Somalia And Us Term paper

While the free essays can give you inspiration for writing, they cannot be used 'as is' because they will not meet your assignment's requirements. If you are in a time crunch, then you need a custom written term paper on your subject (somalia and us)
Here you can hire an independent writer/researcher to custom write you an authentic essay to your specifications that will pass any plagiarism test (e.g. Turnitin). Waste no more time!

The desire for an organization that would help the international community

“avoid future conflicts” and the recognized need for a global body that

would “promote international economic and social cooperation” led the

powerful states emerging from the rubble of WWII to develop the United Nations.

The newly formed United Nations “represented an expression of hope for the

possibilities of a new global security arrangement and for fostering the social

and economic conditions necessary for peace to prevail” (Mingst and Karns 2).

The need for mutual cooperation amongst the states following the second of the

global wars was vital to the reconstruction of war-torn Europe, and for the

development of a new world order. This attempt at cooperation was not the first

of its kind. According to Mingst and Karns, “The UN’s Charter built on

lessons learned from the failed League of Nations created at the end of World

War I and earlier experiments with international unions, conference diplomacy,

and dispute settlements mechanisms” (2). Despite this “experience” in

mutual cooperation, the founding states still faced many problems in the

security arena due to the advent of the Cold War. In order to effectively deal

with security issues facing the UN, the Security Council turned to “peace-

Mulligan 2 keeping” as an alternative to armed aggression. According to the

United Nations Department of Public Information, “Peacekeeping was pioneered

and developed by the United Nations as one of the means for maintaining

international peace and security” (1998), and the UN deals with particular

problems through “the prevention, containment, and moderation of hostilities

between or within states through the use of multinational forces of soldiers,

police, and civilians” (Mingst and Karns 3). This was a very different

approach to quelling conflicts that had never before been practiced.

Peacekeeping was “a creative response to the breakdown of great-power unity

and the spread of East-West tensions to regional conflicts” (Mingst and Karns

3). Before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, John

R. Bolton, Senior Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute, stated

further reasoning for the evolution of peacekeeping. He notes: ‘Traditional’

U.N. peacekeeping evolved when it became clear that the broad intentions of the

Framers of the U.N. Charter were rendered largely meaningless by the onset of

the Cold War. U.N. involvement in international crises, far from being the

central dispute-resolution mechanism envisioned by the Framers in Chapters VI

and VII, became episodic and incidental to the main global confrontation between

East and West. Since “Cold War tensions have subsided, peace has been

threatened by resurgent ethnic and nationalist conflicts in Mulligan 3 many

regions. As a result, U.N. peacekeeping operations have grown rapidly in number

and complexity in recent years. While 13 operations were established in the

first forty years of U.N. peacekeeping, 28 new operations have been launched

since 1988” (UNDPI 1998). The following map shows the many regions of the

world in which the United Nations has become involved in a peacekeeping mission:

Mulligan 4 Due in part because of the extraordinarily limited dimensions within

which U.N. peacekeeping was feasible, a clear set of principles evolved to

describe the elements necessary for successful U.N. operations. These rules

would become the standard from which future U.N. peace-keeping missions would be

drawn. The first criterion for a U.N. peacekeeping mission was consent.

According to Bolton, “All of the relevant parties to a dispute had to agree to

the participation of U.N. peacekeepers in monitoring, observing or policing a

truce, cease fire, or disengagement of combatants” (2000). This agreement must

not only grant the U.N. the right to intervene in the state’s internal

affairs, but also detail the “scope of its mission and the operational

requirements for carrying out that mission” (Bolton 2000). A nation-state, at

any time, could withdraw its consent at which point the U.N. forces would

withdraw. One example of revoking consent occurred in “May, 1967, when Egypt

insisted on the withdrawal of the U.N. Expeditionary Force (established after

the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956) from its territory along the border with

Israel” (Bolton 2000). U.N. forces were forced to leave, and as a result, the

Six Day War followed. Mulligan 5 A second requirement was the notion that the

U.N. forces would not take sides in the conflict. Bolton states that …U.N.

peacekeepers were [to be] neutral [amongst] the parties to the conflict, not

favoring one or another of them. It was understood to be elemental that the

United Nations could not ‘take sides’ in a conflict without itself becoming

involved in the very situation it was trying to stabilize or resolve (2000).

