fbpx

Analysis:  Brace Yourselves Somalia The Americans Are Back

Analysis:  Brace Yourselves Somalia The Americans Are Back

From Daily Maverick

It’s taken the USA a long time to get over the humiliation of Black Hawk Down. With his surprise visit to Mogadishu, US Secretary of State John Kerry finally closed that ignominious chapter, and announced that Somalia would be seeing a lot more American involvement from now on.

More than two decades ago, the corpses of American soldiers were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu – the brutal and all too public consequences of a botched raid to unseat an uncompliant warlord. This humiliating defeat was subsequently immortalised in the book Black Hawk Down, and the film of the same name, but the real consequences were less obvious.

Scarred by failure, America’s gung-ho foreign policy was tempered. Not forever, as Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, but for long enough to make a difference (for instance, any kind of military intervention in Rwanda in 1994 became politically unfeasible – instead, a timid US actually pushed for the withdrawal of United Nations troops). The incident also forced US forces out of Somalia, and America has been reluctant to engage directly with Somalia ever since.

Until Tuesday, that is, when Secretary of State John Kerry’s plane touched down at Mogadishu

Read more at Daily Maverick