A brief description of Somalia during the last decades of the Cold War provides a framework for understanding the conflicts that followed in its wake. A union of British and Italian colonies that had been joined at independence in 1960, Somalia was the object of US-Soviet competi-tion.3 With the Gulf of Aden to the north and the Indian Ocean to the east, Somalia was strategically placed to control access to the Red Sea and to Middle Eastern oil routes. The country was plagued by both internal and external problems that provided outsiders with opportunities for in-fluence. Colonial boundary treaties had left millions of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti. After independence, successive cam-paigns to unite all ethnic Somalis in a Greater Somalia led to numerous border conflicts and devastating regional wars. Inside Somalia, ethnic Somalis shared a common language, culture, and religion. However, ge-nealogical groupings, reified by colonial policies as distinctive clan iden-tities, were manipulated by political leaders to mobilize constituents and consolidate power.4 Ethnic minorities, set apart by race, class, region, language, and occupation, suffered harsh discrimination. Among the
most vulnerable were the Somali Bantu, a recently coined umbrella term for people with Bantu-speaking ancestors who settled along the Shabelle River centuries before the arrival of Somali speakers, as well as those in the Jubba River valley whose ancestors were brought to Somalia as slaves in the nineteenth century.
The first democratically elected postindependence governments were challenged by sectarian and patronage interests, corruption, and disputes over the country’s expansionist goals. Relations with the United States were uneasy. Fearing Somali designs on its primary regional allies, Ethiopia and Kenya, Washington balked when Somalia requested mili-tary aid shortly after independence. The Soviet Union stepped into the gap. In October 1969, General Mohamed Siad Barre, commander in chief of the Somali army, seized power in a military coup. The following year, after Somalia expelled a number of US diplomats, military attachés, and the Peace Corps, Washington terminated all economic aid. Moscow in-tensified its military and economic assistance programs, and Siad Barre soon proclaimed that Somalia would follow the tenets of scientific social-ism. During the early years of his regime, the country made important strides in mass literacy, primary education, public health, and economic development, particularly in the rural areas, while new laws on marriage, divorce, and inheritance expanded women’s rights. However, the military strongman also abolished local authority structures, suspended the con-stitution, banned political parties, and imprisoned or killed dissenters.
Somalia’s political, economic, and social tensions were exacerbated by the Somali-Ethiopian War of 1977–78. As one of sub-Saharan Afri-ca’s most heavily armed nations, Somalia possessed a 22,000-man army that had been trained and equipped by the Soviet Union and its allies.
Ethiopia maintained an even stronger military apparatus, a 40,000 -man army that had been trained and outfitted by the United States. A 1974 military coup had ousted the US-backed emperor of Ethiopia, and the new rulers had embraced Marxism-Leninism. Yet the alliance with Washington endured. Then, in July 1977, Somalia invaded Ethiopia in an attempt to annex Somali-inhabited land. The Kremlin, which was courting the Marxist regime, was furious. Aided by some 18,000 Cuban soldiers, advisors, and technicians, the Soviet Union threw its full weight to Ethiopia. The OAU, which viewed Ethiopia as the victim of Somali aggression, ignored Siad Barre’s appeals for assistance. Although it offi-cially distanced itself from Somali aggression in 1977, the United States
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covertly supported Mogadishu’s war effort through third parties, mobi-lizing military aid through a consortium of allies led by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and France. Unable to sustain the war without more sub-stantial external support, Somalia was forced to withdraw from Ethiopia in 1978. Washington became a mainstay of the Siad Barre regime after its retreat. Between 1979 and 1986, the United States provided Somalia with $500 million in military aid, making it one of the largest recipients of US military assistance in sub-Saharan Africa.5 Somalia had effectively switched sides in the Cold War.
US aid notwithstanding, Somalia was in dire straits by the mid-1980s. The Ethiopian war, corruption, and mismanagement had run the economy into the ground, dissipating the development achievements of the previous decade. Onerous taxes stimulated rural unrest, which was brutally repressed. Determined to crush all political opposition, Siad Barre imprisoned or killed his critics or drafted them into the Somali army while collectively punishing their clan members. Encouraging clan rivalry to disrupt his opponents and strengthen his hold on power, his regime was increasingly dominated by his Darod clan family members and their allies.6
By 1989, clans that had suffered from harassment or discrimination, and Islamists, who had been repressed by the dictatorship, were united in their hatred of the Siad Barre regime. In the north, where a large num-ber of war refugees had been resettled on Isaaq clan land and government policies threatened Isaaq economic interests, the Ethiopian-backed Somali National Movement instigated an insurgency. Somali military planes, piloted by white South African and former Rhodesian mercenaries, bombed the northern city of Hargeisa, and government forces killed tens of thousands of Isaaq clan members. In the south, Islamist opposition was spearheaded by a Salafist study group, al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (Islamic Union). Many of the group’s leaders had worked or studied in Saudi Ara-bia, Pakistan, or Kuwait, where they had been exposed to fundamentalist teachings. Most of the members were students or faculty from Somali secondary schools and colleges, or from the Somali National University.
The massacre of 450 Islamist protesters in the capital city of Mogadishu in July 1989 prompted the transformation of al-Itihaad from a nonviolent association calling people to the faith into a jihadist organization whose goal was to establish an Islamic state in Greater Somalia. The new agenda attracted Somali veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War, who played a major
role in al-Itihaad’s metamorphosis. With their knowledge of military strategy and their training in guerrilla and terror tactics, the war veterans recast al-Itihaad as Somalia’s most powerful military force following the breakdown of the central government in 1991.