Somalian Warlords

October 3^rd, 1993.
Mid afternoon, Somalia.
Task Force Ranger—which consisted of an assault force made up of US Army Delta Force, Ranger teams, an air element provided by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, four Navy SEAL operators from SEAL Team Six and members of the Air Force Pararescue/Air Force Combat Controllers--under the command of Major General William F. Garrison executed an operation that involved traveling from their compound on the outskirts of the city to the center with the aim of capturing the leaders of the Habr Gidr clan, headed by warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The assault force consisted of nineteen aircraft, twelve vehicles, including nine Humvees and 160 men.

3 minutes later they are over the target. Then  two two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by RPG's and three others were damaged. For the next 17 hours the soldiers found themselves fighting in a deadly battle.

Somalia, formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under communist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. Somalia covers the eastern-most portion of Africa. It is bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Kenya to the southwest, the Gulf of Aden with Yemen to the north, the Indian Ocean to the east, and Ethiopia to the west. With the longest coastline on the continent, its terrain consists mainly of plateaus, plains and highlands. Hot conditions prevail year-round, along with period.

It was colonised by Britain and Italy. Italy acquired full control of their parts of the region in 1927. This occupation lasted until 1941, when it was replaced by a British military administration. Northern Somalia would remain a protectorate, while southern Somalia became a trusteeship. 1960 saw the union of the two regions into the independent Somali Republic under a civilian government.

Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in 1969. He banned political parties, and dismantled the national assembly. Over the next 20 years Barre concentrated much of Somalia’s economic activity and political control in Mogadishu, ignoring the rest of the country. This imbalance gave rise to fighting over increasingly scarce resources and to the creation of militias accountable to faction leaders.

During the cold war both the U.S. and Soviet Union vied for influence and control over Somalia because of its strategic location along oil routes from the Persian Gulf. In the 1970s the USSR armed and aided Somalia. On 13 July 1977 Somalian army invaded Ethoipia. By the end of the month 60% of the Ogaden had been taken by the SNA-WSLF force, including Gode, on the Shabelle River. The attacking forces did suffer some early setbacks; Ethiopian defenders at Dire Dawa and Jijiga inflicted heavy casualties on assaulting forces. The Ethiopian Air Force (EAF) also began to establish air superiority using its Northrop F-5s, despite being initially outnumbered by Somali MiG-21s. However, Somalia was easily overpowering Ethiopian military hardware and technology capability due to massive American military support to Somalia government, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars of arms.

Not all communist states sided with Ethiopia. Because of the Sino-Soviet rivalry, China supported Somalia diplomatically and with token military aid. Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu had a habit of breaking with Soviet policies and maintained good diplomatic relations with Siad Barre.
By 17 August elements of the Somali army had reached the outskirts of the strategic city of Dire Dawa. Not only was the country's second largest military airbase located here, as well as Ethiopia's crossroads into the Ogaden, but Ethiopia's rail lifeline to the Red Sea ran through this city, and if the Somalis held Dire Dawa, Ethiopia would be unable to export its crops or bring in equipment needed to continue the fight. Gebre Tareke estimates the Somalis advanced with two motorized brigades, one tank battalion and one BM battery upon the city; against them were the Ethiopian Second Militia Division, the 201 Nebelbal battalion, 781 battalion of the 78th Brigade, the 4th Mechanized Company, and a tank platoon possessing two tanks. The fighting was vicious as both sides knew what the stakes were, but after two days, despite that the Somalis had gained possession of the airport at one point, the Ethiopians had repulsed the assault, forcing the Somalis to withdraw. Henceforth, Dire Dawa was never at risk of attack.

From October 1977 until January 1978, the SNA-WSLF forces attempted to capture Harar, where 40,000 Ethiopians had regrouped and re-armed with Soviet-supplied artillery and armor; backed by 1500 Soviet "advisors" and 11,000 Cuban soldiers, they engaged the attackers in vicious fighting. Though the Somali forces reached the city outskirts by November, they were too exhausted to take the city and eventually had to withdraw to await the Ethiopian counterattack.
The expected Ethiopian-Cuban attack occurred in early February; however, it was accompanied by a second attack that the Somalis did not expect. A column of Ethiopian and Cuban troops crossed northeast into the highlands between Jijiga and the border with Somalia, bypassing the SNA-WSLF force defending the Marda Pass. The attackers were thus able to assault from two directions in a "pincer" action, allowing the re-capture of Jijiga in only two days while killing 3,000 defenders. The Somali defense collapsed and every major Ethiopian town was recaptured in the following weeks. Recognizing that his position was untenable, Siad Barre ordered the SNA to retreat back into Somalia on 9 March 1978, although Rene LaFort claims that the Somalis, having foreseen the inevitable, had already withdrawn its heavy weapons. The last significant Somali unit left Ethiopia on 15 March 1978, marking the end of the war.

