SOMALIA OPERATIONS: LESSONS LEARNED

• Author: Reviewed by Major John P Patriek
• Pages: 07

Americans may best remember Somalia for the ill-fated opera-tion on 3 October 1993 in which eighteen United States soldiers died during the unsuccessful attempt by Task Force Ranger to capture clan leader Mohammed Farrah Aided This tragic event caused a fundamental reexamination of United States policy and ultimately resulted in the complete withdrawal of all United States troops from Somalia in the spnng of 1994. In spite of thls disastrous turn of events, the United States military's involvement in Somalia provid. ed valuable les~ansin the conduct of peace operations.'

Somalia Operations: Lessons Learned is a good starting point for a study of such operations. Its author, Colonel Kenneth Allard, examines operational issues that arose during the course of the United States deployment to Somalia from the early stages of humanitarian relief through the final phase of peace enforcement Colonel Allard's book reinforces lessons learned from the recent peace operation m Haiti and provides useful insights into issues ~pe. cific to humanitarian relief missions. Although Colonel Allard did not personally participate in the Somali deployment, his observations are bared on a variety of first-hand ~ources,including o f k ~ l military after action reports Colonel Allard is a emor military fel. low at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, and hie examine. tion of Somali operations was part af a National Defense University program to study peace operations. This study was prompted by the increasingly important role that peace operations have come to playin the post-Cold War era.

Colonel .4llard's book is divided into three Sections' an overview of the operational context of the Amencan mission in Somalia, lessons learned from the miasion, and concIu6ions. In the first set-

peacekeepmg. and peace enforcement DEPT OF ARW FIELD h k \ ~ u

100-23, PEACEOPER~TIO\Sat I, (30 Dee 19941

tian. Colonel Allard outlines the challenges imposed on rhe relief effort by a country in chaos, where prolonged drought conditions and a devastating civil war resulted ~n over a half million Somali dearhs b) early 1992 iVith food and waer supplies essentially nonexistent in some areas of the country, peacekeepers had to transport all of these banc supplies, a task complicated by the extremely poor Infrastructure of the country

United States involvement LD the Somali relief effort progressed through three stages. Operation Provide Relief. a humamtarian assistance mismn...