God's Work in Hell: Nation-Building and Counterinsurgency in Somalia, 1992-1995

Abstract

This dissertation project amounts to the first multinational, multi-archival study of the Somalia military interventions of 1992-1995. Somalia provided several important precedents for both American and international military operations. Shattered by civil war, drought, and famine, Somalia contributed to the coining and first use of a new term, what Gerald B. Helman and Steven R. Ratner defined as a “failed-state.” The US-led Unified Task Force (UNITAF), and United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II) were the first ever peace enforcement operations authorized by the United Nations. Somalia also marked the first UN interventions into a country where any semblance of government or statehood had ceased to exist. It was the first deployment of German troops with a mandate to use force in a foreign state since 1945. Pakistanis and Indians and Greeks and Turks, regional adversaries with long-standing animosities, served alongside one another. Within nineteen days, UNITAF took effective control of Southern Somalia, securing the environment for humanitarian relief, and ended the famine. Colin Powell, stated that “we were so successful that we had upset the economics of the marketplace. So much free food came pouring into Somalia that it became tough to make a living by farming.” Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali noted in his memoirs that due to UNITAF, the death rate from violence and famine had plummeted, and a foundational agreement at Addis Ababa, put the Somali clans on a two-year program for progress towards peace and reconciliation. Yet, almost three decades later the subsequent, and infamous “Battle of Mogadishu,” an eighteen-hour firefight in an almost three-year nation-building operation, popularized in the book and movie Black Hawk Down dominates the historical literature. This ‘battle’ has colored all subsequent analysis, making Somalia a common reference for those opposed to such policies as the deployment of military forces for nation-building, humanitarian assistance, mission creep, and the restoration of law and order. This dissertation, is thus the first to evaluate the entire military effort in Somalia, assessing both successes and failures in the largest, most ambitious international experiment in nation-building in history at that point.