Page 80 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

720 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

that the famine was only partly due to the drought in the region. The major factor in the
unfolding humanitarian disaster was the political chaos and fighting between the various
clans and sub-clans in that troubled region. The main chance to change that particular
equation and resolve both issues—famine and anarchy—was during the UNITAF mul-
tinational intervention starting under UN auspices in December 1992 where a U.S.-led
coalition of 38 nations held the dominant position in the country. And it was the flawed
transition to UNOSOM II and the reduction of that military force, complicated by the
expansion of the mission to include efforts to capture one of the key warlords, Moham-
med Farah Aideed, which ultimately doomed the effort. The result was the failure of
all western efforts to rescue Somalia from political chaos: efforts which were compli-
cated by the widely divergent capabilities of national forces, the inability of the UN to
establish a credible command and control structure, and the shift in mission starting in
May 1993 from one of humanitarian relief to an aggressive form of nation-building that
would have changed the political balance in the country. As a consequence of this fail-
ure, Somalia’s downward spiral for the last two decades into the status of “failed nation”
continues to this day.
The political and economic situation in Somalia in 1992 and the reasons behind the
western intervention into the affairs of Somalia are well known. The political chaos re-
sulting from the collapse of the regime of Somali strongman Mohammed Siad Barre in
1991 led to the descent of the region into sectarian and ethnic warfare with the creation
2
of numerous regional warlords. With the collapse of political order came a collapse of
the various western aid organizations’ relief networks.
Those networks were already stressed by the endemic poverty of the region and this
was compounded by a severe drought in the southern region of the country. With the
failure of political order came attacks on food warehouses, raids on relief convoys, and
starvation on a vast scale. UN and early U.S. attempts at improving the distribution net-
works were only small band-aids placed on gaping wounds, resulting in UN Resolution
751 on 24 April 1992 which authorized UNOSOM I, U.S. airlift operations beginning in
August, and finally a U.S. led multinational force intervention in December 1992--UNI-
TAF.
The Unified Task Force or UNITAF, (called by the U.S. Operation Restore Hope)
was almost immediately successful. UN Security Council Resolution 794 endorsed the
intervention on 3 December and U.S. and multinational forces were on the ground on 9
December. The operation was joined by large components of troops from France, Italy,
Belgium, Morocco, Australia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Canada for a total of 20 nations.
The operation was organized so that each nation had a major and sometimes inde-
pendent role to play, but as part of an operation coordinated by the U.S. and backed us
logistics and firepower. 3

2 Richard W. Stewart, The United States Army in Somalia, 1992-1994, Washington, D.C.: U. S. Army Center
of Military History, 2002, p. 2.
3 Robert F. Baumann and Lawrence A. Yates with Versalle F. Washington, “My Clan Against the World”, US
and Coalition Forces in Somalia 1992-1994. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, pp.
30-31. The UNITAF organizational chart is from page 31.