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4/14/17, "US troops to help Somalia fight al-Shabab," BBC
"The US says it is sending dozens of troops to Somalia to train forces fighting Islamist group al-Shabab.
President Donald Trump last month approved a directive allowing tougher action against al-Shabab.
In 1993, 18 US special forces personnel were killed in the incident dramatised in the Hollywood film Black Hawk Down.
Who are Somalia's al-Shabab?
The deaths, and the shooting down of two US helicopters in Mogadishu, shocked the US and the rest of its military personnel were withdrawn from Somalia shortly afterwards.
Hundreds of Somalis were also killed in the 15-hour battle sparked when US forces tried to capture close allies of warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed.
Since then, the US has restricted most of its activities in Somalia to drone and missile attacks against Islamist militants.
BBC World Service Africa editor Mary Harper says the US has also trained a highly effective elite Somali force.
The main focus now is the Somali army, which is fractured, undisciplined and poorly equipped, she says.
Several other countries, including the UK and Turkey, are also training Somali troops.
Al-Shabab, part of al-Qaeda, has a strong presence in many rural parts of Somalia and often stages attacks in the capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere.
The African Union has a force of about 22,000 soldiers helping the Somali government fight al-Shabab."
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Added: US in Somalia in 1993: Dead, naked US soldier, U.S. Staff Sgt. William David Campbell, dragged through streets of Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993 to cheering crowds. Photos by Canadian photographer Paul Watson:
Written 3/10/2010 by Alex Selwyn-Holmes, IconicPhotos.org: "U.S. Soldier Dragged through Mogadishu"
"It was a media war that the United States lost in Somalia, ironic since its involvement was forced by the pictures of famine-stricken people there. In one of the clearest and earliest examples of the CNN effect, the war was repeatedly dogged by the dozens of press photographers. It is an anticipating media, not snipers or enemy combatants, that greeted the U.S landing forces in Mogadishu in December 9th 1992.
For a war that began with memorable images, it is both fitting and ironic that it ended because of another set of dramatic images. The photos taken by Canadian photographer Paul Watson, of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu spelled the beginning of the end for U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force. Domestic opinion turned hostile as horrified TV viewers watched images of the bloodshed—-including this Pulitzer-prize winning footage of Somali warlord Mohammed Aideed’s supporters dragging the body of U.S. Staff Sgt. William David Cleveland through the streets of Mogadishu, cheering. President Clinton immediately abandoned the pursuit of Aideed, the mission that cost Cleveland his life and gave the order for all American soldiers to withdraw from Somalia by March 31, 1994. Other Western nations followed suit.
When the last U.N. peacekeepers left in 1995, ending a mission that had cost more than $2 billion, Mogadishu still lacked a functioning government. The battle deaths, and the harrowing images prompted lingering U.S. reluctance to get involved in Africa’s crises, including the following year’s genocide in Rwanda. In 1996, Osama bin Laden cited the incident as proof that the U.S. was unable to stomach casualties: when “one American was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear.” Never before or since had a photo altered a nation’s political destinies so much so.
[In the topmost photo, the soldier’s genitals are exposed. When Time magazine decided to print it, they decided to cover them up in a controversial decision. Right after Watson took that photo, the crowd turned more violent, and they forced him to enter into a leaving car. He bolted from it and took the middle picture. The people in that photo looked a lot meaner and their eyes were focused on Watson, who defied the order to leave. It was this middle picture that AP ran (AP had tough policies against nudity). Supreme irony was that, as Watson noted, “decision was made to censor something sexually offensive, while the outrageous violence of desecrating a corpse is deemed safe for the general public’s consumption.”
Time magazine’s Stephen Mayes replied: “[It] exposes the sensitivities of a nation that is militarily strong enough to confront one dead soldier but morally too insecure to risk the exposure of a single genital, even in such a non-sexual context?”]"
via Portland (Oregon) Center Stage blog, "Photojournalist and Author Paul Watson," pcsblog.org, 9/24/2012
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