Battle of Mogadishu (1993)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Mogadishu, known in Somalia as Maalintii Rangers and elsewhere as the Black Hawk Down Incident, was fought on the 3rd and the 4th of October 1993. It was part of Operation Gothic Serpent. American planners expected the operation to take no longer than 30 minutes. Its goal was to seize two lieutenants of a Somali warlord during a meeting deep inside the capital, in a district that United Nations troops had refused to enter. Instead the raid turned into a fight that lasted 17 hours. How did a famine relief mission become a manhunt for one general? Why were elite American soldiers dropped into a neighborhood that even peacekeepers avoided? And why did the side that lost far more people come to regard the outcome as its victory?

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• 2. Famine and Intervention

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  Food shortages began in Somalia in mid-1990, during the final year of President Siad Barre's rule. By early 1991 rebel groups had toppled his government, and the formal economy had collapsed along with it. A severe drought then struck the south in 1991-1992, just as the civil war weakened the traditional ways of coping and local law enforcement disintegrated. The resulting 1992 famine was caused mainly by the destruction of infrastructure and farmland in the inter-riverine regions. The rebel alliance that removed Barre then split in two. One wing followed Ali Mahdi Muhammad, who later became president. The other followed General Mohamed Farrah Aidid and became known as the Somali National Alliance, or SNA.

  In April 1992 the United Nations created UNOSOM I under Mohamed Sahnoun to help get food to the hungry. Aid workers found armed looters and criminals stealing from storage sites and supply routes. Many of the thieves at Mogadishu's sea and airport were tied to the forces of Mahdi and Aidid. Neither leader could fully control his young fighters, and many turned to food theft for survival and income. The first UN aid shipment reached Mogadishu in May 1992. In August President George H. W. Bush launched Operation Provide Relief, sending American military transport aircraft to support the effort.

  That same August, Sahnoun won SNA approval for 500 peacekeepers, with any further deployment requiring the group's consent. Days later, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali announced an expansion to 3,500 troops on his own authority. Sahnoun was overruled and could not delay it. The larger intervention fed nationalist opposition and strengthened Aidid, whose SNA denounced what it saw as a colonial approach.

  By November 1992, thanks largely to Sahnoun's mediation, aid moved through the Mogadishu port without obstruction. Theft on the routes to the famine zones averaged around 20 percent. That month Sahnoun was replaced by Ismat T. Kittani, who took a confrontational line and sent troops into politically sensitive areas. Kittani claimed that 80 percent of aid shipments were looted. The UN Secretariat and the U.S. State Department repeated the figure to justify a bigger intervention, though many senior UN officials and aid workers disputed it. Some top UNOSOM I commanders believed the famine was being exaggerated so that Somalia could serve as a test case for a UN operation of expanded size and mandate.

  On the 9th of December 1992, American troops began landing at Mogadishu under UNITAF, also called Operation Restore Hope. In all, 17,800 Marines and 10,000 Army infantry were deployed. The famine was already ending as they arrived. The U.S. armed forces wanted to show they could run major operations other than war, while the State Department wanted to set a precedent for humanitarian intervention after the Cold War. A 1994 estimate by the Washington-based Refugee Policy Group credited international assistance with saving about 100,000 lives, of which only 10,000 came after American troops arrived.

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• 3. Radio Mogadishu

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  On the 3rd of March 1993, Boutros Boutros-Ghali sent the Security Council his plan for replacing UNITAF with a new mission, UNOSOM II. He reported that UNITAF had put 37,000 personnel across forty percent of southern and central Somalia. Security and aid delivery had improved, he said, but there was still no effective government, police force or national army. The Council authorized UNOSOM II to establish a secure environment and to pursue national reconciliation toward a democratic state. On the 15th of March 1993, at a conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, all 15 Somali parties agreed to terms for restoring peace. Serious disagreements followed soon after, over what the mission's political mandate truly was. By May 1993 relations had deteriorated so far that the SNA was airing "anti-UNOSOM propaganda" from Radio Mogadishu.

