Читать книгу Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War - Elizabeth Schmidt - Страница 14

4

Somalia

Conflicting Missions and Mixed Results (1991–2017)

FOCUSING ON SOMALIA from 1991 through 2017, this chapter explores how the collapse of the central state, conflict between warlords and Islamists, and a devastating humanitarian crisis stimulated intervention by the United Nations, the United States, the African Union, and neighboring countries. Foreign military involvement was initially justified as a response to instability and the responsibility to protect civilian lives. However, it was subsequently absorbed into the wider war on terror when a jihadist insurgency emerged in response to foreign intrusion. The response to instability/responsibility to protect paradigm is applicable for the duration of the intervention. The war on terror paradigm is relevant to the period before September 2001, but it assumed greater importance after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The results of external involvement were mixed. Although the initial intervention thwarted some conflict-related starvation, subsequent actions jeopardized civilian lives and increased regional instability. Somalia’s post–Cold War experience illuminates the ways in which foreign intervention can be counterproductive—not only failing to promote peace and security, but even provoking a terrorist insurgency. Rather than strengthening Somalia’s internal peace-building and nation-building efforts, foreign powers and multilateral agencies often played roles that prolonged or exacerbated local tensions.

The post–Cold War conflicts in Somalia have deep historical roots, embracing the precolonial, colonial, and independence periods. The promises of political independence were undermined by the enduring effects of colonial policies, by corruption, and, eventually, by a military coup that installed a dictator who manipulated social divisions to maintain power. During the Cold War, Somalia allied first with the Soviet Union and then with the United States. As the East-West conflict waned, Washington abandoned the Somali dictatorship, and warlords and their clan-based militias overthrew the regime. The central government disintegrated in 1991, and Somalia fell into chaos. State institutions broke down, and basic services, if they were provided at all, were supplied by nongovernmental actors. Islamist organizations, especially, played critical roles in restoring order and reestablishing social services. External powers intervened, both to provide security for the Somali people and to advance their own interests.

The first post–Cold War intervention began in 1992 with a UN mandate to monitor a ceasefire and to provide protection for famine relief operations. It fell apart in 1993 with the downing of two US helicopters and the deaths of eighteen US soldiers and approximately one thousand Somalis, mostly civilians. The second intervention began in 2006 with CIA support for anti-Islamist warlords and culminated in a US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia the same year. External involvement accelerated the growth of a jihadist movement that quickly dominated the antiforeign insurgency. The UN, the AU, and IGAD were the most significant multilateral actors, lending their support to a new transitional government, while the EU joined in brokering peace talks and funding peacekeeping operations. The United States, Ethiopia, and Kenya played crucial roles, acting unilaterally or in conjunction with other entities, while neighboring Uganda and Djibouti also intervened in Somali affairs, mostly under AU and IGAD auspices. Turkey and the United Arab Emirates joined the UN, the EU, the UK, and the United States as the Somali government’s primary security partners.¹ Eritrea, a regional outlier, supplied weapons to the jihadist insurgency, primarily to counter Ethiopian influence, while the al-Qaeda network also provided critical support.

The interests of external bodies and powers were not always in accord with those of the Somali people. The UN and US interventions that favored one warlord over another (1992–95), followed by Ethiopian incursions and support for diverse warlords (1996–2000), generated enormous hostility among the Somali population. The imposition of a corrupt transitional government by outside powers (2004), CIA backing of a new warlord coalition (February–June 2006), and a US-endorsed Ethiopian invasion and occupation (July 2006–January 2009) resulted in a backlash that intensified popular support for al-Shabaab (The Youth). This Islamist youth militia, inspired by Somali veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War, found recruits among the country’s unemployed young men. The Ethiopian invasion sparked an antiforeign insurgency, with al-Shabaab at its helm. While the organization maintained a local focus, targeting primarily Somali military and government officials, it also established ties with al-Qaeda and expanded its attacks to Westerners working in Somalia and to neighboring states that were associated with the intervention.²

By early 2007, al-Shabaab insurgents had gained control of much of southern Somalia, provoking another round of foreign military interventions. In February the UN Security Council used Chapter VIII powers to authorize the African Union Mission in Somalia, which eventually sent some 22,000 peacekeepers to restore order. The conflict continued, and the election of yet another foreign-backed government in 2012 did little to resolve it. The government had limited authority outside the capital and relied on AU forces for defense. Its operations were characterized by widespread corruption and monopolization of power. Al-Shabaab continued to exploit legitimate local grievances for its own ends.

