OK I GIVE UP
In the 2001 film Black Hawk Down, American soldiers mow through thousands of nameless Somalis for more than two hours. The GIs have names and recognizable character traits: One is an understated master of war, for example, while another is an ordinary man who loves coffee put into a chaotic situation. They are also incidentally very good-looking (Nikolaj Costar-Waldau, the later Jamie Lannister, had his breakthrough with this film). We identify ourselves with the chiseled, occasionally scared but always brave American soldiers while the nameless Somalis die by the dozen. There should be some background to the suicidal attacks and the hate of the Somalis, one thinks, but then this thought is drowned out by the bang of the guns and the spurt of blood. Also, why the hell is one of the Delta guys using an M14 instead of the standard M16, like rest of the troops? If you want answers to these questions, coupled with way too much detail into the inner workings of the US war machinery, from the bottom to the top, and the minds of the people manning its guns, “Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War”, the book the film is based on, is what you need to read.
The book opens with the event that is the rather unappetizing starting shot for the clashes depicted in the film. US forces acting as UN peacekeepers committed a horrific massacre, and murdered a large segment of what was left of Somalia’s civil society, in an event dubbed the Bloody Monday raid. The elders and notable people of the Habr Gidr clan, of which the leader Muhamed Farah Aidid was being sought by the UN forces for reasons to be explained later, gathered in a house to discuss the deteriorating state of Somalia. UN forces, led by a Turkish general named Çevik Bir, attacked the house with anti-tank missiles, without firing even a warning shot, and then gunned down those that made it out alive. 73 people died, among them women and children, and the Somalis came to the rather apt conclusion that the UN and especially US forces were not there to “keep peace”. That the Turkish general went back to duty in Turkey, organized a disinformation campaign against leading journalists and peace activists, causing them to lose their jobs and one of them to horrifically get attacked in his office (but miraculously survive) is the bitter but somehow natural continuation of a story of militaristic hubris and violent tendencies in the service of politics.
The Bloody Monday Raid is not part of the film because it does not fit the narrative of brave, handsome American soldiers fighting for freedom, but why is it so absent from our general understanding of what happened or is happening in Somalia? The uncomfortable answer connects Çevik Bir’s self-entitlement to order such a massacre, and the omission of the raid from the dominant Western narrative on Somalia (primarily formed by Ridley Scott’s film): Good old racism.
Back to “a story of modern of war”. It is the year 1993, and Somalia is a failed state after civil war of more than a decade. UN is feeding the people through its refugee program, but the warlords want to control the distribution of food. Aidid, the strongest among them, and the one with the most credible claim to power in Somalia, has his forces attack the peace-keeping troops in order to force them to hand over the food. This is where the USA comes in: The Clinton administration creates a task force to apprehend Aidid, in order to engage in some nation-building afterwards. Units that are part of this task force are positioned close to Mogadishu (Mog, as the forces called it). They wait for orders to fly into the city in their helicopters, gather Aidid’s top ranking officials and even the man himself if the chance comes up, and bring him into the base for a swift trial. The episode this book is based on takes place on the 3rd and 4th of October. Army Rangers and Delta “operators” are given orders to stage an operation and capture two high-ranking lieutenants of Aidid. The goal is to swoop in, collect these two and any other important targets, drive them out of the city, and be back in the base compound for dinner. As we now know, things don’t go according to plan. This operation that was supposed to take not more than couple of hours devolves into what is later termed Battle of Mogadishu.
Bowden weaves a very complete story, bringing together the details of the fighting on the ground from the viewpoint of the combatants, the mental state and background of the characters involved from both sides, and the political and historical context. The narrative is based on extensive interviews with numerous surviving participants, and analysis of video and audio recordings of the operation. The level of detail Bowden provides into the two days of armed clash is masterful and cinematic in style. Individual events are told from the perspective of the people involved (if they were alive afterwards, of course) and precisely located on a map of Mogadishu. Ridley Scott had a good choice of what events to depict on screen, and not surprisingly, the bits of action in the film and the book map rather closely to each other. Also not surprisingly, details that paint the American military in a negative light (except for all the killing) such as friendly fire (a not infrequent occurring in the book) are omitted in the film; this actually happened at the request of the Pentagon, and you can watch the deleted scenes of friendly fire on youtube.
