As a social anthropologist (and amateur historian), I have had the unusual experience of studying an African people whose traditional cultural nationalism has fathered more than one contemporary 'nation-state'. In the turbulent context of northeast Africa, however, since formal independence from European rule in 1960, Somali political fortunes have experienced many vicissitudes. The passionate nationalism which brought Somaliland and Somalia together in 1960, and fuelled ambitions to extend the resulting Somali Republic to include the entire nation, unexpectedly burned itself out in the 1980s and 1990s. Then, with a reversal of external and internal pressures, the segmentary divisions within the nation reasserted themselves with an explosive vengeance.

Since Siyad had banned all reference to clans, this even included this circumlocutory usage of 'ex'. On visits to Mogadishu in this period, I thus could not resist wickedly asking my apparatchik Somali friends if one could now safely enquire about a person's 'ex-ex'. They were not amused.

As our oldest sources show, the reality, on the contrary, is that the Somalis invented their own clan system long before, and entirely independently of colonial intervention. Many things can be blamed on those who colonized Somali territory, but not that. Of course, the foreign administrations were forced to take note of these indigenous divisions and even exploit them: this is what the different Somali groups demanded. Each partisan division sought to bend colonial administrators to its particular cause, and the Somalis as a whole proved extremely adept at thus capturing support.

As our oldest sources show, the reality, on the contrary, is that the Somalis invented their own clan system long before, and entirely independently of colonial intervention. Many things can be blamed on those who colonized Somali territory, but not that. Of course, the foreign administrations were forced to take note of these indigenous divisions and even exploit them: this is what the different Somali groups demanded.

Today (2002) Somalis sometimes speak about their diminished nationalism, as though Somalia had not collapsed, in a way that recalls patients whose limbs have been amputated but still 'feel' intact. Their phantom-limb view of their dismembered body politic, may I think, result in part from confusion between Somali 'state' and 'nation', since while the former is highly problematic, in terms of shared culture and language the latter remains very real.

Of course, clan ties remain profoundly divisive, and combined with a bellicose uncentralized political culture, create formidable obstacles to the formation of stable, hierarchically organized political units. This, I am afraid, is the price of the democratic individualism and freedom that Somalis cherish. As the turbulent politics of the 1990s and 2000s so painfully illustrates, these aspects of Somali political culture pose bitterly intractable problems for those seeking to fashion a viable future state (or states). Somali cultural nationalism, contrary to the earlier idealistic hopes of many Somalis as well as my own, does not alone suffice. If Somali history has any lessons to teach, this is one of them.

Clans are traditionally led by Sultans (in Somali: Suldan, Boqar, Garad, Ugas, etc.). This title, which evokes something of the pomp and splendour of Islamic states, ill accords with the actual position of Somali clan leaders, who are normally little more than convenient figureheads and lack any firmly institutionalized power. Indeed for the majority of northern Somali clans, the position of Sultan, though often hereditary, is hardly more than an honorific title dignifying a man whose effective power is often no greater, and sometimes less, than that of other clan elders.

It must at once be added, however, that this markedly unstratified traditional political system does recognize a subordinate category of people known as sab who fulfil such specialized and to the nomad degrading tasks as hunting, leather- and metal-working, and haircutting. The sab who practise these occupations form a minute fraction of the total population and, traditionally, were separated from other Somali by restrictions on marriage and commensality. Today the enfranchisement of these Midgans, Tumals, and Yibirs, is far advanced and most of their traditional disabilities are disappearing.

It is in fact the elders – and this in its broadest connotation includes all adult men – who control clan affairs. With a few special exceptions, a hierarchical pattern of authority is foreign to pastoral Somali society which in its customary processes of decision-making is democratic almost to the point of anarchy.

Although Somalis sometimes compare the functions of their genealogies to a person's address in Europe, to understand their true significance it has to be realized that far more is at stake here than mere pride of pedigree. These genealogies define the basic political and legal status of the individual in Somali society at large and assign him a specific place in the social system.

But, within this series of diffuse attachments, his most binding and most frequently mobilized loyalty is to his 'diya-paying group'. This unit, with a fighting strength of from a few hundred to a few thousand men, consists of close kinsmen united by a specific contractual alliance whose terms stipulate that they should pay and receive blood-compensation (Arabic, diya) in concert. An injury done by or to any member of the group implicates all those who are a party to its treaty. Thus if a man of one group is killed by a man of another, the first group will collectively claim the damages due from the second.

The distinction between the cultivating life of the Sab clans, and the pastoral nomadism of the Samale, is fittingly explained by a number of picturesque legends and anecdotes in terms of the different characters attributed to their respective founding ancestors.

Despite the prevalence of war, feud, and fighting, particularly amongst the nomads, not all men are warriors. Those who devote their lives to religion and in some sense practise as men of God are known as wadads or sheikhs, and thus distinguished from the remainder and majority of men who, whatever secular calling they follow, fall into the category of warriors (waranleh, 'spear-bearers'). … What is significant here, however, is that in contrast to the position in so many other Muslim countries, Somali sheikhs are not normally political leaders and only in exceptional circumstances assume political power.

Although the settled conditions and more hierarchical political organization of the southern cultivating Somali might seem to afford more purchase to the theocratic ordinances of Islam, it would be very mistaken to imagine that Islam rests lightly upon the pastoralists. … The true position is rather that each community has adopted Islam in slightly different ways corresponding to differences in traditional social organization. Thus, for example, while in the north many lineage ancestors have been accommodated in Islam as saints, in the south where lineage organization is less strong and important, these are replaced by a multitude of purely local figures who have no significance as founders of kinship groups.

Thus while the Somali draw many of their distinctive characteristics, especially their strong egalitarianism, their political acumen and opportunism, and their fierce traditional pride and contempt for other nations from their own traditional culture, they also owe much to Islam. … Above all, Islam adds depth and coherence to those common elements of traditional culture which, over and above their many sectional divisions, unite Somalis and provide the basis for their strong national consciousness. Although the Somali did not traditionally form a unitary state, it is this heritage of cultural nationalism which, strengthened by Islam, lies behind Somali nationalism today.

Fortunately, oral records are on the whole sufficiently abundant and consistent in their essentials, to enable the broad outlines of the Somali dispersal to be traced with what is probably a considerable degree of accuracy. Certainly the evidence at present available leaves no doubt that the gradual expansion over the last ten centuries of the Hamitic Somali from the shores of the Gulf of Aden to the plains of northern Kenya is one of the most sustained, and in its effects, far-reaching movements of population in the history of North-East Africa.

UNTIL THE late nineteenth century the history of the eastern Horn of Africa is dominated by the protracted Somali expansion from the north, and the rise and decline of Muslim emporia along the coast. To a certain extent each of these two themes has its own particular history, but at no time over the centuries was one entirely independent of the other. The gradual enlargement of their territory by the Somali was not achieved by movements in the hinterland only, nor were events on the coast without their effect in the interior. About the tenth century, however, when our brief account opens, the pressure of events ran from the coast towards the hinterland. But by the mid-nineteenth century, a state approaching equilibrium had been attained between the outward pressures of movements in the interior and the inward trend from the coast: if anything, indeed, the balance was tipped in favour of the hinterland which had come to exert a dominant political influence over the coastal settlements.

This was not a migration into an entirely empty land. It involved considerable displacements of other populations, and the Somali sphere was only extended by dint of continuous war and boodshed. Those who were mainly involved, other than the Somali, were the ethnically related Oromo peoples – or some of them – and a mixed negroid or Bantu population which, prior to the incursions of the Hamitic Galla and Somali, appears to have possessed part of the south of what is today the Somali Republic.

Finally and most important of all, the new immigration brought Islam, the unifying force which played so significant a part in the sixteenth-century conquest of Abyssinia, and which remains the living faith of the Somali and of many of the peoples of present-day Ethiopia. At the same time, indirectly if not always directly, the absorption of Arab settlers seems to have given an impetus to, or to have precipitated, the movements of expansion of the Somali and Oromo.

Early in the fourteenth century, Haq ad-Din, Sultan of Ifat, turned the sporadic and disjointed forays of his predecessors into a full-scale war of aggression, and apparently for the first time, couched his call to arms in the form of a religious war against the Abyssinian ‘infidels’. At first the Muslims were successful. Christian territory was invaded, churches razed, and Christians forced to apostasize at the point of the sword. In 1415, however, the Muslims were routed and the ruler of Ifat, Sa‘d ad-Din, pursued and eventually killed in his last stronghold on the island off the coast of Zeila which to this day bears his name. From this period the Arab chroniclers refer to Adal as the ‘Land of Sa‘d ad-Din’. This crushing defeat, and Sa‘d ad-Din’s martyrdom, for his death soon came to be regarded in this light, took place in the reign of the Abyssinian Negus Yeshaq (1414–29) and it is in the songs celebrating his victories over the Muslims that the name ‘Somali’ is first recorded.

After almost a hundred years of tranquillity Adal had recovered sufficiently for a new onslaught against the Christians, and in Imam Ahmad Ibrahim al-Ghazi (or ‘Gran’) (1506–43), the Muslims had at last found the charismatic leadership they sought. The origins of Ahmad Gran, ‘the left-handed’ as he was known to Muslims and Christians alike, are appropriately obscure. But under his leadership resounding victories were won. Equipped with cannons imported through Zeila, his armies penetrated eventually into the heart of Abyssinia after a series of savage battles which are still vividly recalled today.

As might readily have been anticipated, this extraordinary outburst of Muslim enterprise was not long sustained. Both sides invoked foreign aid; the Abyssinians turning to the Portuguese now at the height of their power in the Red Sea, while the Muslims sought support from the Turks. After some further successes, Imam Ahmad unwisely dismissed his Turkish contingents and in 1542 was routed near Lake Tana by Galawdewos, the reigning Emperor of Abyssinia. The Imam was killed and Galawdewos’s victory marked the turning point in the fortunes of Abyssinia. Although the Muslims, with Harar as their new headquarters, continued the struggle, they were unsuccessful, and the glorious victories of the Imam were never repeated.

By 1919, feeling between the Darod and those Warday Galla who had been moved across the Tana River reached such a pitch that it was again necessary for the British authorities to intervene. The consequence was an undertaking by both sides, known as the Somali-Orma (Galla) agreement, which allowed the Galla who remained with the Darod on the left bank to choose finally between accepting the formal position of serfs, or of moving across the river to join their free kinsmen. Those who decided to cross the Tana were obliged to leave behind them with their Somali patrons half the cattle which they had acquired during their bondage. Under these conditions it is perhaps not surprising that few of the Warday Galla moved.

These movements had far-reaching social repercussions. Through contact with the Oromo and the absorption of those Galla who remained behind, and with an added leaven from the earlier Bantu communities, the Digil and Rahanweyn tribes emerged with their distinctive characteristics. From the Bantu they adopted cultivation, and from the Galla temporarily adapted their system of age-grades to their expanding military needs. In much the same way, the Darod who later crossed the Juba briefly assumed the Galla warrior age-grade system, and like the Rahanweyn, later discarded it.

Thus ended the great series of migrations which, over a space of some nine hundred years, had brought the Somali from their northern deserts into the more fertile regions of the centre and south and finally into the semi-desert plains of northern Kenya. These movements had far-reaching social repercussions. Through contact with the Oromo and the absorption of those Galla who remained behind, and with an added leaven from the earlier Bantu communities, the Digil and Rahanweyn tribes emerged with their distinctive characteristics. From the Bantu they adopted cultivation, and from the Galla temporarily adapted their system of age-grades to their expanding military needs. In much the same way, the Darod who later crossed the Juba briefly assumed the Galla warrior age-grade system, and like the Rahanweyn, later discarded it.

Probably, more significantly, their warriors were sometimes mounted on horseback, a technique which the Oromo later adopted and used to good effect in their massive migration into Abyssinia. Yet it was probably above all their overwhelming numerical superiority, and the dynamism which their movement acquired, which enabled the Somali to conquer so much territory at the expense of the Oromo.

Finally, in considering the character of the Somali expansion, it should be remembered that this was not a concerted operation under a single direction: it was a disjointed series of clan and lineage movements in which there were many cross-currents of migration as group jostled group in the search for new pastures.

Zeila's governor was now a Somali, Haji Shirmarke 'Ali Salih (of the Habar Yunis clan), who had begun his remarkable career as the captain of a training dhow. Having acquired wealth and reputation, the Haji obtained the office of governor about 1840 from the hereditary holder Sayyid Muhammad al-Barr, representative of the Ottoman Pasha of Western Arabia. His success was also apparently facilitated by the gratitude which he had earned from the British government of Bombay for protecting the lives of the crew of the Mary Ann, a British brig attacked and plundered by the local Somali at Berbera in 1825.

In 1854, Burton records that Haji Shirmarke, tall and, despite his sixty-odd years, strong and active, had not forgotten the military exploits of his youth and contemplated the conquest of Berbera and Harar. He lived modestly, however, in an indifferent mud and wattle 'arish, and not in one of the grander double-storeyed stone houses of the town. His 'secretary' was a Swahili slave; and although he was himself illiterate, his eldest son Muhammad, married to an Arab woman, had been educated at Mukha and proved to be something of a scholar. The town, Burton found, Haji 'Ali governed with a light hand, and the aid of a tough Hadrami soldier and forty mercenaries from Hadramaut, Mukha, and Aden, all armed with matchlock and sword.

As a whole the Benadir ports, Guillain found, acknowledged both the authority of the Sultan of Zanzibar and that of the Somali Geledi clan in the hinterland who, as masters of the Shebelle, were now at the height of their power. And while the Sultan of Zanzibar was no doubt potentially more powerful, because better armed, than his Geledi colleague, it was easier for the latter to give direct effect to his authority. Thus it was typical of the delicate distribution of power between the two Sultans that, when in 1870 the Sultan of Zanzibar wished to build a fortress for his representative at Mogadishu, this required the consent and assistance of the Geledi.

At the time of Guillain's sojourn, however, although the ancient cotton-weaving industry was still profitable, Mogadishu was largely in ruins. A recent scourge of plague and famine had reduced its population to a mere 5,000; and Hamarweyn and Shangani, the two quarters of the city, were at variance and each under a separate leader. The Sultan of the Geledi had in 1842 been invited to mediate and his action then had led to an uneasy truce between the two factions. By contrast, the Sultan of Zanzibar's authority over the town was slight and hardly more than nominal. In 1843, a Somali had been appointed as governor by the Sultan of Zanzibar and furnished with two soldiers to collect the taxes; but after a short time this official had relinquished his office, and now at the time of Guillain's visit, the only Zanzibari representative was an old Arab with an Indian assistant as tax collector.