Setting the Stage: Somalia during the Cold War (1960–91)

A brief description of Somalia during the last decades of the Cold War provides a framework for understanding the conflicts that followed in its wake. A union of British and Italian colonies that had been joined at independence in 1960, Somalia was the object of US-Soviet competition.³ With the Gulf of Aden to the north and the Indian Ocean to the east, Somalia was strategically placed to control access to the Red Sea and to Middle Eastern oil routes. The country was plagued by both internal and external problems that provided outsiders with opportunities for influence. Colonial boundary treaties had left millions of ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti. After independence, successive campaigns to unite all ethnic Somalis in a Greater Somalia led to numerous border conflicts and devastating regional wars. Inside Somalia, ethnic Somalis shared a common language, culture, and religion. However, genealogical groupings, reified by colonial policies as distinctive clan identities, were manipulated by political leaders to mobilize constituents and consolidate power.⁴ Ethnic minorities, set apart by race, class, region, language, and occupation, suffered harsh discrimination. Among the most vulnerable were the Somali Bantu, a recently coined umbrella term for people with Bantu-speaking ancestors who settled along the Shabelle River centuries before the arrival of Somali speakers, as well as those in the Jubba River valley whose ancestors were brought to Somalia as slaves in the nineteenth century.

The first democratically elected postindependence governments were challenged by sectarian and patronage interests, corruption, and disputes over the country’s expansionist goals. Relations with the United States were uneasy. Fearing Somali designs on its primary regional allies, Ethiopia and Kenya, Washington balked when Somalia requested military aid shortly after independence. The Soviet Union stepped into the gap. In October 1969, General Mohamed Siad Barre, commander in chief of the Somali army, seized power in a military coup. The following year, after Somalia expelled a number of US diplomats, military attachés, and the Peace Corps, Washington terminated all economic aid. Moscow intensified its military and economic assistance programs, and Siad Barre soon proclaimed that Somalia would follow the tenets of scientific socialism. During the early years of his regime, the country made important strides in mass literacy, primary education, public health, and economic development, particularly in the rural areas, while new laws on marriage, divorce, and inheritance expanded women’s rights. However, the military strongman also abolished local authority structures, suspended the constitution, banned political parties, and imprisoned or killed dissenters.

Somalia’s political, economic, and social tensions were exacerbated by the Somali-Ethiopian War of 1977–78. As one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most heavily armed nations, Somalia possessed a 22,000-man army that had been trained and equipped by the Soviet Union and its allies. Ethiopia maintained an even stronger military apparatus, a 40,000-man army that had been trained and outfitted by the United States. A 1974 military coup had ousted the US-backed emperor of Ethiopia, and the new rulers had embraced Marxism-Leninism. Yet the alliance with Washington endured. Then, in July 1977, Somalia invaded Ethiopia in an attempt to annex Somali-inhabited land. The Kremlin, which was courting the Marxist regime, was furious. Aided by some 18,000 Cuban soldiers, advisors, and technicians, the Soviet Union threw its full weight to Ethiopia. The OAU, which viewed Ethiopia as the victim of Somali aggression, ignored Siad Barre’s appeals for assistance. Although it officially distanced itself from Somali aggression in 1977, the United States covertly supported Mogadishu’s war effort through third parties, mobilizing military aid through a consortium of allies led by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and France. Unable to sustain the war without more substantial external support, Somalia was forced to withdraw from Ethiopia in 1978. Washington became a mainstay of the Siad Barre regime after its retreat. Between 1979 and 1986, the United States provided Somalia with $500 million in military aid, making it one of the largest recipients of US military assistance in sub-Saharan Africa.⁵ Somalia had effectively switched sides in the Cold War.

US aid notwithstanding, Somalia was in dire straits by the mid-1980s. The Ethiopian war, corruption, and mismanagement had run the economy into the ground, dissipating the development achievements of the previous decade. Onerous taxes stimulated rural unrest, which was brutally repressed. Determined to crush all political opposition, Siad Barre imprisoned or killed his critics or drafted them into the Somali army while collectively punishing their clan members. Encouraging clan rivalry to disrupt his opponents and strengthen his hold on power, his regime was increasingly dominated by his Darod clan family members and their allies.⁶

