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Somalia syndrome

Somalia syndrome noun: a feeling of reluctance among Western nations (particularly the United States) to intervene militarily in African conflicts and humanitarian crises following the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, which was regarded in the US as a disaster.

Noun

the Somalia syndrome (uncountable)

  1. (historical) A feeling of reluctance among Western nations (particularly the United States) to intervene militarily in African conflicts and humanitarian crises following the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, which was regarded in the US as a disaster.
    • How much longer can this perverse, unspoken U.N. assignment last? Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the U.N. Secretary-General, has taken to warning against what he calls the Somalia syndrome, by which he means discouragement among the governments contributing to the mission and a consequent humiliating U.N....1995 June 4, William Finnegan, “No Peace to Keep”, in The New Yorker, New York, N.Y.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 Jan 2025

Questions about Somalia syndrome

What does Somalia syndrome mean?
Somalia syndrome means a feeling of reluctance among Western nations (particularly the United States) to intervene militarily in African conflicts and humanitarian crises following the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, which was regarded in the US as a disaster.
What part of speech is Somalia syndrome?
Somalia syndrome is a noun.

Words near Somalia syndrome in the dictionary

  1. Somali Peninsula
  2. Somali wild ass
  3. Somali wild asses
  4. Somali-
  5. Somalia
  6. Somalia syndrome
  7. Somalian
  8. Somalians
  9. Somalicoon
  10. Somalicoons
  11. Somaliland

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Somalia syndrome (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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