Thus by the middle of the nineteenth century the Somali coast was no longer isolated, and locally it was now rather the nomads of the hinterland who controlled the ports than the other way about. To a large extent the coastal and hinterland traditions had merged, and the centre of political pressure had swung from the coast to the interior. The new external links between the coast and the outside world, however, served in the following decades of the nineteenth century to pave the way for a new colonial impact in which the pressure, initially at least, was again mainly from the coast towards the hinterland.

Britain’s interest in the Somali area stemmed from her possession of Aden which had been acquired by force in 1839 as a station on the short route to India. With its poverty in local resources, the Aden garrison was almost entirely dependent upon northern Somaliland for supplies of meat. There was also a considerable Somali community at Aden, many of whom found employment with the new rulers there. The Aden authorities and the Bombay government were thus directly concerned that orderly conditions should prevail on the Somali coast, and more especially that the feeder caravan routes from the interior, and the ports of Berbera and Zeila, should function freely. But although travellers like Burton and local officials at Aden might advocate a definite British occupation of the Somali coast, their plans fell on deaf ears in Westminster. The British government was only interested in Somaliland’s meat supply as a necessary ancillary to the garrisoning of Aden. Only if this were seriously threatened would any occupation of the Somali coast be justified.

At this time the Somali had no firearms, and had to depend for their security upon the traditional spear and dagger. In addition, despite their sense of cultural identity, they did not constitute a single political unit. Foreign aggression thus encountered not a nation-state, but a congeries of disunited and often hostile clans which themselves were regularly divided by bitter internecine feuds.

In the same period Italian influence at Assab, owned still by the Raffaele Rubattino shipping company, was consolidated and extended. At first the British reaction to these Italian moves was hostile; but by 1882 when under British pressure Italy had agreed to recognize Egyptian sovereignty to the north and south of her settlement, the Italian government felt sufficiently confident of its position to claim Assab openly and the port was bought from the company. Notwithstanding continued misgivings in some quarters as to Italy’s ambitions, the British government began to move towards the position of viewing Italian involvement as a convenient counterpoise to French expansion which was regarded as infinitely more threatening.

If from the British point of view Italy seemed to provide a suitable replacement to Egypt in Eritrea, the same solution was not applicable at Harar or on the Somali coast opposite Aden. The problem of the future status of these areas was complicated; no one friendly or fully acceptable to Britain seemed to want them. The Egyptians were not prepared to conduct the evacuation of their garrisons themselves; Turkey showed no willingness to resume control of Tajura and Zeila; and the local clans of the Somali coast, who of course were not consulted, were manifestly incapable of maintaining their independence and guaranteeing permanent peace and order at Berbera.

Under Walsh, building material which was scarce in the town was obtained by issuing camel drivers with a rope sling by means of which they were to bring two boulders into Berbera whenever they came in from the interior. Before entering the town, the nomads of the hinterland were encouraged to deposit their weapons at the police station and an ingenious procedure was devised to discourage violence. If two men were caught fighting, they were separated and deprived of their arms. They were then obliged to dig a grave. When this was completed to the satisfaction of the police, their arms were returned and they were urged to resume their dispute on the understanding that the victor would bury his adversary. Walsh found that under these conditions the most bellicose of warriors preferred to forget their differences, at least temporarily

Under the inspiration of the forceful Lagarde, the French station had been extended to the northern shore of the Gulf of Tajura after the departure of the Egyptians. Early in 1885 the French asserted that their dominion extended beyond Tajura to close on Jibuti, and Britain replied with a counter notification of her Somali Protectorate from Berbera to a point within the sphere claimed by France. Having gained a treaty of perpetual friendship (which included an unambiguous and total cession of land to France) with the ‘Ise of Ambado and Jibuti, France answered by extending her claim to the latter port.

The Italian version of this treaty was interpreted as making Abyssinia an Italian protectorate, but Menelik claimed that the Amharic version did not oblige him to conduct all his external relations through Italy. This inconsistency, however, was not to come to light until later. For the moment, the Italians, who had gained formal recognition of their sovereignty over Eritrea, felt confident of their position and made arms and ammunition freely available to Menelik: loan capital was also granted, and in 1890 Italy sponsored Abyssinian membership of the Brussels General Act which empowered her as a Christian state to import munitions legally.

In the year in which the ambiguous treaty of Ucciali was concluded, Italy established direct claims to the Somali coast on the Indian Ocean to the east of the British sphere. In February, a treaty was concluded between Vincenzo Filonardi, the Italian Consul at Zanzibar, and Yusuf 'Ali, the Majerteyn Sultan of Obbia, by which the latter placed his country and his possessions under the 'protection and government' of Italy in return for an annuity of 1,800 tallers.

The collapse of Filonardi's Company followed the resounding Italian rout at the battle of Adowa which decisively shattered Italy's ambiguous claim to a protectorate over Ethiopia. Italy managed, however, to retain her Eritrean colony, and despite the furore at home which greeted the news of Menelik's victory, she still clung optimistically to her new Somali possessions.

This remarkable document was dispatched and received in 1891: in Somaliland it claimed 'the Province of Ogaden, the Habar Awal, the Gadabursi, and the 'Ise' (the last three Somali peoples being clans with whom Britain, and in the case of the 'Ise, France also, had treaties of protection). The letter also contained the challenging declaration: 'Ethiopia has been for fourteen centuries a Christian island in a sea of pagans. If Powers at a distance come forward to partition Africa between them, I do not intend to be an indifferent spectator.'

This unwillingness to honour fully the terms of the Anglo-Somali protectorate treaties, however distasteful to the local British authorities, was of course consistent with the official British attitude towards the Somali coast. The effect was to strengthen Abyssinia's hand, and Italy's as Abyssinia's protector, although there was now growing British scepticism as to Italy's real influence with Menelik.

And caught between the conflicting ambitions of the Ethiopians on the hinterland, and the French, British, and Italians, on the coast, individual Somali clans and lineages sought to profit from this rivalry by playing one side off against another. The effect of this was to weaken the general position of the Somali and to encourage the entrenchment of foreign interests.

In a statement in the House of Commons, the Rodd mission was described as being sent to Ethiopia: 'to assure King Menelik of our friendly intentions, to endeavour to promote amicable political and commercial relations, and to settle certain questions which had arisen between the British authorities on the Somali Coast and the Abyssinian governor of Harar'. Although the wider aims of the Mission were to reassure Menelik as to Britain's interests in the context of Anglo-French rivalry on the Nile, and to secure at least Ethiopian neutrality in the war against the Khalifa in the Sudan, the settlement of the British Protectorate's frontiers was described as one of the principal objects of the negotiations. However, the actual terms in which the Protectorate's frontiers were to be defined and the concessions which might have to be made were of relatively minor importance if Rodd could succeed in establishing friendly relations with Ethiopia. Britain was not prepared to defend the 1894 frontiers if this would entail any considerable expenditure: indeed the possibility of abandoning the Somaliland Protectorate altogether had already been raised.

But in the end a compromise was reached by which, while abandoning her claim to some 67,000 square miles of land in the Haud, Britain was able to retain Hargeisa and part of the hinterland within her Protectorate. This represented a considerable concession to the Ethiopian claims which, though not in 1897 supported by any firm Ethiopian occupation on Somali soil beyond Jigjiga, could not be challenged without the use of force, a course which Rodd rightly understood his government would not countenance.

It is important to emphasize that the terms of the agreement were carefully drawn up to yield Ethiopian recognition of the new boundaries of the British Protectorate. The lost lands in the Haud which were excised from the Protectorate were not, however, ceded to Ethiopia; nor did the agreement bind Britain to recognize Ethiopian sovereignty over the territory which had been relinquished.

However, Rodd and the other British officials concerned thought that the Ethiopians would be slow to take advantage of what they had in effect already gained; it was considered that in practice things would continue much as they were with the Haud remaining as a sort of buffer zone used by the British clans only temporarily for grazing. The effects of the gradual adoption of agriculture by the western Somali clans were not envisaged, for this process had hardly yet started. A more serious objection which might more reasonably have been anticipated was the effect of the centuries’ old trend of population movement away from the highly eroded north towards the centre and Haud. This gradual drift of population was to bring increasing numbers of British protected Somali into what was now effectively the Ethiopian sphere.

Thus 1897 saw the definition of the British Somali sphere in relation to Ethiopia. But it was not until 1934, when an Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission attempted to demarcate the boundary, that British-protected Somali became aware of what had happened, and expressed their sense of outrage in disturbances which cost one of the commissioners his life. This long period of ignorance, far from indicating acquiescence, was facilitated by the many years which elapsed before Ethiopia established any semblance of effective administrative control in the Haud and Ogaden.

Islam in Somaliland has long been associated with the brotherhoods or tariqas (literally, 'the Way') which express the Sufi, or mystical view of the Muslim faith, a view which, since it exalts the charismatic powers of saints, is particularly well adapted to the Somali clan system in which clan ancestors readily become transposed into Muslim saints.

More significantly, notwithstanding their own rivalries, in their membership and following the brotherhoods cut across clan and tribal loyalties, seeking to substitute the status of brother in religion for that of clansman, so that men who are divided by clan affiliation may share common adherence to the same religious Order. In this way, by their very nature, the Muslim Orders contribute to national unity through Islam and seek to overcome the sectional rivalries which separate men in their secular activities. However, given the circumstances of Somali life and society in which, lacking any large centralized political units, the only security was provided by small bands of kinsmen, the loyalties of kin and clan remained paramount. Thus the transcendental appeal to unity through Islam which the Orders preached, although it found a response in the cultural nationalism of the Somali, remained only a potential force overridden by the more restricted political realities of everyday life.

At this time, one of the most important centres in the north was Sheikh Maddar's (1825–1917) large Qadiriya settlement at Hargeisa amongst the Habar Awal clan containing representatives of most of the Isaq clans. This was a haven of peace in a turbulent area, strategically placed at the intersection of the caravan routes leading from the coast to the Ogaden.

Competition between the two brotherhoods was considerably increased when the militant Salihiya branch of the Ahmadiya Order, founded at Mecca by Sayyid Muhammad Salih(1853–1917), was introduced into Somaliland towards the end of the nineteenth century. It was to this reformist and puritanical movement that the Somali Sheikh Muhammad 'Abdille Hassan belonged, and under its banner he developed the campaign to free his country of 'infidel' dominion.

Not long after this very characteristic Somali inquisition which had made clear to the leaders of the established Qadiriya the revolutionary character of Sheikh Muhammad 'Abdille's message, the Sheikh came into contact with the French Roman Catholic mission which had opened a station in the north of the Protectorate in 1891.

Administrative reports claimed that Sheikh Muhammad had now assumed the title of 'Mahdi'. But although widespread public awareness of earlier events in the Sudan, and sympathy for their co-religionists there, was certainly a contributory factor in the rise of Sheikh Muhammad's campaign, there is no independent evidence that he ever in fact claimed this title. Indeed, according to all reliable Somali sources, and the evidence of his letters and poems, he called himself 'Sayyid' by which title, or more simply as Ina 'Abdille Hassan (the Somali equivalent of the Arabic ibn 'Abdille) he is universally remembered throughout Somaliland today.

On I September, 1899, the British Consul-General for the coast received a letter from the Sayyid accusing the British of oppressing Islam and denouncing those who obeyed or co-operated with the Administration as liars and slanderers. The letter also contained the challenge: 'Now choose for yourselves. If you want war, we accept it; but if you want peace, pay the fine.' The Consul-General replied by proclaiming Sayyid Muhammad a rebel, and urged his government in London to prepare an expedition against the Dervishes. Thus the opening moves in the long-drawn out conflict were completed with the official denunciation as a 'rebel' of one who, belonging to the Ogaden clan over which Ethiopia claimed but did not exercise sovereignty, and whose maternal kinsmen (the Dulbahante) amongst whom he lived had no treaty with England, was surely most doubtfully classed as a British subject.

Between 1900 and 1904 – with from time to time active Ethiopian support and Italian co-operation – four major expeditions were mounted. These though resisted bravely and brilliantly by the daring guerilla tactics of the Dervishes, who secured a number of notable victories (such as that at Gumburu Hill on 17 April, 1903, when 9 British officers and 189 men were killed), had by the close of 1904 so reduced the Dervish strength and morale that Sayyid Muhammad, who had evaded all attempts at capture, agreed to a peace.

This vain hope was based on a quite mistaken appreciation of the situation, for it assumed that Sayyid Muhammad was merely a regular, if rather outstanding, clan or tribal leader whose political rôle lay in the field of internal Somali clan politics. The truth of course was, on the contrary, that the Sayyid occupied a unique position as a national figure appealing to the patriotic sentiments of Somali as Muslims irrespective of their clan or lineage allegiance. It is true that internal clan rivalries weakened the Dervish movement, and that its compulsive appeal was also restricted by the divisions between opposing religious orders. But even the deeply alienated adherents of the Qadiriya Order could hardly be expected to rally in strength against the Sayyid, for this would have required them openly to assume the rôle of the Christian colonizers, and would greatly have detracted from their religious status.

Consequently, far from throwing up a leader to lead the friend-lies against the Dervishes, the clans now launched into a frenzied pursuit of old scores and feuds, and the interior of the country lapsed into a state of unparalleled confusion and chaos. Soon indeed the situation was so desperate that a large proportion of the population was reduced to a state bordering on starvation, and food was so scarce that people had to eat rats and other unclean animals. The coastal Administration, deprived of effective military resources and greatly reduced in prestige, was totally incapable of restoring order: and the Dervishes were again on the move, and receiving a great access of new adherents, in circumstances which were peculiarly favourable to them. The new policy clearly was a complete failure.

By the end of 1912, when it was officially reckoned that perhaps a third of the Protectorate's population had perished in the 'Time of eating filth', as it is known to Somali, British policy again changed and the Administration was authorized to raise a local mounted camel constabulary.

In the meantime, several new factors of significance entered the situation during the Great War. The ill-fated pro-Muslim prince Lij Yasu became Emperor of Ethiopia in December 1913, and moved his court from Dire Dawa to Harar amongst his Muslim subjects with whom his sympathies lay. With the not-disinterested support of the Turkish and German Consuls in Ethiopia, the new Emperor conceived the aim of creating a vast Muslim Empire in N.E. Africa. To this end he entered into relations with Sayyid Muhammad, probably supplying him with financial aid and arms, and arranged for a German mechanic called Emil Kirsch to join the Dervishes and work for them as an armourer at their new headquarters at Taleh where a formidable ring of fortresses had been built by Yemeni masons.

