The land of disaster for US policy

The Russians beat a retreat from Afghanistan in 1989 after losing 15,000 soldiers in a protracted guerrilla war.

A single ambush of US Rangers in Mogadishu by a warlord gang in 1993 was enough to force the withdrawal of US forces from Somalia, and spook the US military establishment for a decade.

The US troops had been dispatched to Somalia the previous year as part of a UN peacekeeping force that was intended to bring food and relief to the people, facing famine and anarchy after the removal of dictator Siad Barre.

But the mission took on a "nation-building" role. It became "an unprecedented enterprise aimed at nothing less than the restoration of an entire country," as America's then-UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright put it.

As the months wore on, and after 25 Pakistani peacekeepers were killed, the US forces became engaged in a manhunt for warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, whose forces were blamed for the Pakistani deaths.

That mission, led by a US general, steered the Rangers into the trap that ended with the dead US soldiers being dragged through the streets.

By the end of the incident on October 3, 1993, 18 US soldiers were dead and two Black Hawk helicopters were lost. The UN was blamed. The next year, when the US was asked to help stop the genocide in Rwanda, the Clinton Administration refused.

It took the events of September 11, 2001 and a new President to overcome the queasy US reaction to body bags.

The US quietly returned to the failed state after the September 11 attacks, tracking suspected al Qaeda militants. Now, in a bid to prevent another Islamic fundamentalist regime taking hold, they are supporting the warlords who they once opposed.

- INDEPENDENT