Copyright 1992 The New York Times
December 28, 1992
Praise the Marines? I Suppose So
By Nuruddin Farah
KADUNA, Nigeria
It's show time.
The Americans are giving their end-of-the-year extravaganza.
The Somalis are impressed with this show of force. Those viewing
the show on TV are pleased with the performance so far. Come
to think of it, so are the "warriors," in the main
marines spearheading the feed-the-starving protect-the-helpless
American-led force: "warriors" who pose for a photo
opportunity -- well-fed youths, faces wide with self-complacency,
features fat with gourmet treats prepared in ovens offshore and
flown in helicopters equipped with microwave facilities, while
the Somalis starve!
I very much doubt that anyone, least of all America or its allies,
would have come to Somalia's help earlier or faster if it had
been dealt a fate similar to that of Kuwait. Since the end of
the cold war, Somalia has meant less in geopolitical terms; also,
it is peopled by blacks, is too poor to attract Western interests
and has a 100 percent Muslim population.
How come America has committed an elite corps of marines to Somalia?
By the time the world turned its attention to the Somali crisis,
the famine had shaped up into a wicked force to be reckoned with,
what with the photogenic skeletons of death, the visitation on
one's conscience when the stretched skins of the near-starved
entered living rooms via TV.
Is it all a matter of a post-Thanksgiving spot of charity on
the part of an overfed nation to a starving one? Are things as
simple as that? Or are there other, hidden motives?
I would be the first to admit that the crisis in Somalia is one
of its people's making and is native to the country's ill-run
clan patronage, although some of the inherent ills that have
triggered the civic strife may have had their genesis outside.
But when the worst was wedded to the worst, and several thousands
lost their lives, and many more fled across the boundary as refugees
-- when two and a half million fell victim to famine and lawless
looting -- maybe it didn't matter who, in the end, came to intervene
and under what guises, whether blue-helmeted or not, African
or not, even if the intervening force had its own hidden agenda.
I have not desisted from censuring Africa for watching with mind-boggling
indifference while the Somalis destroyed themselves, while the
country collapsed into absolute anarchy -- the worst of its kind.
I will spare you my outrage at the Arab, the Muslim and the nonaligned
leagues of which Somalia is a member. They are not worth my bother.
It's a shame, though, that it fell to the United States to take
the lead by sending in the marines, and for the French and the
Canadians to make contributions in order to salvage the so far
unsavaged. Shame on you, Africa; shame on the Secretary General
of the Organization of African Unity; shame on your heads of
state. I speak as a pan-Africanist!
Shall we say, "Well done, America!" and be done with
the matter?
As a former colonial, a pan-Africanist -- above all a Somali
national who is bitter -- I confess that I find it extremely
difficult to get myself psyched up to put my faith in the genuineness
of a gesture of goodness originating in areas of the globe with
a history of imperialist domination.
I realize I haven't any reason at this juncture to accuse America
of imperialist objectives. It would be too simple-minded and
rather unrealistic to think that Africa could have mounted a
force comparable in strength and efficacy to that of the marines.
Caught off balance by the unexpected arrival of the marines,
a Somali interviewed on BBC's Network Africa was of the opinion
that the Americans were after our beautiful women. I take it
that his response is that of a weakling of a man feeling powerless
when confronted with the powers of another man's virility. Another
held the view that every Somali would be converted to Christianity.
To what end?
Overwhelmed as I am with the magnitude of the crisis, I say this:
Somalia is an open sore, a wound gaping as wide as a gate on
broken hinges, a mouth toothless and without a tongue, ugly in
the extreme, cavernous, tomblike.
Maybe it would be wise to wait until the waste has been dealt
with, the running sore has been stopped, the famished have been
fed, the sick healed, the malnourished rehabilitated, and only
then speak.
I'm coming round to the wisdom to be courteous to those who have
been generous, a wisdom cautioning me to wait and see how things
develop on the ground before piping the praise of the marines
who are performing sanctimonious acts of Christian kindness (Christian
in the secondary, secular meaning of the term), who, days after
landing with only a tiny force, have made much difference to
the balance of power among the thugs -- the marines who have
executed their jobs well, jobs as clean as anesthesia
Wisdom informs me that the marines are not in Somalia to do a
plumbing job; they are there risking their lives to confront
the notorious marauders of Mogadishu, Kismayu and Baidoa, wicked
men who tuck into a cheek the stimulant khat and are on wings,
who get high on other drugs, who are stone-deaf to death, to
the muezzin's preaching of Islamic morality, to the traditional
notions of clanly co-existence.
For what this is worth, I support the marines' strict ban on
the importing of khat, which hardly contributes to the well-being
of the populace; the ban is essential to the peacemaking efforts
under way.
No doubt there are things to quibble about -- American ways of
conducting the affair; their general behavior, which one might
find fault with; their attitudes, which are probably highly unpardonable.
They say, don't they, that one must not look a gift horse in
the mouth for fear of what one might see. After all, one may
not approve of the gift or the one who has given it.
It is show time now, and December is here, so turn on your CNN,
ABC, BBC and Voice of America, kick off your shoes, put up your
feet and relax.
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