It was then decided to dispatch a peace delegation of leading Isaq elders and religious dignitaries, including Sheikh Maddar's son, Sheikh 'Abdillahi, representing the Qadiriya Order. Also of the party was Sheikh Isma'il Sheikh Isaq of the Dulbahante clan, official representative of Sayyid Muhammad Salih in northern Somaliland. Like many another, this religious leader had played, apparently, a somewhat equivocal rôle in the intricate politics of the period. He is said to have clandestinely supported the Sayyid, but appears also to have been a party to the Salihiya letter from Mecca denouncing the Dervishes. With this distinguished composition the party set off in some trepidation to treat with the Sayyid.

After a series of alarming audiences in which they were treated with contempt and submitted to many degradations, they returned to report to the Administration that Sayyid Muhammad had rejected the offer of surrender with haughty disdain. Almost immediately afterwards, a Dervish force attacked Isaq clansmen grazing their livestock near the Ethiopian border. Despite their very heavy losses, the Dervishes were evidently not yet reduced to defeat. However, this attack aroused fierce Isaq resentment, and the outraged clans sought and gained the sanction of the Administration for a massive tribal onslaught on the new Dervish headquarters in the Ogaden. The Dervishes suffered a very heavy defeat, but as on so many previous occasions, the Sayyid himself and a few companions eluded capture and made good their escape to Imi on the upper reaches of the Shebelle River in Ethiopia. Arriving here in October 1920, the Sayyid and his followers built thirteen new forts and unsuccessfully sought official Ethiopian protection. This was their last gesture, however, for a few weeks later Sayyid Muhammad succumbed to an attack of influenza (or malaria) and died on 21 December, 1920, at the age of fifty-six. Thus, in the words of one Somali chronicle of Sayyid Muhammad's campaign, 'ended the life of the man who had fought great odds'. Of his many children from his numerous marriages only nine boys and one daughter survived him.

Whatever his detractors have claimed, and notwithstanding the undoubtedly tyrannical character of his rule ultimately, there is no question that Muhammad 'Abdille Hassan's burning passion was to quicken his countrymen's devotion to Islam and to secure universal and absolute adherence to all the ordinances of their faith. To him the Salihiya brotherhood was the 'way' through which this was to be achieved. He had thus a deeply felt mission to fulfil amongst his people whose ancient belief in Islam he saw as perilously threatened by Christian colonization. It was this realization which fired his patriotism and convinced him that the first ideal would never be realized until his people were free. Thus the national movement which he felt himself called upon to inspire was primarily a means to an end. To argue, as has been customary in the past, that Sayyid Muhammad 'Abdille Hassan used religion merely as a cloak to advance his own personal aggrandizement is to make a cheap and shallow assessment which the facts do not warrant.

For despite such favourable factors as the irritant of Christian mission activity and the hostile and zenophobic reaction of Somali to multiple colonization, the obstacles inherent in the very fabric of Somali society which he had to seek to surmount were formidable. Since Ahmad Gran's wars against Abyssinia in the sixteenth century there had been no tradition of political unity on anything approaching a national basis such as the Sayyid sought to inspire. Particularistic clan rivalries and jealousies rooted in the exigencies of the eternal struggle for access to pasture and water were too strongly entrenched to admit of the possibility of widespread co-operation. Indeed, even in Swayne's well-informed and usually shrewd judgement, in the last decade of the nineteenth century these mutually contradictory forces seemed so overwhelming that the possibility of an organized rising against the British could be discounted. Events proved otherwise, for Swayne had not calculated on the appearance of so uniquely charismatic a figure as Sayyid Muhammad.

While recourse to these tactics was necessary in building up his following, within the Dervish ranks the Sayyid sought to apply Islamic law, enforcing the law of talion and ignoring the traditional Somali practice of treating delicts according to their clan context. Thus amongst his followers he strove to replace traditional clan loyalties by allegiance to his cause, and the Dervish forces were organized into units largely on a non-clan basis. Another striking innovation was that women were sometimes trained as warriors, and a few were even mounted on horseback.

Thus it was with the words of a hymn in praise of the Salihiya founder upon their lips that the Dervishes attacked in battle. And although the true character of Sayyid Muhammad 'Abdille's relations with the headquarters of his Order at Mecca has not yet been, and may never be fully elucidated, Sayyid Muhammad Salih could surely have more decisively repudiated his pupil in Somaliland had he chosen to do so.

With this substantial encouragement and a payment to Menelik of 3 million lire, Italy obtained by the Italo-Ethiopian treaty of May 1908 a frontier running from Dolo on the Juba northwards to the Shebelle where it joined the line agreed to previously. A perfunctory and rather nominal attempt was made to allocate different clans along the boundary to either Ethiopian or Italian control, with little regard for the grazing and watering needs of the people concerned who, of course, were never consulted. The Rahanweyn, for instance, were allocated to the Italian sphere, while the Digodia, Ogaden and others 'north of the frontier line' were to be dependent upon Ethiopia.

Sayyid Muhammad 'Abdille Hassan's war, while it had sometimes delayed and impeded the gradual extension of Italian rule, had not caused the Italians to alter their colonial plans or deflected them from the purpose of creating an economically profitable possession whose agricultural potential might be exploited by settlers from the mother country.

The Sayyid's campaigns had also engendered a tradition of Anglo-Ethiopian collaboration against Somali and had drawn the slender arm of Ethiopian rule farther into the Ogaden, thus considerably strengthening Ethiopia's position in relation to Somali.

Hence, although Sayyid Muhammad's image was at the time of his death, and still remains, that of a national hero and patriot, his holy war – despite all the courage and tenacity of his supporters – not only failed in its purpose of driving the 'infidels' into the sea, but actually led to a further extension and entrenchment of alien rule.

The Sayyid's campaigns had also engendered a tradition of Anglo-Ethiopian collaboration against Somali and had drawn the slender arm of Ethiopian rule farther into the Ogaden, thus considerably strengthening Ethiopia's position in relation to Somali. No doubt this would have happened eventually without British support and prompting, but its occurrence at this time, and in these circumstances, was one of the paradoxical consequences of the Dervish fight for freedom. Hence, although Sayyid Muhammad's image was at the time of his death, and still remains, that of a national hero and patriot, his holy war – despite all the courage and tenacity of his supporters – not only failed in its purpose of driving the 'infidels' into the sea, but actually led to a further extension and entrenchment of alien rule.

In French Somaliland, by contrast, neither these secondary effects nor the direct actions of the Dervishes made any sensible impact. And throughout this elsewhere turbulent period the French devoted their energies to the imaginative project of securing Ethiopia's transit trade for their colony by the construction of a line of rail from Jibuti to the Ethiopian hinterland. Despite the interruption of the Great War in which a French Somali battalion distinguished itself, the Franco-Ethiopian railway reached the Ethiopian capital by 1917. The successful conclusion of this great enterprise, the only line of rail in the whole area, guaranteed the future prosperity of the Côte and its capital and port, Jibuti. Equally, it ensured the gradual eclipse of Zeila as the traditional outlet for much of the hinterland's external trade.

Each worker was allocated one hectare of land, of which half was for his own use, while the remainder was to be worked by him for the Company at rates which varied according to the yield produced. On this basis, a comprehensive labour code was elaborated under which recruits from different tribes and areas were grouped together in cultivating villages on the consortium according to their ethnic and tribal origin.

Paradoxically, it was (and still is) precisely those clansmen of the nomadic areas who were least disposed to work on the land, because of their traditional contempt for cultivation, who were most anxious to obtain salaried employment. By contrast, the southern cultivating peoples, could, at this time certainly, satisfy most of their modest wants from the produce of their own fields and livestock without engaging in salaried employment except in time of scarcity and famine.

Despite these difficulties, however, the definitive establishment of the S.A.I.S. estates and their emulation by other companies at Genale and other centres on the Shebelle, and later on the Juba, provided Somalia with a new pattern of trade. The export of bananas, attempted first experimentally by the Duke of the Abruzzi, soon came to be the main object of production at Genale and provided the colony with a new export product which rapidly came to rival in importance the traditional mainstay, hides and skins.

But in 1929 De Vecchi's successor Guido Corni, considering this practice incompatible with the proper relations between masters and 'subjects' – the status assigned to Somali – laid down that the two races must be taught in separate classes.

From a figure of a mere 900,000 lire in 1905, the budget rose continuously, reaching 2,500,000 lire in 1908, and an average of 74 million lire in the early 1930s. Local revenue, derived mainly from customs and excise duties on imports and exports and licences – there was no significant direct taxation – also rose steadily but came nowhere near meeting expenditure. Indeed, in the same period, local revenue produced only 27 million lire, considerably less than half the colony's budget.

Indeed, as Douglas Jardine, Chief Secretary during part of this period, has eloquently recorded, Somaliland's twenty-years war left nothing more tangible than a few ramshackle Ford cars and no decent roads or other means of communication. 'A still greater misfortune' was 'that the British public had forgotten the Somali war many years before it was brought to a successful conclusion.' And having spent so much on military operations so completely out of proportion to their interests in Somaliland, the British government was not now disposed to make further funds available for development. To add to this sorry tale, the conclusion of the operations against the Dervishes, far from ushering in a new era of co-operation between the people and the Administration, left instead an atmosphere of sullen distrust and covert hostility.

Notwithstanding this gloomy picture, however, an extremely significant development had in fact occurred, almost unnoticed, and without any assistance or aid from the Protectorate authorities. This was the gradual adoption of sorghum cultivation in the western part of the territory (in Borama and Hargeisa Districts), far from the scene of the Dervish operations in the centre and east. From shortly before the turn of the century, the Gadabursi clan and sections of the Habar Awal (especially the Jibril Abokor) living in the higher and better-watered land in the west had begun to follow the example of their kinsmen in the Jigjiga region of clearing areas of bush and planting sorghum, the ground being tilled by ox-drawn wooden ploughs. This comparatively advanced system of cultivation, strikingly different from the hand hoe technique employed in southern Somalia, seems to have been pioneered locally by a few religious settlements from which it soon spread to the surrounding clansmen. Far from hindering this economic revolution, the effect of the Dervish war appears on the contrary to have stimulated it by creating a highly lucrative market for local grain. For those nomads who turned to cultivation still retained an interest in livestock and were not thus completely dependent for subsistence on their crops. To some extent at least, they produced a cash crop which was traded locally with the pastoral nomads in the centre and east of the Protectorate.

A more systematic approach had to wait until the end of the Dervish war when, in 1920, plans were prepared for the institution of six elementary schools and an intermediate school. Since the home government refused to provide funds, it was proposed to raise the necessary capital by levying a direct tax on livestock. This striking, and, to the Somali public at the time, most abhorrent project, roused fierce resentment and led to a riot at Burao in which the District Commissioner lost his life. Since the Protectorate authorities were repeatedly instructed that any project which might spark off another 'Dervish war' was to be avoided at all costs, these plans were consequently dropped for the time being.

In other spheres, though perhaps less tempestuous, the record was on the whole similarly bleak. Following 1926, however, there was some road development, increasingly necessary with the opening of new Administrative stations, and also an extension of medical services. Apart from the activities of the veterinary office, the only other measure of direct benefit to the pastoral economy was the initiation of a small-scale well-drilling scheme in the 1930s. These restricted and altogether minimal developments in a territory where, in contrast to Somalia, there were fewer natural resources and neither the spur of imperial pride nor the needs of a European settler community to consider, cost very little. The budget remained pitifully small, amounting as late as 1937 to only £213, 139.

In the same period, another phenomenon of significance had begun to become evident in Somalia. This was the rapid growth in urbanization which received a new impetus when, after the Ethiopian campaigns, large numbers of Somali soldiers were discharged and settled in the Benadir towns, especially in Mogadishu. This ancient port, with its long cosmopolitan tradition, had, in the decade between 1930 and 1940, more than doubled its population, and now boasted some 60,000 inhabitants. Equally, although no trade union activity was permitted, the employment of considerable numbers of workers by S.A.I.S. and other concerns helped to promote the formation of new social and political attitudes, and these, further stimulated by western schooling, now began to be apparent in the towns and principal centres of the colony.

In these centres, where the impact of western influence was experienced most keenly, and where the traditional system of collective indemnification for wrongs was now less necessary than in the nomadic world of the interior, amongst merchants and traders especially there arose a new feeling of dissatisfaction with the particularism of the past. This, with the traditional Somali national consciousness, which the experience of Italian patriotic fervour presented in a new light, and the long suppressed reaction to alien rule, all combined to provide conditions favourable to the emergence of new aspirations. Thus, in the last few years of the shortlived Italian East African Empire, the first definite steps towards the creation of a modern nationalist movement began to be taken in Somalia. These took the form of small clandestine meetings, organized mainly, it appears, by some of the new generation of Somalis who had been to school and were employed by the Italian government.

Meanwhile, in the British Protectorate, similar developments were occurring. Here, although there was no urban growth of consequence, there were very direct contacts with the outside world, through Aden and the small overseas communities of Somali seamen which were forming in the world's main ports. Of greater consequence still was the ever-present memory and example of Sayyid Muhammad's struggle for freedom. Again, the first impetus seems to have come from the few Somalis who, after education in Aden or the Sudan, had returned to find employment in the clerical grades of the civil service. One of the earliest of these to espouse the new aspirations and to seek to promote the general social and political betterment of his countrymen was Haji Farah 'Omar, a former employee of the Administration, who became active in the 1920s.

In the Protectorate itself, under much the same kind of inspiration as in Somalia, small groups of local merchants and traders began to organize political associations and clubs in the main centres of Berbera, Burao, and Hargeisa about 1935. From these tentative beginnings the Somaliland National Society emerged shortly afterwards. Its principal aims were to encourage modern education and progress in general and to seek to overcome the traditional particularistic rivalries which divided Somali society. Later, these general aims were elaborated into a more detailed programme which also included the aim of the unification of the Somali people and territories. While these aspirations, and particularly those approving western education, represented a distinct break with the past, the Society was in no sense anti-religious and indeed sought both inspiration and justification for many of its aims in Islam. In 1937 another movement, more limited in its political significance but still of considerable importance, came into being. This was the Somali Officials Union, formed principally to promote Somali interests in the Civil Service, and inspired by discontent at the Administration's policy of employing Indian and Arab clerks instead of training local Somali for these posts.

