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Background Report on
Somalia
© 1994 Dianne L. Durante
Civil war has been raging in Somalia since 1988, with fighting between rival clans, sub-clans and sub-sub-clans of the Somali tribe, some of whom want independence, some of whom want to control the country from Mogadishu, and some of whom merely want to carry on feuds begun generations ago. Rival clans commonly capture relief shipments from abroad, steal food, seed and equipment from farmers, and bomb without regard to the presence of civilians. The death toll from direct killings and famine is in the hundreds of thousands.
CAVEAT ON STATISTICS Back to Table of Contents
Statistics from a socialist government or a chaotic non-government should be treated with extreme caution: when in doubt, integrate. For instance, the literacy rate was given in several sources as 24%, but this seems surprising in a country that has 1 daily newspaper, no book publishing, no public libraries and only 4 TVs per 10,000 people.
IF YOU KNOW IT, YOU KNOW IT FOR (an attempt to help you integrate what you might already know of this nation):
Nothing, really. No major artistic or archeological sites, no famous cities, no battlefields of the European powers.
GEOGRAPHY Back to Table of Contents
SIZE: 246,154 sq. mi.
CAPITAL:
GEOGRAPHY: Stretches from about 12 degrees north to 2 degrees south of the Equator, with the second longest coastline on the African continent (about 2,000 mi.). No railways, few paved roads.
WIDER GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING: Covers most of the "Horn of Africa," from Djibouti (at the outlet of the Red Sea) along the Gulf of Aden to Kenya, which is on the Indian Ocean. To the west is a long, disputed border with Ethiopia.
CLIMATE: The north is semi-desert, unbearable from June to Sept. with average temperatures of 104-108 degrees and a minimum of 70 degrees; annual rainfall approximately 3". This part of the country is used, if anything, only for grazing. The best soil is in the south, between the Juba and Shebeli Rivers, but only about 10% of the 30,000 square miles that is arable is under cultivation (as of the late 1960s); rainfall in this area is 13-20" and average temperature 82 degrees.
POPULATION: Estimated in 1992 at 7,235,226, about 29.4 persons per square mile. 98% belong to the Somali tribe, within which are numerous clans and sub-clans. The clans in the north are largely nomadic and frequently fight over grazing territory and water. The southern tribes are more settled. 33% of the population is urban (vs. 75% in the U.S.). Average life expectancy is 56; only 3% of the population is over 65, and 46% is under 15. Population growth is 2.1%.
PAST & PRESENT SITUATION Back to Table of Contents
CURRENT POLITICAL SYSTEM: For practical purposes, non-existent. No courts or police, either.
PAST POLITICAL SYSTEM: Somalia was formed in 1960 by the union of the British Somaliland Protectorate and the Italian-administered Trust Territory of Somalia. From 1960-69 it was run under a multi-party system, with the president elected by National Assembly; he in turn selected a Prime Minister to form a government. The government represented all the main clan and tribal groupings in the nation. Local control was exercised through headmen or chiefs, but control was always very slight, except in the settled, arable areas in the south.
In 1969 the multi-party system was overthrown by the military and Mohammed Siad Barre came to power. He established a socialist dictatorship, ruling by playing rival clans against each other, and had the distinction of having one of the worst human rights records in the world: torture of political prisoners, looting, rape, murder. He was backed, incredibly, by the U.S. government. Siad Barre fled Somalia in January 1991, when armed rival clans marched on Mogadishu, but many months later his loyal followers were still wreaking havoc in western Somalia.
The rival clans who drove Siad Barre out have been unable, in nearly 3 years, to agree long enough to form a new government. Gang warfare goes on throughout the country, pretty much unchecked. Aside from those killed directly by the gangs, famine has been rampant: in 1991 only 5% of the usual crops were planted.
HISTORY: Mogadishu was an established port as early as 1500 B.C., trading with Egypt and Phoenicia, and later with Thailand, China and the Middle East. The coast of present-day Somalia was settled between the 7th & 10th centuries by Arab traders. As early as the mid-16th century the Muslim ruler of the city and kingdom of Zeila (near the northern border of Somalia) fought with and defeated the Ethiopians (supported by the Portuguese) and took part of the territory of Ethiopia (a.k.a. Abyssinia). Conflicts with Ethiopia remain a dominant feature in Somalia's history up to the present day.
In the second half of the 19th century the area became a center of competition between Great Britain, Italy, France, Egypt and Ethiopia, partly for its access to the interior, partly because the area is situated near the mouth of the Red Sea, which the Suez Canal finally connected to the Mediterranean in 1869. Great Britain gained control of a large part of present-day Somalia through treaties of protection with various clans. A major Somali insurrection took place in 1899 (following the example of the Sudanese Mahdi) under Sheikh Mohammed (the "Mad Mullah") and his followers, known as dervishes; this insurrection was not finally put down until 1920. During World War II the British Protectorate was evacuated; when it was recaptured, the British and Italian territories came under British jurisdiction. By 1950 it was decided that the British and Italian parts of Somalia would be granted independence in 1960.
The newly constituted nation of Somalia almost immediately began fighting with its neighbors, claiming for itself all adjacent territories inhabited by members of the Somali tribe: Djibouti, the northern part of Kenya, and the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. In 1977 Somalia declared war on Ethiopia and captured most of the Ogaden area, but Ethiopia recaptured it in 1978 with massive aid from the Soviets - who had previously been giving aid to Somalia, and who were now expelled from that country. Peace was finally made with Ethiopia in 1988.
At about the same time that peace was made with Ethiopia, dissatisfaction began to rise among the many clans and sub-clans, leading to Siad Barre's flight from Somalia in 1991.
