Where the Security Council Fears to Tread

JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images Shell game: The bitter rivalry between Ethiopia and Eritrea has helped turn Somalia into a no-go zone.

Thirty-thousand feet is about as close to Somalia as the United Nations Security Council is willing to get these days. In early June, the 15-member Council embarked on a 10-day, five-country tour of African crisis spots, and Somalia topped the agenda. There was only one catch: U.N. security advisors nixed the idea of the Council landing in Somalia itself. The failed state was just too dangerous for the peacemakers to enter.

Instead, the roving ambassadors descended on neighboring Djibouti to meet with Somalias embattled leaders and to nudge along ongoing negotiations with their Islamist rivals. The former French colony has become a convenient redoubt for those who want to keep an eye on Somalia without setting foot there, including Western militaries. As the U.N. jet touched down, U.S. military aircraft were taxiing for takeoff. Djibouti hosts a contingent of Navy and Air Force planes and Special Forces troops, as well as the largest French military base in Africa. CIA Predator drones fly from its airfields.

A chaotic motorcade ferried the ambassadors to the swank but half-constructed hotel where Somalias so-called Transitional Federal Government was staying (on the U.N.s dime). The Somali authorities scarcely merit the title. Pirates infest the countrys territorial waters, and the government controls only a few chunks of actual territory. In 2006, it lost Mogadishu and much of the south to a Taliban-style Islamist militiathe Union of Islamic Courts. Ethiopian forces, with U.S. backing, ousted the Islamists in December 2006, but they have since morphed into a brutal and persistent insurgency.

Nobody appears capable of restoring order. The scant effective forces at the Somali governments disposal come courtesy of Ethiopia and the African Union, which has dispatched about 3,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops to keep the peace. The U.S. military reportedly has a few commandos skulking around Somalia, but their mission is hunting extremists, not providing order. In early May, an American airstrike killed a senior Islamist commander and several associates.

Sanctuaries from the violence are few and far between. Militias recently sacked a police station in one of Mogadishus most heavily protected districts, and several towns in southern Somalia have fallen again to Islamist forces. Ethiopian Army convoys regularly come under attack. And when the president of the transitional government left Mogadishu to attend the Djibouti talks, his plane was nearly mortared on the runway.

Somalias recent agony owes much to a grudge match between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The war between the bitter cousins formally ended in June 2000, but their animosity is still playing out across East Africa. Eritrea funnels arms to antigovernment forces in Somalia, and many of the Somali governments fiercest opponents operate from Asmara, the Eritrean capital. These hard-liners have made the immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian troops a precondition for peace. But Ethiopia is staying put, and its troops have reportedly adopted ever harsher methods of combating the insurgency. Amnesty International charged recently that Ethiopian forces were slitting the throats of captives.

Bad company: Somalia ranked as the top failed state in the 2008 Failed States Index.

Meanwhile, humanitarian disaster is looming. According to the United Nations, the escalating violence, ongoing drought, and high food prices have come together to place 2.6 million people in jeopardy. A group of Somali civilian representatives told the Council that the country faces an unparallel[ed] storm of humanitarian crisis combining conflict, natural disaster, and displacement. A bout of fighting around Mogadishu displaced 42,000 people in April alone. Desperate Somalis are fleeing across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen in growing numbers.

Somalis can be forgiven for imagining that the international cavalry is saddling up. The Council has discussed sending a 20,000-plus peacekeeping force if the parties can broker a cease-fire. And there is precedent for a dramatic rescue. In the twilight days of his administration, former U.S. President George H.W. Bush sent a massive, if ill-fated, military mission to save the country from starvation. The current Bush administration shows little appetite for such eleventh-hour humanitarianism, and the Security Council as a whole remains wary of sending blue helmets into the Mogadishu maelstrom. Islamist militias have vowed to confront any peacekeepers, and the United Nations is having trouble enough marshaling troops for existing missions in Sudan and Congo.

The Somali politicians who paraded before the Security Council in Djibouti made the right noises. We are all brothers, said the deputy foreign minister while Council members looked on approvingly. We are committed to peace, affirmed an opposition leader a few hours later from the same podium. Government and opposition representatives held productive informal discussions in the hotel hallways and restaurant. And a few days later, the factions did strike an agreement (though the oppositions extremist wingresponsible for much of the actual violencerejected it).

By the time the Somalis announced the deal, the Security Council had left Djibouti for Sudan, the next crisis on its list. When it comes to African peacekeeping, attention is limited and resources are few. The peacekeepers will not land until the Somali factions make a more compelling case that they are ready to cooperate. For now, Somalias people can only watch as help flies overhead.