Finally, mention must also be made of a separate but related development in Somalia which, though cultural rather than political, was later to acquire a highly emotive nationalistic appeal. This was the invention, about 1920, by 'Isman Yusuf Kenadid, of a highly sophisticated and accurate alphabet and script for the Somali language. Although the Arabic script had long been in use in restricted circles as a medium for writing Somali, the differences between the two languages made this a makeshift expedient. And despite improvements introduced by Sheikh Uways and other early pioneers of writing Somali, Arabic still remained an imperfect vehicle for Somali. 'Osmaniya, as the new script was soon named after its founder, overcame these disadvantages by completely abandoning the attempt to rely on the Arabic alphabet, adopting instead an entirely new set of letters. This creation of a truly indigenous vehicle for the national language naturally appealed to the Somali national consciousness, although, from the start, it found opponents amongst conservative religious leaders who favoured Arabic.

ONE OF THE MANY side-effects of the Second World War was to stimulate a new conception of Somali nationalism, to foster the nationalist aim of unifying the several Somali territories, and to provide conditions under which this aim could largely have been realized. In the course of the fighting in Africa, in August 1940, the Italians captured British Somaliland and added that territory to the Somali portion of their East African empire. This, however, was a short-lived success for seven months later the Protectorate was recovered, and Somalia and the Ogaden were occupied by the Allies during the East Africa campaign and liberation of Ethiopia. With the sole exception of French Somaliland which in 1942 declared for De Gaulle, all the Somali territories were now destined to remain for almost a decade under the British flag.

To understand the atmosphere in Somalia at this time, and the nature of the relations between British officials and Somali, it has to be remembered that the new rulers saw themselves as liberators from fascist oppression and to a considerable extent were so received. Indeed, the generally friendly reception accorded to them reinforced the Administration's tendency to regard the Somali as allies against the Italians. And many British officials made no secret of their admiration for Somalis and contempt for the defeated Italians. Hence there was from the beginning a considerable bond of sympathy between the new rulers and the Somali public which, in the liberal currents of opinion of the times, found expression in a strong and quite explicit pro-Somali policy.

Thus, from its inception the new society contained representatives of the majority of the traditional clan divisions within the nation, and of men of religion as well as laymen, united in the desire to abolish the wasteful clan rivalries of the past and to establish a new conception of nationhood. These aims had always been present in Somali Islam, and forty years earlier, at the time of Sayyid Muhammad 'Abdille Hassan, this was the only means by which national patriotism could be expressed coherently. Now, however, these religious aims were married to a modern consciousness of nationhood, and strengthened by a desire for progress in general expressed through the new vehicle of the Somali Youth Club.

With these modernist and progressive aspirations to which the British Military Administration was sympathetic, the Somali Youth Club rapidly gathered adherents, its members' conduct being officially described as 'exemplary'. Initially, it found most ready support amongst the younger educated officials, and soon also in the Somalia Gendarmerie. The Club's popularity in the Gendarmerie was no doubt partly due to the fact that at the time some of the most highly educated Somalis served in this force. Another significant factor was that by its very nature this organization composed of Somalis from every clan division, mixed by deliberate policy in even the smallest units, also sought to inculcate a code of loyalty transcending tribal and clan schisms. In these circumstances, reinforced by the gradual tendency of both organizations to acquire a majority of Darod clansmen in their ranks, there is little doubt that the Gendarmerie must be regarded as having played a significant part in the growth of modern Somali nationalism at this stage.

'To unite all Somalis generally, and the youth especially with the consequent repudiation of all harmful old prejudices (such, for example, as tribal and clan distinctions); To educate the youth in modern civilization by means of schools and by cultural propaganda circles; To take an interest in and assist in eliminating by constitutional and legal means any existing or future situations which might be prejudicial to the interests of the Somali people; And finally, to develop the Somali language and to assist in putting into use among Somalis the 'Osmaniya Somali script.'

Meanwhile, the tempo of political activity and interest had soared after the war with increasing speculation on the future status of the Somalilands, an issue which could only be resolved in the context of the whole tangled problem of the disposal of all the former Italian colonies. Already Ethiopia was pressing for the return of the Ogaden and Reserved Areas, her sovereignty over which had been recognized in the 1942 and 1944 Anglo-Ethiopian Agreements. Ethiopian pretensions extended also even to Somalia, which of course Italy was now claiming strongly. To the four Powers initially charged with the disposal of the Italian colonies, however, the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, sensibly proposed in the spring of 1946 that the interests of the Somali people would be best served if the existing union of Somali territories were continued. A trusteeship, preferably under Britain, although this was not an essential condition, was suggested. Unfortunately for Somali aspirations but scarcely surprisingly, this solution was strenuously opposed by Ethiopia. Nor was Ethiopia to be distracted from her determination to regain the Ogaden by the promise of British support for her claims to Eritrea, or more directly, by the offer of the port of Zeila and parts of the north-west of the Protectorate in exchange for those areas of the Haud and Ogaden regularly frequented by British protected clansmen in their grazing movements.

This rash action cost the Italian community dear; fifty-one Italians were killed and a similar number wounded. Somali casualties were less severe. Widespread looting also occurred, and further violence was only prevented by the action of the Somalia Gendarmerie supported by contingents of the King's African Rifles.

And when the decision was announced at Jigjiga, a riot occurred in which twenty-five Somalis lost their lives. Nevertheless, apart from this gesture of defiance, the population of the Ogaden as a whole bowed to the inevitable; and the transfer from British to Ethiopian control took place smoothly and without further incident on 23 September, 1948. This unexpectedly peaceful exchange, whether or not this was the intended effect, was no doubt facilitated by the disbursement amongst the Ogaden clansmen of some £91,000 by the departing British in settlement of all outstanding blood-dues and claims incurred during the period of British rule.

There was still an undertow of antagonism which the severe devastation caused by a plague of locusts in 1944–45 brought to a head. Anti-locust measures employing locust bait, which was regarded with suspicion, were interpreted by some elements in the population as a deliberate attempt by the government to kill Somali camels and stock; and in 1945 this issue provoked a serious riot at Burao and similar troubles at Erigavo. Order was restored without much difficulty, but the situation pointed to the need for a marked improvement in public relations and a tightening up in administrative control. In point of fact, at the time, the administrative establishment was quite inadequate, there being only five District Commissioners available to run six Districts, and only one of these officials could speak Somali.

However, the serious disturbances which marked the political scene in Hargeisa in 1947, though connected with a proposed merger of the S.N.L. and S.Y.L., were apparently not motivated by traditional Isaq-Darod antagonism. They were produced, in fact, it seems, by a split within the Isaq themselves, one party favouring the new alliance, while the other, being more conservative, supported the Isaqiya association. One of the two factions concerned consisted mainly of Habar Yunis clansmen who had recently lost their traditional position as the main source of employees in government service. The loss of this lucrative and influential monopoly, which dated from the earliest days of British rule, had been hastened by the new administrative policy of seeking to relate the employment of Somali personnel to the relative strengths of the various clans.

Of all the Somali territories only French Somaliland, with its rival Somali and 'Afar population, had experienced no major change of government and remained generally aloof from the momentous tide of events which characterize the decade in the area as a whole. … But apart from the urbanized population of Jibuti, which had swelled rapidly to a town of 20,000 inhabitants, the traditional pastoral life of the interior remained virtually unaffected.

As in other French territories, this canalization of political activity towards the metropolitan country, profoundly affected the later development of political parties, serving to insulate political movements in French Somaliland from those in other parts of Somaliland. The general effect of French policy was thus the isolation of the Côte from the tenor of Somali advancement elsewhere.

Thus, although by 1950 a measure of representative government had been granted to the Côte, and more in fact than was given at the time to British Somaliland or Somalia, both these territories had experienced a more profound and far-reaching political awakening. … Unfortunately for Somali national aspirations, however, the unique opportunity which had existed for welding these two territories together with the Ogaden and Haud, and preparing this national entity for self-government under a single system of rule, had been irretrievably lost. For the present, Somali nationalist activity was accordingly forced to concentrate most of its energies upon local issues in British Somaliland and Somalia, while elsewhere it was suppressed and condemned to a clandestine existence.

And far from gaining a rational national basis for preparation for self-rule, the divisive effects of the nineteenth-century partition of Somaliland, particularly in respect of Ethiopia's portion, had now become more firmly entrenched than before. This inevitably strengthened the barriers opposing Somali nationalist endeavour and consolidated the colonial legacy of fragmentation which could only lead to frustration and friction in the future.

But despite this, the centuries' old cultural nationalism of the Somali had at last found a powerful modern political expression. Somali nationalism in fact had gained an impetus and momentum which was to carry it increasingly forward, notwithstanding this continued partition and the continuing force of internal clan rivalries and factionalism. … And certainly few emergent nations could boast a more vigorous and exacting political tradition than that of the democratic pastoral social system where, perforce, every man is a politician and must exercise all his political talents to the uttermost if he is to survive and prosper in this demanding and hostile environment.

Nor was the position much eased by the heavy-handed manner in which the Italians tended, initially at least, to reassert their authority. Some prominent S.Y.L. members who had achieved responsible positions in the civil service under the British were reduced in rank, dismissed, and in a few cases imprisoned. Similar measures were also taken against leading S.Y.L. civilians, particularly those judged to be dangerously anti-Italian; and a determined attempt was made to discredit the strength and popularity of the League.

In politics, the first important step was the creation of a national Territorial Council in 1950 with consultative functions for which the ground had already been prepared under the British Military Administration. This was not merely a decorative or nominal body, but an active forum to which governmental decrees and draft ordinances were passed for scrutiny and discussion by the Trust Administration. Between 1950 and 1955 little short of a hundred ordinances, covering a wide range of subjects, were thus considered by the Council. Hence, although this body which contained some thirty-five members representative of both traditional and modern interests (including the political parties) was in composition similar to the British Protectorate's Advisory Council, it was more truly an embryonic legislature than the latter organization.

But, as later events were to show, the more effectively the League widened its base, and the greater its electoral success, the more profound became its internal divisons. In the circumstances of Somali political realities, any party with strong national support could not but be essentially a consortium of rival clan interests.

Already by 1956 and 1957 the probable course of later developments had become fairly clear, and opportunities which might have been taken for profitable collaboration were irretrievably lost.

While in Somalia the limitation of the period of trusteeship to ten years imparted a strong sense of urgency, in British Somaliland, where no date had been set for independence, and where indeed the matter had scarcely been raised, progress proceeded at a much more leisurely pace. This coincided with the general view prevalent in British circles that development was likely to be all the more effective if conducted at a slow and steady pace. This gradualist approach was, it may be argued, well adapted to the particularly intractable economic and social circumstances of the Protectorate. But as events turned out, the last days of colonial rule in British Somaliland ended in a hectic scramble which might have been partly avoided had the pace been quickened earlier. And certainly it was unfortunate that there was not more official contact and co-operation between the British and Italian authorities in the two neighbouring territories prior to their independence and unification.

At the end of 1954, however, an event occurred which changed the whole course of political life and led eventually to the Protectorate's advancement to full independence. This precipitant was the final liquidation of British administration in the Haud and Reserved Areas and the complete surrender of these vital grazing lands to Ethiopian control. In the period since the resumption of civil administration in the Protectorate, British control in the Haud had gradually been reduced until, by 1954, only two British Civil Affairs Officers remained there. Without prior notice or consultation with her Somali subjects, on 29 November Britain signed a new agreement with Ethiopia which provided for the complete withdrawal of British authority and replaced the remaining officials by a British Liaison staff with headquarters at Jigjiga.

At the end of 1954, however, an event occurred which changed the whole course of political life and led eventually to the Protectorate's advancement to full independence. This precipitant was the final liquidation of British administration in the Haud and Reserved Areas and the complete surrender of these vital grazing lands to Ethiopian control. … Without prior notice or consultation with her Somali subjects, on 29 November Britain signed a new agreement with Ethiopia which provided for the complete withdrawal of British authority and replaced the remaining officials by a British Liaison staff with headquarters at Jigjiga.

The gradual withdrawal of British authority had attracted little attention or criticism. But when the terms of the new Agreement and its implications became public knowledge there was an immediate and widespread outcry. Massive demonstrations occurred throughout the Protectorate to express the deep sense of Somali outrage, and hastily organized protest delegations were dispatched to London and New York, where they were received with gratifying publicity and sympathy, but achieved little satisfaction. With the support of other prominent national leaders (notably Mr Adan Ahmad), Michael Mariano, who had earlier played an important rôle in the hearings before the Four-Power Commission in Somalia, succeeded in forming a national convention called the National United Front. This body which drew support from all sections of organized public opinion, including initially the S.Y.L. and S.N.L., launched a vigorous campaign with the twin objectives of recovering the Haud and obtaining independence for the Protectorate within the British Commonwealth.

The new nationalist fervour which had been aroused, however, was not to be quenched and received further impetus from the Ethiopian Emperor's speech on 25 August at Qabradare in the Ogaden when he claimed that the Somali people were part of the 'Great Ethiopian family' and asserted that, inevitably, the future advancement of Somalis lay with Ethiopia. There was consequently a renewed upsurge of political activity, and the former mood of quiescent acceptance of British Administration began to give place to increasingly urgent demands for fuller autonomy. In response to this pressure the British Government announced in 1956 that the pace of advancement would be accelerated and representative government gradually introduced. Britain, it was also indicated, would not oppose the eventual union of the Protectorate with Somalia if this was desired.

Much of the credit for this successful manœuvre, which involved maintaining the support of both the Darod and Hawiye wings of the League, appears to lie with Adan 'Abdulle, later to become Somalia's first President. Faced with this defeat, Haji Muhammad Husseyn, who enjoyed a formidable reputation as an orator and who had in the past played an important part in the development of Somali nationalism, struck out on his own to form a new militant party called the Greater Somali League. To this new organization, known locally as 'Great', Haji Muhammad sought to attract support from the dissident flanks of the League and to exploit what remained of the Darod-Hawiye breach, after Adan 'Abdulle's intervention.

'The Somali,' he told the Assembly 'form a single race, practise the same religion and speak a single language. They inhabit a vast territory which, in its turn, constitutes a well-defined geographic unit. All must know that the government of Somalia will strive its uttermost, with the legal and peaceful means which are its democratic prerogative to attain this end: the union of Somalis, until all Somalis form a single Greater Somalia.'

All Britain sought for herself, apart from measures to protect the pension and compensation rights of British personnel, was the continuation of the lease for the BBC Middle Eastern Service relay station at Berbera. This caused no difficulty, and the conference, which was conducted in a most cordial atmosphere, was told on 4 May by the Colonial Secretary that his government had decided to arrange for the Protectorate to become independent by I July, 1960.

