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It oversimplifies it to say it was Bush's mess for Clinton to clean up. There were in fact TWO Somalia missions, the Bush mission and the later one that blew up under Clinton. Both phases were undertaken under UN auspices, but under the authority of separate UN resolutions.
On 24 April the UN approved Resolution 751, which authorized humanitarian relief operations in the stricken country and established the United Nations Operations in Somalia, or UNOSOM.
The US operation, code-named RESTORE HOPE, began on 8 December 1992 under the direction of a Unified Task Force, or UNITAF. The I Marine Expeditionary Force was landed. UNITAF included U.S. and allied troops working together in one task force, but under U.S. And not UN direction.
Coalition forces including large components from France, Italy, Belgium, Morocco, Australia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Canada soon joined U.S. Forces During the course of RESTORE HOPE, some 38,000 soldiers from 23 different nations and representatives from 49 different humanitarian relief operations
Operation RESTORE HOPE succeeded in its goal of bringing an end to mass starvation. Then UN diplomats began to press for a more active role of the military in confiscating weapons and in forcing some kind of political settlement. “Mission creep” began to enter the vocabulary of those serving in Somalia, and soon after the United States turned over the mission completely to the United Nations in May, the situation began to unravel.
On 26 March 1993, the United Nations passed Resolution 814 which considerably broadened its mandate to intervene in another country’s affairs. The UN was now intervening militarily in a peacemaking role under Chapter VII of its charter. The more frequently used Chapter VI addressed only the deployment of peacekeeping troops to reinforce a previously agreed upon settlement between warring parties. But Chapter VII dealt with peace enforcement and not merely peacekeeping. The resolution underlined the charters of the first UNOSOM mission and Operation RESTORE HOPE and that of the new mission, UNOSOM II.
UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali asked the Clinton Administration to assist him in capturing Aideed.
On 22 August 1993, the new Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, directed the deployment of a joint special operations task force (JSOTF) to Somalia. These were the army rangers.
Blackhawk Down followed this.
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