Talk:Unified Task Force

Merge?
I think that this needs to be merged with Operation Restore Hope, if for no other reason than to reduce the contradictory information in the two articles.

While Operation Restore Hope is not exactly the same as UNITAF, I think that Op. Re.Hope should be redirected to UNITAF's page (though all information needs to be merged).

I think that in the future, ALL pages on the 1992-1995 United Nations intervention in Somalia needs to be better cross-referenced and merged. If I've the time, I'll start doing this myself.

BWH76 12:58, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree and have said as much on the Restore Hope page discussion. Restore Hope is just the American name for their contribution to UNITAF. --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) 23:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Name
How do we now that the proper name of this isn't UNOSOM (United Nations Operation in Somalia)?-- TheFE ARgod (Ч) 09:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? They are two different entities created via the Security Council. UNOSOM was suspended "at the Secretary General's discretion" while UNITAF was in operation. It was resumed after UNITAF wound up. UNOSOM was a UN-led mission created under Chapter VI of the UN Charter. UNITAF was a US-led intervention that acted with the support of the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 22:30, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * BWH76 regarding your recent edit tag about what is the appropriate name to use. The problem with calling it Restore Hope is that this only covers the American deployment. eg. For us Aussies, our troops being sent there for UNITAF was called Operation Solace. Restore Hope as well kind of blurs the lines into the dates of UNOSOM II. For my money, this article is about UNITAF: a very strictly defined entity in terms of responsibility and duration. So the title should remain the same. --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 23:53, 24 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you're right (and I definitely do not mean to leave the Aussies off the record!). In fact, I think that we should put the Australian name of the operation in the article somewhere (in addition to the names given by other nations).


 * I wasn't too clear with what I was talking about - I was just talking about the title of the info box on the right side of the article, not the article itself. Should the title be "War in Somalia?"  Or should it be something else?  I don't think that the box should be titled "UNITAF" as I think it should be the name of a conflict.BWH76 (talk) 12:18, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I guess it goes back to what we're actually trying to say with the side box. At the moment the info is still kind of conflated with the conflict as a whole rather than the UNITAF intervention. The stats and so on need to be checked to ensure that they reflect only the UNITAF figures. Maybe an alternative title for the side bar could be "US-led intervention in Somalia" or something? I don't know that we need to give the code name for each nation involved. It would be very difficult to track all that down. Internationally it was famous as "Restore Hope". I just wanted to be correct (and picky!) about ensuring that wasn't the default page name. --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 06:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Beginning of Merge
Okay, I've finally gotten around to doing this (as per the talk on War in Somalia.  It's going to take a bit to get everything meshed.  PLEASE, join in in making this article better!BWH76 (talk) 21:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Picture
I would suggest that the picture of "Mike Durrant's helicopter" needs to be removed since it has nothing to do with UNITAF. The Blackhawk Down debacle occurred months after the end of UNITAF. The continual conflation of Blackhawk Down with anything else about the Somalia deployments is not helpful. --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 23:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed - I was thinking the same thing, though I've got to admit, when it comes to photos and formatting on Wikipedia, my skills are woefully underdeveloped. I've got to leave that up to someone else.BWH76 (talk) 00:14, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok I haved changed the pic to something from the right time frame. --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 22:42, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks good!BWH76 (talk) 05:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * New to Wikipedia and have some but not all of articles that may be related, so apologies if this is addressed elsewhere or raises a bone of contention better left buried, but why isn't there any mention of Blackhawk Down here--I started reading on 'Rules of Engagement' and that led (eventually) to this article, and the lack of any discussion or mention of Blackhawk Down seems like a glaring omission. If there are good reasons for separating this article from that movie, fine, but that movie (and book) made a significant impact on people's sense of what happened when military forces were sent to Somalia. This article seems to lack (or avoid?) the proverbial 'elephant in the room' because it doesn't address that movie's existence--and it's point of view re politcs, use of military force, etc. in Somalia.

So, what's up with that?

