Unified Task Force
The Unified Task Force, also known as Operation Restore Hope, was a United States–led, United Nations–sanctioned coalition military force deployed to Somalia from 5 December 1992 to 4 May 1993. It was established to replace United Nations Operation in Somalia I, which had been deployed in April 1992 in response to the 1992 famine—a crisis that followed the 1991 collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic and the full outbreak of the Somali Civil War.
UNITAF was mandated to create a secure environment for humanitarian operations "by all necessary means". The task force, led by 28,000 US troops, included international contributions from dozens of armed forces, totaling around 37,000 troops. Military deployments focused on the south, as central and northern Somalia remained relatively stable. UNITAF forces began landing in Somalia during early December 1992, by which point the famine had almost ended; it has been estimated that relief efforts only shortened the famine by one month.
Aspects of the operation, in particular the large foreign military deployment, faced opposition from significant segments of Somali society and major factions such as the Somali National Alliance and Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya. Several instances of human rights violations by UN contingents later emerged, including Canada’s Somalia Affair and Italy’s Gallo Commission, which exposed cases of abuse and murder of civilians. Overall, UNITAF avoided an armed conflict due to American Lt. Gen. Robert B. Johnston's strict rules of engagement—aimed at winning the Somali public's confidence—an approach abandoned in the succeeding phase of the UN operation in Somalia.
In May 1993, UNITAF handed over its responsibilities to United Nations Operation in Somalia II, transitioning to a broader UN-led mission; however, the operation effectively remained under US control. Approximately 10,000–25,000 lives were saved as a result of the UNITAF and UNOSOM II operation.''''
Background
During the 1980s, the Somali Rebellion intensified, eventually culminating in the outbreak of full-scale civil war in 1991, which led to the collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic. The following year, a famine emerged, driven by both a major drought and the serious fighting that engulfed the nation’s breadbasket in the southern regions.Deployment of UN forces
Faced with a humanitarian disaster in Somalia, exacerbated by a complete breakdown in civil order, the United Nations created the UNOSOM I mission in April 1992. During July 1992 the first UN troops landed in Somalia, seven Pakistani military troops under the command of Brigadier-General Imtiaz Shaheen. Some elements were actively opposing the UNOSOM intervention. Troops were shot at, aid ships attacked and prevented from docking, cargo aircraft were fired upon and aid agencies, public and private, were subject to threats, looting and extortion.In August 1992, UNOSOM I head Mohammed Sahnoun secured an agreement with Mohamed Farah Aidid and the Somali National Alliance to allow 500 UN peacekeepers, with the condition that any further deployments required SNA approval. However, later that month, UN Secretary-General Boutros Ghali announced plans to expand UNOSOM to 3,500 troops without consultation, to the surprise of both Sahnoun and the SNA. According to Professor Stephen Hill, Sahnoun recognized this move would undermine his local support, as it was made “without consulting Somali leaders and community elders.” He attempted to delay the deployment but was overruled by UN headquarters. The large-scale foreign intervention in late 1992 fueled nationalist opposition to international troops, strengthening support for Aidid’s SNA, which condemned the UN’s perceived colonial practices. Somali Islamist factions such as Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya also demonstrated hostility to a foreign military presence. John Drysdale, a prominent advisor hired by the UN for the operation warned that Somalis would widely see a military deployment as gumeysi if it was perceived to be made without their sanction.
The head of UNOSOM I, Mohammed Sahnoun, was replaced by an Ismat T. Kittani during November 1992. Kittani immediately adopted a confrontational stance ordered the deployments of UNOSOM troops in politically sensitive areas, sparking a security crisis with local Somali factions. Kittani pushed claims that 80% of all aid shipments were being looted, which was later repeated by the UN Secretariat and the US State Department to justify expanding the scope of the intervention in Somalia. Alex de Waal observes that though the statistic was treated as fact by the Americans and UN, "its origins are untraceable." Doctors Without Borders noted that nobody on the ground could seriously claim that such a proportion was not getting through, while staff at various aid agencies operating in Somalia such as World Food Program, the Red Cross and CARE contested that real figures were far lower. The head of UNOSOM I troops, Brigadier-General Imtiaz Shaheen of the Pakistani army, stated in an interview with British journalists that the amount of aid being looted was being exaggerated in order justify expanding the scope of the operation and that estimates of 80% were completely fabricated''.''
Expansion of operation and American military intervention
The United Nations Secretariat believed Somalia represented an ideal candidate for a test case of a UN operation in expanded size and mandate. In the view of some top UNOSOM I commanders, the scope of the famine in Somalia was being exaggerated in order to justify using Somalia as an experiment for 'conflict resolution'. Rony Brauman, the president of Doctors Without Borders during the intervention in Somalia, observed of UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali, "I think he wanted to make Somalia the test case for using muscular intervention to restore order and rebuild states; underneath that design lay his ambition to create a permanent UN intervention force."File:Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan at a briefing in Mogadishu during UNITAF.jpg|thumb|200x200px|US Army Chief of Staff Gordon R. Sullivan during a briefing about UNITAF
The United States had various motives for military involvement in Somalia. The US armed forces wanted to prove its capability to conduct major 'Operations Other Than War', while the US State Department wanted to set a precedent for humanitarian military intervention in the post-Cold War era. The Los Angeles Times reported that, shortly before the collapse of the Somali Democratic Republic in 1991, nearly two-thirds of the country had been allocated to American oil giants such as Conoco in deals with the government. Some observers in the petroleum industry and East African experts suggested that protecting these concessions played a factor in the decision to launch the operation.
On 3 December 1992 the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 794, authorizing the use of "all necessary means to establish as soon as possible a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in Somalia". The Security Council urged the Secretary-General and member states to make arrangements for "the unified command and control" of the military forces that would be involved. UNITAF has been considered part of a larger state building initiative in Somalia, serving as the military arm to secure the distribution of humanitarian aid. However, UNITAF cannot be considered a state building initiative due to its specific, limited and palliative aims, which it nonetheless exercised forcefully. The primary objective of UNITAF was security rather than larger institution building initiatives.