Following the withdrawal of the SNA, the WSLF continued their insurgency. By May 1980, the rebels, with the assistance of a small number of SNA soldiers who continued to help the guerilla war, controlled a substantial region of the Ogaden. However by 1981 the insurgents were reduced to sporadic hit-and-run attacks and were finally defeated.
The Ogaden War weakened the Somali military. Almost one-third of the regular SNA soldiers, three-eighths of the armored units and half of the Somali Air Force (SAF) were lost. The weakness of the Barre regime led it to effectively abandon the dream of a unified Greater Somalia. The failure of the war aggravated discontent with the Barre regime; the first organized opposition group, the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), was formed by army officers in 1979.
The United States adopted Somalia as a Cold War client state from the late 1970s to 1988 in exchange for use of Somali bases, and a way to exert influence upon the region. A second armed clash in 1988 was resolved when the two countries agreed to withdraw their militaries from the border.

Somalia became divided into different clans leaded by Warlords. Most notorious of them were Mohamed Farah Aidid.

Following the eruption and escalation of the civil war in Somalia in 1991, the UN and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) strived to abate the suffering that was caused as a result of the high-intensity conflict. Of the Somali population of 4.5 million people, over half were in severe danger of starvation and malnutrition-related disease, mostly in the drought-stricken rural areas.
Another 1.5 million were judged at moderate risk of malnutrition. Three hundred thousand people died outright in the early months of 1992 and another million fled the country as refugees. The UN was engaged in Somalia from early in 1991 when the civil strife began. UN personnel were withdrawn on several occasions during sporadic flare-ups of violence. A series of Security Council resolutions (733, 746) and diplomatic visits eventually helped impose a ceasefire between the two key factions, signed at the end of March 1992. These efforts were aided by other international bodies, such as the Organisation for African Unity, the League of Arab States and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

The UN, with the active support of all rebel faction leaders, felt that some sort of peackeeping force would be required to uphold the ceasefire and assist the humanitarian relief effort, in conjunction with other relief agencies and NGOs. By the end of April 1992, the Security Council adopted Resolution 751.
This provided for the establishment of a security force of 50 UN troops in Somalia to monitor the ceasefire. This detachment would be known as the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) and it existed at the consent of those parties who had been represented in the ceasefire.

 aidid

The resolution also allowed for an expansion of the security force, with a number of around 500 troops initially discussed. The first group of ceasefire observers arrived in Mogadishu in early July 1992.

Despite the UN's efforts, all over Somalia the ceasefire was ignored, fighting continued, and continued to increase, putting the relief operations at great risk. The main parties to the ceasefire, General Mohamed Farrah Aidid and "President" Ali Mahdi Muhammad, once again showing the difficult and troubled relations between the warlords, proved to be difficult negotiating partners and continually frustrated attempts to move the peacekeepers and supplies.
In August 1992 the Security Council endorsed sending of another 3,000 troops to the region to protect relief efforts. However, most of these troops were never sent.
Over the final quarter of 1992, the situation in Somalia continued to get worse. Factions in Somalia were splintering into smaller factions and splintering again. Agreements for food distribution with one party were worthless when the stores had to be shipped through the territory of another.
Some elements were actively opposing the UNOSOM intervention. Troops were shot at, aid ships attacked and prevented from docking, cargo aircraft were fired upon and aid agencies, public and private, were subject to threats, robbery and extortion. Meanwhile, hundreds, if not thousands of poverty stricken refugees were starving to death every day.
By November 1992, General Mohamed Farrah Aidid had grown confident enough to formally defy the Security Council and demand the withdrawal of peace keepers, as well as declaring hostile intent against any further UN deployments.

In November 1992, the United States of America offered to establish a multinational force under its own leadership to secure the humanitarian operation. This offer was accepted by the Security Council, and what became known as the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) was authorized to utilize "all necessary means" to ensure the protection of the relief efforts.
Accordingly, the Security Council suspended any further significant strengthening of UNOSOM as UN affairs in Somalia were subsumed by UNITAF (also known to Americans as Operation Restore Hope). With only a handful of the 3,000 plus troops envisaged for UNOSOM ever put in place, the Security Council left it to “the discretion of the Secretary General” as to what should be done with the abortive mission.
UNITAF was composed of forces from 24 different countries, with the vast bulk contributed by the United States. UNITAF soon secured the relief operations which were being coordinated and carried out by UNOSOM, which was also attempting to negotiate a political end to the conflict. Indeed, although UNOSOM had been replaced by UNITAF, it was technically still in operation and would remain ready to resume its function when UNITAF had met its goals of creating a secure environment for humanitarian relief.

The Secretary-General convened a meeting in early 1993 in which 14 important Somalia political and rebel factions agreed to hand over all of their weapons to UNITAF and UNOSOM, and over $130 million was pledged by donors at an aid conference that year to assist in reconstruction. However, Somalia continued the stumble, and in March the UN decided to transform the UNITAF mission into what came to be known as UNOSOM II. The mandate of UNOSOM II stipulated that the operation was to secure continued relief efforts and, more significantly, to restore peace and rebuild the Somali state and economy.

 

The U.N. asked its member nations for assistance.  In December 1992, in one of his last acts as President, George Bush proposed to the U.N. that United States combat troops lead the intervention force.  The U.N. accepted this offer and 25,000 U.S. troops were deployed to Somalia.  President Bush stated that this would not be an “open-ended commitment.”  The objective of Operation Restore Hope was to rapidly secure the trade routes in Somalia so that food could get to the people.  President Bush stated that U.S. troops would be home in time for Bill Clinton’s inauguration in January.

