When I visited Somalia for the first time, in 1997, the country was well off the map of world interest.
Pirate gangs along the country’s long Indian Ocean coastline menaced vital shipping lanes. Civil war raged-Aidid himself was killed in the fighting in 1996-and the country remained lawless for decades. Paul Watson / Toronto Star via Getty Imagesįor Somalis, the consequences were severe. It later inspired a play called The Body of an American. This Pulitzer Prize-winning photo provoked outrage in the U.S. president, Bill Clinton, halted the mission and ordered the Special Forces out by March 31, 1994. News outlets broadcast searing images of jubilant mobs dragging the bodies of dead Army special operators and helicopter crewmen through the streets of Mogadishu. Rangers and Delta Force operators rushed to the rescue, they were caught in an intense exchange of gunfire and trapped overnight.Īltogether, the 18-hour urban firefight, later known as the Battle of Mogadishu, left 18 Americans and hundreds of Somalis dead. Insurgents shot down two American Black Hawk helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades. A ranger fell from his rope and had to be evacuated. One helicopter landed a block north of its target and couldn’t move closer because of groundfire. The ground convoy ran up against barricades formed by local militias. Altogether, the operation would involve 19 aircraft, 12 vehicles and around 160 troops. A ground convoy of trucks and Humvees would wait outside the gate to carry away the troops and their prisoners. Rangers would helicopter in, lower themselves on ropes and surround the building on all sides. The plan was to surround a white three-story house in the capital city of Mogadishu where leaders of Aidid’s Habar Gidir clan were gathering. forces set out on a snatch-and-grab mission to arrest two of Aidid’s lieutenants. But Operation Restore Hope would be best remembered in the United States for a spectacular debacle that has shaped foreign policy ever since.Īlmost right away, militias led by the Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid began attacking and killing U.N. estimated that no fewer than 250,000 lives were saved.
The effort, started in 1992, secured trade routes so food could get to Somalis. initiative supporting a United Nations resolution that aimed to halt widespread starvation. Twenty-five years ago, I was drawn to Somalia in the aftermath of Operation Restore Hope, a U.S.
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