The United Nations Operation in Somalia Medal is awarded to members of the Armed Forces of the United States who served for a minimum of 90 consecutive days during the U.N.’s operations in Somalia between April 24, 1992 and March 31, 1995. The medal was awarded by the Chief of the United Nations mission.
Although many associate the United States’ role in the United Nation’s intervention in Somalia with President Bill Clinton, it was in fact President George H. W. Bush who first ordered the U.S. military to take up the mantle of the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) with the creation of the Unified Task Force (UNITAF). Code-named Operation Restore Hope, UNITAF was a U.N.-sanctioned multinational military force led by the U.S. that was tasked with creating a safe environment for carrying out humanitarian operations. The first elements of UNITAF deployed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on December 9, 1992; within five months, it had increased the security associated with the delivery of food and other aid supplies to the point that the U.N. decided to end UNITAF operations and launch UNOSOM II on May 4, 1993.
But this was a case of the United Nations either being too optimistic or simply unaware of the turmoil in Somalia in general and Mogadishu in particular, where numerous warlords were vying for control of the capital and the nation. One warlord, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, had sufficient arms and backers as to pose a substantial threat to the nation-building efforts of UNOSOM II, and by July he had become the focal point of military operations in the capital.
Playing upon the notion that the U.N. peackeepers were interlopers with no real interest in the well-being of the Somali people, Aidid’s militia began targeting U.N. personnel; on August 8, one of the group’s remote-controlled bombs killed four American servicemen, eventually spurring the launch of a manhunt for the warlord dubbed Operation Gothic Serpent, carried out by an elite group of Army Rangers and Delta Force troops, Navy SEALs, and Air Force Pararescuemen and Combat Controllers called Task Force Ranger. This was the group at the center of the tragic events that were officially referred to as the Battle of Mogadishu, but which commonly came to be referred to simply as “Black Hawk Down.”’
On October 7, 1993, President Clinton announced the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Somalia by no later than March 31, 1994; they actually left the country four weeks earlier, on March 3. The last of the U.N. troops that comprised the military component of UNOSOM II left the country a little over a year later on March 28, 1995.