American Involvement in Somalia

This is a continuation of my research into the American involvement in the Somali courteous War between 1992 and 1994. This theme will attempt to fit the historical data into some of the various ideas put forth in the Kriesberg phonograph record, though, unfortunately, the contend did not truely develop in the akin way that the book efficiency describe due to the drop off failure of the mission and the draft clip of actual American combat. Nevertheless, Kriesberg will provide a usable theoretical starting time period to down the stairsstand this conflict and its ultimate deprivation of blockage. The civil war that the US was supposed to stop continues with out(a) resolution to this real day.1. Escalating the war took place in three rapid stages. All of these were American led operations, though under the cover of UN Resolutions which seemed to provide some miscell whatsoever of a object lesson stamp on the operation. The three stages were all complete failures from every c formerlyivable point of view. Conventionally, they argon called, in order UNOSOM I, UNITAF and finally, UNISOM II, which was finally terminated in 1994 (Lyons, 1995, 39). All of these acronyms cin matchless casern either UN or US projects in Somalia. The first, in 1992, saw the deployment of only a handful of peace stopers once most of the conspiracys in the country agreed to some kind of mediation. simply as soon as the grand total of 50 men landed, the conclaves refused any kind of negotiation and immediately resumed fighting. UNOSOM I was considered a bad caper at best. However, the US took over operations a brief time later under UNITAF, which was basically an American controlled operation. In early 1993, the US sought to intervene under the cover of both UN diplomacy and under the idea of humanist noise, a concept where the state step in does not seduce any real semipolitical capital to gain, but is intervening to save lives and avert famine.But the reality i s that the US was participationed in authoritative Somalia for one rationality to support it from falling into the hands of the Islamic ride of customary Mohammed Farah Aidid (Lyons, 1995, 39-42). Aidid very quickly succeeded in making himself the most indexful faction drawing card in Somalia, and in his turn, make himself the anti-American and anti-Israeli loss leader in the war, holding to a semi-communist kind of Islam that sided with Sudan and, to some extent, Syria in the centre of attention east (Schultz, 2006, 92-94). Aidid also condemned American involvement in the Iraq war.Hence, very quickly, the Clinton presidentship dropped both te UN and the humanistic cover and sought to capture Aidid at all costs. Aidid was a threat to both US and Israeli interests for some(prenominal) reasons, dealt with in detail in the last paper first, Somalia is an oil-rich state, second, it helps control entrance to the Red Sea, and third, it controls access, to some extent, to the equally oil-rich state of Sudan, where western backed rebels in oil rich Darfur are fighting the Islamic state of Omar Bashir (Kreitzman, 2006).Hence, Somalia was considered a strategic country on all counts. The American force was fought to a draw by Aidids forces in the famed 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. It was not long after that that both UNITAF and UNOSOM II, engaged in at the same time, withdrew its forces from Somalia. 2. There was an US stone-brokered attempt to create a unified faction against Aidid in Ethiopia (then a pro-US power in the region), but negotiations quickly broke down (Lyons, 1995, 40-41 also 45). But this is where the American failure can be more closely analyzed.First of all, the Americans approached negotiations as a purely zero-sum game (Kriesberg, 2006, 273). The point of negotiations in 1993 was not to end the war, but to escalate with, with a powerfully western backed concretion against Aidid. Since there was no real pinch of the ideas of all factions, political or religious, the US also, secondly, stereotyped its opponents the Muslims were evil, foul and, worse, anti-Israel, and the others were unconsecrated and progressive (Kreisberg, 2006, 280).Hence, both due to the zero-sum question as well as stereotyping, the US could not successfully operate on Somali territory, crimson if the number of soldiers escalated higher. The zero-sum aspect of this is also connected to what Kriesberg calls cognitive dissonance in warfarethat is, an intervening bankrupty must convince themselves that the official reason that one is intervening is the real one (Kreisberg, 2006, 157). Of course, no serious somebody could possible pull that off, and hence, there was a schism in the expectation of the hitch from day one.Since the real purpose behind US intervention was to install a secular government friendly to American interests, and the human-centred rhetoric went out the window at an early date once Aidid became powerful and popular, the off icial purpose and the real purpose of the intervention became an open air secret early on. This could only hamper American efforts. As usual Montgomery pointed out, the issuance of UN Security Council Resolution 814, with tacit U. S. support, clearly changed the mission. For us there was no such thing as mission creep, he pointed out, because it was very clear at the outset what we were supposed to do. bit the resolution was unrealistic and overly ambitious, General Montgomery insisted the taskings in it were clear sufficiency (Hoffman 2004). Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, mission creep was the order of the day. Directives from capital of the United give tongue tos differed from directives from the UN. Washington wanted Aidid, while the UN wanted some kind of humanitarian action. But this is not atypical from upper brass in the war machine establishment, as much a political position as a military one.Ultimately, there was a superficial resolution of the pr oblem by saying that the reason the humanitarian disaster occurred was that Aidid made sure the intellectual nourishment aid did not get to the people. This assertion has no evidence to emphasize it. But raze more, the US got involved in an obscure part of the world for oil and Israeli interests. The US had no real intelligence of the religion and culture of either the Islamic or Christian Somalis. The US, as mentioned in the last paper, failed miserably in the propaganda war once Aidid made it clear that the US was an invading and imperial force working at the behest of wealth and power.This set of ideas helped bring Somalis to his side, and made the US look bad. But American ignorance of the real situation and the perception of US interests among the common race ultimately forced the withdrawal of all troops by 1994 with scant(p) having been done. 3. The consequences of this intervention were absolutely disastrous. Since 1992, roughly 1. 2 million Somalis have lose their l ives. Starvation is the order of the day, and the war continues without abatement. Aidid himself was killed in a gun battle in 1996, yet his movement remains strong.But more abstractly, there are indirect consequences. First, the US realized that any serious commitment infallible a large number of troops with strong air support. Second, the eulogy of the UN, while having no military value, has a strong degree of moral value. Third, Americans are not interested in long term warfare, unless a major event can abridge place where Americans are killed. Hence, 9/11 gave both the US and the Israelis a green light to take care of their political problems with little fallout (at least in the concise run). Fourth, there needs to be a constant threat to keep Americans interested.Since Somalis did not threaten Americans, it was very difficult to maintain American interest or support. But constructing an ubiquitous web of Islamic terror cells might keep Americans interested. In reality howe ver, none of these lessons were truly learned, and the realist approach to intervention still maintains itself the US will intervene whenever its financial interests are concerned, which includes protect the hated state of Israel at all costs to her prestige or credibility. Even more, the UN ended up looking like a paper tiger, a tool of US interests and without a clear agenda of its own.It was a disaster in every significant way. 4. The sort of warfare one is looking at in Somalia is clearly zero-sum. The US intervened solely out of an interest in African oil and the control of access to the strategic Red Sea. The failed negotiations in Ethiopia produced no results because of American ignorance and the refusal of US negotiators to permit Aidid to have any say in the matter. Hence, it became officially clear (contra the words of General Montgomery above) that the real purpose of the mission was to keep Aidid away from power at all costs.But in rejecting the most popular and powerfu l faction in the country and trying to cobble together a coalition of small and non-ideological factions led to complete disaster, and American intelligence completely failed to body-build out who was who, and who wanted what (Razack, 2004, 44). The US failed due to the social psychological gentle wind that they themselves created (Kriesberg, 2006, 147). Aidid saw through the American purpose from the outset, which permitted him to construct an Islamic jingoistic base that proved very popular. That was a nut that the semi-committed Clinton administration could not understand or crack.Furthermore, organizational structure of Aidids forces also changed (Kriesberg, 2006,158). As he became more and more popular, it became clear that his organization became more powerful, regularized and disciplined. As mentioned in the last paper, Aidid began providing his own social services, paving roads and even contemplated minting his own currency, all of which the US was determined to destroy, apparently on humanitarian grounds. 5. In Conclusion, Kriesberg can help us understand the war in Somalia and the American failure in several ways. First, the US stereotyped its opponent and the Islamic world in general.Second, it approached the war as a zero-sum game, with everything on the secular warlords and nothing on Aidid. Instead of talking with him and respecting his popularity, the US move to destroy his very base of power and his functioning administration (Lyons disagrees with this, and claims the US did briefly negotiate with Aidid, pp 43, but it went nowhere). Third, the US entered this war without any real understanding of the mentality of third world people in an impoverish state. Like in Iraq, it was assumed that the US would be greeted as peacekeepers. Instead, they were greeted as occupiers (Razack, 2004, 10-11).Fourth, the US did not have a clear sense of mission. While official sources held that the mission was truly humanitarian, from the outset it was clea r that the purpose was to keep Aidid and all like him from power and make certain a pro-US leader was installed in this strategic country. Aidid, a man of great military and political talent, took advantage of all these failures to eventually drive the US out of Somalia. Bibliography Hoffman, hound (2004). One Decade Later Debacle in Somalia. The Proceedings of the oceanic Institute. January. (www. military. org) Kriesberg, L.(2006). Constructive Conflicts. Rowman and Littlefield. Kretzman, Steve (2003). Oil Security, War and the Geopolitics of United States Energy Planning. Multinational Monitor, Jan/Feb. Lyons, Terrence (1995) Somalia State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention and Strategies for Political Reconstruction. Brookings Institute Razack, Sherlene (2004). Dark Threats and White Knights The Somalia interest Peacekeeping and the New Imperialism. University of Toronto Press Shultz, Richard (2006) Insurgents, terrorists and Militias The Warriors of Contemporary Combat. C olumbia University Press