By 1989, clans that had suffered from harassment or discrimination, and Islamists, who had been repressed by the dictatorship, were united in their hatred of the Siad Barre regime. In the north, where a large number of war refugees had been resettled on Isaaq clan land and government policies threatened Isaaq economic interests, the Ethiopian-backed Somali National Movement instigated an insurgency. Somali military planes, piloted by white South African and former Rhodesian mercenaries, bombed the northern city of Hargeisa, and government forces killed tens of thousands of Isaaq clan members. In the south, Islamist opposition was spearheaded by a Salafist study group, al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (Islamic Union). Many of the group’s leaders had worked or studied in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Kuwait, where they had been exposed to fundamentalist teachings. Most of the members were students or faculty from Somali secondary schools and colleges, or from the Somali National University. The massacre of 450 Islamist protesters in the capital city of Mogadishu in July 1989 prompted the transformation of al-Itihaad from a nonviolent association calling people to the faith into a jihadist organization whose goal was to establish an Islamic state in Greater Somalia. The new agenda attracted Somali veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War, who played a major role in al-Itihaad’s metamorphosis. With their knowledge of military strategy and their training in guerrilla and terror tactics, the war veterans recast al-Itihaad as Somalia’s most powerful military force following the breakdown of the central government in 1991.

Collapse of the Dictatorship, Rise of Warlords, and Foreign Intervention (1991–95)

While Somalia faltered, the Cold War also took a new turn. In the late 1980s the Soviet Union faced a severe political and economic crisis, and the alliance with Somalia was no longer critical to the United States. After the 1989 Mogadishu massacre, the George H. W. Bush administration expressed newfound concern about Siad Barre’s human rights abuses, and Congress suspended military and economic aid. Without US support, the Siad Barre government was an easy target. In January 1991, the United Somali Congress (USC), led by General Mohammed Farah Aidid and dominated by the Hawiye clan family, overthrew the regime, and the USC’s Ali Mahdi Mohamed was elected interim president. After the central government failed, personal, clan, and other rivalries split the opposition.⁷ A war between the Aidid and Ali Mahdi factions destroyed much of Mogadishu in 1991–92. The formal economy ceased to function, and southern Somalia disintegrated into fiefdoms ruled by rival warlords and their militias. Followers were mobilized and opponents objectified through clan-based hate narratives. Clan cleansing, although instigated by Siad Barre, became a defining instrument of warlord control.⁸

As the fighting intensified in 1991, war-induced famine, compounded by drought, threatened the lives of 60 percent of the population, primarily in the southern and central regions.⁹ Massive population displacement, the theft of food and livestock by marauding soldiers and militia members, and crop failure put 4.5 million people at risk of starvation. Mogadishu’s port and airport were controlled by warlords who confiscated food aid and manipulated food supplies to reward their supporters, punish their opponents, and finance the purchase of weapons. By late 1992, some 300,000 Somalis had died from starvation and war-related disease and violence, and 2 million people had fled their homes.

The failure of the UN to respond to the crisis was criticized by many Somalis and international NGOs. Largely absent in 1991, the UN took a more active role in 1992 under the leadership of the new secretary-general, Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a onetime supporter of Siad Barre who was deeply hostile to Aidid and determined to undermine his power. The Security Council imposed an arms embargo in January 1992, which prohibited the delivery of any weapons or military equipment to Somalia. In April, the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM I) was established with a Chapter VI mandate to monitor a ceasefire signed in March and to escort and protect aid convoys. It was authorized to include 50 unarmed observers and 500 armed guards. Boutros-Ghali appointed Algerian diplomat Mohamed Sahnoun both as his special representative in Somalia and as the head of UNOSOM. Intent on procuring a lasting political solution, Sahnoun mediated a series of negotiations that included warlords, patrilineage leaders, and community elders, as well as intellectuals, merchants, women, and youth. In July, the UN secretary-general brought attention to the humanitarian crisis when he charged that the Security Council was “fighting a rich man’s war in Yugoslavia while not lifting a finger to save Somalia from disintegration.”¹⁰

If the UN was slow to act, divisions within the US government also hindered a rapid American response. In December 1991, Andrew Natsios, a high-level official in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), called Somalia “the worst humanitarian crisis today” and advocated American action.¹¹ In the State Department, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Herman Cohen, the East Africa Desk, and the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs also called for a strong US response. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, who was under mounting pressure to demonstrate US leadership in response to humanitarian crises in Bosnia and Somalia, believed that a limited military operation in Somalia, although not desirable, would be more manageable than one in the Balkans. Those opposed to US military engagement included Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs John Bolton, who argued that Somalia was not strategic to US interests and thus did not warrant US help, and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, who worried about the lack of an exit strategy. Leading officials in the Defense Department and in the US Central Command (CENTCOM), along with experienced ambassadors in the region, also warned against hasty military involvement without a clear plan or objective.¹²

