WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM SOMALI EFFORT?

We are out of Somalia. We saved perhaps half a million lives, but did not make a single lasting friend. Considerable time will have to pass before we make an inventory of all that we learned from our Somali effort.

Against the advice of his military advisors, President Bush decided in December, 1992, to use the American military to provide humanitarian assistance to the starving in Somalia. He rather naively hoped that our troops would be home no later than the end of his term on January 20, 1993. As Senator Sam Nunn put it, "Bush had a plan to get in, but no plan to get out."

Our generals immediately realized that in order to distribute food supplies throughout Somalia, there would have to be some disarming of the rival factions in order to assure the safety of the personnel involved in the food convoys. The generals also knew that, once you began taking away arms from rival combatants, you were moving a step beyond a purely humanitarian relief effort.

In the early stages, the effort in Somalia was envisioned as a classic peace keeping operation such as those now in Cambodia and Macedonia.

When, during the Clinton presidency, the UN peacekeepers became the targets of fire from Muhammed Farrah Aideed's forces, then the mission became a peace enforcement undertaking. The Korean War and the Gulf War were peace enforcement efforts.

The Somalia UN operation became a bunch of "firsts."

* First massive US/UN military intervention on purely humanitarian grounds, and the costliest.

* First UN Chapter VII peacemaking operation in Africa.

* First time US forces placed under direct UN command.

* The largest UN force assembled for a peacekeeping/peacemaking operation and the largest UN force ever assembled in Africa.

* First time US forces conducted humanitarian relief mission in hostile environment.

* First declaration by the UN that a local political leader was an "international criminal" and issuing of an arrest warrant and reward for capture.

* First deployment of German troops outside of Europe since 1945.

* First time US provided intelligence directly to UN on a regular basis in New York and in the field and first time US military intelligence personnel were assigned directly to UN headquarters in New York.

One of the biggest problems still to be dealt with is how UN forces can properly utilize and gather sensitive intelligence information. Institutionally, the UN is opposed to intelligence gathering. One UN member nation spying on or within another member nation runs counter to the idealism of the UN. However, when you are in a life-threatening military undertaking, you want to use all intelligence resources at your command to determine where dangers are and how to cope with them.

Intelligence, to be effective, has to be kept secret. You can't have sensitive intelligence information floating around the hallways of the UN General Assembly.

In future UN military operations, it is certain that the UN will not have an adequate system of collecting, protecting and analyzing intelligence information. The UN will always be dependent on American and European intelligence sources -- just as it will always be dependent on American and European logistics, air and naval power.

In UN military operations, the Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, acts as the commander-in-chief. A method must be found to let Boutros-Ghali think and act like the important decision-maker while leaving the delicate matter of intelligence gathering and analysis in the hands of a narrow, leak-proof group outside of UN headquarters.

The US should never send its forces abroad in a peace enforcement operation unless its men and women are under the command of American officers. Even today, as part of the UN/NATO air operations in Bosnia, the American pilots are under the military command of the NATO commander, General George Joulwan, an American.

America's final gesture of farewell in Somalia was to donate 5,000 M-16 rifles, 5,000 handguns and millions of rounds of ammunition to the Somali "police" department, all members of which belong to the various warring clans. What a sentimental thought in a nation already armed to the teeth. Fear not. Guns don't kill people; Somali people kill Somali people. Yes, we've often heard that meaningless refrain.