The Last War and the Next: Is Somalia Next? Part 1

In the last issue, we indicated that after that issue's Dossier examined the lessons to be learned (and exceptions to be unlearned) about the war so far in Afghanistan, that the second part would focus on possible scenarios for the next stage in the US' war against Al-Qa‘ida and terrorism. Since that time, however, it has become increasingly clear that the US and several European allies are focusing their attention closely on Somalia. Accordingly, this Dossier is not Part 2 of that one, but Part 1 of an in-depth look at Somalia, also the subject of this issue's Profiles.

US and allied forces have been flying reconnaissance missions over the country, naval vessels have been patrolling the waters off the coast in an attempt to prevent Al-Qa‘ida members from Afghanistan or elsewhere from infiltrating, and European press reports have indicated that the British have been asked to prepare for possible air operations and that German naval vessels are deploying to the region. On January 9, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted by The Washington Times as saying that the US had warned several countries that they must eradicate terrorism or face possible US action, and that "one that immediately comes to mind and that has been mentioned particularly is Somalia". As a result, rather than a generalized "Part 2" of the last Dossier, this represents the first of two Dossiers on the possibility that Somalia is next. It begins with an overall background on Somalia and its factions, and then looks in more detail at the Islamist threat and the options available.

It is true that there is a vocal "on to Baghdad" campaign still underway both in Washington planning circles and on the op-ed pages, but it is also clear that until the Al-Qa‘ida issue is resolved, there is a disinclination to undertake a direct confrontation with a regime which, however unpalatable and dangerous, was not likely directly involved in the events of September 11. There has been more talk about action against terrorist camps in the Philippines, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia.

In the Philippines, the US is known to be providing assistance to the Philippine government in an attempt to finally bring under control the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas, who have made a habit of kidnappings for ransom and have trained in Usama bin Ladin's camps. In Yemen, the government has decided to undertake its own campaign against certain tribal areas, especially in its dissident provinces (See The Estimate's last issue). Sudan, which kicked Bin Ladin himself out in 1996, has been taking action against some of his assets there and has been reportedly cooperating with the US despite tenuous relations between Washington and Khartoum.

Somalia is another matter. A failed state like Afghanistan, with multiple quarreling warlords, no single faction controls anything like the percentage of the territory that the Taliban controlled in Afghanistan before October 7, when the war began. And various factions are positioning themselves to be the "Northern Alliance" of Somalia and friends of the US. Since it increasingly looks like some kind of action is to be directed at Somalia, this first part of our new Dossier looks at the situation on the ground and the background to it; and this issue's Profiles pages looks at the various warlords (and the "elected President" backed by the UN process), on Pages 9 and 10.

Just as Hollywood was releasing the film Black Hawk Down, based on Mark Bowden's book of the same name about the 1993 firefight in Mogadishu which killed 18 American soldiers, there was new talk of a return to some sort of military operations in Somalia. Usama bin Ladin has sometimes been quoted as pointing to the 1993 firefight and the subsequent US withdrawal as an indication that Americans are unwilling to accept even relatively light casualties, as the withdrawals from Beirut in the early 1980s and Somalia a decade later allegedly prove. Ironically, the firefight on which Black Hawk Down is based was an attempt to capture Somali warlord Muhammad Farah Aidid; as noted in the last issue of The Estimate, his son, Hussein Aidid, who now heads his faction and also leads a council of warlords, is a former US Marine who is seeking to join with the US in cracking down on Al-Qa‘ida and its allies.

He is not alone. Many faction leaders on all sides in Somalia are seeking to position themselves to be the "Northern Alliance" or the Hamid Karzai of Somalia, riding into leadership backed by the air power of the United States. But Somalia is, arguably, a far more splintered mess than Afghanistan ever was.