What is of particular interest here is that the British government should have felt it appropriate and necessary to make this stipulation: earlier British governments had shown little scruple in acting unilaterally against the intention and content of these same treaties.

This financial aid was accompanied by a six months' programme of technical assistance such that Britain would for six months continue to pay the salaries of those former colonial officials who elected, at the request of the Somali government, to stay on after independence. Italy promised a more substantial annual grant of about £3 million, paid partly in the form of salaries to a team of Italian 'experts' serving with the Somali government. The commercial link between the two countries, which brought the southern regions into the European Common Market, was to be continued through the banana monopoly and the heavy dependence of Somalia upon Italy for imported goods.

Here of course Somali nationalists were at one with nationalist leaders in every other territory in Africa: and the divisive influence of Somali 'tribalism' was felt as more, rather than less frustrating by the fact of its persistence within an already achieved cultural unity. Nationalist leaders saw only too clearly how clan differences and jealousies had in the past facilitated the partition of their people by foreign powers. Now these same factors, with little diminished vitality, impeded not only the full realization of the Pan-Somali goal, but also seemed to imperil the stability of the Republic itself.

Since agreement had still not been reached on a national script for Somali, and since only a small section of the population was fully literate in Arabic, the two colonial languages continued to be used in the transaction of business. Many southern politicians and senior officials had acquired some knowledge of English during the period of British Military Administration, but few knew the language sufficiently well to use it regularly as a means of written communication for official purposes; and in the north virtually no one was proficient in Italian. Hence, while with other political considerations, this seemed to tip the balance in favour of English in the long term, it did not resolve the immediate problem of communication for the government and civil service, many of whose members could not write to each other directly without the aid of English-Italian interpreters.

The north had sacrificed more than the south. The south, with the capital and National Assembly at Mogadishu, was still the hub of affairs; but from its former position as the capital of a small state Hargeisa had declined to a mere provincial headquarters remote from the centre of things. Even though many northern officials now held key positions in the government, northern pride found it hard to stomach this reduction in prestige. This dissatisfaction was also directly stimulated by the marked increase in unemployment which accompanied the withdrawal of expatriate officials and their families after independence.

Matters came to a head with the short-lived and abortive military coup of December 1961. The full circumstances of this northern gesture of defiance are still far from clear. The revolt was led, however, by a group of Sandhurst-trained lieutenants who, after independence, found themselves serving under Italian-trained superior officers who had been posted to the north. Directly inspired, it seems, by a mixture of personal ambition and northern patriotism, these British-trained junior officers quietly arrested their southern superiors whom they regarded as unjustly promoted over their heads.

The immediate precipitant on this occasion, ironically enough from the point of view of the government, was the introduction throughout the Republic of a unitary system of tariffs and customs dues which, though intended to lower transport costs in the north, had quite the opposite effect. Food prices in the northern regions immediately soared causing widespread public indignation which led to a riot at Hargeisa on I May. This assured that the new party received much public support in the north.

It was this more limited, and of course entirely constitutional aim which explained the failure of the attempted coup in 1961 and the readiness with which the new northern political organizations sought to ally with those who opposed the S.Y.L. in the south. Hitherto, indeed, the integrity of the Republic had been much less seriously in danger than foreign observers had sometimes supposed.

Thus by the end of 1963 northern particularism appeared more and more to be finding an outlet in the Somali National Congress, and its objectives were less the division of the Republic than the downfall of the S.Y.L. government. It was this more limited, and of course entirely constitutional aim which explained the failure of the attempted coup in 1961 and the readiness with which the new northern political organizations sought to ally with those who opposed the S.Y.L. in the south. Hitherto, indeed, the integrity of the Republic had been much less seriously in danger than foreign observers had sometimes supposed. Moreover, by the end of the year, further progress had been achieved in the fuller integration of the two regions. In May, by 52 to 42 votes, the Assembly had passed legislation extending the existing southern pattern of universal suffrage to the north, where previously only men had enjoyed the right to vote. In June, Article 29 of the Constitution was revised to prohibit proselytization except by Muslims, thus standardizing the previous British Protectorate practice throughout the Republic. In August, legislation was passed unifying the regulations governing municipal and rural district councils. And by the end of the year, the lengthy and intricate task of establishing a uniform legal code was almost complete.

In addition, new French measures in the Côte, undertaken with the object of advancing the previously neglected ‘Afar community, had the effect – which in Somali eyes they seemed designed to promote – of driving a wedge between the two peoples. Finally, and perhaps most significantly of all, in their hostility to the Pan-Somali aim, French policies were closely allied with those of Ethiopia, and sustained by the mutual interest of both countries in the prosperous port of Jibuti and the line of rail connecting it to the Ethiopian hinterland.

The main issue was that, while Ethiopia insisted that the frontier should be determined on the basis of a strictly legalistic interpretation of the 1908 Italo-Ethiopian Convention, Italy maintained that other international agreements should also be taken into account as well as ethnic factors relating to the distribution of different Somali clans in the disputed area. The Italian position thus favoured a more liberal interpretation in the direction of Somali national aspirations. Prior to independence no further progress was made; although, in December 1959, both Ethiopia and Somalia agreed that the British provisional line should remain in force until a final settlement was reached.

The ‘District’ in fact comprised six separate administrative Districts with headquarters at Mandera, Wajir, Garissa, Isiolo, Marsabit, and Moyale. Widely dispersed and thinly concentrated on the ground, the Somali pastoral nomads occupied almost the whole of the eastern part of the region (Garissa, Wajir, and Mandera Districts), being cordoned off from their neighbours and ethnic kinsmen the Orma and Boran Galla by the ‘Somali line’, which ran southwards from east of Moyale to the Tana River. The Pokomo cultivators, numbering some 6,500 and straddled along the banks of the Tana, provided another ethnic element in the composition of the District. And the fairly clear-cut division between Galla and Somali, although complicated by the fact that many Oromo had adopted Islam and were in process of assimilation to Somali, was offset by the presence in Marsabit District, in the extreme west, of the part-Somali Rendille tribe who formed a distinct wedge between pagan and Muslim Galla and numbered some 10,000 persons.

In these circumstances, and faced with the Protectorate’s request for independence and union with Somalia by I July, 1960, Mr Macmillan judged it necessary to offer some clarification. Thus, in April 1960, having accepted the Protectorate’s request for independence, the Prime Minister made the following statement to the House of Commons. ‘Her Majesty’s government’ he said, ‘did not and will not encourage or support any claim affecting the territorial integrity of French Somaliland, Kenya, or Ethiopia. This is a matter which could only be considered if that were the wish of the governments and peoples concerned.’ Evidently this declaration was primarily intended to mollify the fears of Ethiopia and France and to reassure the Kenyan African leaders. At the same time, however, when this message was relayed by the Governor of Kenya to chiefs and elders in the N.F.D. two months later, it seemed to open the door to the attainment of Somali aspirations. For the statement acknowledged that their wishes would be considered, and they believed that apart from Somalis the only government which was ‘concerned’ was that of Britain.

The N.F.D. delegation on the other hand asked why they should not be accorded the same rights as their kinsmen in the former British Somaliland Protectorate whose independence and union with Somalia had taken place under British auspices. If the principle of self-determination meant anything, they urged, it certainly could not mean the enforced suppression of their national and legitimate integrity.

The long-awaited commission, consisting of a Nigerian judge and a Canadian General, at last arrived in Kenya in October; and having completed its work of hearing evidence with commendable alacrity, and – what was perhaps more surprising – without incident, published its report some six weeks later. The Commissioners found28 that the Somali who they estimated made up 62 per cent of the N.F.D.'s population 'almost unanimously' favoured secession from Kenya with the object of 'ultimately' joining the Somali Republic. This desire was shared also by the majority of the other smaller Muslim communities in the District (principally Muslim Galla). The contrary wish to remain with Kenya and to participate in its constitutional development was recorded amongst some of the Oromo in Marsabit District, among non-Muslim Boran in Moyale District, and with the Pokomo cultivators along the banks of the Tana River in Garissa District. There were also several smaller areas of mixed opinion. The general division, however, coincided with the division between Muslims (Somali and associated peoples) and non-Muslims (principally Galla).

The Commission's findings were largely as had been anticipated, but the report contained one phrase which was particularly disquieting to Somali nationalists. This was that evidence had been collected 'on the premise that there can be no question of secession before Kenya gets independence'. This assumption derived, apparently, from the Commissioners' confidential instructions. It was not included in the previous Colonial Secretary's announcement of the decision to set up the Commission made at the Kenya conference, and it appeared to be in conflict with the undertaking given then that a decision would be taken before Kenya became independent. Whatever might be thought of the British government's conduct of the whole issue, this direction to the Commission seemed to imply a definite hardening of opinion against the Somali desire for secession.

At last, in March 1963, it fell to Mr Duncan Sandys, the new British Colonial Secretary, to announce his government's decision. To the satisfaction of the Nairobi and Addis Ababa governments, but to the chagrin of Somalis, this was that the N.F.D. was to be brought into Kenya's regional constitution. A new, predominantly Somali, North-Eastern Region was to be created in which Somalis would enjoy the same degree of local autonomy as had already been accorded elsewhere in Kenya's other six Regions.

At last, in March 1963, it fell to Mr Duncan Sandys, the new British Colonial Secretary, to announce his government's decision. To the satisfaction of the Nairobi and Addis Ababa governments, but to the chagrin of Somalis, this was that the N.F.D. was to be brought into Kenya's regional constitution. A new, predominantly Somali, North-Eastern Region was to be created in which Somalis would enjoy the same degree of local autonomy as had already been accorded elsewhere in Kenya's other six Regions. This decision, which gave effect to the recommendations of the Kenya Regional Boundaries Commission29 rather than to the findings of the special N.F.D. Commission, not only ignored the Somali secessionist demand but also cut off from the new Region several Muslim tribal groups which shared the Somali aim.

The rupture involved loss of privileges for both countries. The Republic relinquished her small but useful annual subsidy of £1-1/2 million from Britain, while Britain lost over-flying rights and was forced to close down her powerful BBC Middle Eastern service relay transmitter at Berbera. Britain had evidently decided that, whatever interests she might have in maintaining friendship with the Republic, and whatever responsibilities she might be held to owe to her Somali subjects in Kenya, or to her former subjects in the Northern Regions of the Republic, these were not such as to justify endangering the long-standing entente with Ethiopia or alienating the new Commonwealth territory of Kenya.

What could be said, however, with some degree of confidence was that the breach between Britain and the Republic need not have occurred. This, of course, is not to make the facile and uncomprehending judgement that the Somali Republic acted too precipitately: but rather to suggest that the British government acted too indecisively and too slowly. For several years prior to the 1962 Kenya conference, the Provincial Administration of the N.F.D. had consistently reported on the direction and strength of Somali feeling. Had these reports received serious attention it would clearly have been possible for the British government to have prepared the ground for the eventual secession of the N.F.D. without, at that stage, incurring serious opposition from African opinion in Kenya.

This view of African unity which expresses the long tradition of Somali cultural unity, and the desire to move from nationhood to statehood which is the crux of the Pan-Somali aim, runs counter to the process of national unification in other African states. For the general problem elsewhere in Africa is the construction of nations from the polyglot and polytribal territorially defined states, with their arbitrary frontiers, which are the legacy of colonialism. This difference between Somali nationalism and African nationalism elsewhere, however, while of academic interest, would in itself hardly have been important enough to isolate the Somali people at the bar of Pan-African opinion. The real difficulty lay in the conflict between the Somali aim to unite with their kinsmen across the frontiers of Kenya and Ethiopia, and the passionate attachment of the new African leaders to such colonially defined boundaries. To Kenya and Ethiopia, and by analogy elsewhere, the Pan-Somali movement threatened African territorial sovereignty.

Finally, such slender comfort as this ambiguous result seemed to offer was completely destroyed at the important Addis Ababa summit conference in May. With the long legacy of border incidents and recriminations between Ethiopia and the Republic and tension still continuing, the Somalis at first refused to attend the conference, but later decided to compromise. But there was no concealing the position of isolation into which they had been manœuvred or the icy reception accorded to those passages in the Somali President’s speech which, with more courage than tact, referred to Ethiopia’s part in the division of Somaliland. Ethiopia had scored a notable tactical victory; and with her recent discomfiture on the N.F.D. issue and the concerted rebuttal of her Pan-Somali aspirations, the Republic began to seek a rapprochement with her powerful neighbour despite growing resistance to Ethiopian rule in the Ogaden. How far such a trend could be sustained was difficult to forecast.

Although the value of positive statements in favour of the Somali case may be questioned, there is little doubt that the concerted opposition which Somalis had encountered in the three years since independence was heavily damaging. Britain’s hand had been conveniently strengthened by her accurate assessment of Pan-African opinion, the indirect effect of which was further illustrated at the futile meeting between Kenyan and Somali representatives held at Rome in August 1963 under British auspices. At these talks, which Britain convened under some criticism at home for her management of the issue and, apparently, in the hope of lessening tension in the N.F.D. itself and between Kenya and the Republic, the leader of the British delegation explained that his government judged their decision not to grant secession to be in accordance with the concensus of African opinion expressed in Addis Ababa. Consequently, proposals by the Somali government that, pending a final solution, the disputed area should be placed either under joint Somali-Kenyan, or United Nations administration, received scant attention and the talks broke down.

Thus the end of 1963 saw the Somali Republic cast in the rôle of the odd-man-out in African affairs, and Kenya launched into independence with, from the Somali point of view, the N.F.D. issue unresolved, or as some British officials seemed to assume, settled by default. Yet, despite this, hitherto the Republic had followed the general Afro-Asian pattern of non-alignment at the United Nations and in her dealings with the two world power blocs. Moreover, within the Pan-Africanist camp, she had generally found herself aligned with that group of African states which included Ethiopia notwithstanding the serious local difficulties of the two neighbouring states. Clearly vital though the Pan-Somali issue was to Somali national sentiments, it could not be allowed to override the Republic’s other interests. Since independence these had prospered with generous grants of aid and capital loans from both East and West. Indeed, foreign aid has assumed such proportions by the middle of 1963 that it was possible to launch an ambitious Five Year Development Plan (1963–67) costing £70 million, of which almost half the capital was already available.

