Peter Doerrie – CSS Blog Network

Twenty-Three Years after ´Black Hawk Down´, America is Back at War in Somalia

This article was originally published by War is Boring on 3 October 2016.

Long before the debacles of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Somalia was the quagmire that Western militaries would have loved to strike from their records.

In the now-famous Black Hawk Down incident in 1993, overconfident U.S. forces blundered into an ambush in Mogadishu. Eighteen American soldiers and two troops from the supporting U.N. force died.

The West retreated from Somalia. To fill the security vacuum, the African Union deployed a peacekeeping force from 2006 onward.

The AMISOM peacekeeping force relies to a great degree on material and financial support from the United States and European allies, whose interest in the Somalia conflict increased again when Islamist groups gained influence in the country.

But the memory of the 1993 battle complicated direct intervention by Western militaries.

Gradually and quietly, this has begun to change.

Violence Wracks Ethiopia – But Don’t Expect Anything to Change

*Courtesy of US Navy/ Wikimedia Creative Commons*

This article was originally published by War is Boring on 11 August 2016.

Violent protests have shaken Ethiopia in the last month. More than 50 people have died, most of them shot dead by security forces. In contrast to an earlier wave of demonstrations that claimed the lives of more than 400 protestors and security agents early this year, this time the protests weren’t limited to the Oromo federal state, but instead originated in the Amhara region.

The spread of the protests — and the accompanying violence — points to increasing dissatisfaction with the government among large segments of the population. Together, the Oromo and Amhara people, whose presence largely correlates with the eponymous federal states, account for more than 60 percent of Ethiopia’s population.