What Went Wrong?
The above photos are of atrocities committed by "elite" paratroopers from Belgium. They include one of a Belgian paratrooper urinating on the face of a dead Somali. In mid 1994, the last of the US troops left Somalia, having, for the most part, failed in their task of delivering food to those in need. Warring Somali clan leaders had been unable to find common ground for agreement, and international relief organizations were forced to suspend operations because of widespread looting. According to the Red Cross, it was much harder to deliver food and medicines since the troops had gotten there because they had created such a hostile environment (Weiss 13).
So why did the United States really send troops to Somalia? It seems that more than humanitarianism might have been involved. One reason for the intervention could be that since the Horn of Africa is one of the most strategic territories on the entire continent because it controls access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, the Pentagon generals would find it highly advantageous if they could set up a permanent base in this very critical area of the world. Somalia is also widely thought to be rich in oil. Several billion-dollar oil companies have bought the oil rights from the previous regime. These huge corporations could very possibly want “law and order” in Somalia so that they can begin pumping out the oil. In fact, Conoco, the oil company that has the largest holdings in Somalia, has allowed the U.S troops to use Conoco headquarters in Mogadishu as a command post and de facto embassy (Samatar 56).
Another reason the U.S might have wanted to intervene in Somalia is that it needed a mission. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Colin Powell, called the operation in Somalia, “a paid political advertisement” for maintaining the current military budget. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Pentagon has come under growing pressure to radically cut its bloated budget. The $300 billion a year arms industry connects over 70,000 military contractors, including the largest corporations in the world, with the Pentagon (Clarke 247). The Generals and the weapons makers could have been using the intervention in Somalia to justify their existence.
Others believe that ignoring the crisis simply was not an option. Though reluctant to act, once action was taken, the main goal of the U.S. and U.N was to provide, first and foremost, humanitarian aid to the Somalis. As Republican Senator from Arizona John McCain said in an interview, “Perhaps it was not in the United States’ vital national security interests, but certainly as a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles we felt that it was the right thing to do” (Weiss 113).
Some grave mistakes the U.S and U.N troops made stemmed from their efforts to bridge the cultural gap that existed when they first intervened. When U.S military forces distributed a leaflet as part of a psychological campaign to convince Somalis of the military's good intentions, there were a number of translation errors in the text. For example, the word “adoonka” in the text literally translates to mean, “slave.” It should have been translated to mean “United Nations.” So, instead of reading “United Nations,” the brochure read, “slave nations” (Teson 22). The Somalis interpreted this to mean the intervening nations thought of the Somalis as slaves. These sorts of problems could have been avoided if the U.S. and U.N. had paid greater attention to the culture in which they were intervening. The lack of knowledge about correct translation suggests a casual attitude about a situation that was anything but. It seems impossible for the Somali people to accept those who intervened as legitimate and genuine if they were unable to precisely translate the native language.
Moreover, there was simply a misunderstanding of the causes of crisis and a lack of decisive action taken on the part of both the U.N. and U.S. peacekeeping forces. That is to say that the problem of famine was not solely the result of a drought. Rather it developed also from the war that was ripping the country apart. As Mohamed Said Barre's troops were fleeing Mogadishu, they destroyed acres of farmland and significant numbers of livestock as they went (Mendez and Penglase). This tactic of looting was employed by a number of the various warring factions. The farmers, whose land had been destroyed were subsequently prevented from regrowing their crops in an effort to deprive the enemy of possible food sources. From this insight, one realizes it is not simply the lack of food that is the problem, but why there is no food, and who is responsible. The obvious answer is the warlords. The only way the intervention could have had a chance of success is if it had acknowledged the political causes of the famine from the start. Instead, the peacekeepers tried to flood the country with food in the hopes that some of it would get where it needed to go. It was not until later in the intervention that action began to be taken against the warlords.
Perhaps the biggest failure, though, was that the United States lost its reputation of impartiality and began to be seen as a foreign power taking sides in Somalia's civil war. America, early on, had indicated that they favored some warlords as opposed to others. What the U.S. should have done was make a unilateral statement that all war lords are bad war lords. Instead, the idea of a "good guy" and a "bad guy" was fostered. By agreeing to hold talks with some war lords, these murderers were given political legitimacy when they should have had none. Mohamed Farrah Aideed was the main warlord that the American officials indicated hostility towards from the very beginning.
The Somali situation bore some striking similarities to what happened in Beirut, Lebanon when the U.S called in naval gunfire against one faction which polarized the situation for the U.S. forces from that moment on (Maren 125). Regardless of U.S intentions, there was no such thing as a politically neutral intervention for the Lebanese. The mere presence of the peace-keeping forces bolstered the positions of some players (primarily Christian leader Amin Gemayel) in Lebanon's complicated power struggle at the expense of others. Disadvantaged factions then began targeting the Marines for retaliation, and sniper fire soon started taking a toll. The intervention reached its disastrous conclusion in October 1983 when a terrorist bomb blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, claiming 241 American lives (Maren 126). This example helps to illustrate the necessity for humanitarian intervention to remain impartial. The taking of sides, or the impression that sides are being taken, can have detrimental effects on the lives of the service men and women who come to be seen as the enemy.
Unfortunately,
it was not apparent that the U.S. administration remembered and learned
from the events in Lebanon. In June of 1993, the UN put a bounty on Farrah
Aideed’s head and deployed U.S. Rangers and members of the Delta Force
to try and capture him (Sahnoun 81). A notice went out a few days before
the bounty, which notified mid-level people in Mr. Aideed’s forces, indicating
that his weapons depot would be inspected the next day. No notice was sent
out to any of the other militia leaders. It is easy to see how Aideed might
have felt singled out. Aideed must have gotten the impression that there
was going to be a unilateral disarmament of his forces that wasn't part
of a comprehensive program undertaken across the country with all of the
militia leaders (Teson 136). This, many believed, led to the killing of
the 18 U.S. Rangers and 14 Pakistani troopers by Aideed’s men. Soon after,
President Clinton called to remove the majority of the US troops stationed
in Somalia.