The many rebel groups turned against each other when Siad Barre ran away. Somalia became a country without a government and the many rebel groups each controlled small parts of the country and they all fought against each other.

This led to famine in Somalia because people could not go to the farms because of the violence. People were not only dying because of the violence, they were also dying because of lack of food, so the UN decided that it had to step in.

The UN asked for troops from member countries for a new peacekeeping force called UNOSOM. Many countries provided troops. The UN also managed to broker a peace treaty between the warring groups.

The main task of UNOSOM was to ensure that aid agencies were able to safely get food, water and medicine to the suffering people of Somalia. However, a huge problem soon developed.

Some of the warring factions, especially the two biggest factions led by Mohamed Farah Aidid on one side and Ali Mahdi Mohamed on the other side, soon started using food aid as a weapon of war. They ensured that food only got to their supporters and in some cases they seized food aid and gave it to their troops instead. The UN requested for more troops, but member states did not provide more troops.


Then, in December 1992, as one of his last acts in office, George Bush The First went on TV and announced that the United States would send troops to assist the UN in Somalia.

Remember that I said that Bush believed in a new world order in which America would act as the policeman of the world and bring peace to the world? Well this intervention was in furtherance of that belief.

The US does not usually join UN peace keeping missions because it has a principle that US troops can only be commanded by Americans, so UNOSOM was converted to UNITAF, which was a US led force.

However, the warring factions continued to defy UNITAF forces and in some cases, peacekeepers were targeted.

In June 1993, Pakistani forces of UNITAF went to investigate a weapons depot allegedly controlled by Farah Aidid. They met angry Somali civilians that were protesting against the UN force. They were trying to calm and control the protesters when Farah Aidid's forces launched a surprise attack. 24 Pakistani troops were killed.

US forces declared Farah Aidid wanted and offered a reward for his capture. More US troops were sent to Somalia to capture Aideed, but he was never captured. The UN basically declared war on Farah Aidid and there were many battles between his forces and UN peacekeepers.

[img]http://naijachronicles.files./2018/10/mohamed-farrah-aidid-3247b9a5-d9ca-4e24-bfd0-5daf73ad98d-resize-750.jpg?w=584[/img]
General Mohammed Farrah Aidid

Then, in July 1993 US troops raided a hotel that they suspected that Aidid was staying in. This led to the longest and bloodiest battle of the US intervention in Somalia.

The US had created a special task force to find and capture General Aidid. It was made up of selected Special Forces troops from the army, navy and air force and it was called Task Force Ranger. 160 troops of Task Force Ranger, backed by nineteen aircraft and twelve vehicles went to capture General Aidid at a hotel in Mogadishu. The US thought that the operation would last only one hour, but shortly after the operation began, General Aidid’s forces shot down two US Black Hawk helicopters. Some survivors from the helicopters were able to escape to the hotel compound, while others remained at the crash site. The survivors had to battle Somali militants throughout the night. The next morning, UNITAF sent a team of US, Pakistani and Malaysian soldiers to rescue the survivors. They were able to rescue survivors from the first crash site, but the second crash site had been overrun by a mob of Somali civilians and thousands of militants during the night. 18 US soldiers were killed during the battle and their bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Pictures of the dead US soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu were broadcast around the world. CNN had a programme that they did in partnership with many broadcasters around the world, including the NTA and I saw the pictures on that programme.

Americans were horrified and alarmed. They elected Bill Clinton because he promised to focus on the economy and keep out of foreign wars, so what were US forces doing in Somalia?? This was a country that many Americans had never heard of and it was a country that was not threatening the US, so why were US forces there? Why send US troops to die there?

Four days after the battle, President Clinton went on TV to announce that he was withdrawing US troops from Somalia. The last set of US troops left Somalia in March 1994.

The battle, which has been called, “The Battle of Mogadishu” or “The Day of The Rangers” by Americans, was dramatized in a movie called Black Hawk Down.

The US was not really interested in any foreign wars after the Battle of Mogadishu. President Clinton delivered on his promise to focus on the economy. The US passed a balanced budget for the first time in many years. It also witnessed its longest period of prosperity and economic growth during Clinton’s presidency in the 1990s. Most of the socio-economic problems of the Bush era were solved. The idea of spending US tax-payers’ money and sending US forces abroad to die in wars that had nothing to do with the US was considered an anathema at this time. And this was when the Rwandan genocide occurred.


