Peacekeeping· Somalia Intervention (Op RESTORE HOPE)
Somalia 1992-1995
A nation had simply ceased to exist.
Somalia's government collapsed, famine swept the land, and armed clans turned relief into plunder, leaving hundreds of thousands to starve while food rotted under the guns of warlords. The Marines came to break that grip. First they backed the airlift, then they led the ground intervention, storming ashore at Mogadishu to seize the port, the airfield, and the city so aid could finally move. Spearheading the Unified Task Force, they fanned out across southern Somalia, taking the famine-stricken towns and the relief centers one after another, and the warlords, for all their menace, mostly declined to test them head-on. The famine broke. The mission passed to the United Nations, and years later the Marines returned to cover the final withdrawal. It was armed humanitarianism at its starkest, force projected from the sea not to conquer but to keep people alive.
Engagements in this conflict (3)
Record no. 814