|
After
dictator Mohamed Siad Barre is forced out of Mogadishu in January 1991,
his Somali National Movement party finds itself locked in factional struggle
against rival leaders of politically powerful clans. Civil war intensifies
the devastating effects of famine in regions of Somalia, with an estimated
death toll of 300,000 within the first year. The signing of a ceasefire
in March 1992 establishes a UN mission authorized to oversee humanitarian
relief efforts, beginning with 50 unarmed troops arriving to begin monitoring
duties in August. This mission marks the first intervention of Western
powers within an African state, and the first UN undertaking without the
host country’s consent. |
|
By the end of 1991, acknowledging its failure to establish
a secure climate for the distribution of emergency supplies—supply
trucks hijacked, food stolen from airlifts upon landing—the
UN requests military support from its member nations. George Bush,
in the final weeks of his presidential term, commits 25,000 US
Marines to lead the international force. To the American people
he promises a highly specific, focused term of engagement: "Operation
Restore Hope" will disengage before the Clinton inauguration.
|
|
At
a March conference, with American troops still on the ground,
factional leaders including former intelligence chief Mohamed
Farah Aidid reach agreement on a plan for ending civil war. The
UN plans to assume control from the US-led task force with an
expanded mission, empowered to facilitate "nation-building"
through disarmament, policing, rebuilding of infrastructure and
establishing the framework of representative government. On May
4, as 28 nations deploy troops to support this expanded mandate,
the US hands over command and begins withdrawal of its forces.
|
|
|
| Meanwhile,
unbeknownst to the commanders spearheading the mission against Aidid,
former President Jimmy Carter leads secret negotiations with him. |
Priorities
shift radically on June 5, when the ambush of a weapons inspection
team leaves 24 Pakistani soldiers dead. The Security Council issues
an emergency resolution demanding the capture of those responsible;
though unnamed at the time, Aidid is identified two weeks later
as the object of a $25,000 reward. Abandoning the rhetoric of
nation-building, the UN goes to war against Aidid. Throughout
June and July, assaults on locations associated with Aidid escalate,
and civilian casualties increase. Somalis retaliate by killing
troops and foreign journalists. UN forces lose sight of Aidid
on July 29, but continuing attacks against American soldiers prompt
the deployment of an elite task force of 440 US Rangers charged
with Aidid’s capture.
|
|
90
minutes to storm a house in Mogadishu and capture Aidid, reportedly
meeting with his lieutenants inside. That is the mission of a
Task Force Range operation on October 3, combining air strikes
and a convoy of ground troops. Within 30 minutes the forces have
captured 20 prisoners, though not locating Aidid, and are returning
to base when a helicopter is shot down. Gunmen in the surrounding
street isolate the crew from rescue attempts, and the ground convoy
is ordered back to base. Though a second helicopter is brought
down, pilots continue to fly over the battle scene, dropping additional
ammunition and strafing Somali fighters. Attacks on the base delay
the launch of a rescue mission, which eventually collects the
survivors and the bodies of the helicopter crews before fighting
its way to a nearby stadium for airlift evacuation. 18 Americans
are dead, 84 wounded. American audiences watch news footage of
jubilant Somalis dragging mutilated soldiers’ corpses through
the streets of Mogadishu. The efficient 90-minute mission has
devolved into a 17-hour urban battle, the single most violent
US combat engagement since Vietnam, and a public opinion catastrophe.
|
Aidid
will boast in an interview weeks later that events unfolded exactly
according to his plan. |
|
|
President
Clinton has had enough of Somalia. Within days, he announces that
a substantial troop reinforcement will be sent to enable complete
withdrawal of US forces by the end of March 1994.
The remaining 20,000 UN troops are finally withdrawn a year later.
|
|
rWhen
a Security Council investigation of the mission is completed,
Council members try to suppress the report, which concludes that
the operation was poorly planned, relying on faulty intelligence-gathering
systems that misrepresented the opposition. Never again, recommends
the report, should the UN assume an enforcement role within internal
conflicts—use of force must be a strategy of last resort
after all peaceful and diplomatic courses of action had failed.
"The international community will be very careful in future.
We’ve learned... that [UN member] states don’t want
to take casualties. You can’t do coercive disarmament,"
says a peacekeeping official.
|
|
|
|
At
home, the political fallout of this disastrously naive engagement
of US troops becomes known as ‘the Mogadishu effect’—popular
outrage at the sacrifice of American personnel to global policing
missions, engendering reluctance within the Clinton administration
to frame international conflicts as human rights issues entailing
a moral obligation for intervention.
|
|
"I
think the actual effect [of American operations in Somalia] was
to precipitate a basic review of the circumstances under which
we would get engaged in this type of operation. The outcome of
which was laid down on day one, which was to establish criteria
which would narrow the possibility that we would get engaged.
This resulted in a formal presidential determination or directive
(PDD 25) in May of '94... a set of guidelines under which the
US would be prepared to get her own forces engaged and/or to authorize
the UN to get engaged. And this crystallized a growing body of
resistance to these type of potentially dangerous humanitarian
interventions, which was widespread in our own military and, for
that matter, on Capitol Hill. By establishing a formalized doctrine,
this presidential directive for the United States, they would
set a rigid set of criteria, which, I believe, were tailored to
make it very, very difficult to launch the United States military
into this kind of adventure again." James Woods, Deputy Assistant
Secretary for African Affairs at the Department of Defense, 1986-1994
|
The
battle in Mogadishu erupts two days before the Security Council
votes on whether to provide peacekeepers in Rwanda. |
|
|
The
specter of Somalia will not only haunt American foreign policy,
but quite directly shape international debate on intervention
on Rwanda. As the first post-Somalia crisis demanding UN attention,
the genocide provides a test case for political will under the
skittish new world order. On April 20, after two weeks of massacres
had raged without consequence to the genocidal regime, the UN
Secretary-General’s report to the Council would urge members
to "think back to Somalia and think about what you would
ask these troops to do."
|
|
Or,
as Richard Dowden of the Independent puts it,
"Problem:
Somalia. Response: intervention. Result: failure.
Conclusion: no more intervention."
|
|
|
>
more about PDD 25>
<
back to the timeline < |
