Famine In Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down

Conflicts within the nation of Somalia were sometimes planned as a means to an end. Whereby the United States Government supported a certain regime before they used their power to gain control of the situation and overthrow the tyrant. In other cases the use of national power was used such as the Islamic Courts Union to gain control over Somalia by implementing logical line of operations by providing the people their needs and services to gain their trust. In these situations it would be considered as an irregular warfare environment, because they were violent struggles

Black Hawk Down aka Battle of Mogadishu was a battle that the U.S. soldiers landed into Somalia to capture the two top lieutenants of the renegade warlord and find themselves in a desperate battle with large force against Somalis in 1993. In the movie “Black Hawk Down” they make the Somalis of Mogadishu as being faceless mobs, and baying. There was no effort made in the movie to try to explain why both civilians and militiamen acted so violently to the botched U.S. Gothic Serpent. A previous US air attack in downtown Mogadishu had killed many tribal elders and innocent civilians. This generated a lot of public support for the armed militias. Somalis began to look to the warlords for protection from what they saw as unprovoked American attacks.

between poor and rich just getting bigger and bigger. If you are poor you can’t afford enough food which means you can’t work as much since you do not have any energy. While the rich can afford more food, have more energy, can work more and will have higher and higher income. This is how the gap between poor and rich improves and never stops. However, Banjerjee and Duflo studied a household’s habits in Udaipur, India. They found that a typical poor household could afford thirty percent more food to buy, if they cut their alcohol and tobacco spending. The poor have many choices, but they decide to stay with the excitement. Indians’ children usually suffer from low-fat index. What can be done to stop starvation in the world?

After these two genocides, one may look at the past and ask, how could this death and destruction possibly happen again? The bad part is that it is happening again in the Darfur region of Sudan. This region is “about the size of Texas” (DarfurScores, par. 1) and “five thousand die every month”

The deployment of United States Special Forces to Somalia to apprehend General Aidid was in the interest of the United States, if Nuechterlein's outline of national security interest was anything to go by. Somali had gone through difficult times and there was need to restore normalcy in this Horn of Africa's state. Restoring normalcy would have ensured that stability returned. Moreover, this would have ensured that the instability that had been realized here never spilled over into other Eastern Africa states. Had the United States Special Forces succeeded in apprehending General Aidid, a democratically elected government would have been instituted. This government would have prioritized democratic governance principles that conform to United States Army War College's "Favorable World Order category" (Nuechterlein, 1985). Yes, it was difficult to establish Jeffersonian democracy in Somalia bearing in mind that Somalia was a tribal nation; however, it was something worth giving a short. This could only be made possible by chopping off the head of Aidid's organization and ultimately taking Aidid out of the streets. Under the leadership of Aidid, the United Nations lost at least 24 soldiers of Pakistani origin many of whom were skinned (Bowden, 1997).

In the 1980’s and 1990’s violence in Somalia was getting worse as the days went by. This violence allowed warlords from the regions of Somalia and, in turn, go to war with one another. Images of the war showing starving children called for a response from the United States. The United States government sent supplies of food to the needy. However, these warlords got to the food trucks first. This resulted in President George H.W. Bush sending in troops to make sure that the supply lines could reach these desperate people in need of our help. As violence arose in Somalia United States citizens began to question whether or not it was our place to be there.

Conquest would not find the comparison with Wiesel inappropriate. In the first sentence of his book, he compares the area of the Russian famine in the early 1930’s to a Nazi concentration camp. He makes such a comparison because he is convinced that the famine was not a natural disaster, nor even the result of human miscalculation; rather he believes that it was a “terror-famine,” a famine deliberately inflicted upon the Russian peasants to break their potential resistance to the Communist regime in Soviet Russia. Conquest calculates the total number of dead from the collectivization of agriculture and the famine at fourteen and a half million people, more than the combined death toll of all belligerents in World War I and more than double

Nunn, Nathan, and Nancy Qian. 2014. ‘AER (104, 6) P.1630-US Food Aid and Civil Conflict.’ American Economic Review 104(6): 1630-66. http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257//aer.104.6.1630 (October 22, 2015)

