Carroll, Jonathan Beyond Black Hawk Down. Intervention, Nation-Building, and Insurgency in Somalia, 1992-1995

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 for Mogadishu, eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But few realise that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation, the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a country. The United States wanted to show the world that the United Nations could rebuild a country, but in a grim foreshadowing of the failed efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later, the intervention in Somalia was plagued by political infighting, policy inconsistencies, confusion and fatal assumptions. In 1992, Somalia saw the largest-ever deployment of American troops on the African continent, and in 1993 the first UN-led peacekeeping mission and the most ambitious experiment in state-building followed. In Beyond Black Hawk Down, Jonathan Carroll provides the first scholarly military history of the entire intervention, from the early and largely successful humanitarian phase in 1992 to the final withdrawal of UN troops in 1995. Carroll dispels the myths and misconceptions surrounding one of the most infamous episodes of the 1990s and presents a new interpretation of events, primarily by incorporating the Somali perspective to discuss what went so wrong in Somalia - and, more importantly, why. Understanding the intervention in Somalia, its successes and the causes of its failures is invaluable to current debates on concepts of nation-building and counter-insurgency. Moreover, the increasing regularity of inter- and intra-state conflicts around the world means that the international community will continue to be called upon to intervene in other failed or failing states. "Beyond Black Hawk Down" is an important new story that will influence the shape and nature of future military interventions.