Jabril Sanei
Somalia is on the Horn of Africa, the north-eastern-most point of the African continent. As Raman Bhardwaj wrote in his 1979 book The Dilemma of the Horn of Africa, (Sterling Publishers, India): "The Horn's tip, a life-line for the world's oil traffic, makes this area the most vulnerable and explosive in the world today. The Horn of Africa is the gateway both to the Indian and the Mediterranean Oceans, and it links the Middle East with the African continent... the Somali and Eritrean coasts ... are quite near the Saudi Arabian oilfields and the Red Sea oil lane."
With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the Horn became strategically more important to the European powers. Between 1885 and 1908, Britain, France and Italy seized parts of the long Somali coast; the borders of their protectorates were a continual source of friction and war until world war II.
After the World War II, the British government proposed that all Somali areas be ruled together under an UN trusteeship. This was rejected by the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union. Only Italian Somaliland (southern Somalia) was placed under UN trusteeship and returned to Italian control in 1950.
The Republic of Somalia became independent on July 1, 1960. However, it consisted of only two of the five parts of the Somali national territory — British Somaliland (northern Somalia) and the Italian Trust Territory of Somalia.
To this day, French Somaliland (Djibouti), the Ogaden region in Ethiopia and the Somali-populated Northern Frontier District (NFD) in Kenya remain under foreign control.
Somalis argue that, in spite of these borders, they still constitute an homogeneous group of people who occupy a common territory, pursue the same pastoral economy, speak the same language, and share the same creed (Islam), culture and traditions.
'Half-won independence'
From the point of view of Somalis, independence was only half-won. Not surprisingly, independent Somalia's foreign policy focused on the "liberation" of Somalis in the adjoining states, to be united in a single Somali nation-state. The five-pointed star on Somalia's national flag symbolises the colonial division of Somalia into five parts and serves to remind Somalis that one day the Somali nation might be united.
The post-independence governments of Somalia, both democratic (1960-69) and autocratic (1969-1991), supported secessionist movements in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia and in the NFD in Kenya. Somalia fought violent wars with Ethiopia in 1961, 1964 and 1977-78. A virtual state of war existed between the two countries for most of the 1980s. Somalia was at war with Kenya from 1963 to 1967.
Somalia's strategic location brought Cold War rivalries to the region. Festering regional disputes spurred the Horn's governments to invite assistance from the US or Soviet governments.
During the first 15 years of its independence, Somalia received aid and weapons from the Soviet government. In 1969, Major General Mohammed Siad Barre seized power in a military coup and Somalia was conveniently declared a "socialist state".
However, the 1974 revolution in neighbouring Ethiopia, which overthrew a pro-US government and established close relations with the Soviet Union, led to a shift in alliances. Washington began to prop up Barre's autocracy with US military aid. The US Navy took over the strategic Somali port at Berbera.
The 1978 defeat of Somali forces, which entered the Ogaden region of Ethiopia in 1977, was a disaster for Somalia. An influx of Ogadeni refugees, numbering close to 1 million by 1980, aggravated Somalia's already dire economic and social crisis.
Opposition to the Barre government intensified, particularly in the north where the Somali Nationalist Movement (SNM) was formed in 1981 and stepped up its insurgency after 1984. Indiscriminate military reprisals by Barre government forces killed tens of thousands of civilians. A bitter civil war was fought in 1988-89, which led to the total destruction of Hargeisa, the capital of northern Somalia, and many other towns.
Southern Somalia's opposition forces formed a loose alliance with the SNM in 1990. When fighting intensified in the capital, Mogadishu, in January 1991, Barre was unable to control the situation. At the end of an intense month-long fight, Barre fled to Kenya. On January 31, Hargeisa, fell to the SNM.
The fragile Somali state collapsed into anarchy in the south, as clan-based militias fought for control; in the north, the independent Somaliland Republic was proclaimed in May 1991.
The civil war left the country's economy in disarray and its infrastructure destroyed. Millions of Somalis were displaced and unable to plant crops or tend their livestock. The region was already in the grip of a terrible drought.
In the final period of the Barre regime, virtually all foreign aid to Somalia was halted, and UN agencies and most Western charities withdrew.
Three months after Barre's fall, Mogadishu was in the grip of famine. Save the Children warned that 500,000 of the city's 1.3 million people needed emergency aid. Seventy-five children a day were dying. The West's failure to provide immediate and massive aid added to the chaos.
The UN, its agencies and the West ignored the chorus of warnings by aid agencies that only massive aid could relieve the mounting hunger and defuse the armed factions' squabbling over scarce food supplies. Tensions between rival factions and their armed and desperately hungry followers exploded into serious armed clashes, banditry and looting.
In November 1991, Ali Mahdi Mohamed, who was named interim president of Somalia after Barre's fall, fled the capital after the United Somali Congress (USC) forces led by General Mohammed Farrah Aideed took the capital.
US/UN intervention
Eighteen months after the overthrow of the Barre regime, the UN Security Council on July 27, 1992, belatedly authorised a massive emergency airlift of relief supplies to Somalia. Mogadishu's factions agreed to the presence of 3000 armed UN guards (UNOSOM) to ensure the food was delivered and to police a ceasefire between the factions.