Somalia is, officially, an "Arab" country, in that it is a member of the Arab League, but few Arabs or Somalis really think of it as such; the national language is Somali; Arabic is the language of religion and a trading lingua franca along the seacoast. Somali is generally classed with the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. Linguistically and ethnically, the country is far more united than Afghanistan; most of the population are Muslim Somalis. (Somali-speakers are also found in neighboring Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya, and Somali irredentism was often a problem before the country collapsed from within.) Somalis believe themselves to be descended from an eponymous ancestor named Somal or Samaal, from which the people take their name, and his brother Sab, or Saab, who are both said to have come from the Arabian tribe of Quraysh, that of the Prophet Muhammad. (Like most tribal genealogies, it should not be taken as straight history, of course; Somali is not a Semitic language.)

Clans, Subclans, and Sub-Subclans
But Somalis have long tended not to identify themselves merely as Somali-speakers, but by clan affiliation, and here Somalia has long been as fractious and subject to as many centrifugal forces as Afghanistan. The country is not just divided into clans and tribes but into clans, sub-clans, sub-sub-clans, and tribes. The great clans are not always geographically united, sometimes having far-flung sub-clans not contiguous to the main clan. Clan identification has always taken precedence over "Somali" identity, except when confronting non-Somali outsiders; sub-clans make and remake alliances to control the larger clan formations; and thus a classic example of a hard-to-govern, noncentralized state ripe for warlordism existed in Somalia even before the collapse of 1991, which has never been really countered.

Somali Ethnic Groups (Clans and Major Subclans) (CIA Map) Transliterations differ slightly from those in the text

Although all Somali-speakers are to one degree or another considered Somali, the most important clans belong to the "four noble clans" and their subclans, which claim descent directly from the eponymous Samaal. There are also some minorities (Bantus from the south, Oromo from Ethiopia, etc.), but most of the "minorities" in Somalia are in fact smaller clans which are considered to be less purely Somali than the four noble clans.

The four noble clans are the Isaaq, the Hawiye, the Darod and the Dir. The Isaaq are dominant in the north, the former British Somaliland, which has since 1991 proclaimed itself an independent state of Somaliland. The Hawiye and the Darod have long been in competition for the southern parts of the country; the Dir have territory in both northwestern and southern Somaliland but do not control a contiguous territory.

These major clans are often less important, however, than the subclans. The Hawiye has 10 main subclans, of which the Habr Gedir have been among the most important in factional fighting; Aidid is Habr Gedir. Various other subclans however, as well as sub-subclans within the Habr Gedir, have contested its authority.

The Darod include five major subclans, the Dulbohante, Marehan, Warsangali, Ogaden, and Majertain or Mijertayn. (Spellings vary considerably depending on whether one is using older colonial tranliterations, transliteration from Somali — written in a form of the Roman alphabet but one which does not make pronunciation obvious to non-Somalis — or from Arabic.) The Darod contest some areas of the south with the Hawiye and also control the autonomy-seeking region calling itself Puntland. This will be discussed in further detail a bit further on.

Two other major tribal divisions trace their descent from Sab, or Saab, traditionally the brother of Samaal. These are the Digil and the Rahanwayn. The name Sab is said to be pejorative, one used by the Samaal, meaning "low", because the Sab tribes tended to be more agricultural and more likely to have married into non-Somali groupings. The Digil and Rahanwayn live primarily in southern Somalia, between the Juba and Shabelle rivers, the country's main agricultural zone. They have been of considerable importance in the evolution of warlord conflict in the south.

The Historical Background
Somalia's decade of chaos, since 1991, is in part a product of its clan-dominated social structure, in part a product of years of misrule by the late President Siad Barre, who took power in 1969 and held on until he finally fled into exile in 1991.

Historically, the whole Somali-speaking area was almost never united politically, though the Somali-speaking coastal regions, Muslim in religion, have long been in confrontation with an expansionist Christian Ethiopia to the west and south. During the period of colonial expansion, first the Ethiopians, Ottomans and Egyptians began to seek influence in the area, and later the British, French and Italians. By the late 19th century, Egyptian, British, Italian and French influence began to compete, with France eventually acquiring control over what is now the Republic of Djibouti (once known as French Somaliland); Britain initially sought mainly to protect its trade routes between Suez and Aden but eventually came to install a protectorate over the northern parts of present-day Somalia centered on the port of Berbera. Italy came last, moving into Eritrea in the late 19th century. Though Italian territorial ambitions primarily centered, long before Mussolini, on Ethiopia, as part of its effort to increase its influence from Eritrea, Italy began to acquire influence around the Somali horn. By the 1890s Britain and Italy signed treaties defining the boundaries between British Somaliland and Italian Somalia on the north, and between Somalia and British Kenya on the south.

