UNITED NATIONS, DECOLONIZATION, AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN COLD WAR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, 1960-1994, THE

The crisis in Somalia was very much the consequence of decolization and the Cold War. When the Cold War regime of the Somali dictator Said Barre was overthrown in 1991, Somalia descended into chaos. Clan identities and loyalties had long been more important than loyalty to the postcolonial Somali state, contributing to the fractured nature of Somali society. The civil war and the subsequent famine had already taken an estimated 300,000 lives and another 4.5 million faced starvation, at the time of the UN intervention in 1992. The United Nations Operations in Somalia (UNOSOM) sought to aid in the distribution of humanitarian relief and to establish a secure environment for the delivery of further aid.27 But the chaotic conditions made the UN's humanitarian efforts difficult and, with U.S. encouragement, the UN's mission in Somalia began to increasingly focus on political and security problems as the root of the humanitarian crisis. The UN forces, and particularly the U.S. troops within them, became increasingly obsessed with political matters such as regime change, seeking to capture the clan leader Mohammed Farah Aidid. Efforts to disarm or capture Aidid resulted in the deaths of 24 Pakistani peacekeepers in the autumn of 1993, followed by bloody street-to-street fighting in downtown Mogadishu which left 18 U.S. peacekeepers dead. President Clinton announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia, thus decapitating the UN's larger mission there.28

The consequences of the Somalia operation were immense. While the UN had scored a number of successes on the humanitarian front, the loss of more than 140 peacekeepers received most of the attention and had debilitating aftereffects, leading to a reassessment of peacekeeping and particularly nation building. Among other unhappy consequences, the United Nations had little success establishing even the most basic of Somali state institutions, provoking a debate over the UN's role in nation building beyond rudimentary peacekeeping. Somalia also undermined U.S. support for UN operations, as American public opinion, in the face of a hysterical firestorm of media coverage critical of the operation, began to question the necessity of U.S. forces being used in areas not considered vital to American interests. Somalia delivered a blow to those who had advocated that the United Nations should increasingly take an interest in humanitarian interventions.29

The debacle in Somalia was felt beyond the horn of Africa. In Rwanda, the consequences of Somalia contributed to paralysis and the phenomenon of "humanitarian fatigue" which resulted in the UN standing aside as 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in one of the worst acts of genocide since World War II. The commander of the previously established UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR)30 repeatedly called for international support, but the United States, fearful of another Somalia, blocked further action, and the Security Council avoided the use of the word "genocide" which, under the provisions of the Genocide Treaty, might have automatically committed the Security Council to take action. In an unprecedented move, the Secretary General established an independent inquiry to investigate why the UN remained paralyzed as the Rwandan genocide unfolded. The inquiry concluded that a lack of will, compounded by diminished resources and ignorance about the ferocity of the violence, resulted in the UN's passive response. The flood of Rwandan refugees into the area around Goma, Zaire, provoked the 1997 crisis in that neighboring country, which resulted in the accession to power of Laurent Kabila, and Rwanda has been a major participant in the ghastly Great Lakes crisis which has claimed the lives of millions of Africans.31