Global Policy Forum

By Sarah Sewall *

By insisting that the United Nations do the ''dirty work'' of nation-building without ensuring a secure foundation upon which to build, President George W. Bush is effectively setting up the UN to fail in Afghanistan, much as his father's policies sowed the seeds for failure in Somalia. The US refusal to support disarming and defusing the warlord culture renders even the most effective nation-building efforts a Band-Aid at best.

Accommodating warlords was the linchpin of the initial US intervention strategy in Somalia. This pragmatic approach acknowledged the reality of factionalism in that lawless country. There was only one problem. It failed to weaken the fiefdoms that had torn the country apart. No matter, as long as the United States wanted to drop off food and get out. But it mattered enormously when the UN was asked to help create a functioning state.

The UN mission was placed at risk by a Somali warlord who decided that the foreign peacekeepers had become a liability. The UN lacked the requisite capabilities to confront him. A US operation went bad, Americans died, and the entire UN effort unraveled. Somalia largely reverted to its preintervention lawlessness. US officials now speak of terrorist cells and other threats gestating in the chaos that is Somalia today.

At the time, critics saw the UN peacekeeping effort in Somalia as proof that nation-building was a mistake. However, the real failure in Somalia was not nation-building per se, but the failure to first create a secure foundation on which other efforts would depend.

Security is a precondition for political reform, economic development, and other aspects of what is pejoratively termed ''nation-building.'' (It was called ''postwar reconstruction'' when we did it for Europe, where it was considered both self-serving and heroic.) Even the most energetic and well-resourced efforts cannot construct a nation amid the shifting sands of unaccountable, well-armed minidespots.

In Afghanistan today, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz calls regional powers with a great deal of autonomy a matter of Afghan culture. He warns against intervening too actively on behalf of the central government for fear that people may become too reliant upon that intervention.

This classic conservative suspicion about government, which lies at the heart of objections to nation-building, seems curiously misapplied to nations long suffering from the absence of government. How can Afghanistan hope for a different future if nation-building simply augments power structures of the past? The Bush administration seems to think that it has learned the lessons of Somalia by not messing with the warlords and by leaving the nation-building to others. This is simply wrong.

Confronting the warlords is neither easy nor the best use of American troops at this moment. Our most pressing security concerns lie elsewhere. But the peace in Afghanistan is fragile at best. It can be undone by the concerted efforts of one nasty regional leader. And its undoing will have significant costs.

For reconstruction to proceed, for any hope of future stability, there must be a modicum of security beyond Kabul. If the Afghan central government cannot do this (which is doubtful in the near term), a capable, neutral force that can disarm and dissuade the warlords is vital. No one wants to contemplate the numbers, the capabilities, the costs required. But it is unrealistic to expect sustainable progress without facing up to the country's security requirements.

It is time for the United States to stop using the UN simply to provide our forces with an exit strategy and to keep American hands unsullied by nation-building. The US government should either create the possibilities for peace before asking others to maintain it, or the administration should support follow-on forces that are up to the challenge they will face.

We need to learn the right lessons from past failures. Before handing off our responsibilities, we should ensure some possibility of success for those who would help clean up the mess.

Sarah Sewall, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for peacekeeping, is program director at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

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