I suggest something like a paragraph to acknowledge/explain a connection with the movie, and a link to the article about the movie.A2Schneb (talk) 21:32, 1 March 2011 (UTC)A2Schneb

The Blackhawk Down incident occurred during UNOSOM II, whereas this page discusses UNITAF. These are very distinct and separate phases of U.N involvement in Somalia. The events of October 3, 1993 are discussed on the wiki page for UNOSOM II. As an Army Aviator I am inherently proud of the heroism and valor of my brothers in arms, however in the interest of presenting facts and avoiding confusion this page should be left as is. That is with no mention of events that did not occur within the timeframe of the subject of UNITAF. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.145.208.120 (talk) 21:54, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Casualty figures
I think the casualty figures in the sidebar are bogus. I suspect that they are being rolled in with UNOSOM casualties. Also, I know for a fact that one Australian soldier was killed accidentally and that isn't in the figures shown. I will attempt to find a source and update them.--Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 23:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Come to think of, the whole sidebar is misleading, since it is entitled "War in Somalia", which is not really the same as UNITAF. I guess that's a standard "war" template and it doesn't really fit where we're talking about a peace keeping and aid mission. eg, we don't have 'combatants', we have 'particpants'. Comments? --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 03:17, 18 January 2008 (UTC)


 * You're right - I was trying to find one source that had all the casualty figures in it, but I've not had much success yet. This source mentions 3 US KIA and 5 Wounded, but it only mentions US forces.  I read something about the Australian as well.  I'll keep looking for a source that has the figures explained clearly and concisely.BWH76 (talk) 05:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I have found a couple of sources that say 8 US KIA (4 of which were non-combat from a chopper crash) and 15 WIA. I agree it it very hard to get a sense of casualties outside of them being rolled in with the UNOSOM missions. As far as the UN are concerned, UNITAF almost didn't exist. And as far as the USA are concerned, there seems to be no delineation between UNITAF and UNOSOM. Finding casualty counts for other nations is very difficult. For the one dead Australian the reference is Australians and Peacekeeping.--Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 10:36, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Success for who?
In the infobox, the result is stated as being a "success". A success for who? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.248.182.72 (talk) 16:16, 4 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Since this was a mission of the United Nations and the article focuses on UN intervention, it is quite clear and factually accurate to say the mission was a success. The article's focus is specific.  It is redundant to say that the "multinational force was successful" when the entire article is about the multinational force.BWH76 (talk) 06:22, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It isn't redundant to say it was a multination force success, because the infobox illustrates enemy combatants. 80.248.182.72 (talk) 10:14, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The success is easily measured in terms of the mission's mandate, which was to secure humanitarian distribution. What happened subsequent to UNITAF under UNSOM II does not detract from the success of the UNITAF mission. --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 01:55, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Quite obviously the somali gangs won. They are now pirating ships all around the horm of Africa and the powerless pro-western gov't has just been blown to smitherers by an IED. Great coalition success... Why does Wikipedia make a fool of itself with ridiculous claims like UN success in Somalia? It's full-stop orwellian newspeak, no less! 82.131.210.163 (talk) 20:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Infobox
This is partly in response to the above comment by (talk) and partly in general. I think that this infobox is relatively inaccurate. First, the casualty figures are all over the place - I don't think that these numbers represent this phase of the UN intervention. Second, I really don't think that it is accurate to say that Somalia was a combatant in this phase of the conflict. If it is accurate to say this, then it would further be accurate to state that "Somalia" was on the UNITAF side as well.

I haven't looked into it, but is there an infobox that is more appropriate than the one currently in the article? Perhaps something for UN missions?BWH76 (talk) 12:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The short answer is 'no'. There is no consistent approach to UN misison pages. Some have no infobox. Some have an infobox but it is used to provide links to other major pages covering the same conflict. eg. The page for UNAMIR has an infobox listing topics about the Rwandan Genocide.

The only consistency is that they do not treat the UN mission as a kind of war/battle like the infobox on this page does. I think the best idea is to keep the picture, keep the box but do away with the military style reporting of stats. Use the infobox to link to pages like Somali civil war and UNOSOM, the Security Council resolution and so on. As I have said earlier, the casualty figures especially are very misleading because they include numbers across the entire US deployment. I spent about about an hour looking one day for discrete UNITAF casualty figures and it was almost impossible to find them. --Mat Hardy (Affentitten) (talk) 23:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Suspension
The assertion that UNOSOM 1 was suspended is not "false information" as implied by the edit of Melanie.lim91. When UNITAF came into being, the further reinforcement and direction of UNOSOM was left at "the discretion of the Secretary-General" (Resolution 794 para 6.) And using that discretion he made no authorised contributions to UNOSOM during the period of UNITAF. He therefore 'suspended' UNOSOM by putting it in a devlopmental stasis and it is for this reason that it is broken (even up by the UN themselves) into UNSOM I and II. To be 'suspended' doesn't always imply that there is a legal document involved making a formal retraction of something. It can just be a de facto freeze. --Mat Hardy (talk) 04:13, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Free images available
This user on Flickr served there and has some of his photos available under free license, suitable for upload to http://commons.wikimedia.com. Not my area of interest, but folks looking for images usable here should take advantage of the opportunity. T L Miles (talk) 02:30, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Images
Two users have been edit warring over some pictures I added earlier. Personally I don't think it was necessary to remove all of the pictures in the article and replace them with a single image of George Bush, and I don't see how pictures of the article's subject were "unrelated". I will be putting them back unless there's some reason not to. A Werewolf (talk) 01:29, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree that the images show UTF personnel and are relevant to the article. A single user seems to disagree, and enjoys deleting instances of Somali-related images in Wikipedia without consensus. I would assume they are "disrupting Wikipedia to make a point", but have not seen any evidence of a point. Please feel free to restore the images. Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 06:55, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't disagree with Middayexpress's removal of the images if only for the fact that they were inserted by Sherurcij who seems to enjoy adding images showing Somalis/Somalia in the most undignified light possible. You might say that's the side-effects of war but i disagree there plenty more productive images that actually tell a story of their own related to the article rather than the GI-JOEism or graphic brutality that we have come to expect from Sherurcij. --Scoobycentric (talk) 11:34, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

