On Oct. 3, 1993, U.S. forces entered the Somali capital of Mogadishu to capture key officials of one of the main warring clans. The mission was a fiasco, as 18 American soldiers and more than five hundred Somalis were killed that night.
The event, the subject of the recently released Hollywood film “Black Hawk Down” raises an important question. Somalia is a country characterized by factionalism. The running joke is that if there are four Somalis in a room, there are probably six rival clans present. Yet when the two U.S. Black Hawks went down, an entire city seemed to drop its internal differences and attack the very forces that were there to feed them. Why? Did the Somalis rampage simply out of an inherent hatred for outsiders?
Few populations, least of all among the formerly colonized, warmly embrace foreign involvement in domestic affairs, and the Somalis are no different in this regard. But there were specific factors that set the stage for the distinct fury in Mogadishu that day.
One important factor was the massacre of July 12. Three months prior to the downing of the Black Hawks, the United Nations and United States decided to put pressure on the Habr Gidr, one of Somalia’s main ethnic clans. The Washington Post described the event as a “slaughter” in which “a half-dozen Cobras pumped 16 TOW missiles and 2,000 rounds of cannon fire” into a gathering of elders, intellectuals, poets and religious leaders, “first blowing away the stairwell to prevent anyone from escaping.” Not only did the move turn many Somalis against the United Nations, but it was also counterproductive, since the meeting’s purpose was to consider a U.S.-initiated peace plan.
The broader context leading up to the intervention is also important to consider. Many Somalis distrusted the U.N. and then Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali who previously, as an Egyptian official, had been a backer of notorious Somali dictator Siad Barre. Furthermore, one of the symbols of the West for average Somalis was the International Monetary Fund, whose austerity measures had hit hardest on the weakest in society. Farmers lucky enough to escape drought had little market to turn to. Many watched their children starve. As desperate migration from the countryside increased, young men arrived to cities with little more than an acute sense of anger toward so-called Western solutions.
It didn’t help that the country was awash in arms. In Mogadishu, it was almost easier to buy a machine gun than lunch. For years, the United States kept Siad Barre propped up with $50 million in annual arms shipments.
None of these factors lessens the tragedy of the American and Somali lives lost when those Black Hawks went down, but there may be lessons to learn.
Short-term stabilizing relationships with repressive leaders have long-term destabilizing consequences, especially when these relationships are bought with weapons. The United States must begin taking human rights more seriously as it chooses its friends, and begin supporting the United Nations in its efforts at international small arms controls. This would be a reversal from the role the United States’ gun lobby played at last year’s U.N. arms control convention.
Above all, Somalia was a lesson in the danger of ignoring failed states, and political and monetary policies which contribute to their demise.