Remaining neutral, however, would prove to be difficult as we will witness

further along in this work. To ensure the U.N. forces neutrality, the

peacekeepers were “almost always only lightly armed, or unarmed, and they

frequently depended on the cooperation of the parties to a dispute for

logistical support or cooperation” (Bolton 2000). Lacking the appropriate

offensive capabilities would deter possible outbreaks of aggression on the part

of the peacekeeping forces. According to Mingst and Karns, “Peacekeepers use

military force only as a last resort and in self-defense. This precedent was a

response to the difficulties encountered in the Congo in 1961 when the Security

Council authorized the United Nations Operation in the Congo (UNOC) to use force

to prevent civil war and to remove foreign mercenaries in that country. The use

of force – even limited force – is fraught with political and legal

controversy” (79). As a result of the limited military Mulligan 6

capabilities, the U.N. peacekeepers “had no right of enforcement, and their

missions were deliberately non-coercive, not intended to compel any party to

accept a particular settlement. U.N. rules of engagement, through

long-established practice, provided for the use of force essentially only in

self-defense” (Bolton 2000). The use of force by a U.N. force would be

questioned in future peacekeeping endeavors. U.N. involvement in Somalia would

prove to be one such example of the problems experienced by the occupying

forces. Somalia has been described as the textbook example of a “collapsed”

or “failed” state. Throughout the period of intervention, those involved in

“restoring hope” – from the military and civilian sides – no doubt

understood too little about the sources of state dissolution and the respective

roles of the Somali clan system, colonialism, and Cold War geopolitics in the

horn of Africa. Prior to British and Italian colonialism, “there was no common

Somali identity or centralized control over the territory of what became

Somalia. Although more homogeneous than other countries in Africa – with a

common ethnicity, language, culture, and religion (Islam) – Somalia’s

geographical area was occupied by nomadic Mulligan 7 pastoral groups, organized

predominately by paternal kinship” (Weiss 71). The continually moving

population made establishing a centralized governmental body difficult and there

was no recognition of a “hierarchical system”. This lack of a controlling

body led to conflict among the indigenous peoples. Thomas G. Weiss states that

conflict was “common among lineages, especially in competition for land and

resources necessary for survival. But there were conflict resolution mechanisms

within the lineages, known as the ‘xeer,’ which prevented the escalation of

conflicts by inhibiting the excessive economic stratification in society”

(71+). He goes on to say that, “The spread of Islam modified conflict

management by adding a mild form of the Shari’ah Islamic Law. Acts of

vengeance were diminished through the concept of the ‘dia,’ or the payment

of ‘blood money’ compensation to the victim by the violator” (Weiss 72).

Despite the lack of a governing body to enforce laws, social institutions were

there to control behavior. While the basis of organization was direct lineage,

groups were also structured by subclans and then clan families, each

predominantly associated with sometimes overlapping geographical areas. The six

overarching major Mulligan 8 clan families are the Darod, Digil, Dir, Hawiye,

Issaq, and Rahanwein. Traditionally, lineages continually created and shifted

alliances among other groups and subclans. The end of colonialism in 1960

further shifted alliances amongst the clans. The transition from a lineage/clan

based society to a centralized state authority posed new problems for the

independent Somali government. However, governmental attempts to rid the

political environment of clan-influence failed when an army coup in 1969 placed

Mohammed Siad Barre in power. Thomas G. Weiss explains the result of Barre’s

rise to power. He says, Rhetorically, Barre’s policy of ‘scientific

socialism’ aimed to eliminate ‘clanism,’ but the end result of his

twenty-two-year rule was strengthening of clan-based politics. He forbade the

use of clan names; however, his primary method of obtaining and maintaining

power was to draw support from his own clan and those linked by lineage and to

pit other clans against one another. Virginia Lung has described this policy as

a form of ‘clan clientelism,’ in which arms, money, and land were

distributed to clans in order to maintain his power (73). Thus, the clan-based

system was not eliminated; it was reinforced. The late 1980’s saw the steady

decline in Barre’s power. “The combination of food crises, economic

collapse, and the end of Cold War competition in the horn, along with the

resulting decline in foreign aid, began to erode Barre’s base” (Weiss 75).

Further, the rise of clan-based national movements and their success in

challenging Barre’s Mulligan 9 rule led to the multiplication of clan based

factions. “Spurred by the fear that one group’s assumption of power would be

detrimental to another’s own position,” says Weiss, “clan-based opposition

led to extreme fragmentation of Somali society” (75). In the end, Barre’s

own policy backfired on him. By 1990, his power base was limited to only one

clan – the Marehan. In 1991 and 1992 “civil order in Somalia totally

collapsed as warring clans seized control of parts of the country” (Mingst and

Karns 92). The fighting that followed, with clans and subclans constituted in

loose alliances without central control, took place at...

You should cite this paper as follows:

MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 24 May, 2012 from
    <http://essaymania.com/167255/somalia-and-us>

More College Papers

Socrates On Politics essay
Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher who was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. His sentence was death, byway of drinking poison. However, prior to his execution day, a friend, Crito, offered Socrates an opportunity to flee Athens, and evade his death sentence. Socrates r

Shirley Chisholm essay
Hill Chisholm was born on November 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York. Her Father, Charles St. Hill was an immigrant from French Guyana (now it is called Guyana) and her mother, Ruby (Seale) was an immigrant from Barbados. Charles was a factory worker and her mother was a seamstress and a mother to h

Sherman`s Antitrust essay
Whilst approaching the Twenty-first Century, America has taken significant strides in the advancement of high technology. With the unveiling of this new frontier comes continued innovation and government regulation. One aspect of the government in particular, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, h