These concerns notwithstanding, a major humanitarian disaster so close to the US presidential elections could not be ignored. In July 1992, the United States agreed to fund and transport 500 Pakistani troops to guard humanitarian shipments as part of the UNOSOM I mission. In August, while awaiting the Somali principals’ acceptance of the UN force, President Bush announced the launch of a unilateral US military airlift. Operation Provide Relief supplied the equivalent of 12 million meals to Somalia between August and November. By October, the rains had begun and death rates were declining. Although highly effective in the short run, the operation also had drawbacks. Insecurity had not abated, and in some places it had grown more dire than previously. The massive increase in food supplies provided new opportunities for warlords and bandits to weaponize food, and in some ways it contributed to a widening of the conflict. Similarly, the introduction of foreign military forces generated hostility in some quarters and rendered a political solution more difficult.

Among the strongest critics of the use of military force was UN Special Representative Sahnoun. Although he credited the US airlift with saving lives, he opposed further militarization of the UN operation. Political negotiations were making progress, even if they were slowed by painstaking attention to local sensitivities. Faction leaders and community elders from all regions had endorsed the idea of a national conference to discuss national reconciliation. Aidid, Ali Mahdi, and other powerful faction leaders had agreed to permit 500 UN peacekeepers to deploy in Mogadishu; the port had been reopened, and food distribution had commenced. Alternatives to military intervention, including mediation by subregional bodies and the application of sanctions, had not been fully explored, and military intervention would undermine these delicate processes. Sahnoun publicly criticized the provision of military supplies and money to Ali Mahdi’s forces in a UN plane, which contributed to Aidid’s mounting distrust of the UN; Sahnoun also opposed the increase of the UNOSOM I force to 3,500 troops, authorized in August without warning to Sahnoun or consultation with Somali leaders. Irked by Sahnoun’s public criticisms and his willingness to work with Aidid, Boutros-Ghali dismissed his special representative in late October. Sahnoun’s successors failed to garner the same degree of trust among Somalis, and efforts to thwart the rising tensions between the Ali Mahdi and Aidid factions fell apart, as did agreements that allowed the safe passage of relief shipments.

Although Sahnoun’s removal undermined the prospects for a political solution, the matter was not yet settled. The Western NGO community debated whether enhanced UN military involvement would exacerbate or ameliorate the situation. Some opposed foreign military presence of any kind; others resisted the use of troops beyond those needed to protect relief agencies and their supplies; still others called for a full-blown military intervention. Within the US government, leading officials continued to urge caution. By late November, increased media attention along with urging from bipartisan forces in Congress, president-elect Bill Clinton, and a growing chorus of NGOs tipped the balance toward action. Those who stressed the need to “do something”—with an eye to political and publicity concerns—held sway over those who endorsed prudence. Boutros-Ghali outlined several possible courses of action, including one that would allow a member state to undertake a military enforcement operation with UN Security Council authorization. The Bush administration informed the UN secretary-general that the United States was willing to lead such an intervention.

In December 1992, the Security Council authorized the establishment of a US-led multinational military task force, officially called Unified Task Force (UNITAF) and unofficially dubbed Operation Restore Hope. The military force would include nearly 26,000 US troops plus 11,000 more from two dozen other countries. UNITAF was granted a Chapter VII mandate to work with UNOSOM I to secure ports, airports, warehouses, feeding centers, and roads so that humanitarian relief could be delivered. It was not authorized to disarm or demobilize warring parties, confiscate heavy weapons, or intervene to stop fighting between rival groups. Its mandate was solely to ensure the delivery of humanitarian relief to the civilian population. The original charge continued to be the public face of the mission even after the US role had changed substantially.

The authorizations for UNITAF and UNOSOM I expired in May 1993, when UNOSOM II, also led by the United States, took over. Composed of 18,000 peacekeepers, including 4,200 Americans, UNOSOM II operated under a broader mandate than its predecessor, and one that was far removed from UNOSOM I’s original peacekeeping role. Arguing that mass starvation could be averted only if local militias were neutralized, the UN Security Council prescribed a Chapter VII mandate and a course of action that included the forcible disarmament of Somali militias, particularly that of Mohammed Farah Aidid, whom the UN leadership was now determined to exclude from power.

Photo 4.1. US Marines participate in UNITAF search for General Mohammed Farah Aidid’s weapons, Mogadishu, January 7, 1993. Photo by PHCM Terry C. Mitchell.

