Clarification of events mentioned in Joshua Holmes's A Dying Dream.

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First of all, the 1990 overthrow of the Siad Barre regime was not an event of 1990.  It was accomplished in 1991, and it was a process that began in 1978.  So, people in the mainstream media, who are shallow and thus a stream rather than a river, failed to notice it for more than a decade.  Not your worst error.

You are correct that the Somalis overthrew a dictator and went home.  They did not set up a successor government. In large measure, they abandoned the new-fangled forms of Western governance and return to their traditional form of clan leadership.  They abolished their central government but not all governance.  The point is significant, but is not relevant to your worst error.

The UN did send humanitarian aid, but that was not the UN's main agenda.  The UN also attempted to establish a new central government for Somalia.  I believe a key motivation was the $2.6 billion (1999 value) of external debt that the Somalis were not paying on.  That debt was accumulated by the Siad Barre regime, which was overthrown.  The absence of a successor government was a difficulty for the debt holders.  Not your worst error.

The term "warlords" appears frequently in the mainstream media, and is a real word.  It refers to any leader who uses military power, with or without the sanction of the government.  In that sense, George W. Bush is a warlord; Queen Elizabeth II is a warlord. You could look it up.  The clan society of the Somalis is run by the elders of the several clans.  There are about 60 clan lineage groups each with identifiable leaders, which are aligned into six major clan affiliations. The elders of these clans are no more "warlords" than Bush or QE2.

I think your idea that food was the most important thing to the war leaders of the clans in Mogadishu is poorly reasoned.  Money and weapons are readily used to obtain food either in exchange or by force.  The well-armed individuals in the militias of the several clans in Mogadishu had little difficulty obtaining food  And, well before the UN intervention, food aid was showing up on the shore.  It wasn't be distributed inland to all the different clan groups, because there was a state of unrest which had no  been resolved.

Neither the term warlords nor the importance of food is involved in your worst error.  I'm getting to that.

Yes, the USA government did send the Marine Corps to Somalia. About 20,000 Marines deployed from December 1992, and withdrew by May 1993.  So far, so good.

Yes, the Somalis, especially those in the Habr Gidr clan, felt that the UN had another agenda, to set up a new central government, and not just to distribute food aid.

However, the Marines were welcomed, were treated well, and were widely respected by the Somalis.  The food aid distribution went well, famine was averted, food got to the clans throughout the region, and all was well.  Then the Marines were withdrawn.

So, it is false, wrong, an error, and a big one, your worst error, when you type: "Americans were treated to images of Somalis dragging the dead bodies of US Marines through the streets in celebration."  Those weren't Marines.  The Marines had gone home (semper fi!).  Those were (a) members of the USA Government's Combat Applications Group, also known as "Delta Force" operators and (b) members of the 10th Mountain Division's air cavalry and (c) members of the USA Army Rangers, an elite forward fighting unit.  About a battalion of Rangers and about a company of Delta Force operators supported by a substantial air cavalry unit were in Mogadishu in October 1993 when all the fighting and dead body dragging was undertaken.

Two major events motivated the firefight in October 1993. Don't take my word for it.  Go to the Philadelphia Inquirer's web site and read Mark Bowden's analysis.

Event one was a UN attack on a Habr Gidr controlled radio station which had been broadcasting reports on the UN's real agenda, on Boutros-Boutros Ghali's relationship prior to becoming UN Secretary General with the Siad Barre regime (back when Ghali was an Egyptian diplomat posted to Mogadishu) and other information unflattering to the UN.  The UN sent troops in to shut down that radio station, in much the same way they shut down access to news in Kosovo and Serbia more recently.  The UN is not a friend of the free press.

In response to that event, the Habr Gidr and many other clan militia overwhelmed the UN troops in a firefight.  The UN withdrew, pointed its finger at the Habr Gidr, declared the leader of the Habr Gidr militia, Mohammed Farrah Aideed, a "war criminal" and began ranting and raving.  Keep in mind that there was, in May 1993, no Somali government.  So there was nobody to invite the US or the UN to send in troops; the UN Charter says that it isn't to intervene in the internal affairs of any country, but it did.  Unilaterally.

The second event too place 12 July 1993.  As Bowden describes it, seventeen USA helicopters surrounded an apartment building and sent TOW missiles, cannon fire, and rockets into the inhabited building.  Some 80 Habr Gidr clansmen, mostly elders, were meeting, and many dozens were killed.  The attack was unprovoked, unannounced, and, I believe, qualifies as a war crime under international law.  Fat chance that Admiral Howe or Anthony Lake would ever come to trial for that event, though.

In the context of these two events, the USA deployed "Task Force Ranger" the aforementioned battalion of Rangers and company of Delta Force operators, to hunt down Aideed.  The firefight on 3 October 1993 took place in Mogadishu, in Habr Gidr held territory, and was what military men often call "a clusterfuck" in terms of how the USA military handled it. The whole long story can be read in Bowden's book, Black Hawk Down, soon to be a major motion picture.

You can get another view of these events, colored by some of my discussions with Somalis by reading "The Day of the Rangers" or "Ma-alinti Rangers" here.

It actually took two more years, until 1995, for all the USA and UN forces to be removed.  And, in 1995, Aideed made plans to form a national government, and was killed by one of his own bodyguards.  During three years of hunting for Aideed, the USA came up empty.  It took a few weeks for the Somalis to deal with him when he became a threat to their freedom.

 Meanwhile, the USA and the UN have not left  Somalia alone. They interfere endlessly in Somali affairs.  They have recently backed the formation of a nationalist socialist government called the Transitional National Government. They have recently pulled the plug on some Somali Internet services, and have dealt unjustly with Somalis who were doing business with the al-Barakat banking concern.

There have been multiple competing Somali ISPs for several years.

Yes, the USA has launched its war on terrorism, and yes, that is terrible news.  It isn't made better by misunderstanding what happened in 1993, or why.

That the next stage in the campaign against terrorism may pit the modern Roman centralized brutality wielding superstate against the Carthaginians in Africa, with the burning, the raping, the mutilating, the library immolating, and the sowing of salt in the land does seem likely.