In these conditions of Somali anger and despair it seemed at first most likely that the Chinese Peoples’ Republic, which had already shown considerable interest in Somali affairs and which had no conflicting commitments in Ethiopia, would proffer support. The Prime Minister had already visited China, and also India, in the middle of the year, no doubt with these matters very much in mind, and trade and aid agreements had been signed with both countries. Thus it seemed likely that these negotiations would be followed up by some new and striking manifestation of Chinese help which, in the context of East-West relations, might restore the Mogadishu government’s flagging prestige. Most unexpectedly, however, it was not from this quarter but from Russia, that Dr ‘Abd ar-Rashid found the means by which he hoped to recapture popular support. In November 1963 it was officially announced that the Republic had refused an offer of Western military assistance valued at almost £6-1/2 million in favour of Russian military aid to the tune of nearly £11 million.

To what extent this move represented a definite change of direction in Russian policy in the Somali dispute remained to be seen. Its local effects, however, were more immediately discernible. In the November municipal elections the government party won 665 of the available 904 seats (74 per cent), while its principal rival the Somali National Congress gained 105 seats. In the elections for the national assembly which followed on 30 March, 1964 – by which time the long train of border incidents with Ethiopia had erupted into open war and the Ogaden was in resurgence – the S.Y.L. position was again strongly maintained, though with a slightly reduced majority (S.Y.L., 69 seats; S.N.C., 22; S.D.U., 15; H.D.M.S., 9; others, 8). These results speak for themselves and show how effectively the League had recovered much of its wide popular support in circumstances which were bound to strengthen the government’s position. At the same time, the manner in which the elections were conducted, and the extent to which opposition parties participated in them, reaffirmed the Republic’s continuing commitment to the principles of parliamentary democracy. Thus in the conduct of its internal political life as much as in its external nationalist interests, the Somali Republic remained isolated from many of its neighbours.

Taking stock of the general situation on the wider Pan-Somali issue, the new Premier found little cause for comfort. The clandestinely supported Somali guerrilla campaign in Northern Kenya (known to the Kenyans as the shifta – i.e. bandits – war), which had developed in the region after Britain’s failure to implement the findings of the 1962 Commission, was making little headway at great cost to the local civilian Somali population. In Jibuti matters were even worse. In the referendum, held two months before the Mogadishu presidential election and carefully orchestrated by the French authorities, the inhabitants of the Côte (or at least those permitted to vote there) had again endorsed the continuance of French control, rejecting outright independence. The ‘Afars had now indeed seized the political initiative so long enjoyed by the Somalis and had turned the knife in the wound by changing the name of the Côte to the ‘French Territory of the ‘Afars and ‘Ises’. Nothing could more directly reflect the new political complexion in Jibuti.

New electoral regulations were introduced to discourage one-man lineage parties and to encourage national parties. Each constituency was assigned an ‘electoral quotient’, determined by dividing the number of votes cast by the number of seats available. Only parties polling more votes than this target quotient could gain seats. There was tremendous national interest in the impending contest and political activity on a greater scale than ever before. Many prominent civil servants resigned their posts to stand as candidates. Large sums of money were spent in campaigning; figures of £15,000 being quoted in a number of cases (the national budget at this time was £15 million). The government rallied all its resources and the much respected police commander, General Muhammad Abshir, resigned from his post, refusing to agree that police transport should be employed to carry S.Y.L. voters to the polling stations. There was a great deal of confusion and in some districts riots occurred, resulting in the reported loss of some forty lives. Despite the new electoral provisions, a record number of 1,002 candidates, representing 62 parties, contested the 123 seats. The S.Y.L. won 73 seats, the emasculated S.N.C. 11 and the H.D.M.S. a mere three. The latter result indicated how the Digil and Rahanweyn tribesmen now evidently felt that their interests were better served through the wide national parties than by their own parochial party. As usual, as soon as the National Assembly opened, a large number of members crossed the floor of the house to join the government, hoping to share in the spoils of office. The unedifying stampede of deputies left ‘Abd ar-Razaq Haji Husseyn sitting alone as the sole opposition member of the Assembly In company with the majority of its peers, the Somali Republic had at last become a one-party state.

In the event, the immediate precipitants of the coup were entirely unexpected. During the absence on a visit overseas of Prime Minister Igal, on 15 October, 1969, while visiting drought stricken regions in Las Anod District in the north of the Republic, President 'Abd ar-Rashid 'Ali Shirmarke was shot dead by one of his police guards. At this news, the Premier hastened back to Mogadishu to organize the election of a new President upon whom he could rely for support. The Premier's candidate was an old-campaigner and close associate, Haji Muse Boqor. When, at a late-night meeting on 20 October, the party caucus reached agreement to present this nominee as their official candidate, thus virtually ensuring his election as President and Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Igal's re-appointment as Premier, those army officers who had been closely watching developments decided to act. … In the early hours of 21 October the army occupied key points throughout the capital, members of the government and other leading politicians and personalities were placed in detention (or, as in the case of General Muhammad Abshir, under house arrest). The Constitution was suspended, the Supreme Court abolished, the National Assembly closed, political parties declared illegal, and rule by a Supreme Revolutionary Council established.

The new regime's aims stressed the elimination of corruption and tribal nepotism and the re-establishment of a just and honourable society in which proper attention would be given to real economic and social betterment for all. In external affairs, existing treaties would be honoured and the Somali unification struggle continued, while further support would be given to liberation movements generally and to the fight against colonialism. In earnest of these intentions and hopes the state was renamed the 'Somali Democratic Republic'. The membership of the Supreme Revolutionary Council (S.R.C.) was announced on 1 November. As had been anticipated, its President turned out to be General Muhammad Siyad Barre (who had succeeded the late General Da'ud as army commander in 1965) assisted by twenty-four other officers from the rank of major-general to captain.

In the early hours of 21 October the army occupied key points throughout the capital, members of the government and other leading politicians and personalities were placed in detention (or, as in the case of General Muhammad Abshir, under house arrest). The Constitution was suspended, the Supreme Court abolished, the National Assembly closed, political parties declared illegal, and rule by a Supreme Revolutionary Council established. The new regime’s aims stressed the elimination of corruption and tribal nepotism and the re-establishment of a just and honourable society in which proper attention would be given to real economic and social betterment for all. In external affairs, existing treaties would be honoured and the Somali unification struggle continued, while further support would be given to liberation movements generally and to the fight against colonialism. In earnest of these intentions and hopes the state was renamed the ‘Somali Democratic Republic’.

This vigorous effort to correct the errors of the past and place the country's fortunes on a firm footing assumed a more specific ideological orientation on the first anniversary of the coup (October 1970), when General Siyad proclaimed that Somalia would henceforth be dedicated to Scientific Socialism. This choice of direction, already foreshadowed in the retrospective transformation of the coup into a Revolution (Ka'an in Somali) reflected the army's growing dependence on Russian equipment and advisers in contrast to the complementary connexion of the police force with America and the West.

The development of this official ideology and of other reinforcing divisions became increasingly important to General Siyad's regime as the public enthusiasm which had greeted the coup initially gradually diminished. A national cult owing something to Chinese, North Korean and Nasserite as well as Soviet influences, was gradually created round the Head of State. The new official hagiography presented General Siyad as the 'Victorious Leader' (Guulwaadde), dauntessly leading the nation in its unremiting struggle against its foes.

This response to internal disagreement within the S.R.C. made it indisputably clear that General Siyad's word was law and brooked no defiance or disagreement. If this uncompromising sentence administered a sharp jolt to national feeling, the public execution of ten local religious sheikhs in January 1975 had wider and more serious repercussions, touching a deeper nerve. With twenty-three others who received long prison sentences, the ten executed religious figures were charged with preaching in the mosques against a liberal new law which, contrary to traditional Islam, gave women the same inheritance rights as men. By this action, taken in International Women's Year, the government demonstrated its secular, reformist intentions – but at the cost of raising in an acute form the whole question of the Islamic identity of the Somali people.

While the President regularly exhorted his local representatives to act as channels of communication faithfully relaying the ideas and aspirations of his subjects to him, this pervasive apparatus of state control was hardly conducive to an effective dialogue between rulers and ruled. These transactions were thus, inevitably, somewhat one-sided. Policy did change from time to time (and indeed in 1977 dramatically), partly in response to public opinion, but its course was sufficiently erratic to make it difficult for members of the public to be certain at a particular time of the precise boundaries of acceptable opinion. Reticence was clearly the safest policy, and people naturally told those in authority what they thought they wanted to hear.

All this contributed to the seemingly arbitrary nature of the authority exercised by the Supreme Revolutionary Council. Despite its elaborate and heavy-handed character, however, this essentially autocratic pattern of government still touched the nomadic majority of the population relatively lightly. The nomads, indeed, remained as a refractory challenge despite energetic measures designed to bring them more securely into the fold. In 1974, the eight provinces into which the state had previously been divided were reconstituted as fifteen new regions, comprising seventy-eight districts, where necessary renamed to exclude tribal (or clan) names. Emphasis was placed on the settlement (digmo) as the basic unit of association and identification in a further effort to extirpate lingering lineage loyalties. And even among the nomads efforts were made to encourage people to regard the orientation centre at a regularly frequented water point as the hub of social and political activities. Marriages, which had traditionally involved rival (and often potentially hostile) lineages, were now to be conducted at a local orientation centre, with its resident community replacing the kin of bride and groom. It would be unrealistic to expect these measures to have made much immediate impact amongst the nomads. There was thus, inevitably, a considerable gap between theory and practice in the political life of the nomadic majority of the population.

In July 1974, at an estimated cost of £10 million, a huge taskforce of some 30,000 secondary school students and teachers was dispatched into the interior in triumphant truckloads. In parties of eight, with a teacher as leader and with the participation of veterinary and medical personnel, these young pioneers of the new Somalia set forth to teach the nomads to write their own language, hygiene, modern animal husbandry methods, basic civics and the aims of Scientific Socialism.

While a restocking scheme was also inaugurated, most of those in the relief camps were re-established either in newly expanded collectives and state farms along the Shebelle and Juba Rivers in the south, or in coastal fishing communities to supply the Russian-aided fish-canning industry. Although the Somali government had hoped the costs of this vast re-settlement would be met from Arab funds, in the event it was organized by the Russians who provided air and road transport on a massive scale. This sudden re-location of Somali population, involving up-rooting people from their traditional grazing areas and re-settling them amongst unrelated clans and lineages, where they were to change from nomadic herdsmen to sedentary cultivators or fishermen (both occupations traditionally despised by the nomads), was a bold and hazardous undertaking.

If the drought thus transformed the rural development campaign into a massive famine relief operation, its original aims were recovered by converting the famine relief camps into orientation centres. This, of course, was necessarily only a temporary expedient. Many of the nomads in the camps had lost all or most of their livestock, and their future livelihood posed an acutely challenging problem. Here again, however, advantage could be taken of adversity. The government was quick to seize the opportunity of furthering two of its long-term policies: the sedentarization of nomads and detribalization. While a restocking scheme was also inaugurated, most of those in the relief camps were re-established either in newly expanded collectives and state farms along the Shebelle and Juba Rivers in the south, or in coastal fishing communities to supply the Russian-aided fish-canning industry. Although the Somali government had hoped the costs of this vast re-settlement would be met from Arab funds, in the event it was organized by the Russians who provided air and road transport on a massive scale. This sudden re-location of Somali population, involving up-rooting people from their traditional grazing areas and re-settling them amongst unrelated clans and lineages, where they were to change from nomadic herdsmen to sedentary cultivators or fishermen (both occupations traditionally despised by the nomads), was a bold and hazardous undertaking.

In effect, in an old and venerable Islamic tradition, the Head of State claimed to understand the Prophet's message better than his critics. The state media, and particularly the radio, developed a subtle synthesis of Islam and Somali socialism, in which Quranic texts and commentaries led naturally to socialist ideals and to their pithy formulation in the Head of State's much-quoted slogans.

With their usual verbal facility, ingenious Somali sophists developed an alternative circumlocution, substituting dates, starting from that of the Glorious Revolution, to represent the major power-holding groups. In this idiom 21 October was used as a synonym for M, 22 October for O and 23 October for D. This new code had the additional advantage of being sufficiently elastic to embrace a wider range of groups and, if necessary, to register changes in their relative power and ranking.

There was no question of his seeking to abandon or seriously modify his own special version of benign, despotic paternalism. What the new structure sought to do was to endow the President's authority with greater legitimacy. Two years after its foundation, the official Party could boast no more than 20,000 members, a figure which hardly suggested massive popular support in the country at large.

As he contemptuously observed in a speech at the Halane National Orientation Centre in 1972, narrow-minded orthodox Marxists missed the point when they said 'that Comrade V. I. Lenin confiscated such and such property after the Great October Revolution, or in [the] 1940s Comrade Mao Tse-Tung did this and that in his country against the reactionary forces. These people are totally ignoring the historical context of the teachings of the great socialist thinkers. They recite quotations from the founders of scientific socialism out of their proper context'. In a different setting the same point was made in much the same spirit by a young Somali Marxist intellectual who concluded a heated private debate with a well-known French Marxist anthropologist with the dismissive declaration: 'I don't need Marx; Marx needs me!'

Waging ceaseless wars against his country's enemies – poverty, disease, ignorance – and launching national campaign after campaign, Siyad was presented as the omnipotent leader in the relentless struggle forward to progress and victory. In such an atmosphere of Sturm und Drang there are traditional precedents for Siyad's style of leadership. In the past, however, personal authority of this kind and scale had usually only been successfully wielded by national religious heroes, waging the holy war (jihad) against the infidel. The two outstanding examples of this proud tradition in the Somali national consciousness were the famous Islamic champion, Ahmad Gran (1506–43) who conquered and briefly ruled the Christian Ethiopian heartland in the sixteenth century, and the fiery twentieth-century Dervish hero, Sayyid Muhammad 'Abdille Hassan (1864–1920).

Socialism, as the President declared in one of many harangues to the nation, cannot exist without opposition which must be overcome by a ceaseless struggle towards victory. In this dialectical conflict it was President Siyad who identified the enemy and kept the battle tally.

Although Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung and the peripatetic Kim Il Sung (to say nothing of Mussolini) all had some influence on the homespun philosophy of development and power constructed by the Siyad regime, local political realities suggest that 'Scientific Siyadism' might be an appropriate description of the Somali experience at this time. Certainly socialism was here a means rather than an end.

Since the Sudan had previously presented itself in this light, Somalia's bid for the same position brought a new component of rivalry to the hitherto generally close relationship between the two states.

Since their assumption of power in 1969, the military had, of course, frequently acknowledged their abiding commitment to the liberation of those parts of the Somali nation which still languished under foreign rule – the French Territory of the 'Afars and Issas (Jibuti); the Ogaden (Ethiopia); and the northeastern region of Kenya. But they had hitherto shown a moderation all the more remarkable in a military government in pursuing this aim.