Civil wars in Ethiopia and Somalia have led millions of refugees to cross the borders: by one estimate, as many as one in 4 of those living in Somalia is a refugee from Ethiopia, and by mid-1992 a million Somalis had fled to Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya or Yemen. These displaced people are worsening an already critical food situation.
In December 1992, just before he left office, George Bush sent about 30,000 U.S. troops to Somalia with orders to ensure that foreign food shipments reached the victims rather than being hijacked by local warlords. (It is estimated that until that time, about 50% of the shipments were stolen.) The U.N. officially took over this mission in May 1993, and U.S. troops (now numbering about 13,000) are set to be withdrawn in March 1994. The U.N. Secretary General is already warning that, unless U.S. troops are replaced, the warlords will have to be kept in check by their rival warlords (an unlikely prospect).
ECONOMY Back to Table of Contents
PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS: Largely a subsistence economy: according to the Britannica (1970) more than 60% of the population were pastoral nomads herding sheep, goats and camels, and another 15% or so are farmers. (But according to the on-line *Academic America Encyclopedia,* 1993, 33% of the population is now urban.) Chief exports: livestock, hides, bananas. According to the 1990 Traveller's Guide, "Manufacturing industry is very limited; alcohol and perfumes are produced in Jowhar and there is a [!] textile and clothing factory in Bal'ad" (p. 177). 68% of the GDP comes from agriculture (vs. 2% in the U.S. and 42% in Ethiopia). GNP declined 1.4% on a GNP of US$1.7 billion; industrial production declined 5% (Ethiopia has a GNP of $6.6 billion, Djibouti a GNP of $340 million).
CURRENCY: Somali shilling; in the 1960s, 7.14 So.sh. = US$1.00; by 1990, 409.00 = US$1.00. (The exchange rate of the Somali shilling is not listed in the Wall St. Journal.)
INFLATION RATE: (ca. 1990) 81.7%, vs. 7.8% in Ethiopia, 3.7% in Djibouti and 5.4% in the U.S.
PER CAPITA INCOME: US$210 (vs. US$130 for Ethiopia, US$1,030 for Djibouti and US$21,800 for the U.S.).
CULTURE Back to Table of Contents
LITERACY RATE: 24% (vs. 48% in Djibouti and 62% in Ethiopia). There is one daily newspaper in the whole country (Ethiopia has 3) and .4 TVs per 1,000 people (Ethiopia has 1.7, Djibouti has 48, the U.S. [ain't it great?] has 812).
LANGUAGES: Northern Somali is the language spoken by most; it had no written form until 1972, when a Latin orthography was adopted. Italian, English and Arabic are the chief written languages, with Arabic used for religion as well.
RELIGION: Islam is the state religion; most Somali are Sunni Muslims. Traditional dances are still performed to ward off diseases, crop failures, wild animals, foreign invaders and other evil forces.
CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS: No written literature (see Languages); some oral narrative poetry.
TIDBITS: The total number of physicians is 325, total number of dentists 5. (Tiny Djibouti has 77 and 4, respectively). You will be relieved to know that the animals are protected: Somalia has 3 game parks and 10 game reserves.
If you visit Somalia you must be inoculated against yellow fever and cholera; vaccinations against typhus, typhoid and tetanus are "advisable, but not essential" (Traveller's Guide p. 178). Malaria is endemic.
SUMMARY Back to Table of Contents
LESSONS LEARNED: A nation cobbled together on the basis of race, and held together only by that bond, will rarely remain either peaceful or free. Even if an outside power initially establishes a relatively free government, such a nation, because it concentrates on collective rather than individual rights, will deteriorate into civil war between rival gangs or hold together only by fighting a neighbor. Most often the people end up hoping for a strong dictator, who will offer peace if not freedom, and death from one predictable source rather than dozens. The pattern that appears in Somalia can currently be seen in neighboring Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Sudan, and I suspect in much of Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, where European powers granted independence to people who had no conception of government by the principles of individual rights rather than by the strongest group. Precisely the same situation was described by Ayn Rand when Algeria won its independence in 1962: "The people of Algiers marched through the streets of the city, in desperate protest against the new threat of civil war, shouting: 'We want peace! We want a government!' How are they to go about getting it? Through the years of civil war, they had been united, not by any political philosophy, but only by a racial issue. They were fighting, not for any program, but only against French rule. When they won their independence, they fell apart - into rival tribes and armed 'willayas' fighting one another" ("Blind Chaos," The Ayn Rand Column, p. 58; available from the Ayn Rand Bookstore.).
QUESTIONS UNANSWERED: Granted that a civilized nation has the right to colonize an area such as this, use its natural resources for its own purposes and hire ("exploit") its people: what are that nation's obligations when it chooses to withdraw? Should it remain until the people are educated enough to engage in something other than civil warfare? What if the nation can no longer afford to defend the colony, or no longer has selfish reasons for remaining?
BIBLIOGRAPHY Back to Table of Contents
Academic American Encyclopedia, online edition, Grolier Electronic Publishing, Danbury, CT, 1993: s.v. Somalia and Djibouti (by Peter Schwab) and Ethiopia (by James McCann).
Encyclopedia Britannica (1970) XX, 893-99.
RAKE, Alan, ed. Traveller's guide to East Africa and the Indian Ocean. London: IC Publications, 1990. The general tips on travel in Africa are eye-opening: don't photograph airports, harbors, bridges, railways or anything that could be regarded as a military installation; crossing the desert should not be attempted by hitchhikers, and vehicles should travel in convoy through the desert; avoid foods that have been prepared in advance and left standing.
Software Toolworks World Atlas, distributed by The Software Toolworks, 1991 version.
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