Tension between the UN and Aidid broke to the surface on June 5, when Aidid’s militia ambushed and killed two dozen Pakistani peacekeepers who were attempting to inspect his radio station and weapons depots. The Security Council quickly expanded UNOSOM II’s mandate, authorizing UN forces to arrest, detain, try, and punish those responsible for the killings. Having moved from the original mission of protecting aid convoys and relief workers to capturing, disarming, and punishing one faction in the fighting, the UN crossed the line from humanitarian intervention to choosing sides in a deadly conflict. As the mission’s chief advocate and leader, the United States was now deeply embroiled in Somalia’s civil war. Because US support had been key to Siad Barre’s survival, many Somalis were already hostile to the United States and distrustful of its motives. In their view, the United States and its UN partner had declared war; their soldiers were now perceived as an occupation force.

On June 11–17, 1993, US military forces in AC-130 Spectre gunships and Cobra and Black Hawk helicopters attacked Aidid’s radio station and a number of Mogadishu compounds believed to hold weapons caches. UN troops fired on the angry civilians who poured into the streets, killing and maiming a large number. In July, a similar airborne assault on elders, clan and religious leaders, intellectuals, and businessmen, who were meeting to consider a UN peace initiative, killed sixteen prominent members of Aidid’s party and dozens of others. The massacre intensified anti-UN and anti-American sentiment among the civilian population. Violent retaliation was directed at all foreigners, causing numerous relief organizations to withdraw from Somalia. US troops, in turn, regarded Somali civilians with growing disdain.

Photo 4.2. Children walk past graffiti criticizing Jonathan Howe, the UN special envoy sent to Somalia to oppose Aidid, Mogadishu, June 30, 1993. Photo by Eric Cabanis/AFP/Getty Images.

Although the delivery of food aid was the priority of the US military in early 1993, it was not the objective eight months later. From late August to early October, the US armed forces were bent on capturing or killing Aidid and his top lieutenants. The final raid took place on October 3, 1993, when 120 elite US Army Rangers and Delta Force troops attempted to capture key leaders of Aidid’s militia in one of Mogadishu’s most dangerous neighborhoods. By this time, al-Itihaad had formed an alliance of convenience with Aidid’s militia. Both groups included members who had been trained and armed by al-Qaeda operatives who had fought in the Soviet-Afghan War and who were charged with expelling US and UN forces from Somalia. During the October 3 operation, Aidid’s forces, assisted by al-Itihaad, shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, which crashed into children in the streets below.¹³ Angry crowds attacked the surviving soldiers and those who came to rescue them. In the fighting that ensued, eighteen US soldiers and some one thousand Somali men, women, and children were killed. Eighty percent of the dead were civilians.

Within days of the debacle, President Bill Clinton announced that all US troops would be withdrawn from Somalia by the end of March 1994. Without US backing, the UN could not impose a political settlement that excluded Aidid. Although the crisis had not been resolved, the UN pulled out of Somalia in early 1995, declaring that UNOSOM II was over.

Islamism, Jihad, and Insurgency (1994–2017)

While the UN and the United States were preoccupied with the secular warlords, Somali Islamists were also building their base. Like many of its secular predecessors, al-Itihaad promoted irredentist claims with the goal of uniting ethnic Somalis from Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, and Somalia in a single nation. However, in contrast to secular leaders, those in al-Itihaad envisioned Greater Somalia as an Islamic state. Perceiving opportunity in the chaos, al-Qaeda determined that Somalia was ripe for a jihadist insurgency that could serve as a launching pad for similar uprisings in Eritrea, Yemen, and the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia. By late 1993, Sudan, Iran, and al-Qaeda were supplying al-Itihaad with money, weapons, military training, and personnel to counter US influence in the region.

As the security situation deteriorated and Western aid organizations withdrew, Muslim charities supported by wealthy patrons in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait filled the void. In a country with virtually no functioning infrastructure or social services, al-Itihaad provided assistance to the poor and established Qur’anic schools, Islamic courts, and militias to perform police duties. It invested in banking, telecommunications, export-import, and transportation, using business proceeds to finance social services and religious and political endeavors. Through the application of shari’a (Islamic law), the Islamic courts provided a justice system in a society buffeted by lawlessness and violence, where warlords and their gunmen raped, robbed, kidnapped, and killed at will. Desperate for law and order, a working economy, and basic social services, the Somali public generally supported al-Itihaad’s efforts, while Somali business owners endorsed the courts and financed their law enforcement activities.