  Radio was the most popular source of news in Somalia, so control of the airwaves mattered to both sides. On the 31st of May 1993, Aidid's political rivals urged the top UNOSOM official to take over the station, and Aidid learned of the meeting. Rumors that the UN planned to seize or destroy Radio Mogadishu spread for days. On the 5th of June 1993, SNA fighters and Somali citizens at the station attacked a Pakistani force that was inspecting an arms cache there. The Pakistanis lost 24 dead and 57 wounded. One Italian and three American soldiers were also wounded. A 1994 United Nations inquiry later wrote: "Opinions differ, even among UNOSOM officials, on whether the weapons inspections of the 5th of June 1993 was genuine or was merely a cover-up for reconnaissance and subsequent seizure of Radio Mogadishu."

  On the 6th of June 1993, the Security Council passed Resolution 837, calling for the arrest and prosecution of those responsible. It did not name Aidid but held the SNA accountable. Admiral Jonathan Howe then issued a $25,000 warrant for information leading to Aidid's arrest, and UNOSOM forces began striking targets across Mogadishu to find him. Professor Ioan M. Lewis argued that the UN made an unwise choice by using force instead of politically isolating Aidid and opening an independent legal inquiry.

  In mid-June 1993, American AC-130 gunships began hitting SNA targets across the capital, and an insurgency grew against UNOSOM. The Somalis were usually outgunned, but both sides took mounting losses. In one incident UNOSOM troops machine-gunned a crowd of protesters and killed at least 20 civilians. A week into the offensive, American intelligence claimed that Aidid's command was badly weakened and his arsenal mostly destroyed. The opposite happened. Each major clash with UN forces raised Aidid's standing with the Somali public. Former UN Under-Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur observed that "The scale, intensity, and frequency of the use of force by UNOSOM after June 1993 bore little resemblance to the rhetoric and expectations of when it was established, nor any recognizable relationship by then to a peacekeeping operation as defined in the UN lexicon." Relief agencies began distancing themselves from the UN, and many UNOSOM II contingents pushed for talks with the SNA.

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• 4. Bloody Monday

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  On the 12th of July 1993, American AH-1 Cobra helicopters attacked a house in Mogadishu where clan elders were meeting. Somalis came to call it Bloody Monday, and it is also known as the Abdi House raid. UNOSOM claimed a successful strike on an SNA command center full of hardliners. Somalis, foreign journalists and human rights groups widely disputed that account. Howe said the evidence could not be shown because the cameras recording the raid had jammed. A Somali cameraman's footage was judged so disturbing that CNN would not air it for American viewers. Human Rights Watch noted that UNOSOM had offered no evidence for its claims, and it said the attack "looked like mass murder."

  The death toll is contested. The Red Cross counted 215 Somali casualties, though it could survey the dead and injured at only two of the city's hospitals. An SNA official said 73 were killed, including prominent clan elders, and UNOSOM denied it. Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, noted that every eyewitness he interviewed put the dead at 70 or more, a figure that Ambassador Robert B. Oakley accepted. Many of the dead, Bowden was told, were respected moderates who opposed Aidid.

  The Vatican, the Organisation of African Unity, World Vision, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International all urged UNOSOM to rethink its course. Italy had ruled Somalia as a colony for half a century, and its contingent threatened to quit the whole operation. Its officials feared that the relief mission had become an American-led war. Several contingents stopped taking part in operations against Aidid after their governments ordered them to. Ann Wright, the top official of the UNOSOM II Justice Division, resigned in protest, as did other UN officials. Many who stayed told reporters that the UN had given up its moral authority in its war against Aidid.

  Oakley judged the raid's effect plainly: "Before July 12th, the U.S. would have been attacked only because of association with the UN, but the U.S. was never singled out until after July 12th." Bowden called the raid "a monumental misjudgment" and "tragic mistake." Aidid decided for the first time to target American soldiers specifically. Night patrols in Mogadishu stopped entirely because the city had become too dangerous for foreign troops.

  On the 8th of August 1993, in a part of the city considered relatively safe, the SNA detonated a bomb under an American Humvee and killed four soldiers. Only three Americans had died in the whole intervention up to then. Two weeks later another bomb wounded seven more. President Bill Clinton approved a task force of elite units, including 400 Army Rangers and Delta Force operators. It deployed on the 22nd of August 1993 under Major General William F. Garrison, commander of the Joint Special Operations Command. Captain Michael D. Steele led B Company of the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. Lieutenant Colonel Gary L. Harrell led C Squadron of Delta. The force also included 16 helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Navy SEALs from DEVGRU, and Air Force pararescuemen and combat controllers from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron.

