U.S. Moves to Recolonize Africa: New Data on 1993 Pantagon Massacre in Somalia

By John Catalinotto, Workers World, 2 April 1998

A news story that reached the wire services March 22 gives a completely different view of the potential for U.S. involvement in Africa than most of the news coverage surrounding President Bill Clinton's trip.

This story—researched by a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter for his upcoming book and published in the weekly London Observer—says that on Oct. 3, 1993, U.S. troops opened fire on the population in Mogadishu, Somalia, and killed 1,000 people in the ensuing slaughter.

The U.S. propaganda machine is presenting Clinton’s Africa trip as if his visit is a great boon to the African people. The problem, many in the big-business media say, is that the United States has ignored Africa. Now the Clinton administration will pay attention.

But those African workers who plan to protest Clinton’s visit don’t see it that way at all. U.S. imperialism has not neglected Africa. To the contrary. U.S. imperialism’s intervention has done great harm—from the slave trade to the CIA-inspired coups of the 1960s to its post-Soviet attempts to run the whole continent.

The latest and most forceful such intervention was in Somalia in 1992-1993. It started during the Bush administration and ended soon after the October 1993 slaughter. That same day, 18 U.S. troops were also killed, stirring an outcry in this country that forced Clinton to withdraw the troops.

Washington’s explanation for sending U.S. troops was that they were peace keepers, part of an international force to stop fighting between different Somali factions. They were supposed to be protecting those who provided food for the people as they prevented new battles.

The reality was different. They intervened in the Somali civil war, and especially against the forces of Mohamed Farah Aidid. For a period of a few months, Aidid was demonized in the U.S. media, much as Panama’s Manuel Noriega had been in 1989 and Saddam Hussein has been since 1990.

According to research by Mark Bowden of the Philadelphia Inquirer, U.S. troops, trapped in the streets of Mogadishu after a botched 1993 operation to capture Aidid, massacred 1,000 Somalis. This was five times the number reported by U.S. authorities at the time.

The crowd included unarmed civilians, many of them children.

According to the Observer, Bowden quotes Ambassador Robert Oakley, the U.S. special representative to Somalia, as saying that more than 1,000 Somalis had been killed. He interviewed other U.S. and Somali survivors, it added.

At the time 200 Somali casualties were reported. U.S. authorities said they resulted from an attempt to rescue U.S. forces.

But you can really explain killing 1,000 people only by calling it what it was: a racist massacre like My Lai in Vietnam.

Eighteen U.S. soldiers died attempting to seize Aidid, after their helicopter was shot down. Worldwide television coverage showed some of the soldiers’ bodies later dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

The Somalis’ anger was justified even before the Oct. 3 slaughter. It was inevitable after it.

The U.S. expeditionary force then slipped back out of Africa. It should stay out.