Battle of Mogadishu 1993: Black Hawk Down in Somalia

The Battle of Mogadishu was a fierce urban battle fought on 3-4 October 1993 in the Somali capital between US special operations forces and Somali militia fighters loyal to the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. A raid planned to last about an hour turned into an all-night fight after two US Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. Eighteen US soldiers and hundreds of Somalis died, and the battle led the United States to withdraw from Somalia and become wary of intervening in African conflicts.

Background

Somalia collapsed into civil war after the dictator Siad Barre was overthrown in January 1991. Rival clan-based militias fought over the ruins of the state, and war and drought produced a famine in which an estimated 200,000-300,000 people died in 1991-1992. Food aid was looted by armed groups.

The United Nations began a small mission, UNOSOM I, in 1992. In December 1992 a US-led coalition called UNITAF (Operation Restore Hope) landed to secure aid deliveries, and the famine eased. In May 1993 UNITAF handed over to UNOSOM II, a UN force with a broader mandate to disarm militias and help rebuild Somalia.

The hunt for Aidid

Aidid, leader of the Somali National Alliance, saw the UN’s nation-building as a threat. On 5 June 1993 his militia was blamed for an ambush that killed 24 Pakistani peacekeepers. The UN Security Council called for the arrest of those responsible, and the UN and US effectively went to war with Aidid’s faction. A US helicopter attack on a meeting at the Abdi House on 12 July killed many clan elders and greatly increased hostility to the foreign forces.

In August 1993 Washington sent Task Force Ranger, a unit of Army Rangers, Delta Force operators and helicopters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, commanded by Major General William F. Garrison. Its mission was to capture Aidid and his senior aides. It carried out several raids in August and September.

The battle

On the afternoon of 3 October 1993 the task force raided a building near the Olympic Hotel in the Bakara Market area, a stronghold of Aidid’s clan, and captured two of his senior lieutenants and a number of others. As a ground convoy prepared to carry the prisoners away, militia and armed civilians converged on the area.

Problems began early: as the Rangers roped down from their helicopters, one young soldier fell and was badly injured, and a truck carrying him back to base came under fire. At about 4.20 pm a rocket-propelled grenade brought down the Black Hawk Super Six-One; both its pilots, Cliff Wolcott and Donovan Briley, were killed in the crash. Rangers and Delta operators fought their way to the crash site and were surrounded. Around 20 minutes later a second Black Hawk, Super Six-Four, piloted by Michael Durant, was shot down about a mile away. Two Delta snipers, Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart, volunteered to be inserted to protect the crew and were killed; both received the Medal of Honor posthumously. Durant was captured and held for 11 days.

The trapped soldiers fought through the night, supported by helicopter gunships. A relief convoy made up of US 10th Mountain Division troops in Malaysian armoured vehicles and Pakistani tanks finally reached them in the early hours of 4 October. Some soldiers had to run back on foot alongside the vehicles to a stadium held by Pakistani troops, a stretch later called the “Mogadishu Mile”.

The ground convoy that was meant to reach the first crash site lost its way in narrow streets under constant fire, taking heavy casualties before returning to base. The narrow lanes, roadblocks of burning tyres and the large numbers of armed men and civilians made the district extremely difficult to move through.

Casualties

Eighteen American soldiers were killed and 73 wounded; one Malaysian soldier also died. Somali losses are uncertain but much heavier, with estimates of several hundred to more than a thousand killed, including many civilians caught in the fighting. Television images of the bodies of US soldiers being dragged through the streets caused shock and anger in the United States.

Myths and facts

Myth: the raid failed to achieve its objective. The assault force did capture the two Aidid lieutenants it was sent for, along with around twenty other prisoners. What went wrong was the extraction, after the helicopters were lost; the strategic failure was the wider campaign against Aidid, not the raid itself.

Myth: al-Qaeda planned the battle. Osama bin Laden later claimed credit for helping Somali fighters, and US prosecutors alleged that al-Qaeda had trained some militias in Somalia. However, the extent of any direct role on 3-4 October is disputed, and most historians see the battle as a fight by local clan militias and armed residents defending their district.

Memory and portrayal

In the United States the battle remained little known until the journalist Mark Bowden published a long newspaper series in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1997, followed by his book Black Hawk Down in 1999. Ridley Scott’s film of the same name, released in 2001, made the battle widely familiar, although it was criticised for showing little of the Somali side. Somalis remember the fighting as “the Day of the Rangers”, and for many in Mogadishu it is recalled for the heavy civilian losses in their neighbourhoods. Parts of the wreckage of Super Six-One were later recovered and put on public display in the United States.

Key people

• Mohamed Farrah Aidid – Somali warlord and leader of the Somali National Alliance; he died in 1996.
• Major General William F. Garrison – Commander of Task Force Ranger, who took responsibility for the raid.
• Michael Durant – Pilot of Super Six-Four, captured and later released on 14 October 1993.
• Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart – Delta Force snipers awarded the Medal of Honor.
• Bill Clinton – US President, who ordered the withdrawal from Somalia.

Consequences

On 7 October President Clinton announced that US forces would be reinforced temporarily but withdrawn by 31 March 1994. The hunt for Aidid was abandoned. Defense Secretary Les Aspin, criticised for refusing requests for armoured vehicles before the raid, resigned in December 1993. UNOSOM II left Somalia in March 1995 without restoring a government.

The battle made US leaders reluctant to put troops into peacekeeping missions. In May 1994 a new presidential directive set strict conditions for US participation in UN operations. The so-called “Somalia syndrome” is widely seen as one reason the US and UN failed to act during the Rwandan genocide, which began six months later.

Timeline

• 1991, January: Siad Barre is overthrown; civil war engulfs Somalia.
• 1992, 9 December: US-led UNITAF forces land in Mogadishu.
• 1993, 4 May: UNOSOM II takes over from UNITAF.
• 1993, 5 June: 24 Pakistani peacekeepers are killed in an ambush.
• 1993, 12 July: US helicopters attack the Abdi House meeting.
• 1993, 3 October: The raid begins; two Black Hawks are shot down.
• 1993, 4 October: The relief convoy reaches the trapped soldiers.
• 1993, 14 October: Pilot Michael Durant is released.
• 1994, 25 March: The last US combat troops leave Somalia.

Why it matters

Coming less than three years after the swift victory of the Gulf War, the Battle of Mogadishu was one of the deadliest single engagements for US forces since Vietnam, and it reshaped American attitudes to humanitarian intervention for a decade. For Somalia it marked the failure of international efforts to end the war, and the country remained without an effective central government for years.