Most important, the aggressive US stance vis-à-vis a pair of brutal dictators only helped both of them to unprecedented popularity in their country.

The ouster of Muhammad Siad Barre’s military regime in January 1991 produced a leadership vacuum in Somalia. The military administration deliberately fostered hatred and conflicts among the country’s various clans and subclans and gradually fragmented the sociopolitical fabric. When the iron hand of the dictator was no longer there to keep the forces of hate and ambition under check, armed conflicts ignited among the clans and subclans which, in turn, became the basis of the subsequent “clan-approach” to the struggle against the regime, and paved the way for crisis.

The consequences of this disastrous situation were anarchy, the 1992-93 famine, and a mass exodus of the population. The American and UN intervention in 1992-95 was undertaken with the aim of feeding the starving people.

The UN-run operation left in March 1995 after thousands of Somalis, many of them women and children, as well as 18 Americans died in a firefight in October 1993. This incident forms the basis for the American movie Black Hawk Down. The movie shows dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by militiamen loyal to warlord Muhammad Farah Aidid. Aidid was finally killed in inter-clan fighting four years later. The then US President Clinton withdrew all US forces from the country.

In fact, the US forces had achieved considerable progress. US Marines protected food deliveries to some of the worst affected areas and begun a process of disarming the militia loyal to Mogadishu’s warlords. Aidid, who was controlling South Mogadishu, opposed the US move to disarm his militia. He feared that restoring law and order could undermine his ambition to be the country’s next leader. But the Americans insisted on general disarmament to pave the way for a national government.

When Aidid congratulated his militiamen after the killing of the peacekeepers, the US military swore it would hunt him down. Aidid then urged his clan militia to defend what he called foreign aggression, and his clan elders and gunmen chose to defend him, and decided to refuse any humanitarian aid from the world.

In Somalia and Iraq, the US is facing a people who, when pressed, will side with the devil they know. Instead of welcoming them with open arms, the people of Iraq, like the people of Somalia, will defend their leader against foreign intervention.

Was this predictable? When waging war on foreign soil, first class intelligence is indispensable. If recent history shows that US intelligence can be unreliable and US predictions flawed — as the Mogadishu incident undoubtedly does — then a change of approach would have been sensible.

In both cases, the US might have been better advised to proceed indirectly — by supporting and strengthening the opposition, as it has done elsewhere. A direct attack is once again proving to make an unpopular leader popular and create a host of unforeseen problems for the invading forces.