gulf. For example, a coalition of U.S. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders supported U.S. intervention in Somalia (as well as Bosnia), saying, "America is not policeman to the world, but the mass murder of innocents is unacceptable. We cannot sit idly by as the cruelty and the killing persist." The National Council of Churches called the deployment of troops "urgent and necessary."

Others, however, have raised serious concerns and cautions about the U.S.-led military operation - and some human rights and peace organizations have opposed it outright.

The Catholic peace organization Pax Christi USA acknowledged the "moral obligation" to intervene on behalf of the "desperate needs of the Somali people," but said the United Nations should not have acquiesced to U.S. control of the operation. Pax Christi expressed alarm at the U.S. military's insistence on a mandate to "use all necessary force," and said that "troops should only be allowed to fire their weapons in self-defense."

The Fellowship of Reconciliation, an interfaith pacifist organization, questioned the assumption that military intervention could solve the problems of Somalia; previous interventions in Panama, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the group pointed out, did not solve the problems of those countries. The FOR statement raised concerns about the precedent being set for future interventions in other countries, and called for the United Nations to take charge of the peacekeeping operation in Somalia.

The Nation magazine warned that the intervention in Somalia "is meant to soften up [the U.S. public] for more interventions under the new world order," and that a consensus is forming around a new "right to intervene." The magazine's editors stressed the political nature of the mission, given Somalia's strategic location astride the Horn of Africa, and asserted that American intervention will help the wealthier merchant class consolidate local control - setting the stage for future civil strife and famine.

Representatives of Mennonite Central Committee, whose work in Somalia began in 1975, called military intervention a "simplistic" response that does not address the root causes of the crisis. MCC officials expressed fear that the intervention, despite good intentions, could block progress toward peace and endanger international aid efforts, and warned that if the U.S. military seeks to establish a central government in Mogadishu instead of empowering traditional clan elders "it will be a disaster."

The American Friends Service Committee, which has done development and relief work in Somalia for more than 10 years, called the intervention a "grave mistake" that "may be counterproductive." A situation created and perpetuated by the violence of arms, the Quaker pacifist organization said, needs peacemakers rather than more soldiers. AFSC also warned that foreign relief workers could become targets of reprisals, and that the intervention could militarize future relief aid.

Syndicated columnist Colman McCarthy pointed out that it was both military policies and indifference to the world's hungry that helped create the catastrophe in Somalia. The United States sent $403 million in military aid to Somalia in the 1980s. Currently, the United States sells weapons to 142 governments. In five or 10 years, McCarthy asks, which of them will be in a state of armed chaos as Somalia is now, crying out for future interventions?

- The Editors