Do not stand over my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep;
I am a thousand winds that blow, I am a diamond glint on snow.
I am the gentle Autumn rain, I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
When you awake in the morning's hush, I am the soft upflinging rush,
Of quiet birds in circling flight, I am the soft starshine at night.
So do not stand over my grave and cry,
I am in your heart,
I will never die.
"It's a humanitarian mission, and our mission is to get in there and open up these corridors and provide humanitarian relief."
George H.W. Bush
01 JAN 1993
In late 1992, civil war, clan-based fighting, and the worst African drought of the century created famine conditions that threatened one-fourth of Somalia's population with starvation. In August, the U.N. began a peacekeeping mission to the country to assure the distribution of food and medical aid.
On December 4, with deteriorating security and the U.N. troops unable to control Somalia's warring factions, U.S. President George Bush ordered 25,000 U.S. troops into Somalia. Although he promised the troops involved that the humanitarian mission was not an open-ended commitment, "Operation Restore Hope" remained unresolved when Bill Clinton took over the presidency on January 20, 1993.
Like his predecessor, Clinton was anxious to bring the Americans home, and in May the mission was formally handed back to the U.N. By June, only 4,200 U.S. troops remained. However, on June 5, twenty-four Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers were ambushed and massacred while inspecting a weapons storage site by soldiers under Somali warlord General Mohammed Aidid.
U.S. and U.N. forces subsequently began an extensive search for the elusive strongman, and in August, four hundred elite U.S. troops from Delta Force and the U.S. Rangers arrived on a mission to capture Aidid. Two months later, eighteen of these soldiers were killed and eighty-four wounded during a disastrous assault on Mogadishu's Olympia Hotel in search of Aidid.
The bloody battle, which lasted seventeen hours, was the most violent U.S. combat firefight since Vietnam. Three days later, with Aidid still at large, President Clinton cut his losses and ordered a total U.S. withdrawal. On March 25, 1994, the last U.S. troops left Somalia.
The History Channel