Disappointed and defeated in Somalia

TL;DRAbstract

UNOSOM I, Operation Restore Hope and UNOSOM II – which together endured from April 1992 to March 1995 – plunged the international community headlong into its first post-Cold War encounter with a collapsed state. For US President George Bush, still heady from his victories in the Cold and Gulf Wars (and to a lesser extent, in Panama), and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, eager to test the potential of an organisation that had been in a Superpower stranglehold since its inception, Somalia provided the perfect opportunity. Vietnam was by then a mere after-thought. The intervention in Somalia, however, did not live up to expectations. Much of Somalia today has slipped back into the situation of sporadic lawlessness that prevailed before foreign troops arrived – albeit not the famine – despite the enormous infusion of funds ($2.3 billion spent by the US government, and $1.64 billion by the UN), and invasion of untold numbers of aid workers and foreign soldiers (close to 50,000 tr

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