Bakaara Market, Mogadishu. (Photo AMISOM Public Information)
Few countries in Africa have had such powerful links with both the Soviet Union and the United States – each for years at a stretch – as Somalia, or more correctly, the Federal Republic of Somalia.
From a quiet Indian Ocean backwater that had once been an Italian colony, it remained aloof for a long time from the kind of power struggles that beset other African countries like Ghana, the Congo, Guinea, Algeria, the Sudan and quite a few more in the 1970s.
Overnight, that all changed in 1969, when the Somali army, led by Major General Siad Barre, grabbed power. His first move was to abrogate all security links he might have had with the West and to invite Moscow to become, as he would phrase it, ‘my trusted ally’.
Bakaara Market, Mogadishu. (Photo AMISOM Public Information)
The Soviet move was not only unexpected, but it was, as one hack phrased it ‘an overnight revolt against all things linked to the West’, with Moscow establishing several air bases in the interior while stationing its warships in Somali ports.
Baledogle, a small airport north of Mogadishu, became the biggest Soviet air base in black Africa, from where Soviet military aircraft operated across much of the Indian Ocean. Washington, London, Paris, Riyadh, Jerusalem, Addis Ababa and Nairobi were appalled, but there was little they could do.
An impetuous man, Siad Barre believed his links with the Kremlin were secure enough to realize the Somali imperial ambition of annexing several neighbouring regions. The Somali flag has a five-pointed star, signifying the five regions of ‘Greater Somalia’, two of which lay in neighbouring countries. One of these was Djibouti, a miniscule former French colony on the Red Sea. The other was Ogaden, which lay to the immediate north in what was formerly known as Abyssinia.
But when he invaded Ethiopia’s Ogaden Province – Addis Ababa was then Washington’s staunchest friend in Africa’s Horn –the Soviets had had enough. To the consternation of the West, the Kremlin abandoned the Mogadishu government and embraced Addis Ababa.
Mogadishu from the air. (Photo ctsnow)
That resulted in the Russians giving full support in the Ogaden War to the people of Ethiopia, establishing the largest international airlift of weapons since the Six-Day War.
For more than a decade thereafter, conditions within Somalia deteriorated markedly. A number of the country’s tribal leaders established themselves as ‘warlords’, some with Soviet support, others getting succour from Western sources. The country spiralled into anarchy. Conditions became so bad, that in 1992 the United Nations eventually stepped in with Operation Restore Hope, ostensibly intended to help Somalia’s starving millions.
Technically an ‘invasion’, Operation Restore Hope was a multinational force headed by the United States military, created for conducting humanitarian operations in Somalia. The starving masses were only part of the equation.
The move was controversial from the moment the first batch of US Marines stepped ashore on Mogadishu’s beaches – in the full glare of waiting television crews whose batteries of lights illuminated the way– with many tribal leaders retaining either clandestine Soviet links or receiving aid from radical Arab forces. Some of these disparate elements included powerful al-Qaeda cadres.
Worse still, it took only a day or two thereafter for several warlords to lay claim to food supplies that started to be unloaded from freighters that berthed in Mogadishu port, the idea being that this largesse would be handed over piecemeal to those desperate people who were worst off, and free of charge.
But there was no controlling the belligerent demagogues. Most of the food aid ended up on the open market, where those in need were expected to pay for whatever was on offer.
The situation soon became intractable. The warlords, having spotted a gap – with the multinational forces of Operation Restore Hope either unable or unwilling to stop the rot – moved into the next phase in a bid to dominate the status quo. Washington, unaccustomed to this kind of strident tribal militancy and in fear of being regarded as politically incorrect, sat back and did nothing.
Although both the United Nations and a powerful African Union (AU) military force continue to maintain a strong presence in the country, a high level of hostilities, as well as multiple killings, continue.
AMISOM forces in Mogadishu. (Photo AMISOM Public Information)
For the record, it is worth looking at how conditions have developed since Operation Restore Hope, together with an insight into some of the previous developments.
Al-Qaeda, through its surrogate insurgent force al-Shabaab, remains a major player in Somalia, receiving its support from Iran, today a close ally of the Russians.
There is still much evidence of the role that the former Soviet air base at Baledogle originally played in Somalia, including scores of jet engines abandoned where they had originally been deposited alongside the main runway. All this sophisticated equipment, abandoned, rusted and useless today, was to have been used to build fighter jets, planned before the Ogaden débâcle.
A new form of post-Soviet terrorism has emerged in Somalia. Suicide bombings have become commonplace, regarded by many because of Iranian and al-Qaeda involvement with al-Shabaab.
Even today, Somali insurgents never dare touch Moscow’s interests in the country. The Russians in Somalia are hardly ever molested and, unlike many Western embassies, their diplomatic enclaves are regarded as sacrosanct by the jihadis.
The story begins in 1950, when Italian Somaliland (southern Somalia) became a UN trust territory under Italian administration.
Renamed Somalia six years later, the country was granted internal autonomy and subsequently held its first elections, won by the Somali Youth League. In July 1960, both British and Italian Somaliland were granted independence, uniting to form the independent Republic of Somalia. Aden Abdullah Osman Daar became the first president, but the newly revived country’s borders were not clearly defined, resulting in border skirmishes and hostilities with Kenya and Ethiopia throughout the 1960s.
