Mussolini and Hitler in Munich, June 1940. (Photo Eva Braun)
History World’s website1 covers in great detail much of what went before in a series of several thousand narratives and timelines, running from Aegean civilization to Zoroastrianism and gives us a detailed backdrop of early and more recent Somali events. Written by Bamber Gascoigne, he tells us that the land of the Somali people, much of it arid and inhospitable, has for thousands of years been close to civilization and international trade. To the north, just across the Gulf of Aden, is Saba, the land of the legendary Queen of Sheba and the earliest part of Arabia to prosper. To the west is Ethiopia, where the kingdom of Aksum was established by the 5th century BC.
Gascoigne goes on to explain that Somalia’s harbours, situated on the Horn of Africa, jutting out into the India Ocean, were natural ports of call for traders sailing to and from India. ‘So the coastline of the region was much visited by foreigners, in particular Arabs and Persians and later, by Chinese explorers. But in the arid interior the Somali people were left to their own devices.’
Enter other European powers, including France and Italy, with both nations having established settlements in the north, adjacent to the Red Sea, the former establishing a permanent base in what was to eventually become the Republic of Djibouti in 1977 and Italy taking control of much of the south. Britain made claims of its own in an expansive desert region that was listed as Somaliland on the charts up to the mid-20th century. This region has since hived off into a form of unrecognized semi-autonomy, refusing to acknowledge the authority of the Mogadishu government. Like Puntland, to its immediate south-east, contemporary Somaliland regards the central government as unable to control its own affairs.
More than a century before, undeterred by the strong European presence, Abyssinian Emperor Menelik II also laid claim to vast regions along his southern fringes, with a large part of it – Ogaden – in dispute for almost a century. Earlier, Gascoigne writes, ‘Italy had established protectorates along the coast eastwards beyond British Somaliland while Italian companies acquired leases on parts of the east-facing Somali coast (where the landlord was the sultan of Zanzibar). Italy agreed spheres of influence amicably with Britain in 1884, placing the border between British Somaliland and Italian Somalia just west of Bender Cassim … At first Italy was on congenial terms with Ethiopia, notably in the 1889 treaty of Uccialli concerning Eritrea. But disagreement over the actual meaning of the Eritrean treaty rapidly soured. By 1896 this resulted in outright war and in the crushing defeat of the Italians at Adwa, an event still celebrated annually throughout Ethiopia.’ At the time this was the greatest defeat inflicted on a European army since the age of Hannibal and its consequences were felt well into the 20th century. History World maintains, ‘As an example of colonial warfare on an epic scale, it cannot be surpassed.’
The first real uprising against colonialism occurred when Somalis sought to push the Ethiopians out of the Ogaden region but this uprising – largely tribal in context – then expanded to target European colonists as well. The Dervish State, headed by Mohammed Abdille Hassan, an Ogaden himself whom the British referred to as ‘Mad Mullah’, conducted a religious-based war of resistance against the Ethiopians and British from 1899 to 1920 when he was eventually defeated. The war resulted in the death of nearly a third of northern Somalia’s population.
Italy’s presence in the Horn became more pronounced over the years and culminated with fascist Benito Mussolini hoping to expand his interests across a vast swathe of Africa that stretched from Libya on the Mediterranean all the way south through the Sudan to the Indian Ocean. Egypt also came into the equation but Mussolini had not reckoned on the British being so resolute. A new era of conflict had begun in Somalia in 1923 with the arrival in the Italian colony of the first governor appointed by the fascist government in Rome. Mussolini had already made Africa a colonial priority, his intent clearly to follow in the footsteps of what France and Britain had achieved in West and Central Africa, and Germany in what are today Namibia, Tanzania and the Cameroons before being forced out of Africa after the First World War. One of his first moves was to sign the Treaty of Lausanne, which formalized Italy’s still-disputed administration of Libya.
Having been able to entrench his administrative presence in Somalia, Mussolini’s next step was to try to force Abyssinia into making aggressive moves towards his possessions along the coast, especially since Emperor Haile Selassie was in search of a suitable harbour that the landlocked country had been denied in Europe’s ‘African Scramble’. Both France and Italy controlled Ethiopia’s only possible approaches to the Red Sea. But the wise old fox, Haile Selassie, acutely aware of Mussolini’s colonial aspirations would not be prompted into taking any kind of action that might be construed by the Italians as aggressive.
