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 of Mogadishu eighteen Americans and hundreds of Somalis were killed. But very few appreciate that this was just one day in a two-and-a-half-year operation; the most ambitious attempt in history to rebuild a nation. The United States sought to show the world that the UN could rebuild a country, but in a dire foreshadowing of the failed efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later, the intervention in Somalia was plagued with political infighting, policy mismatch, confusion, and fatal assumptions.
In 1992 Somalia saw the largest ever deployment of American troops to the continent of Africa, and 1993 brought the first UN-led peace enforcement mission and the most ambitious experiment in nation-building. In Beyond Black Hawk Down, Jonathan Carroll provides the first scholarly military history of the entire intervention, from its early and largely successful humanitarian phase in 1992 through to the ultimate withdrawal of UN forces in 1995. Carroll dispels the myths and misunderstandings surrounding one of the most infamous episodes of the 1990s to present a new interpretation of events, most notably by including the Somali perspective, to argue what went so wrong in Somalia, and more importantly, why.
Understanding the intervention in Somalia, its successes and the roots of its failures, is invaluable to contemporary debates on concepts of nation-building and counterinsurgency. Moreover, the increasing regularity of inter-state and intra-state conflicts across the world means the international community will continue to be called upon to intervene in other failed or failing states in the future. Beyond Black Hawk Down is an important new history that will inform the shape and nature of future military interventions.
Industry Reviews
"Jonathan Carroll has written an excellent account of the US/UN intervention in Somalia. His insightful and thoroughly researched work provides an in-depth analysis of the complex nature of military interventions. The lessons he draws should be studied by political leaders and generals contemplating these kinds of operations."- General Anthony C. Zinni USMC (Retired), coauthor of Leading the Charge: Leadership Lessons from the Battlefield to the Boardroom"Based on meticulous research in newly available archival records, Jonathan Carroll's incisive myth-busting account of international intervention in Somalia offers an invaluable contribution to the military history of the 1990s."- Brian Drohan, author of Brutality in an Age of Human Rights: Activism and Counterinsurgency at the End of the British Empire "In this piercing and well-researched study, Carroll uses many never-before-seen sources to bust the key myths about the complex and often misunderstood international military intervention in Somalia between 1992 to 1995."- Thijs Brocades Zaalberg, coauthor of Empire's Violent End: Comparing Dutch, British, and French Wars of Decolonization, 1945-1962
