Page 85 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

725
ActA
wounded. Various estimates placed Somali casualties between 500 and 1,500.
The battles of 3-4 October were a watershed in U.S. involvement in Somalia. The al-
ready complex mission and difficult environment took a dramatic turn with those events.
The U.S. military presence in Somalia increased significantly and a new U.S. Joint Task
Force Somalia was created. Coalition troop strength quickly increased to nearly 30,000
soldiers but it was too late: the political situation was beyond repair. The Clinton ad-
ministration was focused on using those forces to facilitate the withdrawal of U.S. troops
19
rather than use them to punish Aideed.
In a national security policy review session held in the White House on 6 October,
the president directed the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral David
G. Jeremiah, to stop all actions by U.S. forces against Aideed except those required in
self-defense. He also reappointed Ambassador Robert Oakley as a special envoy to
Somalia in an attempt to broker a peace settlement and then announced that. The Presi-
dent addressed the nation on 7 October announcing his intent that all U.S. forces would
withdraw from Somalia no later than 31 March 1994. It was apparent that the U.S. had
had enough. 20
The situation in Somalia continued to slide downhill as more and more western
troops departed: the French on 12 Dec., the Belgians soon afterwards, followed by the
Turks, the Germans and the Italians and finally the U.S. by 25 Mar. Peace talks in Addis
Ababa failed to deliver a settlement and although UN personnel would remain in Soma-
lia for about another year, all attempts at obtaining a political settlement were stymied
by Aideed’s intransigence and the coalition’s collapse of will. The mission in Somalia
was a failure.

Conclusions:
The multinational coalition entered Somalia in December 1992 to stop the imminent
starvation of hundreds of thousands of people. Although it succeeded in this mission,
the chaotic political situation of that unhappy land prevented the creation of a permanent
settlement. This problem was only exacerbated by the devolution of the mission onto an
ill-prepared, poorly resourced UN follow on mission: UNOSOM II.
UNITAF had succeeded as well as it did because of several key reasons.
The mission was clear, the rules of engagement robust, the chain of command clean
(to the extent any multinational mission can be given each nation’s ability to say NO at
any time), and there was enough force on the ground to cow the splintered Somali op-
position. But when UNITAF left and transitioned to UNOSOM II, all of these strengths
went away and the Somali factions, especially those led by Aideed, saw both weakness
in the new headquarters and a new mission which was an existential threat to their
power.
And why did UNOSOM II fail to retain these strengths? First, because the U.S. tried
to shake off the responsibility for the mission and minimize its exposure while at the
same time helping hand the UN a widely expanded and dangerous mission: disarm the
19 Somalia AAR, pp. 140-141
20 Ibid., p. 139.