Mussolini and Hitler in Munich, June 1940. (Photo Eva Braun)
That impasse resulted in Mussolini invading Ethiopia in October 1935 and thus launching the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. Haile Selassie’s forces fought bravely, but they could not counter the modern weapons fielded by the Italians, many of which had come from Nazi Germany, then also preparing for involvement in a foreign conflict, the Spanish Civil War.
Seven months after hostilities began Emperor Haile Selassie fled the country and Mussolini’s forces moved into the interior and took the capital, Addis Ababa.
In the interim, the Italians dedicated significant effort towards developing their twin East African colonies of Eritrea and Somalia by making their respective capitals Mogadishu and Berbera into fairly modern African cities where the Italian expatriate communities would be thoroughly at home. In fact, they were hugely successful, having initiated many of the facilities enjoyed by Italians in Europe – good hotels, a network of roads reaching into the interior, reliable communications, and health and banking systems. Both colonies attracted thousands of permanent settlers. In fact, when this author visited Mogadishu in the late 1960s and 1970s, he found the Somali capital one of the most pleasant ‘ports of call’ along the entire East African coast.
Whitehall, in contrast, took a more hands-off approach to governance of its portion of the Somali peninsula, leaving more responsibility in the hands of local leaders but also providing less by way of infrastructure. These distinctions are often cited as underpinnings of the incompatibility that would arise between the various colonial regions, of which Abyssinia, soon to be renamed Ethiopia, was a vital cog.
This colonial history, in addition to other dynamics, is also seen to play a role in the subsequent contrasting levels of stability of Somalia and Somaliland. During the Second World War, the entire East African region became an immediate focus of attention, Mussolini having signed up to the ‘Axis of Evil’.
On the outbreak of the Second World War, the Duke of Aosta, the viceroy of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana), had between 250,000 and 280,000 Italian troops on hand to maintain power. By 10 June 1940, the Italians were organized into four command sectors: the Northern Sector (Asmara, Eritrea), Southern Sector (Jimma, Ethiopia), Eastern Sector (near the border with French Somaliland and British Somaliland), as well as the Giuba Sector in the south (Kismayu). Lieutenant-General Luigi Frusci commanded the Northern Sector, General Pietro Gazzera the Southern Sector, General Guglielmo Nasi the Eastern Sector and Lieutenant-General Carlo de Simone the Giuba Sector. The Duke of Aosta maintained overall command from Addis Ababa.
Most of the Italian troops in East Africa – almost three-quarters of the entire force – were local East African askari. While native troops of the regular Eritrean battalions and the Somali colonial troops of the Regio Corpo Truppe Coloniali (Royal Corps of Colonial Troops) were among the best Italian units in East Africa, the majority of the colonial troops in Italian East Africa were recruited, trained and equipped to do little more than maintain order in the colony. The Somali dubats (literally ‘white turbans’), recruited from border clansmen, provided useful light infantry and skirmishers but the irregular bande were much less effective. Ethiopian askari and irregulars, recruited during the brief Italian occupation, deserted in large numbers after the outbreak of war. The Royal Corps of Colonial Troops included horse-mounted Eritrean cavalry known as ‘Falcon Feathers’ ( Penne di Falco). A squadron of these horsemen once charged a large section of Commonwealth troops, rather ineffectively hurling hand grenades from the saddle.
Once South African General Smuts had entered the war against the Axis powers, an immediate effort was made to send several large units north by road from South Africa to Kenya. More South African forces came in by sea from Durban. It was the second time that South Africa had mobilized its people to support its old Boer War enemy against the Germans and their allies.
To appreciate the problems facing the Allies, the topography of Kenya itself must be considered, as it had to be traversed to get to Somalia and dictated the lines on which the services, especially the engineers, transport companies and field ambulances, would have to develop and operate. The frontier of Kenya and Italian East Africa stretched for 2,000 kilometres from Lake Rudolf to the Indian Ocean, between Lamu and Kismayu, at points well over 50 kilometres in depth, and across almost its entire length it ran through arid bush and semi-desert, except briefly where it crossed a rocky but green escarpment at Moyale.
