Somalia ‘93

The reviews of Black Hawk Down seem to be uniformly good. The film purports to document the downing of a helicopter (or two?) during the U.S. invasion intervention aid effort in Somalia in 1993. The movie begs research because Hollywood covering such a story, especially now with the word “terrorist” as ready to spring from the mouths of officials as “communist” was from Joe McCarthy’s, seems ripe for misinterpretation, if not deliberate obfuscation of fact. Also, recent reports indicate that, given the lawlessness and rule by warlords rather than a centralized government, the U.S. is training its ‘terrorist-smoking-out’ scrutiny, and likely its guns, on Somalia once again. AlterNet has Black Hawk — and Truth — Down, which notes that:

<q>The Pentagon assisted with the production, pleased for an opportunity to ‘set the record straight.’ The film is a lie that compounds the original lie that was the operation itself.“ … After watching the film, which made me uncomfortable because it showed how senseless the U.S. policy was as well as how ineffective, I also realized how little it conveyed what really happened in that tortured land.</q>

The recent history of Somalia follows the same dreadful pattern as that of so many other third world nations “involved” with the U.S, politically and/or economically. The U.S. props up a pliant dictator with guns and money so that U.S. multinationals can operate freely. Once people depose said dictator in coup, leaving the nation no longer viable as a market, U.S. troops are sent in to restore stability.

In Somalia’s case, as covered in The Long and Hidden History of the U.S in Somalia on AlterNet, the U.S. was not always in support. In fact:

<q> … During the early 1970s, Somalia was a client of the Soviet Union, even allowing the Soviets to establish a naval base at Berbera on the strategic north coast near the entrance to the Red Sea. Somali dictator Siad Barre established this relationship in response to the large-scale American military support of Somalia’s historic rival Ethiopia, then under the rule of the feudal emperor Haile Selassie. When a military coup by leftist Ethiopian officers toppled the monarchy in 1974 and declared the country a Marxist-Leninist state the following year, the superpowers switched their allegiances, with the Soviet Union backing the Ethiopia Dirgue and the United States siding with the Barre regime in Somalia.</q>

Once the sides had been realigned, the U.S. settled into the familiar policy of providing arms to the dictator and his regime in exchange for a military presence, this time close to the Middle East.

<q>From the late 1970s until just before Siad Barre’s overthrow in early 1991, the U.S. sent hundreds of millions of dollars of arms to Somalia in return for the use of military facilities which had been originally constructed for the Soviets.</q>

As Black Hawk Down: Shoot first… on the Independent puts it:

<q>In the 1970s and 1980s, Somalia was ruled by a corrupt president, Mohamed Siad Barre. It was a familiar story &#8211; an unpopular, despotic nutcase (read, Pinochet in Chile or the Shah in Iran) who suppressed popular dissent and did what the US government, or US-owned multinationals, told him to do. … Siad Barre had leased nearly two-thirds of Somalia to four huge American oil companies: Conoco, Chevron, Phillips, and Amoco …</q>

Once Barre was overthrown, this control was lost and there was no longer a government with which to parley. The common story at this point holds that the U.S. sent a humanitarian mission to Somalia to do what it’s government could not, feed its people. However, this mission was composed of “30,000 U.S. troops, primarily Marines and Army Rangers”, of whom the “U.S. Secretary of Defense [said], “We’re sending the Rangers to Somalia. We are not going to be able to control them. They are like overtrained pit bulls. No one controls them.” and whose unofficial slogan soon became “The only good Somali is a dead Somali.”

What may have began as a misguided humanitarian mission, carried out by the foreign military of a nation whose foreign policies were largely responsible for the famine it was meant to address, quickly became a manhunt for General Aidid, the ruling warlord of Somalia after the government fell. Hollywood drags bloody corpse… on the Online Journal by Larry Chin writes:

<q>Task Force Ranger was not in Mogadishu to feed the hungry. Over six weeks, from late August to Oct. 3, it conducted six missions, raiding locations where either Aidid or his lieutenants were believed to be meeting. The mission that resulted in the Battle of Mogadishu came less than three months after a surprise missile attack by U.S. helicopters (acting on behalf of the UN) on a meeting of Aidid clansmen.<q>

He goes on to quote Noam Chomsky, from his book, The New Military Humanism:

<q> … The official estimate was 6-10,000 Somali casualties in the summer of 1993 alone, two-thirds women and children. Marine Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who commanded the operation, informed the press that ‘I’m not counting bodies . . . I’m not interested.‘</q>

However, in the movie, he points out that what he feels viewers will take away are: “brave and innocent young American boys” getting shot at and killed for “no reason” by “crazy black Islamists” that the Americans are “just trying to help.”, which is, of course, the official story. Further, he notes that: “Many who have seen the film report leaving the theater feeling angry, itching to “kick some ass.”

As to the actual incident covered in the movie, U.S. Massacred 1,000 Somalis from 1998, discusses the event in more detail:

<q>Backed by 17 helicopter gunships, they stormed the building where the Somali leaders were meeting and took 24 prisoners. They planned to drive the three miles back to the U.S. base but could not get out of the area. First one and then another Blackhawk helicopter was shot down. Without a back-up force the convoy ended up going in circles, trapped by hundreds of Somali gunmen firing AK47s and rocket grenades from rooftops or moving with the crowds. </q>

The argument that the soldiers were fighting for their lives is a valid one. There is vast internecine war raging still in Somalia; it’s a dangerous place. The question to ask is “what was the U.S. doing there?” Thousands of Somalis were killed by U.S. troops. All of those Somalis might have died of starvation or been killed by other Somalis, but that doesn’t justify their killing by U.S. troops. There is no morally defensible reason for the U.S. actions in Somalia.

The fact that a large portion of the country’s resources had been earmarked for U.S. multinationals is suspicious to say the least. It wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. military attacked another country in order to protect its economic interests abroad. This was probably not enough to warrant such a large invasion. Cox’s allegations of racism, though apt, are also beside the point. It seems that every once in a while, the U.S. feels the need to flex its military muscle, to show other nation, especially third-world ones, that an unaligned government is just not possible. Certainly, allied, pliant client states are the best for the U.S. in the short term, but that is never the best for those states or their people.

For more discussion, see Review: Black Hawk Down (filter level of 3 is recommended) on Slashdot.