American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

Even as one humanitarian crisis subsided in northern Iraq, another emerged in Somalia, an arid, impoverished, and turbulent failed state on the horn of Africa. Americans had had some Cold War interest in Somalia, neighboring Ethiopia, and the strategically positioned horn of Africa; but the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of Somalia into sectarian and clan warfare demolished whatever attraction the region might have held for national policy considerations.

This disinterest reversed itself when a devastating drought precipi- tated famine, and internecine warfare rendered relief efforts ineffective. Combatant clans raided each other's food supplies, local warlords charged protection money to international relief agencies attempting to deliver supplies, and convoys delivering supplies were nevertheless looted to enhance the wherewithal and prestige of the warlords. Starva- tion became a weapon, and supplies did not make it into the hands of the hundreds of thousands who needed them most. Night after night international television broadcast images of starving, emaciated chil- dren covered with flies and dying in filth. A Pulitzer Prize went to a photographer who captured the agonies of a dying child with a pain- fully distended abdomen, crying as expectant vultures perched nearby. President Bush believed he could ignore this situation no longer.