Three South African Air Force squadrons, including outdated Hawker Hartebeest fighters, were sent to Kenya during the first few months of 1940 and when South Africa declared war against Rome on 11 June, these units immediately attacked Italian positions, air and ground forces, petrol and ammunition dumps and lines of communication in an effort to offset the Regia Aeronautica’s numerical superiority in the air. The intent was to prevent Italian land forces from gaining further ground. The first South African infantry and support units arrived in Mombasa, Kenya, in early June. By the end of July, the 1st South African Infantry Brigade Group had arrived and weeks later the 1st South African Division was formed. This division included the 1st, 2nd, and 5th infantry brigade groups.
Italian-era Somali askari.
Italian troops at Moyale in East Africa, shortly before being overrun by the South African Army, 1941.
By the end of the year, there were 27,000 South Africans serving in East Africa, either in the 1st South African Division, the 11th African Division or 12th African Division. Each South African brigade group consisted of three rifle battalions, an armoured car company, and supporting signal, engineer, and medical units.
The assault by the South African 2nd and 5th infantry brigades together with the East African 25th Infantry Brigade on the enemy in southern Abyssinia was highly successful and in February 1941 the fort at Hobuk and the fortress of Mega fell to the Allies.
Meantime the South Africans, joined by a battalion of troops from the Gold Coast (Ghana today), defeated the enemy at El Wak on the Kenyan–Somaliland border from where they moved on to Kismayu on the coast. After crossing the Juba River, the Allies moved forward in strength to Mogadishu which was captured on 24 February 1941.
With the Italian resistance in Somaliland eliminated, British General Cunningham decided to immediately strike north from Mogadishu, following the Italian-built Strada Imperiale across the barren plains of north-eastern Abyssinia towards Jijiga and Harar, the latter being the country’s second-most important city. The distance of about 1,200 kilometres was covered in seventeen days countering Italian resistance all the way. After fierce fighting in the vicinity of Harar and Dire Dawa (a major Italian air base), the Allied troops reached the Awash River on 2 April 1941. Four days later, again with the South Africans in the van, they captured the Abyssinian capital Addis Ababa unopposed.
The war was not yet over. After their defeat by General Platt at the Battle of Keren, the remnants of the Italian Eritrean army had fallen back to the southeast towards Dessie and Amba Alagi to link up with the defeated armies fleeing north from Addis Ababa.
In the interim, the Emperor of Abyssinia, Haile Selassie, in exile in Britain since 1936, had returned to his country via the Sudan and collected a motley army of brigands and rebels, called the Shifta, which was now also marching on Addis Ababa and the Italian strongholds at Amba Alagi and Gondar. The two fiercest battles the South Africans would fight during the entire campaign were in the mountain maze of Dessie and Amba Alagi north of Addis Ababa. Towering 3,000 metres into the sky, the peak of Amba Alagi was surrounded by a jumble of mountains and ravines which, in May 1941, were enveloped by biting winds, rain, mist and sleet. On 18 May 1941, after fifteen days of tenacious assault by British, Indian and South African troops, the Duke of Aosta, Commander-in-Chief of the Italian East African Army, formally surrendered. The rainy season postponed the final reduction of some Italian garrisons which had taken refuge in ancient forts in the mountain country of northwest Abyssinia, but, on 27 November 1941, General Nasi, the last of the Italian commanders in the field, surrendered the fortress at Gondar.2 The East Africa Campaign was over.
Britain was to rule these territories as military protectorates until 1949, at which time the newly formed United Nations granted Italy a trusteeship over most of present-day Somalia. The British maintained the trusteeship over what is today the self-declared state of Somaliland. Bamber Gascoigne: ‘Between 1948 and 1950 the situation reverted to the colonial boundaries agreed in 1897. Ethiopia retained the Ogaden and the Haud. French and British Somaliland continued as before. In 1950 the Italians returned to Somalia under a UN trusteeship, with the commitment to bring the colony to independence within ten years.’
