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Black Hawk Down:
Reducing the Somalia Occupation to Entertainment
By Frank E. Grant

March/April 2002
Volume 39, Number 2

"Black Hawk Down" is not a political movie but a war movie sympathetic to the plight of peace-keeping Marines under attack in uncertain circumstances where their leaders - from the President on down - waffle over what to do about it. One wonders about the tentative nature of the U.S. attacks in Somalia. Seeing the movie from the hindsight of history, it is possible to question our presence there despite the mission-defining words of a special U.S. envoy, "...to restore hope and stop the killing from war, famine and disease."

Since 1960, when Somalia, then Somaliland, achieved independence from Britain and Italy it has had few times of peace and hardly any of prosperity. In 1992, the United Nations got two warlords to agree to a cease-fire and seek a political solution to their differences. The ensuing resolution also requested humanitarian relief to the war-torn, famine-ravaged country. The rivals, including the notorious Mohammed Farah Aideed, did not cease fighting, however. A U.N. chartered ship carrying food and other humanitarian goods was fired upon in Mogadishu harbor. It left before it could unload its cargo.

Other resolutions led to other missions of aid, including ceasefire observers and armed U.N. guards to protect the relief workers from Aideed's loyalists. An emergency airlift, called "Operation Provide Relief" was announced by the United States Marines. The ensuing peace was uneasy, and Somali guards and U.N. military observers were killed. This led to another resolution, and some 3,000 armed U.N. troops were posted to help keep the peace. It failed, and yet another resolution called for the use of force. The disastrous U.S. "Operation Restore Hope" expected to involve 28,000 troops and last for two to three months. By this time an estimated 2 million Somalis were starving.

According to a report in the Washington Peace Letter, November 1993, problems arose because no Somali officials were consulted before the Marines landed. The U.S. Ambassador to Somalia at the time, Robert Oakley, contributed to the debacle by, among other things, not ensuring that the warring factions would be disarmed. Trust, meaningful negotiation, waffling about how to manage Aideed - underscore many insensitivities of the United Nations and United States.

"Black Hawk Down" is a Hollywood simple, fictionalized accounting of the events leading to the U.S. pullout after 18 Americans and more than 700 Somalis were killed. This "defeat" of American influence is believed to be one of the elements referred to recently by Taliban militants in their stalwart readiness to destroy a "weak" United States, culminating in the tragic events which changed our world on September 11, 2001. The events which led to the occupation in Somalia are not dissimilar to those which nurtured the jihad in Afghanistan. A soldier laments in the movie, as he tries to understand what leads people to fight: they had no jobs, no food, no education, and no future. Ergo, they had nothing to lose except hope.

If your tastes run to loud, hyperactive entertainment, compellingly told and acted (without, as far as I could tell, women), this might be your cup of testosterone. However, if you believe that war is not entertainment but hell, that enough graphic evidence of war already exists in documentary/archival form, and that violence, fictionalized or not, only begets more violence, then you'd best stay away from this blockbuster.

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