When fresh fighting between southern Somali militias interrupted the flow of aid, Washington seized on the opportunity. The US in November 1992 offered to organise and lead an operation to "ensure the delivery of humanitarian assistance". The Security Council accepted the offer and authorised the use of "all necessary means to establish a secure environment for the relief effort".
"There is no government in Somalia. Law and order has broken down. Anarchy prevails", US President George Bush senior cynically said on December 4, 1992. "The people of Somalia, especially the children of Somalia, need our help."
The awful TV images of starving children offered the perfect excuse for the imperialist powers to establish the precedent of unilateral military intervention on "humanitarian" grounds.
On December 9, 1992, the first of 35,000 US-led UN troops landed in Somalia — carefully timed to be broadcast live during prime-time evening television in the US.
The proud people of Somalia at first welcomed the US-led "mercy mission", codenamed "Operation Restore Hope". However, just weeks into the operation, US forces began to divide the warlords operating in and around Mogadishu into "good" and "bad" guys. The "bad guys" were those who would not go along with US demands, which included allowing the swift return of US oil giants. The top of Washington's hit-list was Aideed.
In March 1993, a UN-called conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, attended by the main Somali factions had resulted in a "peace deal", including a ceasefire and the handover of arms to UN forces.
However, Aideed was concerned that the UN would appoint an administration that would once again divide Somalia along tribal lines. He accused UNOSOM of imperialistic intentions. The UN raided Aideed's radio station and, in retaliation, USC militia killed 24 Pakistani UN peacekeepers on June 5, 1993. The Security Council issued an arrest warrant for Aideed and US soldiers led the hunt.
As the "humanitarian" mask of the US-led UN military occupation fell away, the Somali people turned against the invaders as tens of thousands of Somalis were killed in the fighting. The US was finally forced to withdraw its forces following the deaths of 19 US soldiers in October 1993 made famous by Hollywood in the movie Black Hawk Down), which took place after a botched attempt to kill Aideed.
At a conference in November 1993 in Ethiopia, the UN reversed its policy towards Aideed. Instead, UNOSOM tried to bring him and the major Somali warlords together to form a central government.
At the end of 1994, Aideed appointed himself president of Somalia, forming an administration that was representative of all the clans in Somalia. The UN momentarily supported this administration as a face-saving solution so it could finally pull out of Somalia in February 1995.
While Aideed's USC was the most militarily powerful faction — and was supported by the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD, a regional body created by the governments of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan and Somalia), the Arab League and international Islamic organisations — Somalia remained little more than a warring patchwork of clan-based fiefdoms.
In 1996, Aideed was killed during infighting within the USC. His son, Hussein Mohamed Aideed (a former US marine), succeeded him. Complicating matters further, in 1998, Puntland, in Somalia's north-east, declared unilateral independence.
Peace talks
Between 1997 and 2000, a number of attempts by rival coalitions of factions, backed by neighbouring governments, failed to form an internationally recognised central government. Somalia remained hopelessly fragmented.
However, in August 2000, Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Gheulleh sponsored a peace conference that was held in Arte, Djibouti, and attended by all the key factions. The clan chiefs made all the major decisions. Abdulkassim Salat Hassan was named interim president of the Transitional National Government (TNG). Hassan was given three years to reconcile Somalia's warring factions and establish a viable central government.
Hassan's appointment was welcomed by IGAD, the UN, Washington and the European Union. Accordingly, he was expected to take meaningful steps to achieve an all-inclusive political settlement. However, this was not borne out by his dealings with the breakaway Somaliland Republic and Puntland, or with opponents in Mogadishu and the southern regions.
In response, an unprecedented coalition of faction leaders from Mogadishu and southern Somalia, as well as the Puntland administration, was formed in January 2001. In March 2001, they met in Ethiopia and formed the Somali Restoration and Reconciliation Council, led by Hussein Aideed. The SRRC demands that regional administrations be established throughout Somalia prior to a central government being formed.
The latest effort to bring peace to Somalia opened on October 15, at a conference in Eldoret, western Kenya. It was organised by IGAD and brought together all the major players in Somali politics, including TNG leaders President Hassan and Prime Minister Hassan Abshir Farah and SRRC leader Aideed, seen as the main threat and challenger to the TNG.
After drawn out talks, an accord on a transitional charter was signed on January 29 by about 40 political and faction leaders, including the Puntland administration, at a ceremony in Nairobi. The northern Somaliland Republic is the one major force that is not a party to the accord.
Under the accord, clan elders will select a 275-member parliament (61 from each of the major clans and a further 31 selected by a coalition of small clans). This parliament will in turn elect a president. The president will appoint a prime minister and government to shepherd the country to polls after five years and oversee the writing of a new constitution.
Both the EU and the US have signaled approval of the accord.
[Jabril Sanei is an activist in Melbourne's Somali community and helps produce the Voice of Somali Youth newspaper.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 3, 2004.
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