es of internal conflict, however, two or more parties may claim to be the legitimate government, or (as in the case of Somalia) there may be no group or body having any of the characteristics of a government. There is thus no specific victim, in the sense of a recognized sovereignty, which can appear before the United Nations to seek redress. Yet the human victims of such conflicts may be very numerous, and the world community rightly acknowledges a right and obligation to intervene.
Such intervention may be difficult in practice, so difficult that no effective intervention can be undertaken. Moreover, because the United Nations is dependent upon its member countries to provide intervention forces, internal political circumstances may render adequate forces unavailable. Bosnia and Somalia, respectively, are instances of these two classes of circumstances. In the Bosnian civil war, the terrain is not favorable to intervention. Much of the country is mountainous and forested, eliminating the advantages of armored movement and air power that were so impressively demonstrated in the liberation of Kuwait. The irregular forces involved are, moreover, large in scale, so any potential intervenor is compelled to face the possibility of large-scale casualties. In Somalia, the environment is less unfavorable and the indigenous forces smaller, but the most effective intervenor, the United States, withdrew its forces following a domestic political response to combat losses among American troops.
Thus, in both of these instances, United Nations intervention has in fact failed to be effective in quelling violent and bloody civil conflicts. But, although the practical effectiveness of the United Nations has thus been regrettably undercut, these cases have not undercut the principle of
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