  As American casualties mounted, backlash grew at home, and bipartisan support for withdrawal built in the Senate. On the 27th of August 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin gave a speech urging less military focus and a return to negotiations. Ambassador Robert R. Gosende of the State Department took the opposite view in a cable that urged thousands of additional troops and an end to talks with the SNA. General Joseph P. Hoar of CENTCOM disagreed sharply. In a confidential memo he argued that if more troops were needed, control of Mogadishu was already lost. At 2 a.m. on the 25th of September, an SNA rocket-propelled grenade brought down the Black Hawk Courage 53 during a patrol. Its pilots flew the burning aircraft toward the port and crash-landed. The pilot and co-pilot survived, three crew members died, and the SNA treated it as a propaganda win. UNOSOM spokesman Major David Stockwell called it "a very lucky shot."

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• 5. The Somali Defense

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  The Somali National Alliance was formed in June 1992, after many factions together beat back Siad Barre's attempt to retake Mogadishu. By the time of the hunt for Aidid it included several political organizations, among them Colonel Omar Gess's Somali Patriotic Movement, the Somali Democratic Movement and Aidid's own Habr Gedir wing of the United Somali Congress. Nobody knows its fighting strength in the battle precisely. Stephen Biddle estimated about 1,500 SNA fighters in Mogadishu, while American intelligence had insisted Aidid had at most 300 loyal gunmen. Most of the force carried light weapons such as the AK-47, backed by RPG-7s, grenade launchers, snipers, mortars, mines and machine guns. The SNA kept its heavier weapons out of the fight entirely.

  Colonel Sharif Hassan Giumale commanded the SNA fighters on the ground. He was a 45-year-old former army officer and brigade commander who had studied at a Soviet military academy in Odessa and later in Italy. He had fought in the Ogaden War with Ethiopia in the late 1970s and again after the civil war began in 1991. Aidid, Giumale and their officers drew on Chinese and Vietnamese books about guerrilla war. They also took advice from Somali mujahedeen who had just returned from the Soviet-Afghan War.

  The SNA had split South Mogadishu into 18 military sectors, each with a field officer always on alert and a radio network joining them. Commanders could mass troops in any sector within 30 minutes. Giumale had studied Task Force Ranger's previous six operations in the city and read widely on insurgencies, especially the FLMN in El Salvador, which had developed ways to fight aircraft with infantry weapons. He concluded that the Americans relied on speed, so the SNA had to move faster. Their greatest advantage, the helicopter, was also their weak point. Bringing one down would cancel American speed and surprise and force a long fight, in which militia numbers could offset superior firepower. Ambushes and barricades would hold back reinforcements. Giumale also believed the elite American units were underrating his fighters, who had months of urban combat behind them. Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson later wrote that most American commanders had underestimated how many rocket-propelled grenades the SNA had.

  Alleged links to Al-Qaeda remain disputed. Al-Qaeda defector Jamal al-Fadl claimed the group trained the fighters who shot down the helicopters, and Mohammed Odeh reportedly said he went to Somalia to train fighters and provide money. Bowden argued that Al-Qaeda coached the militia to aim rocket-propelled grenades at Black Hawk tail rotors. Correspondent Jonathan Randal found no evidence for this and noted that hitting rotors had been a known technique since Vietnam. Ambassador Oakley, who had access to American and UN intelligence, said he investigated every piece of evidence and found nothing. The SNA did receive guidance on downing helicopters from fighters with experience against Russian helicopters in Afghanistan, and dozens of Somalis trained by the Afghan Mujahideen had come home to fight.

  Besides the SNA, the battle drew in volunteers, many of them untrained civilians with grievances against UNOSOM. Some were women, children and elderly people with small arms. Members of the rival Abgal and Habar Gidr clans, loyal to Ali Mahdi and Aidid respectively, fought side by side, and fighters from Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya joined as well. SNA commanders found the volunteers uncontrollable, since they demanded ammunition and clogged the militia's medical evacuation system. American journalist Scott Peterson reported that days before the battle, American mortar crews had fired shells into the dense neighborhoods around their base. The shells killed a family of eight and injured 34.