After the ten-year interim period, on 26 June 1960, the northern protectorate of Somaliland gained independence from Britain. Five days later, on 1 July 1960, the two former colonies united to form the United Republic of Somalia under President Aden Abdullah Osman Daar, Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Shermarke and a 123-member National Assembly representing both territories. Daar ruled Somalia from 1960 until 1967. Shermarke succeeded him and led the country for two years until his assassination in 1969. Though northern and southern Somalia were united under one government, they operated as two separate countries, with different legal, administrative and educational systems. On the day of Shermarke’s funeral, the Somali army, led by Mohamed Siad Barre, staged a bloodless coup.3
Barre, a charismatic but utterly ruthless military man who fostered a cult of personality and called himself ‘Victorious Leader’, served as president and military ruler of Somalia from 1969–1991 and renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic. Under Barre’s brutal leadership Somalia sided with the Soviet Union in the Cold War and while he proscribed tribalism and promoted his own ‘Scientific Socialism’, he supported clan chieftains in maintaining control of rural areas. The new government, dominated by the only legal political party, the Supreme Revolutionary Council, or SRC, formed a guiding ideology based on a combination of Marxism and the Quran and led a ‘re-education’ campaign to eliminate opposition. In 1976 the SRC officially marked the end of military rule by dissolving itself and ceding power to its own creation, the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, or SRSP.4
During these developments, a major recurring political theme in independent Somalia was the need to reunite with three large Somali groups ‘trapped’, as Mogadishu maintained, in other states. The three ‘offshoots’ were in French Somaliland, in Ethiopia (the annexed Ogaden and Haud regions) as well as in northern Kenya. Failure to make any progress on this issue was largely due to western support for Ethiopia and Kenya, which caused Somalia to look to the Soviet Union for military aid. Nevertheless the Somali government managed to maintain a fairly neutral stance in international affairs during the 1960s, a position which changed dramatically after 1969.
Soldiers of the King’s African Rifles during the British advance into Italian Somaliland, February 1941. (Photo H.J. Clements)
In 1977, with Ethiopia in chaos after the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, Somalia attacked Ethiopian garrisons in the Ogaden. But President Siad was betrayed by the Soviet Union who regarded Ethiopia as a more important potential client. Early in 1978 the Ethiopian army, deploying Soviet equipment and reinforced by troops from Cuba, recaptured the Ogaden. The result was the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees over the borders into Somalia. In the aftermath of this disaster, clan-based guerrilla groups were formed in and around Somalia with the intention of toppling Siad’s repressive centralist regime. By 1988 the country was in the grips of a full-scale civil war, resulting in the overthrow of the tyrant Siad in 1991.
Visit of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake, Egypt, February 1945. (Photo US National Archives and Records Administration)
British forces demolish fascist stone monument, Kismayo, Italian Somaliland, 1941. (Photo H.J. Clements)
The conflict destroyed Somalia’s crops during 1992 and brought widespread famine. Food flown in by international agencies was looted by the warring militias. By December 1992 the situation caused the UN to actively intervene, sending a force of 35,000 troops into the country under the auspices of Operation Restore Hope. The UN briefly calmed the situation, persuading fifteen warring groups to convene in Addis Ababa in January 1993 for peace and disarmament talks. These seemed at first to make progress, but the situation continued to deteriorate. In March 1994 American and European units in the UN force withdrew, finding the level of casualties unacceptable. Troops from African countries and the Indian subcontinent remained in situ.
During the rest of the decade the situation deteriorated still further. From late 1994 Mogadishu, was divided between the two most powerful warring factions, with the respective leaders of each declaring themselves president. In March 1995 remaining UN forces were evacuated from the coast under the protection of an international flotilla. At the end of the decade the only remotely stable region was the breakaway republic of Somaliland, in the north-west. An interim constitution was introduced there in 1997 and a president elected. But the would-be republic failed to win any international recognition.
In a messy litany of tribalism, colonialism, world wars and cold war, the 20th century came to a violent close with Somalia consigned to essentially ‘non-state’ status, ungoverned and ungovernable, with industrial-scale humanitarian disasters befalling the territory on a regular basis. The 21st century would usher in further turmoil and bloodshed as Islamist colonizers in the guise of al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab sought to stamp their footprint across the region.