Beyond Black Hawk Down

Intervention, Nation-Building, and Insurgency in Somalia, 1992-1995

Jonathan Carroll

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9780700638888
• eBook ISBN: 9780700638895
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

The first historical look at what happened during the Somalia intervention; what went wrong and what lessons we should learn from it.

The story of Black Hawk Down is a familiar one. On 3 October 1993 two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, and in the ensuing Battle of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation; the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a nation. The United States sought to show the world that the UN could rebuild a country, but in a dire foreshadowing of the failed efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later, the intervention in Somalia was plagued with political infighting, policy mismatch, confusion, and fatal assumptions.

In 1992 Somalia saw the largest ever deployment of American troops to the continent of Africa, and 1993 brought the first UN-led peace enforcement mission and the most ambitious experiment in nation-building. In Beyond Black Hawk Down, Jonathan Carroll provides the first scholarly military history of the entire intervention, from its early and largely successful humanitarian phase in 1992 through to the ultimate withdrawal of UN forces in 1995. Carroll dispels the myths and misunderstandings surrounding one of the most infamous episodes of the 1990s to present a new interpretation of events, most notably by including the Somali perspective, to argue what went so wrong in Somalia, and more importantly, why.

Understanding the intervention in Somalia, its successes and the roots of its failures, is invaluable to contemporary debates on concepts of nation-building and counterinsurgency. Moreover, the increasing regularity of inter-state and intra-state conflicts across the world means the international community will continue to be called upon to intervene in other failed or failing states in the future. Beyond Black Hawk Down is an important new history that will inform the shape and nature of future military interventions.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• A Note on Spelling
• Introduction
• 1. “The Collapse of Somalia: The Long Dark Road through Anarchy to Intervention
• 2. A Tale of Two Bureaucracies: The United Nations and United States Decide to Intervene in Somalia
• 3. Deploying to the Moon: The Formation and Arrival of the Unified Task Force
• 4. Pacification, Presence, and Overwhelming Force: Securing Somalia
• 5. Jump-Starting a Nation: UNITAF and Embryonic Nation Building
• 6. The Reluctant Crusader: UNOSOM II Takes over in Somalia
• 7. 5 June 1993
• 8. The Fatal Attraction of Mogadishu: The Summer War, June–October 1993
• 9. The Battle of Mogadishu
• 10. Caught in a Dangerous Interlude: Charting the Course for UNOSOM amidst the Settling Dust
• 11. Left to Wither on the Vine: The End of UNOSOM in Somalia
• Epilogue: Dancing on the Corpse of a Helicopter
• Appendix A: Major Somali Clans and Subclans and Their Political Factions
• Appendix B: Coalition Forces Deployment List
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover