Somalia seems to cry out for United Nations intervention. After former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was driven from power in January 1991, the country fragmented into small, clan-based fiefs. There is no central government; warlords and bandits are the only authority. Most modern institutions–schools, ministries, factories-have been destroyed in war or ravaged by looters. But traditional culture also is in shreds. Tribal pride and the impulse toward vengeance are widespread; respect for clan elders and old methods of solving disputes are not. Within this cultural warp, the United Nations must try to find a way to save more than 1 million helpless people from starving to death.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has goaded the Security Council into a greater sense of urgency. He recently contrasted the council’s apparent lack of interest in the ravaged Horn of Africa country with its preoccupation with “the rich man’s war” in Yugoslavia. Last week the United Nations organized an emergency airlift of food to Mogadishu and towns in the interior. The United States said it would provide military planes to help with the airlift, though the planes would steer clear of areas where they might encounter gunmen. And various Somali warlords– including the power-hungry Mohamed Farah Aidid, who rules southern Mogadishu and much of the outlying country with a motley group of allies-agreed to accept the deployment of 500 armed U.N. troops, who will try to secure the relief operation in and around the capital.

Frazzled relief workers do their best to get food to the hungry, but the only way to protect themselves and their operations is to hire some of the same thugs who have torn the country apart. Distribution is dangerous. Two armed Land Cruisers or jeeps must escort every five trucks that leave the docks. Even then, whole convoys are sometimes captured or diverted. “The shooting starts at the exit gate and continues along the way and at the distribution centers,” says a worker from the relief agency CARE.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has the most effective food-distribution program in Somalia. The operation, which costs 30 percent of ICRC’s worldwide budget, has brought more than 80,000 tons of food to Somalia since the beginning of the year. Red Cross officials warn, however, that their current rate of supply needs to be more than doubled, and they don’t have the capacity. The United Nations does and is trying to make up for lost time. In the short term, an airlift could get supplies to the needy in a hurry, but it would be prohibitively expensive over the long term. Instead, food must be able to travel by land without being attacked on the way.

Many relief experts and Somalis concur that an outside force is probably necessary to secure emergency operations. Farah Aidid initially refused to accept the deployment of armed foreigners. U.N. forces could have undermined his power, which is already tenuous because of his inability to provide his men with regular food and wages. His chief rival, Ali Mahdi Mohamed, wants intervention. “There is anarchy everywhere,” he complained recently in northern Mogadishu.

U.N. envoy Mohammed Sahnoun, who negotiated the agreement with the warlords, said it would take two or three weeks to dispatch the 500-member international force to Somalia. The U.N. troops will be restricted to the Mogadishu area and won’t be able to protect emergency operations in other stricken places, such as the southern port of Kismayu. Some relief officials worry that the operation could backfire if armed Somalis see the troops as invaders rather than as protectors of relief supplies. Farah Aidid and other local warlords are not above inciting a bloodbath. Last week Washington asked the Security Council to authorize “additional measures,” if necessary, to protect the relief operation.

Pakistan’s Brig. Gen. Imtiaz Shaheen, who heads a small team of unarmed U.N. observers, warns that nobody should underestimate Somalia’s fighters. The Somali “give life and take life with gay abandon,” says the general. “A man who is not afraid of being killed is a good fighter.” It will take equal courage from relief workers, as well as diplomatic skill, to rebuild a fractured nation. The challenge is to prevent a few shabby warlords from holding the entire country hostage.