The uncertainty and confusion that began to spread through Ethiopia in 1974 as the ageing Emperor increasingly lost control and was finally overthrown on 12 September by the armed forces, inevitably greatly encouraged Somali hopes of achieving autonomy for the Ogaden. Exciting though this prospect was, for the time being it was considered prudent to watch and wait to see what would happen in Ethiopia while concentrating primarily on Jibuti.

This move signalled the commencement of a seismic shift in superpower alignments in the Horn of Africa with wide-ranging consequences, the full repercussions of which were difficult to foresee, far less measure.

Controlling Jigjiga, W.S.L.F. forces swept on towards Harar in pursuit of their ultimate objective of freeing the entire Somali area up to the Awash Valley of Ethiopian domination. This would entail the expulsion of the Ethiopians from areas round Harar with mixed Somali, Oromo (Galla) and 'Afar populations and require defeat of the regrouped Ethiopian forces in Harar and Dire Dawa. As the theatre of conflict grew larger, involving associated ethnic groups, official W.S.L.F. statements as well as those from the Mogadishu government emphasized the close affinity of the Somalis and Arussi and other Oromo in Bale and the Harar area. The terms 'Abo-Somali' and 'Wariya-Somali' (from abo in Oromo and wariya in Somali, used to attract a person's attention) were coined to emphasise the close affinity between the Somali members of the W.S.L.F. and their Oromo allies; and on these lines, the Somali Abo Liberation Front (S.A.L.F.) was formed as an offshoot of the W.S.L.F.

The only major impediments to a formal rupture were Siyad's concern to avoid the potential destabilization of his regime which an abrupt breach might encourage, and a natural reluctance to terminate his main source of arms supplies before reliable alternative arrangements had been secured. There was also perhaps the hope that Russia might, under appropriate pressures or blandishments, still somehow wring from Mengistu the necessary concessions to Somali nationalism in the Ogaden. No progress in this direction was achieved, however, and on 13 November the predictable breach with Russia was announced in Mogadishu.

Nationalist sentiments in the Republic, stimulated to an unforeseen degree by Somali literacy, had reached a climax. The fighting in the Ogaden, in which many were directly and all indirectly involved, had become a national obsession. All interest focussed on the progress of the war and the unofficial contribution to the war effort had unquestioned priority over all other activities.

The Russians who had, as it were, come in to Somalia with the Ogaden (see above), went out with it, an about-turn which testified to the abiding force of local nationalism in the area

The long-cherished Tsarist ambition of making Ethiopia a Russian protectorate, prominent at the end of the nineteenth century when Russian arms and advisers had facilitated Menelik's conquests, and romanticized in the Ethiopian origins ascribed to the national poet Pushkin, had at last borne fruit.

These subtle and quite undeliberate politically-loaded semantics strengthened the impression that the Somalis were the aggressors brazenly invading Ethiopian territory, when in reality it was Somali settlements whose independence was being restored – with help from the armed forces of the Somali Republic. In the euphoria of victory the W.S.L.F. used exactly the same terms in announcing their successes when it would have been more prudent to have spoken of the recovery of Somali sovereignty.

The relationship between the 'Ise Somali round Dire Dawa and the Ogaden was an uneasy one, and there was also a long history of competition over grazing between the Ogaden and Isaq clans to their north. There were even divisions within the Ogaden confederation of clans itself, not least between those leading the Ogaden guerrillas and clansmen in prominent positions in the Somali Republic. There was also mistrust and rivalry between the Muslim Oromo supporters of the W.S.L.F. and other Oromo (some Muslim), equally hostile to Mengistu's regime, some of whom supported the Oromo Liberation Front. Other Oromo again (and probably the majority of this large nation) were not directly allied with either of these organizations.

The Head of State, whose most recent appointments and promotions suggested an increasingly defensive dependence on his own clansmen, was also said to be negotiating clandestinely with Majerteyn clan leaders in an effort to avert a situation which, some local Somali commentators claimed, threatened to lead to widespread tribal war.

The Supreme Revolutionary Council was disbanded (again) in March 1982 when President Siyad paid his first official visit to the United States. In preparation for this, under American pressure, the Somali President had released the two prisoners of conscience, former Prime Minister Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Igal and the much respected former police commander, Muhammad Abshir, both of whom had been held without charge or trial virtually continuously since October 1969. The release of these prominent figures from the past was, however, followed in June of the same year by the arrest of seven leading members of the regime who were accused of being involved in a sinister plot against the government. This new group of detainees included Vice President Isma'il 'Ali Abokor and the former Foreign Minister, 'Omar Arteh – both prominent northerners and architects of the personality cult of the head of state.

These many diffuse currents of discontent assumed a more organised form through two main political movements based primarily on the clans in the central and northern (ex-British) regions of the Republic. Those mainly Mudugh-based Majerteyn clansmen associated with the unsuccessful attempted coup of 1978 had by late 1981 formed the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF), a guerrilla organisation which transferred its operational head-quarters to Ethiopia in the following year and set up a powerful radio transmitter ('Radio Kulmis' – later called 'Radio Halgan').

In the same year the Somali government prohibited the sale and cultivation of the stimulant narcotic plant, qat (Catha edulis), which had become a flourishing cash crop in the north western regions. However progressive and well intentioned, this move was interpreted in the north as a further attack on Isaq enterprise and commercial activity. These individual sources of frustration were exacerbated at a more profound level by the large refugee presence in the north and the increasing trend toward direct military rule from Mogadishu. Tension was compounded by such misunderstandings as the arrest on charges of subversion, at the end of 1981, of over forty prominent local civil servants, doctors, teachers and businessmen who had joined forces not to overthrow the regime but simply to improve the quality of the local public services.

If the latter movement reflected in some measure the hubris of the Majertyn clansmen whose political ascendance had been eclipsed by Siyad's Marehan power, the SNM articulated Isaq grievances ranging from inadequate political representation, neglect in development, and the frustration of local businessmen and exporters chafing at economic controls that adversely affected the parallel market which, boosted by hard currency from livestock and labour exports to the Gulf states, flourished so profusely in the north. The livestock trade, in which Isaqi merchants played a leading role, received a further severe shock in 1983 when the Saudi government imposed a rinderpest ban on Somali imported stock.

On many issues, decisions were also taken by the influential circle formed around the President’s formidable first wife and her son General Maslah. This entrenchment and expansion of Marehan power was particularly striking in the army, where by the middle of 1987 it was estimated that as much as half the senior officer corps belonged to the President’s clan or related clans, the proportion being even higher in the artillery and tank brigades based in the capital in the new southern command unit headed by Siyad’s son General Maslah.

While before his car accident, President Siyad had seemed to be encouraging the Foreign Minister to prepare to succeed him, after his accident the limelight switched to his son General Maslah. These efforts to establish a family dynasty prompted Maslah’s Marehan rivals to seek support outside their own clan ranks, even amongst members of the opposed ‘constitutional’ faction led by First Minister Samatar.

Typically, however, the price specified and reported to the Bank by the Somali exporter and Saudi, or other hard currency importer, was much less than that actually paid. This hard currency profit earned by the Somali exporter was either used to import scarce consumer goods for sale in Somalia or sold to Somali importers at the parallel market exchange rate which soared to over twenty times the official rate.

At the close of the period we review here, the political situation had changed dramatically from that a decade earlier at the time of the Ogaden War. Then Somalia nationalism had been buoyant and confident, and General Siyad had been able to mobilise sentiments of national solidarity which, with the exception only of one northwestern clan (based in Jibuti), effectively embraced all the nation’s major clans. In such an expansive context the President’s MOD power base represented a security net. Now, ten years later, with the collapse of national solidarity and an unparalleled growth of inter-clan strife, the MOD framework had been abandoned as General Siyad fell back defensively on the support of the most loyal segments of his own Marehan clan.

In the decade following the Ogaden War, Siyad’s survivalist strategies had helped to reinforce the inherently segmentary character of the Somali political system, undermining nationalist solidarity (always a fickle and temporary phenomenon) to the consequent advantage of Ethiopia.

In retrospect, the peace accord signed by the Ethiopian and Somali heads of state in April 1988, obliging each party to terminate support for the other's Somali dissidents, can be seen as the final precipitant to the vicious civil wars which, with the general collapse of governmental institutions as well as the economy (on an external aid life-support system for years), effectively destroyed Somalia well before the actual overthrow of Siyad in January 1991.

The general situation now vividly recalled the descriptions of Burton and other nineteenth-century European explorers: a land of clan (and clan segment) republics where the would-be traveller needed to secure the protection of each group whose territory he sought to traverse. This was achieved by the traditional institution of the 'agent' (abban), providing, for an agreed fee, protection for the temporally adopted client from attack by the agent's kinsmen.

The only substantial difference, now, was that the volatile relations between these clan units across the whole country had been raised to fever pitch by the experience of Darod (particularly Marehan) hegemony and oppression, and the bitter fighting which, with modern weapons, wrought death and destruction on an unprecedented scale. The intensity of the ensuing 'clan cleansing' (as Somalis called it) in Mogadishu and elsewhere in the south had never been seen before. Siyad's policies of divide and rule, particularly since the Ogaden war, had included dispensing weapons to his current allies to fight his current foes, and this had facilitated the spread of modern arms throughout the country.

As their forces moved through it, each side laid waste the agricultural region between the rivers that is Somalia's breadbasket, killing and terrorizing the less aggressive cultivators. With agricultural and livestock production devastated, famine spread, especially in the arable riverine areas. The U.N. estimated that as many as 300,000 people perished from famine, and about a million sought refuge in Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen, Europe, Scandinavia and North America.

Modern equivalents of the traditional battle leader (abbaanduule), these 'warlords', as foreign journalists called them (brigand-leader, or Mafioso capo would be more accurate titles) were mainly far from illustrious figures from the Siyad regime, and mostly former military officers.

Particularly striking was Somaliland's success with low-cost, local clan-based peace initiatives in contrast to the high-profile, internationally sponsored and highly unsuccessful conferences which came to dominate what was optimistically called the 'peace process' in southern Somalia. Such high-profile 'peace conferences' were destined to become a major local industry in southern Somali politics for over a decade. As the Kenyan President Moi, who played an important role here, was to put it, 'peace conferences became milch camels for the factions to milk'.

This difference between north and south in restoring order also, of course, reflected the relative absence from the north of competing, power-hungry military leaders who sought to mobilize their clan connections with no thought for any wider public good. It also highlighted the divisive impact of foreign aid which, in the course of the following decade, proved to be a major factor fuelling conflict in southern Somalia.

No real progress in political reconstruction took place and the U.N. reverted to its former practice of dealing primarily with the warlords and their associates, having abandoned its never-convincing efforts to 'empower' traditional clan elders. As the reduced U.N. force withdrew from its garrisons in the hinterland to concentrate in Mogadishu and prepare for the final termination of U.N.O.S.O.M., due at the end of March 1995, there was the predictable upsurge of violence, including attacks on U.N. personnel.

Thus, failure though it was, U.N.O.S.O.M. inadvertently played a major role in shaping the future political economy of Mogadishu and southern Somalia. U.N. headquarters was located in southern Mogadishu which was now dominated by militias based on segments of 'Aideed's Habar Gidir clansmen, who, for the most part, had invaded the city during and after the guerrilla operations which overthrew Siyad Barre in 1991. Without considering the implications, the U.N. had recruited large numbers of Somali ancillary staff from this clan, which also derived an important income from backhanders it imposed when renting property and supplying transport to aid organizations. These funds paradoxically, helped to finance 'Aideed's fight against U.N.O.S.O.M., as well as supplying him with intelligence while disseminating misinformation.

Both sides had mutually incompatible expectations and the international soldiers and civilians were in the main profoundly ignorant of Somali culture and local politics. Although both Sahnoun and Oakley, in their different ways, had some knowledge of local conditions and negotiated directly with leading local figures, their successors relied on indirect contacts through aides and representatives, a style of diplomacy calculated to sow suspicion in the minds of their interlocutors. The intractable Somali situation, in which each Somali group vigorously sought to influence U.N. activity to its own advantage, required skilful and patient diplomacy of a high order, making the job of U.N. special envoy exceedingly demanding.

In the same vein, innocent people who, in the course of protecting their property, wounded or killed armed attackers, found they were expected to pay blood compensation (mag) in the traditional fashion to their assailants. In general, only those who belonged to strong clans and lineages could protect their lives and property successfully. And while compensation was imported into urban life with the clan system, and successfully claimed (by the stronger party) in cases of targeted individual assault, it was obviously not possible to pin responsibility on individuals in the artillery exchanges which frequently broke out in Mogadishu.

Those who had seized property claimed that it belonged to the state and had been stolen by the previous occupants. Moreover, since their Habar Gidir clan 'now owned the country', other people's property now belonged to them: everybody else was a foreigner. These were the depths of actual clan chauvinism. Some of the older urban commercial communities (Arab, Reer Hamar, etc.) belonging to clans without effective militias, who were routinely abused, escaped abroad.

Thus, this inequitable distribution of indirect 'foreign aid' was doubly destructive in the boost it gave to warlord activity. An even more disgraceful legacy of U.N.O.S.O.M. were the number of instances which later came to light of torture and human rights abuses by some U.N. contingent forces. Particularly flagrant cases involved Canadian and Italian soldiers. A number of senior military officers were forced to resign.

Somaliland’s initial years were difficult, and ‘Abdarahman Tur’s administration did not succeed in generating sufficient income, from internal or external sources, to finance an effective government, while the banditry of roving armed bands and independent militias undermined public security. The Grand Conference of National Reconciliation, which opened at Borama on 24 January 1993 and lasted over four months, enabled key issues to be extensively debated and consensus to be built up slowly by the national committee (guurti) of 150 elders, who were delegated to vote. During these deliberations an estimated 2,000 other people attended and participated, as Somalis do, from time to time in the discussions and debates. Most of the costs were met by local Somalis, with some slight assistance from foreign sources. U.N.O.S.O.M., which seemed committed to a unified Somali state, did not provide any support; nor, more scandalously, did it make any contribution to Somalilands determined demilitarization programme for militias.