There had been a civil war in Rwanda between the Hutu led government of Juvenal Habyarimana and the Tutsi led rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by Paul Kagame. The United Nations was able to negotiate a peace deal between the government and the rebels. A small UN force was created to help in implementing the peace deal.

Canadian, Major General Romeo Dallaire, was appointed as the commander of the United Nations force in Rwanda, UNAMIR in 1993. UNAMIR was a small force of Canadian, Belgian, Pakistani, Kenyan and Ghanaian peacekeeping troops.

[img]http://naijachronicles.files./2018/10/general-romeo-dallaire.jpg?w=584[/img]
General Romeo Dallaire

The first sign that General Dallaire had that something terrible was about to happen was when the French government flew in a cache of weapons for the Hutu Government. The French had a history of supporting the Hutus against the Tutsis (they had earlier prevented the RPF from overthrowing the Hutu government) and General Dallaire could clearly see the danger posed by the arms shipment to the Hutu Government, so he asked his bosses at the UN in New York for permission to seize the weapons. The UN replied that it was not within the force’s mandate to seize the weapons. The informant that told General Dallaire about the arms shipment also told him that Hutu militias (the Interahamwe) were being armed for a mass extermination of Tutsis.

General Dallaire also noticed that government forces had set up roadblocks and they were checking identity cards to determine who was Hutu and who was Tutsi. This was the point at which he started asking for more troops. The UN Secretariat passed his request on to the Security Council (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and the elected members), but the Security Council refused to authorise more troops for UNAMIR.

Ten members of the Belgian contingent of UNAMIR were capture, disarmed, tortured and killed at the beginning of the genocide and Belgium immediately withdrew its troops from Rwanda. General Dallaire considered the Belgians to be the best trained and most equipped of his troops and the loss of those troops had a terrible effect on him.

Eventually he had to focus his small body of troops on parts of Kigali in which he knew that Tutsis were hiding. He eventually saved thousands of Tutsis. General Dallaire and his troops (and even the civilian members of his team) were often outnumbered and outgunned by the Interahamwe militia, but they were able to save thousands of Tutsis simply by using their UN credentials to convince the militia to leave them alone. They knew that they would have been defeated if there was a fire fight. Three Ghanaian soldiers of UNAMIR were killed during the fighting.

During this period (1993/1994) I listened to the BBC, VOA, Deutsche Welle, RFI, Radio Netherlands, Radio Moscow and Radio China every day and I clearly remember what happened. I also watched CNN every day. General Dallaire was on Network Africa (morning), Focus on Africa (evening) on the BBC and on Daybreak Africa and Nightline Africa on the VOA almost every day asking for more troops. I also heard correspondents’ reports from the UN in New York and it was clear that the major powers were not disposed to sending more troops to Rwanda.

The UN Secretary General, Professor Boutros Boutros-Ghali was also appealing for assistance, but nobody listened to him.

The United States was not ready to send troops anywhere after what happened in Somalia. The Western European powers took their lead from the US. Russia was suffering the after effects of the breakup of the Soviet Union and most of the Eastern Powers were also suffering the effects of the end of communism. Nigeria was busy with Ecomog in Liberia and South Africa was transiting from Apartheid to majority rule.

The United Nations is not a world government. It is more like an association of countries. It cannot act unless its members empower it to act. The United Nations has no military of its own. It depends on member states to donate troops for peace keeping operations. There is nothing that it can do if member states refuse to donate troops. Besides, the Security Council is the most powerful organ of the UN. The Secretariat cannot send troops unless the Security Council approves of such deployment. There’s nothing it can do if the Security Council (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and the elected members) refuses to approve it. So it is wrong to blame the Secretariat for not deploying troops to Rwanda.

Eventually, at the height of the genocide, the Security Council approved more troops for Rwanda. These were French troops that were already in Rwanda (the French have a barracks there). General Dallaire was initially opposed to these troops because he knew the history of French support for the Hutus. It wasn’t until the RPF invaded Kigali that the genocide ended. The French handed over the areas that they controlled to the RPF.

The Rwandan Genocide was not the only operation that the US refused to send ground troops to. There were several wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and NATO and the United Nations sent various peace keeping missions to try and maintain peace there. The United States assisted these missions with its air power (missiles, drones and planes), but it refused to deploy ground troops to these missions.

