Somalia, operations in (1992-5). In the late 1980s, a full-scale civil war erupted in Somalia, which led to the end of Muhammad Siad Barre's dictatorship and the collapse of the Somali state. The war was responsible for a man-made famine, and caused hundreds of thousands of refugees, internally displaced persons, and civilian deaths from hunger. Because of this large-scale humanitarian tragedy, the USA, together with the UN, intervened militarily to protect the delivery of food supplies and thereby stop the famine. The intervention also necessarily entailed plans to rebuild the state in order to prevent the situation on the ground from reverting to that which caused the conflict in the first place.
The famine was successfully relieved, yet the international community did not rebuild the Somali state during the three Somali operations: the UN operation in Somalia (UNOSOM I) ; the US-led, UN-sanctioned RESTORE HOPE (also known as Unified Task Force, or UNITAF) ; and UNOSOM II, the last two of which ran from April 1992 until March 1995. UNOSOM I was a small peacekeeping operation that could not provide adequate security for food delivery, which is why the US government in December 1992 sent 37, 000 of its troops on a peace-enforcement mission to assist in the task. UNITAF in turn handed-off to a multinational, peace-enforcement operation, UNOSOM II, in May 1993 (the USA withdrew in March 1994). Difficulties were encountered throughout, partly because this was the first post- Cold War peace-support operation in a collapsed state and proper procedures for co-ordinating such a massive operation had not been standardized.
The abiding image of these interventions remains the pictures of the bodies of US Rangers being dragged through the streets after a failed raid seeking to capture a prominent warlord. Somalia will be remembered for its complexity, for the influence of the media on the operation, for the loss of lives of 156 peacekeepers and many more Somalis, and for tasking the UN with more than its resources could realistically accomplish.
Bibliography
- Clarke, Walter, and Herbst, Jeffrey (eds.), Learning from Somalia (Oxford, 1997).
- UN Development Programme, Somalia Human Development Report, 1998 (New York, 1998)
— Karin von Hippel