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• 6. Into the Bakara

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  On the morning of the 3rd of October 1993, a locally recruited asset told the CIA that two of Aidid's principal advisers, Omar Salad Elmi and Abdi Hassan Awale, would meet near the Olympic Hotel. Aidid himself might attend, along with other senior figures. The hotel and the surrounding Bakara market were Habr Gidr territory, considered very hostile. UNOSOM forces had refused to enter the area in earlier engagements.

  The plan was simple. The Somali asset would drive to the meeting site and raise his car's hood to mark the building for aircraft overhead. Delta operators would land from MH-6 Little Bird helicopters and secure it. Four Ranger chalks under Captain Michael D. Steele would fast-rope from hovering MH-60L Black Hawks, because there was no suitable landing zone. The Rangers would form a four-corner perimeter so that no one could get in or out. A column of 12 vehicles, nine Humvees and three M939 trucks, under Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight would drive in to carry out the assault team and prisoners.

  At 13:50, analysts confirmed Omar Salad's location, and the code word "Irene" went out across the radio channels. Sixteen helicopters lifted off from Mogadishu International Airport, with rocket-armed Little Birds in the lead, for a flight of about four minutes. The formation flew past the target and then turned back together, hoping to confuse the Somalis. Soon after takeoff, aircrews saw Somalis lighting tires across the city, a signal the SNA had used before to announce incursions and call up counterattacks. At 15:42 the Little Birds carrying Delta operators reached the target. Dust was so thick that one helicopter had to land out of position.

  Small-arms fire began almost at once. Chalk Four, aboard the Black Hawk Super 67, was set down a block north of its intended spot, and heavy fire stopped it from moving to the right position. Private First Class Todd Blackburn lost his grip while fast-roping and fell 70 feet to the street, suffering severe injuries. A column of three Humvees took him back to base under heavy fire. Sergeant Dominick Pilla was killed on that trip by a bullet to the head, the first American to die in the battle.

  SNA officers told later interviewers that about 10 minutes of confusion followed the Black Hawks' arrival. Then Colonel Giumale ordered units across Mogadishu to converge and set ambushes along the likely relief routes. Ten minutes after that, militia had nearly sealed the roads around the Olympic Hotel. Giumale's commanders stopped using radios, knowing the Americans could jam and intercept them, and relied on handwritten dispatches and couriers. Barricades of rocks, wreckage, rubbish and burning tires slowed the American ground convoy, which waited near the hotel, down the street from the target building.

  About 40 minutes into the assault, an RPG-7 hit the Black Hawk Super 61, piloted by CW3 Cliff "Elvis" Wolcott. The helicopter spun out of control and came to rest against a wall in an alley about 300 yards east of the target. Both pilots died. Staff Sergeants Ray Dowdy and Charlie Warren were badly wounded. Snipers Staff Sergeant Daniel Busch and Sergeant Jim Smith survived and began defending the site. Militiamen shouted through megaphones: "Come out and defend your homes!" A Little Bird, Star 41, landed at the crash site, where the pilot flew with one hand and fired a machine gun with the other while the copilot pulled two Delta snipers aboard. A 15-man combat search and rescue team led by Captain Bill J. Coultrup then fast-roped in from Super 68. An RPG nearly severed that helicopter's main rotor blades as the last two men rappelled, but it limped back to base. The team built a shelter from armor plates salvaged from the wreck.

  At about 16:40, the Black Hawk Super 64, flown by Michael Durant, was circling almost directly above that wreckage. Yusuf Dahir Mo'alim, who led a seven-man SNA RPG team, spotted it. One of his men knelt in the road and fired at the tail rotor. The helicopter seemed fine for a few moments, then began to lurch and spin, and it dropped into a group of tin shacks. Somalis in the area cheered, and the crash killed several residents.

  A small Ranger relief column left the airfield and lost two Humvees and three soldiers within a kilometer of the base. Charlie Company of the 10th Mountain Division's Quick Reaction Force was then ambushed on Via Lenin road. About 100 soldiers fired nearly 60,000 rounds and used hundreds of grenades in 30 minutes before they pulled back. Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart, two Delta snipers, asked three times to be inserted at the Super 64 site. The third request was approved, and Super 62 delivered them. After about 10 minutes of fire support, an RPG tore through that helicopter's engine and knocked its copilot unconscious. It managed to crash-land a safe distance away. Overrun, Gordon was fatally wounded. Shughart gave Gordon's CAR-15 to Durant and held off the crowd for about 10 more minutes before he was killed. Every crew member died except Durant, who was nearly beaten to death and captured by Mo'alim. Gordon and Shughart received the Medal of Honor posthumously, the first awarded since the Vietnam War.