Jumping over a great deal of history, an Italian Army sought to move into British Somaliland in 1940, but British colonial forces, mostly East African, conquered not only Italian-controlled Ethiopia but also Italian Somalia by 1941.

In 1949, the United Nations Security Council decided to make former Italian Somalia a United Nations Trust Territory under the supervision of postwar, no longer fascist Italy, with a clear understanding that the trust was for a period of some 10 years and that independence should be granted by 1961.

British Somaliland and French Somaliland remained under their prewar colonial status. Other ethnic Somalis lived in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia and in northeastern Kenya. During the decade from 1949 to 1959, under UN supervision, the Italian-controlled area moved towards self-government.

British Somaliland, meanwhile, was also moving towards independence under British guidance, and in 1960, the two former colonial zones, despite considerable differences in second language (English versus Italian) and cultural preferences, were able to merge into a new united Somali Republic in July 1960. The new state's flag had a five-pointed star with irredentist symbolism: not only for the British and Italian colonies but also for the "lost" Somali territories of Djibouti, Ogaden in Ethiopia, and northeastern Kenya.

Independent Somalia struggled with many of the same issues which beset other parts of sub-Saharan Africa after independence: the growth of single-party or single-tribal dominance, and the difficulty of maintaining a multi-party system in a tribal society. In the March 1969 elections, no fewer than 64 parties presented themselves, though the ruling Somali Youth League was dominant.

In October 1969, a military coup overthrew the elected government. Led by Muhammad Siad Barre, this revolutionary regime would, after many vicissitudes, purges and changes of ideology and alignment, last until Siad himself fled the country in early 1991, more than 21 years later.

Siad Barre was born of an Ogaden mother and a Marehan father, both of these subclans of the Darod; during his tenure he heavily favored his father's Marehan kinsmen, alienating many other clans in the process.

Siad Barre's two decades in power saw the usual shifts in position, purges of deputies, foiled coups and plots of many similar countries in the era. He took a left-wing, "Islamic Socialist" and later "scientific socialist" turn which saw him aligning with the Soviet Union and also bringing Somalia into closer links with the Arab world. But at the same time Siad Barre became an increasingly isolated figure, corrupt, afraid of coups, favoring his own clan relations. He had confrontations with Ethiopia over his native Ogaden; he grew old, corrupt, and in time ill in office, especially after a suspicious auto accident left him somewhat disabled.

As his old allies and deputies fell out with him, Siad (as he was usually known) gradually came to depend more and more on his own clansmen and allies, and faced tribal and regional uprisings as a result. Long before he fled the country at the end of January 1991, he was already in deep trouble.

In the 11 years since Siad Barre fled (he died in exile in 1995), Somalia has never had a real central government. Various tribal factions and local warlords sought to parcel out the spoils. Muhammad Farah Aidid's Habr Gidr-based forces took Mogadishu and saw themselves as rightful claimants to the Presidency. But other clans backed ‘Ali Mahdi, who headed a transitional government. A famine in 1993 brought international intervention, and the United States soon found itself, in a textbook example of "mission creep", moving from being there for humanitarian purposes to seeking "nation-building", which came to mean getting rid of Aidid.

Factions proliferated. Already in 1991 the former British Somaliland had declared its independence under the name "Somaliland"; by 1998 the area to its east had declared itself the autonomous "Puntland" and another warlord was talking about a "Jubaland" in the south. Despite the Disneyesque names, some of these statelets had some real existence; Somaliland in fact has governed itself with greater stability than any other part of Somalia (or, they would say, former Somalia) ever since.

Part 2 Next Time: from 1992-93 to the Present, and the Al-Qa‘ida Role in Somalia

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