The Borama conference had at least three significant results. Harking back to the S.N.M.’s original programme, it produced a Peace Charter (a kind of national heer) to strengthen security and regularize the role of the traditional local elders in all aspects of peace making. It also formulated a national charter to serve for two years as the country’s temporary constitution. The new government, which Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Igal (Habar Awal in succession to Abdarahman Tur, Habar Yunis) was elected to lead, would be required to draft a formal constitution to be put to a referendum within this two-year period. The most novel feature here was an imaginative innovation in the shape of a bicameral legislature, with a non-elected upper house of traditional elders (the guurti), and an elected lower house of representatives: a kind of compromise between the old clan-based S.N.M. and the exigencies of modern administration.

Following the Borama conference, security in general improved; with a vigorous (if still financially constrained) militia demobilization programme, roadblocks were progressively removed and Igal gradually succeeded in re-establishing the basic structure of government which had collapsed in the 1980s and had failed to be restored in the first S.N.M. administration. Regular working hours were instituted for civil servants, who were now paid regularly. A planning ministry was established, whose work included liaison with foreign N.G.O.s and U.N. agencies, and the central bank reopened to administer the new Somaliland shilling as the national currency. Professionally equipped police forces (led by former local officers) were restored to the main towns: Hargeisa, Burao and Borama. At the same time, regional and district courts were reopened. Life was returning to normal – which it had not been since the last decade of Siyad’s regime.

Business, indeed, according to some sceptical Somali commentators, was what the transitional national government was essentially about. Its leading figures were business partners with interests in Djibouti shared with Ismail ‘Omar Geelle. One new senior minister, indeed, openly boasted that he was only with the T.N.G. for the money, and it was not long before charges of corruption were to be levelled, leading to the resignation of the Prime Minister whose relations with the President were conspicuously at odds.

The U.N., in fact, had decided that its initiative was a success from the beginning and was not prepared to see whether ‘Abdulqassim and his ministers would actually succeed in winning public support on a sufficiently wide front to warrant the title ‘government’. Abdulqassim, obviously, had started off badly with a highly centralized political structure and by failing to honour his pledge to move the Somali capital to Baidoa. In its rush to legitimate his fledgling administration, the U.N. committed a more serious blunder by immediately granting the T.N.G. diplomatic recognition, and welcoming its representative to the Somali seat at the General Assembly.

Mogadishu was now an overlapping network of such mafia-style neighbourhoods, each under the protection of a particular big man and his clan militia, with frequent turf wars as attempts were made to expand rival jurisdictions.

The lack of effective government gave them freedom of action to print currency abroad and so manipulate prices to their own advantage, and there were no taxes to pay except those to militia gang leaders. As the ‘president’ of Mogadishu’s commerce committee put it to the adventurous young French journalist Jerome Tubiana in February 2002, ‘We only pay the faction controlling the port of entry of our goods and then transport them by road as far as Kenya, in Ethiopia, and to Djibouti. We pass through the frontiers without too much difficulty because the frontier zones are occupied by Somalis. So our clothes or our televisions are cheaper than those of Kenyan and Ugandan traders.’

While this huge human displacement (estimated at well over one million people, probably about a sixth of the total Somali population) fled their country, reducing pressure on resources at home, the remittances they sent back became a vital new source of economic aid for the kin they left behind. This indirect aid from the countries in which they found refuge was estimated to have an annual value of more than U.S.$800 million and accounted, according to some studies, for between 20 and 40 per cent of per capita household income in Somalia. These valuable remitted funds not only subsidized the living costs of families in Somalia but also directly, or indirectly through ‘taxes’ levied on them, contributed to the coffers of the factions and played an important role in maintaining their war chests.

Where in the end everything depended on the protective (and aggressive) firepower to which individuals had access, Rambo was an appealing role model for the young in a world where the success stories were those of gangsters and entrepreneurs who had made it to become important faction leaders and warlords. Although a surprising number of private schools had sprung up in Mogadishu and even a few establishments calling themselves ‘universities’, education had lost its value as a passport to success. This decline had been in train in the Siyad years, and in the ruined capital in which the Arta government now set up its stall some of the most successful big men were illiterate.

The few who were familiar with the history of the Somali programme, and knew that it had been deliberately set up in the 1950s by the British foreign office to counter Nasserite propaganda, were astonished at this ironic turn of events!

This popular mandate seemed to establish quite clearly that Somaliland was, in the best democratic sense, indeed a ‘self-declared’ republic (this was the epithet bestowed disparagingly on the country by hostile U.N. officials and T.N.G. supporters who, evidently not being interested in local democracy, declined to send observers).

The most tangible and devastating consequence was the action taken by the U.S. government in closing down the offices and Internet communication service of the Dubai-based Somali remittance bank al-barakat, suspected of collecting funds for Islamic terrorist organizations although this was vehemently denied by its directors. Fortunately for Somalilanders, their older banking service, dahabshil, which also operated in the south, was exempt from this cavalier American action (although briefly banned in Ethiopia). Remittances in the south immediately dropped by 50 per cent and there were reports of businessmen in their droves quitting Mogadishu and transferring their activities elsewhere.

The ironic paradox in the summer of 2002 was that, while a government did not actually exist in Mogadishu, it was recognized and disingenuously promoted by the U.N.; in contrast, the functioning and democratically elected Somaliland government, that owed virtually everything to its own efforts, remained unrecognized. This absurd anomaly did nothing to assist southern Somalia's recovery. Indeed, in many respects it retarded its real development. However much it may have served the interests of numerous layers of U.N. bureaucracy (and subsidiary professional peace makers), and sustained Italian nostalgia, this travesty of reality condemned the T.N.G. to a fantasy existence, and obscured and distorted the true situation in southern Somalia.

Unacceptably strange though it seems to some politically correct foreign pundits, part of the problem here, as must be obvious by now, is that conflict and war are normal conditions in Somali experience down the ages. There is thus a high tolerance of disorder and violence, especially amongst the recent nomadic invaders of Mogadishu.

It is not that people do not know how to make peace or reach political compromises, as some international organizations naively suppose; it is a matter of motivation. In the south, in the main and for the moment, the stakeholders (to use development jargon) have other objectives. The cost of peace and political settlement is estimated as too high by the scrap merchants who have risen to such prominence and manifestly want to retain, or increase, their economic and political status. Perhaps most importantly of all, the Habar Gidir colonizers of so much land and property in southern Somalia have little desire to return it to its previous owners. Although in the middle of June 2002 some of his own close Ayr kinsmen publicly expressed their lack of confidence in 'Abdulqassim's administration, many of his clansmen must feel that they need him (or some other Habar Gidir) to safeguard their stolen riches.

For the moment, thus, it seemed that despite the reluctance to recognize the Somaliland Republic officially, this might actually be for some time the only viable Somali state on offer. It might accordingly prove necessary to recognize that, in this as in so many other cases, half a loaf is better than none.

Part of the support with which the U.N. and E.U. sought, against all the evidence, to encourage the transitional government must have reflected a conviction, taken as self-evident, that Somalis could not survive without a modern centralized regime. It would certainly be more convenient for international relations. In the case of E.U. and North American countries a more direct motive related to the delicate political problem of refugees that so engaged their leaders in the summer of 2002. Partly because of difficulties in absorbing Somali refugees in countries like Denmark and their impact on right-wing political parties, there was a strong desire to limit the number of Somali asylum seekers and encourage repatriation where this was feasible. For better or worse, this type of pressure partly informed international interests in promoting the formation of a government in Somalia which, it was forlornly supposed, required yet more Somali 'peace conferences'. Few of these external actors, however, appreciated the extent to which the fragile 'frontiers of the state' had been massively 'rolled back' in this powerfully decentralized and robustly individualistic culture.

The dramatic introduction in 1972 of mass literacy in the Roman script by the military regime in Somalia is discussed in Chapter IX. Prior to this a number of scripts had been devised by Somalis. The most popular of these, called 'Osmaniya' after its inventor, enjoyed limited currency, competing in certain areas with Arabic as a medium for writing Somali.

As joint members of the Eastern Cushitic language family the ancestors of the Somalis and Oromo are believed to have originally inhabited the highlands adjacent to the lake region of Ethiopia. Research in modern historical linguistics indicates that from this cradle land, the proto-Somali thrust to the northeast, occupying part of the Horn by about 1000 AD or earlier (see, e.g., H. S. Lewis, 'The Origins of the Galla and Somali', Journal of African History, 7, 1, 1966; B. Heine, 'The Sam Languages. A History of Rendille, Boni and Somali', Afroasiatic Linguistics, 6, 2, 1978; U. Braukamper, 'Oromo Country of Origin: A Reconsideration of Hypotheses' in G. Goldberg and B. Podolsky (eds.), Ethiopian Studies, Rotterdam, 1981, pp. 25–40). Thus the north-south migrations of individual Somali clans discussed here appear to represent a secondary sequence of population movement following the introduction of Islam.

The name Galla, which is of obscure origin, is first recorded in the sixteenth century: it is used without always a specific ethnic connotation in Ethiopia to designate traditionally 'subject' peoples. The Galla call themselves Oromo.

Between 1884 and June 1885, however, Italy pressed Britain to agree to an Italian occupation of Zeila and Harar. In June 1885, Lord Granville indicated that notwithstanding the de jure sovereignty of Turkey over these, Britain would not oppose an Italian bid. By this time, however, the Italian parliament would not accept an Italian occupation.

The 'Haber Garhajis' are an alliance of two separate northern Somali clans, the Habar Yunis and 'Idagalle. Eastern clans with whom Britain concluded a protectorate treaty were the Haber Tol Ja'lo; the Warsangeli; and the Majerteyn. The Majerteyn eventually fell within the Italian sphere. The Dulbahante clan to the east of what became the British Somalilland Protectorate was not included in the protectorate treaties.

The post at Biyo Kaboba consisted 'of a fragile block-house built of loose stones and thatched with straw, . . . it is garrisoned by seven men . . . a nondescript and ragged riff-raff of Somali and Sudanese – no Abyssinians amongst them . . . those poor devils, who receive no pay . . . only live on passing caravans. . . .' (Count Gleichen, the Intelligence Officer with Rodd's party, With the Mission to Menelik, 1897, London, 1898, p. 27.) Alola, another place where a temporary Abyssinian post had been opened within British territory, was found to be deserted in 1897. Thus the Abyssinian encroachments were mere tokens, but the effect of this rather nominal Abyssinian pressure was to make Britain realize that her Somali territory was more extensive than was really necessary for her purposes.

Rivalry between the Marehan and Awlihan clans in this region assumed serious dimensions about 1910 when a British post was opened at Serenleh. From this base attempts were made in 1912 to bring the Marehan under effective administrative control. Further friction, however, led to the mounting of an expedition of the King's African Rifles between 1913 and 1914. Tension between the two clans appears to have been fanned by the activities of 'Abd ar-Rahman Mursal, a prominent headman of the Awlihan employed as an agent by the British authorities. He seems to have been a rather unhappy choice, for in 1915 after making an official visit to Nairobi, he returned to the area to broadcast the news that the country between Wajir and Serenle had been placed under his authority. This encouraged the Awlihan to provoke their enemies the Marehan and in the resulting tension to rebuff all attempts at mediation on the part of the Administration. In 1916, after a savage Awlihan attack on the Marehan, matters came to a head and 'Abd ar-Rahman Mursal was warned that unless camels looted in the raid were returned he would be dismissed from government service and imprisoned. He was not, however, to be intimidated and contrived a daring attack on Serenle post in which the local British official was killed along with the majority of his guard. With the arms and ammunition which had been seized, Serenle remained in the hands of the Awlihan until the Italian Resident at Bardera, on the opposite side of the Juba, crossed the river with his askaris and drove the Awlihan out.

The claims made to the contrary by the Ethiopian government and by such distinguished supporters of Ethiopia as Miss Sylvia Pankhurst are generally unfounded, as of course is also the pretension that the Ogaden formerly formed part of the 'ancient Ethiopian empire'. As has been seen, Ethiopia's claims to the region were originally established by infiltration and conquest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and only acquired some status in international law in the 1897 and 1908 Italo-Ethiopian agreements.

In March 1957, the government had brought out a Somali news-sheet ('The Somali Messenger', Wargeyska Somaliyed) written in Somali transcribed in a simple but accurate Roman script. But popular reaction was so unfavourable that after two editions this was withdrawn.

In October 1960 a committee under the chairmanship of Mr Muse H. I. Galal, the distinguished authority on Somali poetry, was set up to recommend the most suitable script for the mother-tongue. The Committee's recommendations favoured the use of a Roman orthography, but no decision was taken by the government of the Republic at the time.

The fact that only some 100,000 persons voted out of the north's estimated population of 650,000, suggests that at least half the electorate boycotted the referendum. All adult men and women were entitled to vote, women voting for the first time in the north's history.

The tax on petrol in the north was raised to the rate currently applied in the south, causing petrol prices in the north to double. At the same time the tax on diesel fuel was reduced and also import duties on alcohol and cigarettes to bring the northern prices into line with those in the south. These latter measures were expected to offset the increases in petrol prices. Unfortunately, however, for reasons which are difficult to understand, the government failed to realize that almost all motor vehicles in the north use petrol and not diesel oil. Northerners found little comfort in the reductions in alcohol and cigarette prices which they regarded in the circumstances as derisory.

The Bill received the support of 72 members of the Assembly, ten members opposed it, and one member abstained: other members had apparently left the Assembly in protest. The new law which consisted of 78 articles provided, inter alia, for tighter control of public meetings and associations and empowered the Supreme Court to suspend or dissolve political parties which violated the provisions of the Republic's constitution. To what extent the opposition's criticisms were justified can only be judged from the way in which this legislation was applied. Certainly, in the past some opposition groups had abused the democratic privileges of the Republic to an extent dangerous to public security.

Without adducing any factual evidence, some poorly informed researchers have asserted that the forces of 'Aideed and Siyad were racially motivated in their attacks on the less belligerent farmers of this fertile region. Although the pastoral nomads traditionally tend to despise cultivators, these militia attacks were inspired by their desire to seize livestock and grain and take control of this fertile region which is the breadbasket of southern Somalia. Their predatory success was aided by their superior, clan-based military organization and firepower.

Paid for by the British taxpayer, the service is still financed from the Foreign Office budget, but the latter, very properly, exercises no direct control over programmes. It is assumed that the professional standards of the broadcasters concerned will ensure neutral news reporting. The Somali programme used to be regularly monitored by a non-B.B.C. Somali speaker (at one time Professor B. W. Andrzejewski). But this sensible control seems to have been discontinued, presumably to save money.

R. Marchal, 'The Somali Private Sector', who has contributed valuable reports on what he calls (with misgivings) the 'business class' in mid-1990s Mogadishu, has unfortunately not published detailed sociological case histories illustrative of warlord careers which could throw light on the questions posed here.