On 15 October 1969, President Shermarke was assassinated by a member of his own police force. Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in the subsequent coup, and in 1970, he declared Somalia a socialist state, strengthening ties with the Soviet Union and subjecting the country to his absurd ideology of ‘scientific socialism’.
In 1974, Somalia joined the Arab League, which, with the support of countries like Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, should have brought peace. But in 1977–78, Somali forces invaded the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, an area roughly the size of Norway or Malaysia, traditionally inhabited by Somali nomads. It has always been a remote, semi-arid region, with no large cities that has been subject to numerous border hostilities since the 1960s.
The invasion was a gamble. The president did not anticipate the Soviets, their former allies, rushing to help the government of Ethiopia. A major war followed in which thousands were killed on both sides, but, eventually, the better-equipped Ethiopian army and air force prevailed.
Somali troops were forced out by the Soviets and Cubans, prompting Barre to expel his Soviet advisers and strengthen ties with the United States who, until then, had been uncharacteristically relegated to the side lines. Somalia and Ethiopia signed a peace accord in 1988.
In 1991, the recalcitrant Siad Barre was forced out of office. The collapse of his government led to a series of feudal struggles up and down the coast, and, ultimately, to a full-blown civil war. This was followed by the arrival of a United Nations peacekeeping mission, which was to operate in Somalia between 1992 and 1995.
Concurrently, the civil discord that followed the failure of Barre’s administration led to a serious humanitarian crisis in Somalia, which prompted further action from the international community, including the arrival of an American-led task force in 1992, named Operation Restore Hope.
AH-1W Cobras aboard USS Tripoli off Somalia in 1992. (Photo Joseph Dorey, US Navy)
The following year, Somali rebels shot down two US helicopters, leading to a battle in which hundreds of Somali citizens were killed.
On 24 September 2001, the UN announced the withdrawal of its entire international staff from Somalia, declaring that it was no longer able to guarantee their safety. The following year, the US announced increased military operations in the country, which it suspected of being an al-Qaeda refuge.
The transitional Federal Somali Government was inaugurated in Kenya – its temporary base– at a conference on 10 October 2004 where Abdullahi Yusuf was elected president. It is worth mentioning that this was the fourteenth attempt to restore some kind of effective central government since 1991, with President Yusuf making an urgent plea to the international community ‘to stand by us and help us disarm our militias’. It had little effect, however, because factional differences between the tribes resulted in still more fighting.
In 2005, the transitional government returned from Kenya to Somalia, but divisions remained. Rebels began to hijack food shipments off the coast, leading to the suspension of several aid programmes. On 30 May, rival factions battled for control of Baidoa in south-west Somalia, where Yusuf planned to establish a temporary capital. In November, gunmen attempted to assassinate interim Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi, attacking his convoy in Mogadishu.
In 2006, Mogadishu experienced the worst violence in more than a decade, as fierce fighting broke out between rival militias.
On 26 February 2006, the transitional government met for the first time on home soil, in Baidoa. That same month, a UN Security Council resolution declared that no neighbouring states should send their forces into Somalia and that only African Union peacekeepers should be involved, but the resolution was ignored by Somalia’s old enemy, Ethiopia, which sent the Islamists into retreat.
On 27 December 2006, Ethiopia was urged to withdraw by the African Union and the Arab League. The next day, Mogadishu was recaptured by the government with the help of Ethiopian troops. In January 2007, the transitional government regained control, with President Yusuf entering Mogadishu for the first time since becoming president.
Three months later, the UN authorized an African Union peacekeeping mission. In June 2007, the United States carried out air strikes, the first known American direct military intervention since 1993, targeting al-Qaeda figures in southern Somalia. The following month, in protest, Islamist leaders boycotted a national reconciliation conference in Mogadishu.
The Ethiopian prime minister promised not to withdraw his troops until the ‘jihadists’ were defeated. Ethiopian, Somali and Islamist forces were accused of war crimes by Human Rights Watch, which claimed the UN Security Council was indifferent to the issues at stake.
The role of the United States in Somalia’s internal politics is significant, especially since the country is regarded as one of the most important revolutionary staging areas in Africa and the Middle East. Al-Qaeda – and its al-Shabaab jihadi counterpart – maintains numerous peripatetic bases in Somalia. While always on the move for security reasons, these bases increasingly come under attack, not only by US special forces units, but also by remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) launched from neighbouring Djibouti, a former French colony on the Red Sea.
America’s Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was established some years ago in Djibouti’s Camp Lemonnier. Formerly the headquarters of the French Foreign Legion, for a long time it served as the focal point for Washington’s Department of Defense efforts in the region. For security reasons, that headquarters has since been moved into Djibouti’s remote interior, to an area immediately south of the Danakil Depression. Notably, CJTF falls under the jurisdiction of the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM).
Mogadishu airport during the American invasion. Note the freight plane approaching from the right (Photo Al J. Venter)
On average, the staff of the CJTF numbers around 250, and the assigned troops number between 1,200 and 1,800. The US Navy also uses Djibouti to launch surveillance missions in the Red Sea.
The ‘combined’ aspect of the CJTF is at the staff level only; there are no non-American troops assigned to the US command.
The CJTF-HOA’s publicly stated mission is to engage in ‘joint and combined training and operations in the CJOA-HOA and AOI to enable Regional Nations to defeat al-Qaeda and Associated Movements (AQAM) and to obtain coalition support to diminish underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit and to prevent the re-emergence of AQAM’.