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From the start, the relationship between the foreign troops and Somalis has been ill defined, leaving ample room for misunderstanding. When a group of heavily armed Marines disgorged from an amphibious assault vehicle stenciled with the name BRAT PACK and tried to secure an airfield hangar, they baffled non-English-speaking Somalis with orders to "Get down on your knees!" and "Spread your arms!" At least one Somali found the treatment inexplicably rude, given that the men were unarmed. "If you are a human being, it's not good for you to be lying on the ground," he said. "I would like to entertain these foreigners with open arms, but I very much regret this problem."
The real work of bringing food to starving people has barely begun. On Saturday, the U.S. escorted its first food convoy, a group of four trucks that delivered its cargo to northern Mogadishu. American helicopter gunships and armored personnel carriers escorted the shipment, which had been idled in port for several days, reportedly because of a disagreement between U.S. troops and U.N. peacekeepers over who was in charge. Other relief shipments remained blocked in the city, in large part the result of bad communications between soldiers and relief workers.
The possibility of confrontation will increase sharply when the foreign troops push inland toward the famine belt. The situation to the south, in Kismayu, was grim. Sixty people were killed last week during clashes between two local factions, and all but a handful of relief workers had to be evacuated. Of mounting concern is what the thugs plan to do once the foreign troops reach these cities. Will they turn their firepower on the soldiers? Or will they continue running as the U.S. units advance, pushing into villages that until now have been spared the worst of the fighting? "We are very concerned about the bandits' being driven out of major population centers by the Marines and setting on people in the countryside," says Nicolas de Metz, coordinator of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).
The U.S. troops face logistic difficulties as well. Given Somalia's / primitive airports, shallow ports and unpaved roads, troops will have to improvise as they go. "This is a classic bring-your-own operation," says one four-star Army logistician. That means supplying their own night lights at the airport, radar systems for air-traffic control, generators -- and then fuel to run them. Logistics managers are sending three times the normal spare parts, worried that sand could be a constant problem.
Nutrition and hygiene must also be imported. The military will have to desalinate or purify every drop of water drunk by troops. Water consumption for a 16,000-member division is roughly 300,000 gal. daily. The troops have been immunized for a wide range of diseases, including yellow fever and typhoid, and truck-mounted pesticide sprayers are being brought in to do battle against flies and mosquitoes.