{"id":2553,"date":"2019-02-25T15:22:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-25T14:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meerverstehen.net\/?p=2553"},"modified":"2021-05-19T09:35:30","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T07:35:30","slug":"25-years-after-mogadishu-what-remains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/25-jahre-nach-mogadischu-was-bleibt\/","title":{"rendered":"1TP5Understanding the sea: 25 years after Mogadishu - what remains?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was 25 years ago these days that the German Navy evacuated the German Somalia Support Unit from Mogadishu. This army unit had previously supported the United Nations Operation UNOSOM II in Somalia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was the army's first major foreign deployment, which came to an abrupt end when the USA withdrew hastily from the operation and the German troops were left to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n

The circumstances of the subsequent Southern Cross evacuation operation were widely discussed at the time. However, if you want to read up on this today, you will only find a single Wikipedia article (https:\/\/de.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Operation_Southern_Cross<\/a>), which was based on the reports of the then Marine<\/strong>-The operation has long been forgotten. This operation has long since been forgotten, overshadowed by more recent missions and, in recent years, a return to national and alliance defence.<\/p>\n

What are the lessons learnt from Mogadishu? Firstly, the operation was characterised by the lack of a Bundeswehr command organisation for such missions. There was no organisation that was able to manage the confusion of competencies, the disputes and, above all, the jealousies of the various branches of the armed forces and lead all forces operationally. This provided the impetus to set up the Operational Command a few years later<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it became apparent that the Marine<\/strong> simply lacked the appropriate ships to move army troops. At that time, frigates and a supply ship were used as transports. The small SeaLynx helicopters flew out the last contingent completely, a masterpiece of improvisation, but in principle an indictment of poverty.<\/p>\n

The Inspector General at the time therefore called for a so-called multi-purpose ship, which in other countries would simply have been called a dock landing ship. The idea behind this so-called Naumann Ark was to be able to bring troops ashore and back again independently of harbours and provide them with logistical support. This primarily required amphibious ships, which would also have been ideal platforms for humanitarian aid operations.<\/p>\n

The resulting opportunities have been Marine<\/strong> in its concept for supporting joint operations from the sea (Basis See). Although the Bundeswehr could have made good use of such a capacity in the phase of major foreign deployments that began after Mogadishu, the initiative failed. The same happened to two other attempts, which were organised under the names Einsatztruppenunterst\u00fctzungsschiff (ETrUS) and Joint Support Ship<\/strong> (JSS) have gone down in history.<\/p>\n

The only thing that has been achieved is a co-operation agreement with the Netherlands on the joint use of their landing ship Karel Doorman. There is also the ARC agreement with Denmark on joint transport with merchant ships.<\/p>\n

Since the Crimean invasion at the latest, attention has turned to other naval projects. Now the focus is once again on powerful surface ships and submarines, submarine hunters and new mine defences.<\/p>\n

However, if you read official documents such as the 2016 White Paper, you will find that international crisis management is on a par with national and alliance defence. This means that foreign missions have not disappeared, the requirements for them still exist.<\/p>\n

25 years after Mogadishu, a quarter of a century after Operation Southern Cross, it is therefore time to take stock. What was it like back then, and what lessons are still relevant today? To do this, however, and this is the third lesson, you need good documentation and an unbiased evaluation of what worked and what did not.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In diesen Tagen ist es 25 Jahre her, dass die Marine den Deutschen Unterst\u00fctzungsverband Somalia aus Mogadischu evakuierte. Dieser Heeresverband hatte zuvor die Operation UNOSOM II der Vereinten Nationen in Somalia unterst\u00fctzt. F\u00fcr das Heer war es der erste gro\u00dfe Auslandseinsatz gewesen, der abrupt zu Ende ging, als sich die USA \u00fcberst\u00fcrzt aus der Operation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,33,34],"tags":[182,282,283,284],"class_list":["post-2553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-streitkraefte-blog","category-blog","category-marinen-aus-aller-welt-blog","tag-deutsche-marine","tag-mogadischu","tag-somalia","tag-un"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marineforum.online\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}