African Union problems in Somalia

There has been fighting between Somali insurgents and African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu in recent days. There are reports that the AU bases came under attack in simultaneous raids.

The United States peacekeepers in Somalia in the early 1990s had well-known difficulties in the country, and their lack of success may have been a contributory factor to their decision to stay out of Rwanda during the massacres of 1994. If the US had known that their problems were not necessarily because the West could not intervene successfully in Africa, and that Africans would encounter the same difficulties, they may have intervened in Rwanda and stopped the bloodshed.