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• 7. The Long Night

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  At the first crash site, about 90 Rangers and Delta Force soldiers were pinned down, spread over two blocks and sometimes fighting enemies a single door away. They occupied four houses on Freedom Road to shelter their wounded and detained about 20 Somalis who lived there. Several children were locked alone in a bathroom until the soldiers let them rejoin their mothers. The mothers later alleged that the Americans had handcuffed them.

  At 6:40 p.m., Colonel Giumale received written orders from Aidid to repel any reinforcements and do everything needed to stop the Americans from escaping. About 360 militiamen had encircled the first helicopter, along with hundreds of armed volunteers and irregulars. Giumale ordered six 60 mm mortars set up to destroy the four houses. Before they fired, an SNA officer brought him the relatives of the detained Somalis, who warned that women and children were inside. Giumale told another commander, Colonel Hashi Ali, to hold the mortars back except to harass reinforcements. Aidid later agreed, since he did not want civilians to turn against the SNA. American officers conceded that the civilians prevented an attack but doubted the mortars could have wiped out the task force. They said anti-mortar radar and Little Birds would have quickly destroyed any firing position. The SNA alleged the Americans used civilians as human shields, which American officials flatly denied.

  AH-6 Little Birds flew in pairs all night, strafing and pushing back the creeping militia. They are credited with keeping the besieged Americans alive until dawn. As night fell, many volunteers drifted away and left the experienced SNA fighters behind. The Americans noticed that the shooting grew less frequent but much more accurate. One participant later recalled: "They used concealment very well. Usually all you saw of a shooter was the barrel of his weapon and his head."

  Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Casper led one rescue convoy from the airport, but it turned back at the KM4 junction under intense rifle and RPG fire. There had been no contingency planning with UN forces before the raid. The mission was kept secret even from top UN commanders for fear of tipping off Somali informants, and several UN contingents hesitated to join the rescue. A relief column was assembled in haste from Malaysian mechanized infantry companies, a Pakistani tank platoon and American infantry. At 11 p.m. about 100 vehicles set out, led by four Pakistani M48 tanks. The column stretched two miles, with M113 armored carriers, Malaysian Condor carriers, Humvees and flatbed trucks, covered by Black Hawks, OH-58s and Cobras from the 10th Mountain Division.

  On National Street, the first two Malaysian armored vehicles, carrying American troops, strayed off route and took RPG and heavy machine gun fire. A Malaysian driver died. A U.S. lieutenant blew a hole in a nearby wall so the troops could reach a courtyard. After two Malaysian carriers were destroyed, the Pakistani tanks drew RPG fire and answered with their 105 mm guns. Lieutenant Colonel Bill David ordered the force forward, knowing that staying in the kill zone meant destruction. For three hours the column fought through ambushes before splitting in two. Near the Olympic Hotel, Humvees with Mk19 launchers fired 40 mm grenades at Somali firing points while American troops dismounted for street skirmishes. At 1:55 a.m. on the 4th of October 1993, the relief convoy finally reached Task Force Ranger.

  Aidid, meanwhile, had grown worried about the rising Somali death toll and the chance of large-scale retaliation if the trapped Americans were killed. With Durant in his hands, he claimed in an interview to have ordered a corridor opened at dawn. Biddle disagreed: "it was the UN, not the SNA, that disengaged to end the fighting. The relief column that ultimately extracted TF Ranger had to fight its way into and out of the Bakara Market; SNA fighters were resisting fiercely until UN forces crossed out of Aideed's zone of control and withdrew to their bases."

  There was no room left in the vehicles for a group of Rangers and Delta operators led by Staff Sergeant John R. Dycus, so they used the vehicles as cover and left the city on foot. They ran to a rendezvous at the intersection of Hawlwadig Road and National Street, a trek now known as the "Mogadishu Mile." Some vehicles dashed toward Mogadishu Stadium and accidentally left soldiers behind. Cobras and Little Birds covered the withdrawal while Pakistani tanks fired at buildings that had shot at the convoy. The fighting ended by 06:30 on Monday the 4th of October. By 7 a.m. all survivors had reached an aid station inside the stadium on the 21st of October Road.