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr Madeline Albright, led a campaign against the UN Secretary General, Professor Boutros Boutros-Ghali after the Rwandan Genocide. Dr Albright had blamed the UN Secretariat for failing to stop the genocide in Rwanda, but Boutros-Ghali replied that there was nothing that the Secretariat could do when members refused to supply troops.

Professor Boutros-Ghali was the first African Secretary General of the UN. Member countries had a gentleman’s agreement that an African would be elected Secretary General in 1991 and many Africans contested for the position. The race was primarily between Boutros-Ghali and Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo, but many Nigerians campaigned against Obasanjo’s candidacy. Professor Ghali was multilingual, had been the Egyptian foreign minister and he was a professor of international law, so he was eventually selected as the new secretary general. Professor Ghali was also from a family of prominent politicians (his father and grandfather were prominent Egyptian politicians).

[img]http://naijachronicles.files./2018/10/109148724.jpg?w=584[/img]
UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Dr Albright could not believe that Professor Ghali could talk back at her, so she launched a campaign to get him out of office. It was the tradition that UN secretaries general served two terms of office, but Dr Albright did not want Boutros-Ghali to have a second term.

[img]http://naijachronicles.files./2018/10/800px-secalbright.jpg?w=584[/img]
Madeline Albright. She was the United States Ambassador to the UN at the time. She later became the United States Secretary of State

There was another reason that the Clinton Administration did not want to send troops to Rwanda (apart from the Somali debacle). Although the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, Republicans were increasingly becoming stronger and they made life difficult for Clinton (they Republicans eventually gained control of both houses in 1995). Republicans in Congress made it difficult for the Clinton Administration to get international treaties ratified and they asked difficult questions like, “Why should unelected civil servants in the UN make decisions for Americans?” “Why should the US pay the highest dues to the UN?” (I think the US funded almost half of the UN’s budget), “Does the US really need the UN?”, etc. The Clinton Administration did not need another battle in Congress over deployment of troops to Rwanda.

The Clinton Administration decided to offer Boutros-Ghali as a sacrifice to Republicans in Congress. They waged a propaganda campaign to blame him for the failure to stop the genocide and they tried to prevent him from running for a second term in 1996. In fact, Dr Albright offered to establish a foundation for him to run if he steps down as UN secretary general.

However, other countries did not agree with the US. Boutros-Ghali was the only candidate for the position of secretary general in 1996. Other countries (from Europe, Asia, South America, Oceania, etc.) felt that he was a victim of American domestic politics. Africans felt that he was being victimised because he was an African.

Professor Boutros-Ghali won 14 of the 15 votes in the Security Council, but the sole negative vote was a U.S. veto. The United States is a permanent member of the Security Council and so it has the power to veto any resolution or act by the council and so Professor Ghali could not be elected if a permanent member voted against him.

The United States continued its diplomatic campaign against Boutros-Ghali. It told Africans that another African could serve as secretary general, in place of Boutros-Ghali, that African would serve two terms (meaning that Africa would get three terms) and it also offered assistance to African countries if they dropped Boutros-Ghali’s candidacy.

After two more deadlocked elections, Boutros Boutros-Ghali withdrew his candidacy and Africa nominated Koffi Anan instead. Koffi Anan had a long career at the UN and he was easily elected.

However, Koffi Anan also suffered some of the backlash from the US Congress because he was head of the UN’s peace keeping department when the genocide occurred. But as Mr Annan said, he passed on General Dallaire's request for troops to the Security Council and there was nothing he could do when the Security Council declined to provide troops.

Mr. naptu2 , thank you for this side of the story, the narrative always changes as time goes by, but reading this from you an eyewitness makes me understand the politics at play during the genocide.

Rwanda was basically left to her fate, accusatory fingers should be pointed at all actors, the best description of the debacle was that international politics trumped humanitarian consciousness.

US - visited the sins of Somalia on Rwanda by choosing to ignore them.

I see history repeating itself, if selfish interests are still pursued first in the ongoing wars.

That's why I always reiterate to people don't clamour for war, it consumes so much and its fate spiral so out of control for the instigators.

naptu2:
Ishilove, Elfico, Vivuch, Roh50. (continue reading after this post. There are 5 posts below).

Memories of the failure to stop the Rwandan Genocide

I think I've written a little bit about this before, but I'm not sure, so I'll write it anyway.

It all began during the Reagan Administration in the mid-1980s.

Ronald Reagan seemed to me to be a person that liked wars or at least a person that believed in military solutions to problems. My dad called him a "cowboy" during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Now remember, this was during the Cold War and the US was in an on again/off again arms race with the Soviet Union.

The only thing keeping the peace at that time was the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). This was the idea that the United States (and NATO) and the Soviet Union (and the Warsaw Pact countries) had enough nuclear weapons and intercontinental balistic missiles to destroy each other.

This meant that the United States would not launch a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union because it knew that the Soviet Union would launch a retaliatory strike and both nations (and a large part of the world) would be destroyed.

Ronald Reagan did not believe in MAD and he wanted to make nuclear weapons useless, so he started the Star Wars Plan.

That's not it's official name, but that's what it was often called in the media and that's what I called it in my mind. It's official name was the Strategic Defence Initiative. Man! That thing sparked my imagination!

My favourite parts of the plan were (1) proposals to develop lasers that could vaporise intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) (2) proposals to arm satellites in space with missiles that could shoot down ICBMs and other satellites. The program also included developing faster supercomputers that could take charge of the command and control functions needed to operate these weapons. There were other futuristic proposals attached to this plan.

Many people credit Ronald Reagan with ending the Cold War. How did he end the Cold War when he had already left office before the Berlin Wall came down and long before the Soviet Union collapsed?

Well, the Star Wars programme and other such military programmes that the Reagan Administration embarked on were incredibly expensive. The Soviet Union also spent a lot of money to upgrade its military to meet the challenges posed by the American programmes and the Soviet Union went broke and this led to its collapse.

The crazy military spending of the Reagan era also affected the US economy. Reagan piled up huge debts which he used to fund his military spending. Things were ok at first, because this spending was creating jobs in the defence industry, but inflation rose and the US economy fell into a recession.

Go on...

Ishilove:

Go on...

I've finished. Scroll down below the post you quoted.

naptu2:
By this time Reagan had left office and George Bush The First was president. There were social and economic problems in the US. The gap between the rich and the poor was widening, crack cocaine appeared on US streets (particularly in black neighbourhoods), allegedly facilitated by the CIA in order to fund the Contra Rebels and racial tensions and race riots (e.g. the Rodney King/LA riots) were increasing.

At this point the American people wanted the government to focus on American domestic problems rather than foreign policy. The Soviet Union had collapsed and there was no great military threat to the existence of the US, but there were serious social and economic problems within the US and the people wanted the government to solve those problems.

However, the Bush Administration was still obsessed with foreign policy. President Bush gave many speeches in which he talked about a "new world order" and an opportunity for the US to dictate the pace of world affairs and ensure peace, since it had become the sole superpower due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

[img]http://naijachronicles.files./2018/10/800px-george_h__w__bush_crop.jpg?w=584[/img]
George Bush The First



This was why Bill Clinton won the 1992 election.


There was an increase in gang violence, crack cocaine on the streets, increased police harassment of blacks and hispanics (factors that led to the rise of hard core and gangster rap), a recession, etc. yet the president was obsessed with foreign policy. Americans were tired of being the "policeman of the world", yet the president was talking about a "new world order".

I will never forget the night I saw this. Bill Clinton walked into the arena at a campaign rally carrying a big sign that read, "It's The Economy, Stupid!" (I watched it on CBN News in 1992).

Basically, he was saying that the main problem facing the country at that time was the economy (and domestic policy), not foreign policy. That was exactly what Americans wanted to hear and they elected him.

[img]http://naijachronicles.files./2018/10/economy.jpg?w=584[/img]

Clinton promised to focus on domestic policy, but his first major challenge was actually about foreign policy. It was about Somalia.

What happened in Somalia?

Guy you're very learned and intelligent. No wonder Ishilove likes you. You're our encyclopedia.

Why bother with Google, when you have naptu2?

Syphax:

Guy you're very learned and intelligent. No wonder Ishilove likes you. You're our encyclopedia.

I don't like him. Everyone who knows our history here will attest to the fact.

Can this be made into into a separate thread and pushed to front-page? @Ishilove, can you help on this? Thank you @naptu2 for the education. Do you write on Quora too?

Naptu Encyclopedia. No need for Google again.

> it is well



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