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Editorials
Thursday, August 10, 2000U.S. takes supporting
role in African conflictThe issue: The Clinton administration will send soldiers to Nigeria to train and equip troops from several West African countries who will reinforce U.N. peacekeepers and government forces battling rebels in Sierra Leone.
PUBLIC outrage over the killing of 18 American soldiers in Somalia prompted the Clinton administration to pull U.S. forces out of that beleaguered country in 1993. The scars from that experience were still fresh when genocidal violence erupted the following year in Rwanda. The Clinton White House refused to intervene to stop the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people -- a decision the president subsequently said he regretted.
Washington has continued to shun direct involvement in Africa's violent upheavals since the withdrawal from Somalia. Now, however, the administration has decided to assume a larger role in the crisis in Sierra Leone.
It plans to send hundreds of soldiers to Nigeria, where they will train and equip soldiers from several West African countries who will reinforce United Nations peacekeepers and government troops battling the Sierra Leone rebels. This is a useful step that should avoid the problems implicit in a commitment of American forces to a combat situation.
The New York Times reported that Washington had previously refused to help the U.N. peacekeepers and tried to charge high rates for the use of U.S. planes to ferry soldiers of other nations to Sierra Leone. That position was criticized in Congress and by Britain, which had dispatched its own troops to help restore order in its former colony.
The result was what one official called "an agonizing reappraisal" of the U.S. policy toward a country where guerrillas who treat civilians with great brutality -- such as amputating limbs of women and children -- are fighting government forces and kidnapped hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers.
Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering said the U.S. goal is "to return the freely elected government to full control of the territory of Sierra Leone and to get the guerrillas demobilized." The hope is that this can be achieved without direct involvement of U.S. forces, by using American soldiers to train troops from Nigeria, Ghana and from an as-yet-undetermined French-speaking West African country.
Washington last summer helped forge an agreement that brought the leader of the guerrillas, Foday Sankoh, into the government and effectively gave an amnesty for the atrocities committed by his fighters. Previously a largely West African force had recaptured the capital, Freetown, from the rebels.
However, when the West Africans withdrew last spring, the rebels overran positions of the peacekeepers and took hundreds of hostages. Britain then sent troops to restore order.
This is not a situation in which direct U.S. involvement seems necessary or appropriate. However, the United States' position of leadership in the world community does not permit Washington to ignore requests that it perform such tasks as training and equipping peacekeepers.
Web infiltrates China
PERSPECTIVE is everything. What Western and formerly Communist countries in Eastern Europe regard as freedom of expression is seen by the Chinese government as enemy infiltration. Chinese police now are hunting organizers of the first dissident Web site based in China, an exercise aimed at repressing the irrepressible.
"Enemy forces at home and abroad are doing all they can to use this field to infiltrate us," reported the official People's Daily. While acknowledging that the Internet "has a large amount of progressive, healthy and beneficial information," the government organ bemoaned the presence of "quite a lot of reactionary, superstitious and pornographic content" on the Web.
What set off the Communist alarms was a Web site called New Culture Forum, operated by pro-democracy activists in Shangdong province before it was shut down by state security officials last week. Its organizers probably will face long prison sentences if arrested, adding to the spectacle of China's futile resistance to the information age.
The Web is growing within China's borders. The number of Chinese online users doubles every six months and reached 14.9 million in June. That is a piddling 1 percent of China's enormous population, but it comprises the intellectual elite, people of particular concern to the government.
A refreshing aspect of this phenomenon is the People's Daily's recognition that China must compete in -- rather than build barriers against -- the marketplace of ideas. It said China must greatly strengthen its own online media and develop news sites to attract more foreign and Chinese Web users. Most state-run media in China are on the Web, but sites that provide access to less-controlled or uncensored information are the most popular.
With Internet use on the rise and effective censorship on the decline, Beijing will look increasingly foolish by trying to suppress domestically based Web sites. The Internet may provide a powerful impetus for China to reform its repressive human rights policies along with its economy.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
