Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 3, 1995 TAG: 9503030119
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOGADISHU, SOMALIA LENGTH: Medium
With the wrap-up of a international intervention that cost $2 billion and the lives of more than 100 peacekeepers, the U.S. Marines that helped guard the pullout will then leave Somalia.
The operation that began with a televised invasion nearly 27 months ago closed without fanfare Thursday as the final peacekeepers were hurried away to waiting battleships off shore.
U.S. Marines landed Monday to protect the evacuation of 2,400 Pakistani and Bangladeshi peacekeepers, the last remnants of a multinational force that once totaled 38,000 troops from 21 countries.
Part of the evacuation force - more than 300 Italian marines - withdrew before dawn Thursday and returned to the ships. Another 1,500 U.S. Marines remained to finish the job.
Despite its failure to solve Somali's political problems, the massive multinational intervention did end the widespread starvation that, together with war and disease, killed 350,000 Somalis in 1992.
But not without cost. The operation claimed the lives of 42 American troops and more than 100 peacekeepers, and drained $1.66 billion from U.N. coffers. Individual nations such as the United States collectively spent millions supporting their troops in Somalia.
The operation, however, ended without removing the main obstacle to peace in Somalia - its intransigent warlords.
Tops among them was Mohamed Farah Aidid, who once carried a $25,000 U.N. price on his head and more than any other Somali subverted the peacekeepers' efforts.
And when the Americans came back this week, who was there but their old enemy, Aidid.
After Pakistani peacekeepers withdrew from the airport Wednesday, hundreds of looters had barely an hour before Aidid's militia roared in on stripped-down trucks mounted with weapons to claim the facility as its prize.
by CNB