Continuing drought brought widespread famine to the Horn of Africa during the early 1990s, leading the United Nations to send humanitarian aid. By December 1992, however, warring Somali factions were diverting UN sanctioned food-relief shipments to black markets, so President Bush dispatched 30,000 American troops to Somalia to protect food deliveries.

The deployment of troops became controversial as tensions arose between UN and US officials in Somalia, while Somali factions began to fight back. It became clearer that American officials did not know enough about the region and its peoples to make the mission work smoothly These problems were exacerbated when President Clinton expanded the American military’s mandate to restoring order and state building. When eighteen marines were killed fighting the forces of Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and television cameras recorded a mob dragging an American body down the street, public support for the mission deteriorated. Clinton withdrew all troops in 1994, and remained wary of using American force in Africa, something that would have dire consequences when genocide began in Rwanda.