The level of detail, if anything, is too much and goes on for too long, especially in medical aspects – or let’s say bodily aspects, as after a certain level of disintegration it’s more physics than biology. The bloody details of each and every injury sustained by American forces is given, probably because for the military audience those details are part of the fighting. The Somalis are regularly torn to pieces, their limbs blown off by M203 grenades, or they simply explode to pieces when hit by the miniguns of the helicopters. This detailed carnage goes on for hundreds of pages, and at some point it all turns into a lengthy blur of limbs, blood and cadaver.
If you are as desensitized toward violence as I am thanks to exposure to action films and get through this carnage, you can enjoy the complete “Story of Modern War” promised in the title, created by the amalgamation of the behavioral patterns of the parties, the political context and the story of the fighting on the ground. US forces are fighting against an undisciplined and impoverished enemy which is, to top it off, high on drugs the whole time (the infamous khat). It should, on paper, not present any difficulties. What this enemy has going for it though is fearlessness, and the opportunity to observe the Americans and develop tactics to trap them. The Somalis are prone to displaying their courage by running into the middle of a shooting and spraying bullets, leading them to be killed by the hundreds by the massively powerful US military machine. The Americans, on the other hand, stick to a “no man left behind” policy, leading them to be easily trapped by the Somalis, who have recognized this weakness.
The Americans are heavily overpowered compared to the Somalis, especially in the air, thanks to the Black Hawks which provide “air superiority”. They become too reliant on this power, however, giving the Somalis the time to figure out their weaknesses. The Black Hawk helicopters, wonders of military technology, are heavily armored, very robust, and their pilots are experienced perfectionists who take pride in using them like tanks in the air. The only weapons the Somalis have against the Black Hawks are RPGs, which are useful only when the helicopters are close to the ground, but even then they are quite useless because the blowback of the RPGs when fired upwards become lethal for the person shooting it, as it hits the ground behind them and spreads. The Somalis figure adapt by adding appendages to the guns that redirect the blowback. They also learn from the Sudanese Islamists who fought against the Russians in Afghanistan that the weakest point of a helicopter is the rear rotor, which is not armored, and leads to the helicopter getting out of control when hit.
A theme that permeates the book is the difference in the skills and the mindset of the Rangers and the Delta operators. Delta team consists of very well-trained and experienced soldiers that are used to the chaos of war and have great expertise in individual areas. Their mindset is also “elite”: They consider themselves to be “noble, silent and invisible…modern knights”. The Rangers, on the other hand, are very young (average age of 19!) army soldiers that were selected based on physical aptitude. Mogadishu is their first conflict deployment, and they are very eager to shoot some “Sammies”, as they call the Somalis, and are bored of waiting for orders. The Delta operators were disappointed in the Rangers; they found them too young, too unexperienced, and not fit for real war. In the operation that is the topic of the book, the Delta would be the ones doing the cleaning of the building and capture of the targets, with the Rangers providing the perimiter and protection. While the Delta execute their assignment clinically, the Rangers stumble from one costly mishap into the other: A soldier that has too much weight and is too nervous falls from the helicopter and dies later, another disables his own radio through incompetence, and they shoot at other US forces in multiple instances. The Delta were also the ones that kept their cool and executed their training one step after the other, while the rest of the miliary, including the commanders, completely lost all control and reacted passively to whatever was happening.
One thing that stood out like a sore thumb in the film was that one of the Delta snipers used an old-school M-14 rifle with a scope, whereas others were running around with the standard assault rifle of the Delta or the Rangers. I wasn’t expecting an answer to what I thought was weapon-creative license, but the book in fact delivered. It turns out that this Delta sniper personally switched to an M14 rifle because the tungsten-tipped bullets used by the modern guns, developed to pierce through armor, were completely ineffective when it came to stopping actual people, as it simply went through them without knocking them out unless it hit the heart or the spine (p. 208). War is grizly business, but it makes for great entertainment.
Disdain for normal displays of army status was the unit’s signature. They simply transcended rank. (p. 34)
Flush with succcess against Saddam Hussein and the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were plenty of politicians, diplomats, and journalists with bright hopes for a new millennium of worldwide capitalist free markets. America’s unrivaled big stick could right the world’s wrongs, feed the hungry, democratize the planet. (p. 94)
But every enemy advertises his weakness in the way he fights. To Aidid’s fighters, the Rangers’ weakness was apparent. They were not willing to die. (p. 110)
You could be prepared for the sights and sounds and smells of war, but the horror of it, the blood and gore and heart-rending screams of pain, the sense of death perched right on your shoulder, breathing in your ear, there was no preparation for that (p. 215)