To add on the above: Wiki-User Middayexpress makes one hell of a case on why these images are unrelated to the article in question here.Therefore he has my 100% full support!--Scoobycentric (talk) 11:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * WOnderful reasoning, except none of them were added by me, and none of them show Somalis. Other than that, iron-clad! Sherurcij (speaker for the dead) 15:19, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Indeed Scoobycentric. See my post here for the lowdown. Middayexpress (talk) 00:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Factual accuracy and dispute boxes
Not quite sure why these boxes have been added to the article without any accompanying reason here on the talk page. The user in question seem to have added these boxes to a wide variety of military history type articles en masse over the last couple of weeks. --Mat Hardy (talk) 02:23, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree. I've removed them. Anotherclown (talk) 08:23, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

GEORGE BUSH WAS NOT PRESIDENT IN 1992 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.49.39.23 (talk) 00:13, 24 May 2011 (UTC) Oops, yes he was! Sorry!!

Relevance of CIA casualty
Is this part relevant for the article: "CIA Paramilitary Officer Larry Freedman from their Special Activities Division was the first casualty of the conflict in Somalia. He had been inserted prior to the US invasion on a special reconnaissance mission. Freedman was a former Army Delta Force operator and Special Forces soldier and had served in every conflict that America was involved in both officially and unofficially since Vietnam. Freedman was awarded the Intelligence Star for extraordinary heroism." It follows directly after the sentence: "President George H. W. Bush responded to this by initiating Operation Restore Hope on 4 December 1992, under which the United States would assume command in accordance with Resolution 794.[11]" and breaks the flow of the text.

Unless it had a major influence on the later outcome of the UN intervention, the death of Mr Freedman is not relevant for the conflict or the article and doesn't need to be here.130.63.82.105 (talk) 18:01, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

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Merger into United Nations Intervention in Somalia (1992-1995)
So I recently did a little clean-up on the Somali Civil War campaignbox, and just made a new one covering the UN intervention period (See right). While we have three separate articles covering this: United Nations Operation in Somalia I, Unified Task Force, and United Nations Operation in Somalia II, I think it's pretty obvious that we're talking about the same event, which gets renamed by the United Nations for administrative purposes. While it was occurring at the same time as the Somali Civil War, this is a pretty self-contained event, with a defined beginning and end, involving international peacekeepers fighting various Somali militias. I think a single article would help bring that into perspective. Palm_Dogg (talk) 20:29, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment I agree that it is necessary to make United Nations Intervention in Somalia (1992-1995), of course, because there should be cover-up article to explain entire United Nations intervention in Somalia during 1990s. However, I don't think we need to merge the articles because all three articles are operations for United Nations Intervention in Somalia. Rather, I think we can edit these articles like NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is covering overall operations of NATO in Bosnia but didn't merge sub-operation. -- Wendylove (talk) 20:29, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree, the material should show an overall list of joint interventions in Somalia. UNOSOM I, II, UNITAF, and post UNOSOM involvement by the US JackFailor (talk) 03:40, 18 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Support Roman numbers on the page title are not really helping the readers. 122.170.42.250 (talk) 02:36, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

in "background"
The entire second paragraph of background makes unclear statements about the situation in 1992 Somalia as context to the UNITAF and the adaption of Resolution 794 that's only citation as proof is a primary source article *from the UN*, which is not even available to read anymore (although perhaps its blocked to England which is why I cannot read it and I have not tried using the way back machine yet). I believe this paragraph or article as a whole shows clear bias and relies too much on primary sources or just none at all. Rollingdowntown (talk) 22:11, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

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