Humanitarian Intervention: Remembering Somalia

By Sarah Oster on 18 November 2005

In the early 1990s the Somali state collapsed, and the international community’s response was then seen as an unprecedented kind of humanitarian intervention — a type of response that would not have been likely during the Cold War. However, 14 years later, Somalia is still a deeply troubled nation and a source of international instability. To take just one example, United Nations officials say that those responsible for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya passed through Somalia to purchase weapons at the open-air bazaar in Mogadishu.

The lessons of Somalia should not be forgotten in contemporary discussion concerning the nature of international intervention in complex humanitarian crises. Specifically, Somalia calls into account the vital difference between holistic humanitarian intervention and temporary humanitarian assistance. The US and UN provided short-term assistance for victims of both a natural and manmade disaster, but foreign powers soon found that a more comprehensive understanding of intervention must be examined. In the case of Somalia, one might argue that the international community was willing to “treat the symptoms but not the cause.”

Holistic humanitarian intervention may entail a commitment to the revision, restructuring, and rebuilding of failed institutions or political systems by foreign powers, elements commonly associated with “nation-building.” Such intervention is a daunting prospect, of course, and would-be interveners are understandably nervous about over-committing themselves, especially if the intervention requires a military component. But the issue becomes one of foresight. It is clear the US and UN pulled out of Somalia too quickly, and the issues left “untreated” in Somalia in the early 1990s have come back to haunt them.

First, let us examine the events leading up to the collapse of Somalia that occurred in 1991. In 1969, Maj. General Siad Barre usurped not only political power from the state through a coup but also the freedom of a party-based constitutional democracy from the Somali people. Somalia has always been a clan-based state with a largely pastoral and agricultural economy. Efforts to develop a true “Republic of Somalia” were hindered by Barre’s violent intolerance for opposition movements and ethnic groups, especially in the northern regions of the state.

By the end of the 1980s, opposition to Barre’s regime spread from the North to central and southern regions.¹

The Somali army fell apart as citizens returned to their clan militias, reducing Barre’s territorial control to the areas surrounding the capital city of Mogadishu. By 1991, Barre was successfully overthrown by armed opposition and exiled to Nigeria. Consequently, Somalia’s government collapsed and declared itself to be in a state of national emergency.

By 1992, the international community was more than aware of the civil unrest and starvation that plagued Somalia. With the help of other nations, the United States launched Operation Restore Hope to provide assistance to Somalis suffering from starvation caused by drought and a failed central government. The United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) was launched on the heels of the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) that led Operation Restore Hope. Both missions withdrew in 1993 and 1994 after 18 US soldiers were killed in the capital of Mogadishu.

Since then, Somalia has suffered from 14 years of civil strife as various warlords and factions have fought to obtain power in the collapsed state. Somalia has lacked an effective government, legal code, and functioning economy. Yet some believe that the election in October 2004 of Abdullahi Yusuf, president of the transitional government based in Kenya, will usher civil order back into the territory.²

The election ended a two-year reconciliation process led by the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to form a Transitional Federal Government.

However, the reunification of Somalia is not an easy task. Since the collapse of the Barre regime, Somalia has become so dangerous that its own government cannot enter. Terrorists have taken advantage of Somalia by making it a base for recruitment and training. Meanwhile warlords and criminal networks abound. Prospects for stability seem dim.

These failures in Somalia also create regional ripple effects. For instance, the negative outcome of the Somali intervention inhibited the international response to the Rwanda genocide less than a year later. Such inhibition allowed the Hutu rebel force to quickly gain momentum and carry out its extermination campaign. Furthermore, the escalation of the Rwandan conflict led to the dispersion of refugees and fighters in neighboring countries, which has had ongoing destabilizing effects for the entire region.

The lesson from Somalia is that hopes of disassociating a humanitarian operation from other political and economic expectations are naive. As Dr. Ken Menkhaus argued in 1995, “All were aware that a long-term solution to the Somalia crisis would entail a commitment to fostering national reconciliation…. These tasks, though later derided by critics as ‘nation-building,’ were essential if the anarchy…which triggered the famine, were to be eliminated.”³

Once the US decided to intervene, there were expectations that political and economic problems would work themselves out, but in a strictly humanitarian “assistance” operation, the challenges of “nation-building” were not realistically assessed and incorporated into the planning.

Somalia should not be remembered as a failure of international humanitarian “intervention,” because it never amounted to a real, holistic intervention. It was a confused mixture of temporary assistance and good intentions, none of which were fortified with sufficient advance planning and long-term commitment. Events in the past decade reveal the backlashes that can occur when crises are not managed in a comprehensive manner. In a heavily integrated and globalized world, countries cannot afford to offer only band-aid solutions or be constantly swayed by the public’s expectation of immediate results.

Last updated 12 January 2009