The first skirmish of postmodern warfare: Black Hawk Down and the future of combat. (Defence).(Mark Bowden)

PERHAPS THE MOST eagerly anticipated and potentially influential film of 2002 will be Ridley Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer's adaptation of Mark Bowden s dramatic best-seller Black Hawk Down. The film, due for release in Australia in February, sets out to depict the battle that took place between United States forces and Somali men, women and children in the streets of Mogadishu on 3rd and 4th October 1993. Bowden has already lauded the film as "the most authentic depiction of modern soldiering ever put on film".

As yet we have only been allowed titillating glimpses of this star-studded film; therefore, apart from expecting a graphic, bloody and epic mega-flick in the Scott-Bruckheimer tradition we will just have to wait and see how it comes out. Undoubtedly, the film will generate acres of newsprint, but this essay is not a review of either it or the book. The true significance of any account of this catastrophic clash of feudal and technological-age warriors lies not so much in the drama itself, but in our responses to the realities of combat in a world now changed forever by the attack on the World Trade Center. We need to put the events depicted in the film into perspective. In the light of the more recent fighting in the shattered urban and rural landscape of Afghanistan, this brief skirmish tells us more about the future of armed combat than many of us may be willing to absorb.

Bowden's account of the battle reads like a Tom Clancy novel, or a Cornelius Ryan history on steroids. Consequently, it provides excellent fodder for a blockbuster action movie. If the book had 6ne failing, it is that Bowden did not draw any conclusions about the nature of this particular mission and the way it was carried out. Given the limitations of the cinematographer's art, it is unlikely that the film will be able to achieve any more sophisticated analysis. It will be a very great shame, though, if the depiction of events dwells only on the personal tragedies and heroism of those involved.

It will be even more of a shame if the film simplifies the cultural dimension of the battle to present the Americans as the good guys and the Somalis as the evil foes. The outcome of this battle represented a major failure of US policy and caused immense damage to American prestige. In the aftermath of the battle in the Black Sea district of Mogadishu, tinpot dictators and terrorists around the world concluded that they only had to impose casualties on the USA to cause its military to retreat with its tail between its legs. Osama bin Laden admitted as much in a 1997 interview on the US ABC network. As recent events have demonstrated, the terrorists were wrong, but the damage has been done. Emboldened by American hubris and seeming cowardice, otherwise insignificant despots and warlords have felt that they too can take on the USA and win. Understanding the story behind Black Hawk Down will help us to understand why.

The street battle of 3rd and 4th October cost the Americans eighteen lives and seventy-eight wounded. Conservative estimates put the Somali dead at 300 to 500, with over 700 wounded in a country where rehabilitative care is non-existent. It represented a massive blow to US prestige and UN capability, and was the direct cause of the ignominious withdrawal of US forces on 23rd March 1994. A year later the last UN forces left Somalia, firing as they withdrew into the sea. The UN in Somalia had resolved very little, apart from initial famine relief. To a certain extent the civil war had almost burnt itself out. What could have gone so badly wrong?

IN 1992 IT HAD BECOME obvious that Somalia was a failed state. The combination of civil war, total government collapse, the return to clan politics, famine and disease had cost the lives of up to half a million people. More than twice that number were in urgent need of food and medical assistance to prevent further mortality, and there were some 800,000 Somali refugees in Kenya and Ethiopia. The television coverage of the disaster displayed scenes of horror--none more heart-wrenching than the scenes of young children, covered with flies, dying of malnutrition and associated conditions. Beginning in July 1992 a UN-led humanitarian relief operation attempted to provide food and medical aid as well as to achieve some form of political settlement. The USA provided assistance in the form of an emergency airlift of food and other essentials known as Operation Provide Relief.

By November it was clear that the deteriorating security situation, together with the UN's own organisational and doctrinal inadequacies, had forestalled any progress. Driven by international concern--and it would appear, by President Bush's desire to carry out one more successful mission--the USA offered to lead a UN-sponsored operation that was ultimately to involve contingents from twenty-one countries, including Australia. On 3rd December the Security Council approved the creation of a Chapter Seven peace enforcement operation, the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) under US leadership, and authorised it "to use all necessary means to establish as soon as possible a secure environment for humanitarian relief operations in Somalia".