With the absence of Mohamed Siad Barre, the country had no proper government to run it. Faction groups started forming in Somalia to take control. In 1992, there was killing and starvation in the south of Somalia (Global Security 1). The U.N. sends peacekeeping operations into Somalia. In addition, the United States started sending troops into Somalia. In 1994, there was too much casualties in Somalia, so the U.S. soldiers withdrew from Somalia with the problems still unsolved (Phil Stewart 1). Fishermen started taking advantage of the bad condition Somalia is in and started raiding different fishing ports. The Somalians started to fight back. The Somalians began to raid and became pirates. Some observers say that the Somalians pirates are usually poor folks trying to get their fortune back (Ishaan Tharoor

In August of 1992, President George Bush Sr. sent US soldiers into Somalia to provide humanitarian relief to those Somalis suffering from starvation. The major problems in Somalia started when President Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown by a coalition of opposing clans. Although there were several opposing groups, the prominent one was led by Mohammed Farah Aidid. Following the overthrow of Barre, a massive power struggle ensued. These small scale civil wars led to the destruction of the agriculture in Somalia, which in turn led to the deprivation of food in large parts of the country. When the international community heard of this, large quantities of food were sent to ease Somali suffering. However, clan leaders like Aidid routinely

soldiers were killed. The U.S won the battle, but lost the war. Sure the U.S helped feed millions of people for a certain period of time, but overall the intervention turned out to be unsuccessful because once they left, starvation would soon hit Somalia once again. The Somali leader and the main instigator of starvation was not arrested, many innocent people were killed and when the U.S withdrew its troops, 18 soldiers' lives were lost in vain because their mission was not accomplished with their deaths.

(6:30 - 9:03) The U.S. had to fight their way through Somalia militia before capturing Aidid. As hours progressed in Somalia the U.S. lost two Black Birds, and many soldiers were either wounded or dead. Chaos broke lose in Somalia, because we see a hatred race yearning to kill, and have victory. Somalia militias believe (1:45:00 - 1:45:52) if the Americans capture Aidid the killing doesn’t stop, and if there is no victory then there is no peace.

“Liberian Civil war fought in 1989-1996, is among the most deadly and destructive war in the history that lasted for more than 7 years and killed almost 3 hundred thousand people. This war was the worst ever in the history of Africa because it caused the infrastructural and property damage in the country. The war also displaced more than 1 million people in refugee camps in neighboring countries. This war led to a complete breakdown of law and order in the country. There was not any direct cause that led to this war but several reasons contributed in the creation of this destructive event. Hunger for power, greed and opportunities to control and to get more out of Liberia’s natural resources were the main reasons behind this conflict. As D. Elwood Dunn quoted “We begin with the assumption that the conflict arose from the tugs and pulls of different identities the differential distribution of

The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that 250,000 IDP’s are displaced because of the conflict in South Sudan. Lizabeth Paulat, a member of Truthout, a think tank, writes that the violence is directly causing a potentially massive famine within the region. “This threat of starvation is not occurring because of a natural scarcity, or even a political attempt to starve out opponents,” says Paulat, “rather, this is an issue of South Sudan’s internal refugees, forced to flee their homes to escape violence.” With such a high volume of IDP’s and a projected record breaking famine, the international community must intervene to assist President Kiir and the South Sudanese Government.

Furthermore, another source of the problem began with the gradual change of the climate in Darfur. Desertification, a process by which land becomes increasingly dry until almost no vegetation grows on it, becomes a major problem for the Darfur people. Land for farming becomes scarce. Living on desert is unsuitable for humans for obvious reasons: lack of food and, more importantly, lack of water. There is not much suitable farm land, therefore “the lack of fertile land caused the populations to compete with one another for land on which they could survive” (Xavier 18). Before desertification became a huge problem for the Sudanese people, they lived in peace. Honestly, “the hostility between Darfur’s Arabs and Africans are relatively new” (Xavier 20). This shows how the competition for survival helped fuel the terrible genocide in Darfur.