Revolt in British Somaliland

These arrangements had scarcely been completed when the British Somaliland protectorate administration found its modest rule threatened by a religious rebellion led by Maxamed Cabdulle Xasan. This Somali sheikh (known to the British as the Mad Mullah) of the Ogaadeen clan, living with his mother’s people in the east of the protectorate, was an adherent of the Ṣaliḥiyyah religious order, whose reformist message he preached with messianic zeal. He quickly achieved wide recognition for his learning, piety, and skill as a mediator and initially cooperated with the authorities. In 1899, however, Sheikh Maxamed came into conflict with the recently established Christian mission and also was involved in a petty dispute with the administration. With the current European and Ethiopian encroachment and with the example of the Sudanese mahdi (in Islamic eschatology, a messianic deliverer), these two incidents provided the seeds that rapidly developed into a major Somali insurrection.

Maxamed did not appropriate the title of mahdi but assumed the title of sayyid (a descendant of the Prophet), and his followers were known as the dervishes. He displayed great skill in employing all the traditional tactics of Somali clan politics in building up his following, strengthening these with the call to national Muslim solidarity against the infidel colonizers. Arms and ammunition, denied to Somali in the past, became easily available through the ports of Djibouti and the northeastern coast, and the dervishes, although opposed by many Somali, who were branded as traitors to Islam, successfully weathered four major British, Italian, and Ethiopian campaigns between 1900 and 1904. The cumbersome British armies, hampered by their supply and water requirements, found the dervish guerrilla tactics hard to combat effectively, and, when in 1910 the British government decided to abandon its inconclusive, extremely expensive operations and withdrew to the coast, leaving chaos in the interior, Sayyid Maxamed seemed to have emerged victorious. A new policy was subsequently adopted, however, and, with the aid of an increasingly effective camel constabulary (whose founder, Richard Corfield, was killed at the Battle of Dulmadoobe in 1913), the dervishes were kept at bay until 1920, when a combined air, sea, and land operation finally routed them. The formidable dervish stronghold at Taleex, or Taleh, was bombed, but the sayyid escaped, as so often before, only to die of influenza a few months later while desperately seeking to rally his scattered followers.

Italian Somaliland

After 1920, administrative control (under the colonial office since 1905) was gradually restored in the protectorate. In Italian Somaliland, where the Italians had been gradually extending their hold on the country, the sayyid’s rebellion had caused less disruption, and the appointment in 1923 of the first fascist governor marked a new active phase in the life of the colony. Two years later Britain ceded Jubaland with the port of Kismaayo, and in 1926, after a bitter military campaign, the two northern Italian protectorates were firmly incorporated. Italian settlement was encouraged, and fruit plantations were developed along the Shabeelle and Jubba valleys. Although agreements of 1897 and 1908 had defined the border with Ethiopia, this had not been demarcated, except for a stretch of about 18 miles (29 km) delimited in 1910, and remained in dispute, thus facilitating the gradual Italian infiltration into Ethiopia. In late 1934 the celebrated Welwel incident, in which an Ethiopian patrol clashed with an Italian garrison, occurred at the Welwel oasis in the eastern part of the Ogaden claimed by both Italy and Ethiopia. The Italian conquest of Ethiopia that followed in 1935–36 (see Italo-Ethiopian War) brought the Ethiopian and Italian Somali territories together within the framework of Italy’s short-lived East African empire. Italian Somaliland became the province of Somalia.

Independence and union

During World War II the British protectorate was evacuated (1940) but was recaptured with Italian Somalia in 1941, when Ethiopia also was liberated. With the exception of French Somaliland, all the Somali territories were then united under British military administration. In 1948 the protectorate reverted to the Colonial Office; the Ogaden and the Hawd were gradually surrendered to Ethiopia; and in 1950 the Italians returned to southern Somalia with 10 years to prepare the country for independence under a United Nations trusteeship.

Taking advantage of the modest progress that the British military administration had effected, the Italians rapidly pursued social and political advancement, although economic development proved much more difficult. The British protectorate, in the event, became independent on June 26, 1960. On July 1, Italian Somalia followed suit, and the two territories joined as the Somali Republic.