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• 8. The Reckoning

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  After the battle, a large crowd dragged the bodies of several Americans through the streets. They included crewmen of Super 64 and the Delta soldiers Gordon and Shughart. Asked about it on American television, SNA Captain Haad said that enraged civilians who had lost friends and family were responsible, not SNA soldiers. He pointed to the 12th of July raid and asked: "Wouldn't you be very sorry about 73 of our elder men, of our religious leaders, of our most prominent people, having their bodies mutilated, we collected parts of their bodies from the building in which they were attacked, if you were a son of one of those people killed on that day, what would be your situation, how would you feel?" Several days later the SNA issued a public appeal urging respect for the dead, the injured and prisoners, in line with Islamic principles. American television carried images of the dragged bodies, and public outcry followed.

  On the 6th of October 1993, Clinton personally ordered General Hoar to cease all combat operations against the SNA except in self-defense. Hoar passed the order to Garrison and to General Thomas M. Montgomery of the Quick Reaction Force. On the 7th of October Clinton announced that substantial reinforcements would go to Somalia briefly but that all American forces would leave by the end of March 1994. He defended American policy while admitting it had been a mistake to "personalize the conflict" with Aidid. He reappointed Robert B. Oakley as special envoy to signal a return to political reconciliation. The stand-down order led other UNOSOM II contingents to avoid confrontation with the SNA, and most patrols in Mogadishu ended.

  Oakley arrived in Mogadishu on the 9th of October 1993 to win the release of captured troops and cement a ceasefire. He and General Anthony Zinni negotiated directly with SNA representatives. The manhunt was over, but no SNA conditions would be accepted for the release of prisoners. On the 14th of October, Aidid announced on CNN that Durant would be freed. Three months later every SNA prisoner in UN custody was released, including Omar Salad Elmi and Mohamed Hassan Awale, the targets of the 3rd of October raid. All American forces left Somalia six months after the battle. They left behind a 20,000-strong UNOSOM force, which withdrew in 1995.

  Two weeks after the battle, Garrison wrote a handwritten letter to Clinton taking full responsibility for the outcome. He argued that the task force had met its objective by capturing its targets. Before the battle he had remarked that in a serious firefight, "we'll win the gunfight, but we might lose the war." The SNA leadership had aimed to expel American forces after the Abdi House raid. It judged that the Americans could not stomach casualties in a conflict where they had no real stake. In Losing Mogadishu, Johnathan Stevenson argued that the SNA, like the North Vietnamese guerrillas, was deliberately fighting a war of attrition, knowing it could absorb far greater losses than the Americans.

  American losses reached 18 soldiers killed, with another 19th soldier, Delta operator Sergeant First Class Matt Rierson, killed by a mortar two days later. The Department of Defense had initially reported five dead. The Malaysians lost Lance Corporal Mat Aznan Awang, aged 33, who was driving a Condor carrier when an RPG hit it. He was promoted to corporal after his death and awarded the Seri Pahlawan Gagah Perkasa. Somali casualties, a mixture of militia, volunteers and civilians, are far harder to count. The Red Cross estimated 200 Somalis killed, and Doctors Without Borders reported 200 deaths and 700 injured. The SNA reported 133 of its own fighters killed. Aidid claimed 315 dead and 812 wounded, figures the Red Cross called plausible. Bowden's book gives 500 killed and more than 1,000 wounded. Oakley estimated 1,500 to 2,000 killed and wounded and described it as "a very nasty fight." Scott Peterson reported that about a third of Somali casualties were women and children. Captain Haad said the civilian toll was "almost uncountable" because the fighting took place in one of the busiest sectors of the city.

  Deaths among Somalis are attributed mostly to the attack helicopters, especially the AH-6 Little Birds with their rockets and miniguns. Fear of committing large numbers of American troops to Somalia shaped policy for years afterward. In the 2000s it led the CIA to use warlords as proxies against the Somali Islamic Courts. That reluctance to intervene on a large scale in Somalia, and in Africa more broadly, is commonly called the "Somalia Syndrome."

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