There was no lowering of the Stars and Stripes last week as the final contingent of 80 U.S. diplomats, Diplomatic Security Service agents and marines left Mogadishu, the scene of Washington's last military adventure. "No interviews, no comment, no story; we have nothing to say," said a burly American in aviator sunglasses outside the U.S. Embassy as Ambassador Daniel Simpson and his staff prepared to leave in a Ukrainian cargo jet and several small aircraft.
When the Americans arrived 21 months ago, they were greeted by a phalanx of television cameras and hordes of reporters from around the world gathered on Somalia's sandy shoreline. Operation Restore Hope was launched to end the famine caused by two years of civil war. But Operation Continue Hope, its successor, collapsed when combined U.S. and United Nations forces failed to capture clan leader Mohammed Farah Aidid. General Aidid was blamed for the deaths of 23 Pakistanis -- who were part of the U.N. peacekeeping force -- and his militia killed 18 Americans in one battle before President Clinton called off the hunt in October last year. Since then, U.N. forces have been scaled down. U.N. and U.S. attempts to install a democratic government have come to nothing -- in what some see as a lesson for Haiti -- but there is a dim hope that a broad-based government (under Aidid) can be formed before the blue helmets' mandate expires on September 30.