The politics of the new republic were conditioned by clan allegiances, but the first major problems arose from the last-minute marriage between the former Italian trust territory and the former British protectorate. Urgent improvements in communication between the two areas were necessary, as were readjustments in their legal and judicial systems. The first independent government was formed by a coalition of the southern-based Somali Youth League (SYL) and the northern-based Somali National League (SNL).

Pan-Somalism

While modest developments were pursued internally with the help of mainly Western aid, foreign policy was dominated by the Somali unification issue and by the campaign for self-determination of adjoining Somali communities in the Ogaden, French Somaliland, and northern Kenya. The Somalian government strongly supported the Kenyan Somali community’s aim of self-determination (and union with Somalia); when this failed in the spring of 1963, after a commission of inquiry endorsed Somali aspirations, Somalia broke off diplomatic relations with Britain, and a Somali guerrilla war broke out in northern Kenya, paralyzing the region until 1967. By the end of 1963 a Somali uprising in the Ogaden had led to a brief confrontation between Ethiopian and Somalian forces. Since the United States and the West provided military support to Ethiopia and Kenya, Somalia turned to the Soviet Union for military aid. Nevertheless, the republic maintained a generally neutral but pro-Western stance, and, indeed, a new government formed in June 1967 under the premiership of Maxamed Xaaji Ibrahiim Cigaal (Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal) embarked on a policy of détente with Kenya and Ethiopia, muting the Pan-Somali campaign.

The era of “Scientific Socialism”

In March 1969 more than 1,000 candidates representing 64 parties (mostly clan-based) contested the 123 seats in the National Assembly. After these chaotic elections, all the deputies (with one exception) joined the SYL, which became increasingly authoritarian. The assassination of Pres. Cabdirashiid Cali Shermaʾarke (Abdirashid Ali Shermarke) on Oct. 15, 1969, provoked a government crisis, of which the military took advantage to stage a coup on October 21.

The overthrow of Cigaal brought to power as head of state and president of a new Supreme Revolutionary Council the commander of the army, Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre (Maxamed Siyaad Barre). At first the new regime concentrated on consolidating its power internally. Siad quickly adopted “Scientific Socialism,” which, he claimed, was fully compatible with his countrymen’s traditional devotion to Islam. Leading a predominantly military administration, Siad declared a campaign to liberate the country from poverty, disease, and ignorance. The president was soon hailed as the “Father” of the people (their “Mother” was the “Revolution,” as the coup was titled). Relations with socialist countries (especially the Soviet Union and China) were so greatly strengthened at the expense of Western connections that, at the height of Soviet influence, slogans proclaiming a trinity of “Comrade Marx, Comrade Lenin, and Comrade Siad” decorated official Orientation Centres throughout the land. Siad’s authoritarian rule was reinforced by a national network of vigilantes called Victory Pioneers, by a National Security Service headed by his son-in-law, and by National Security Courts notorious for ruthless sentencing. Rural society was integrated into this totalitarian structure through regional committees on which clan elders (now renamed “peace-seekers”) were placed under the authority of a chairman, who was invariably an official of the state apparatus. Clan loyalties were officially outlawed, and clan-inspired behaviour became a criminal offense. Of the government’s many crash programs designed to transform society, the most successful were mass literacy campaigns in 1973 and 1974, which made Somali a written language (in Latin characters) for the first time.

After 1974 Siad turned his attention to external affairs. Somalia joined the Arab League, gaining much-needed petrodollar aid and access to political support from those Persian Gulf states to which Somali labour and livestock were exported at a growing rate. Following Haile Selassie’s overthrow in September 1974, Ethiopia began to fall apart, and guerrilla fighters of the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) in the Ogaden pressed Siad (whose mother was an Ogaadeen) for support. When in June 1977 France granted independence to Djibouti (under a Somali president), the WSLF, backed by Somalia, immediately launched a series of fierce attacks on Ethiopian garrisons. By September 1977 Somalia had largely conquered the Ogaden region, and the war was at the gates of Hārer. Then the Soviet Union turned to fill the superpower vacuum left in Ethiopia by the gradual withdrawal of the United States. In the spring of 1978, with the support of Soviet matériel and Cuban soldiers, Ethiopia reconquered the Ogaden, and hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees poured into Somalia.