Once President Clinton was inaugurated he stated his desire to scale down the U.S. presence in Somalia, and to let the U.N. forces take over.  In March 1993 the U.N. officially took over the operation, naming this mission UNOSOM – II.  The objective of this mission was to promote “nation building” within Somalia.  One main target was to disarm the Somali people.  UNOSOM – II stressed restoring law and order, improving the infrastructure, and assisting the people with setting up a representative government.

President Clinton supported the U.N. mandate and ordered the number of U.S. troops in Somalia reduced, to be replaced by U.N. troops.  By June 1993, only 1200 U.S. troops remained in Somalia, but on June 5, 1993 24 Pakistani soldiers were ambushed and killed during the inspection of a Somali arms weapons storage site by Aidid`s fanatical followers.  The U.N. responded with an emergency resolution to apprehend those responsible.  While it was not specifically stated, Aidid and his followers were believed to be responsible.  On June 19, 1993 Admiral Howe ordered Aidid’s arrest and offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to this.  He also requested a counterterrorist rescue force after the massacre of the Pakistani troops.

From June 12 through June 16 U.S. and U.N. troops attacked targets in Mogadishu related to Aidid.  On July 12 U.S. Cobra helicopters attacked a house in Mogadishu where clan leaders were meeting.  They destroyed several buildings and many Somalis were killed.  When four Western journalists went to investigate the scene they were beaten to death by a mob of Somalis.  On August 8 four U.S. military police were killed when a land mine was remote-detonated by Somalis.  Two weeks later, six more U.S. soldiers were wounded.  It was at this point that Task Force Ranger was deployed to Somalia.

On August 29 Task Force Ranger flew into Mogadishu.  They were led by General William Garrison and consisted of 440 elite troops from Delta Force.  Their mission was to capture Aidid.  But, at the same time, in September 1993 the Clinton Administration began a secret plan to negotiate with Aidid.  U.S. military commanders within Somalia were not apprised of this.  U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin denied a request for armored reinforcements made by General Montgomery.

On October 3, 1993 Task Force Ranger raided the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu to search for Aidid.  This led to a seventeen-hour battle in which eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed and eighty-four were wounded.  Bodies of dead American soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, shown on international news reports. Hundreds of Somalis also died, although the official number has never been released.  This was the longest, most bloody battle for U.S troops since the Vietnam War.  On October 7 President Clinton responded by withdrawing U.S. troops from Somalia.  The hunt for Aidid was abandoned, although U.S. representatives were sent to resume negotiations with clan leaders.

Two weeks after the Battle of Mogadishu General Garrison officially accepted responsibility. In a handwritten letter to President Clinton, Garrison took full responsibility for the outcome of the battle. He wrote that the Task Force Ranger had adequate intelligence for the mission and that their objective (capturing targets from the Olympic Hotel) was met.

What began as a peacekeeping mission to provide relief to the starving people of Somalia essentially ended with a firefight during the Battle of Mogadishu. After all of the U.S. troops were withdrawn in March 1994, 20,000 U.N. troops were still in Somalia. By the late Spring of 1994 all of the remaining U.N. troops were withdrawn, ending UNOSOM-II.

Aidid then declared himself President of Somalia in June 1995, but his government was not internationally recognized. Indeed, within Somalia and even within Mogadishu, his control was fiercely fought over, especially by Ali Mahdi Muhammad. In September 1995, militia forces loyal to Aidid attacked the city of Baidoa, killing 10 Somalis and capturing at least 20 foreign aid workers.

ethiopian army in somalia

On July 24, 1996 Aidid and his militia engaged in battle with the forces of warlords and former Aidid allies Ali Mahdi Muhammad and Osman Ali Atto. Wounded by gunfire during the fight, Aidid suffered a fatal heart attack on August 1, either during or after surgery to treat his wounds.

In the mid ninethies a group of religious extrimists rose in Somalia. They were like talibans of Afganistan. They were against Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT0, the united clans of of the warlords. In this batle the religious extrimists got the upper hand. By June 4 the they had taken Balca and seized the primary ARPCT base in Mogadishu<sup>.

Then</sup> Ethiopian troops invaded Somalian territory on July 20, 2006. Ethiopia maintained it was providing military assistance to the transitional government. They were backed by the US. This time the US prefered warlords than the religious group. On December 27, Ethiopian and Somali government forces were reported en route to Somalia's capital, Mogadishu after capturing the strategic town of Jowhar, 90 km from the capital. After the Fall of Mogadishu to the Ethiopian and government forces on December 28, fighting continued in the Juba River valley, where the UIC retreated, establishing a new headquarters in the city of Kismayo. Then on 9^th January,2007 US air force attacked somalia. They bombed the religious grouop`s position.

On 2008 Somalia was declared a number 1 failed state by the United States think-tank Fund for Peace and the magazine Foreign Policy, publishes an annual index called the Failed States Index. It is clear the political goodwill of the leaders will help this poor nation to build its backbone again.