The first “humanitarian” mission of the 1990s was Clinton’s continuation of George H.W. Bush’s Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993. UN troops, under the leadership of the United States, were sent to address the food crisis and feed the hungry—yet the troops arrived months after those most threatened by hunger had already died of starvation. While the United States and United Nations justified the invasion on humanitarian grounds, US interests in Somalia’s geostrategic location and oil resources played a more significant role in the Americans’ decision to intervene. When eighteen US soldiers were killed in the now-famous Black Hawk Down incident, US troops departed and left the East African nation worse off than when they arrived. This intervention prefigured what was to come.

XREF: Connects to broader critiques of humanitarian intervention and the tension between stated humanitarian aims and underlying strategic motives in US foreign policy.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 409