Instability in Somalia precipitated a new crisis with Ethiopia. In 1994, al-Itihaad established a military presence near the borders with Kenya and Ethiopia and launched numerous attacks inside Ethiopia, especially in the Somali-inhabited regions. By 1996, Ethiopia was making regular incursions into Somalia to challenge al-Itihaad and build alliances with Somali warlords. In 2000, a group of Ethiopian-backed warlords formed the Somali Reconciliation and Restoration Council (SRRC), led by Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, who would become president of Somalia in 2004 as a member of the foreign-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG), and by Hussein Mohammed Aidid, who had succeeded his father, Mohammed Farah Aidid, as head of the powerful USC militia.

Instability in Somalia also inspired new US concerns. US counterterrorism experts warned that Somalia had become a haven for al-Qaeda—including operatives responsible for bombing the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. These fears escalated after the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. In October 2001, the UN included al-Itihaad on a list of organizations associated with al-Qaeda, and in December the United States placed al-Itihaad on the 2001 USA Patriot Act’s “Terrorist Exclusion List.” Businesses with purported ties to al-Itihaad were also targeted. Among these was Somalia’s largest employer, al-Barakat, a money transfer company with telecommunications, internet, and other holdings that had assumed significant banking functions after the collapse of the country’s banking system in the early 1990s. Al-Barakat had operations in forty countries, transferred some $140 million annually, and served as a lifeline for many Somalis, who depended on remittances from family members abroad to sustain them. In November 2001, the George W. Bush administration, claiming that al-Barakat served as a conduit for funds to al-Qaeda, closed its offices, froze its US assets, and pressured the UN Security Council to impose sanctions.¹⁴ These actions effectively terminated al-Barakat’s operations, jeopardizing the well-being of Somali citizens and generating increased animosity toward the United States.¹⁵ Washington also sought common cause with Ethiopia, Somalia’s regional rival, which for centuries had been dominated by Christian elites. In 2006, the US government referred to Ethiopia as “the linchpin to stability in the Horn of Africa and the Global War on Terrorism.”¹⁶

Instability in Somalia also worried other external powers. The UN, the AU, the EU, the Arab League, and IGAD intensified their diplomatic involvement. In 2004, they helped broker an agreement to establish a central government in Somalia—the fourteenth attempt since Siad Barre was ousted in 1991. The resulting Transitional Federal Government was backed by these external entities, and by the United States and Ethiopia. However, the TFG had very little support inside Somalia. The negotiations had been deeply influenced by SRRC warlords who aspired to establish a clan-based federal system that would consolidate their own power. Although presented as a government of national unity, the TFG was dominated by the Mijerteen clan/Darod clan family of its president, SRRC warlord Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. It marginalized many of the Hawiye clans that had long controlled Mogadishu, and it purged the parliament of opposition members. Unable to enter Mogadishu’s hostile environs, the TFG established its capital in Baidoa, 150 miles away, where it was protected by Ethiopian troops. It controlled little territory outside that city. Rife with nepotism and cronyism, the TFG was incompetent and corrupt. The salaries of senior army, police, and intelligence officers, as well as government ministers and parliamentarians, were paid by foreign donors, and government officials were not accountable to the Somali people. President Yusuf, the SRRC men he appointed to top positions, and his prime minister, Ali Mohamed Ghedi, were all closely linked to Ethiopia. As a result, many Somalis considered the TFG to be an Ethiopian puppet regime.

Supported by the United States, President Yusuf opposed all forms of political Islam and resisted the inclusion of Islamists in his government. As a result, the powerful Islamic courts and their proponents refused to support the TFG. President Yusuf’s reliance on Ethiopian troops and his anti-Islamist actions helped rally support for the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which had formed in 2000 to consolidate the power of the Islamic courts and improve their effectiveness. Courts affiliated with al-Itihaad promoted a strict, Salafist interpretation of Islamic law, while others interpreted the law according to the more tolerant Sufi traditions that most Somalis embraced.¹⁷

Disregarding popular support for the ICU, external powers were determined to undermine it. In early 2006, the CIA encouraged a group of clan militia leaders, businessmen, and warlords—including four TFG cabinet ministers—to join forces against the growing Islamist movement. The result was the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT). Violating the 1992 UN arms embargo, the CIA provided the ARPCT with weapons and financed its militias. In return, the alliance became an accessory to the US war on terror—capturing and rendering to the United States suspected al-Qaeda operatives, specifically those believed to be involved in the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2002 attacks on an Israeli-owned hotel and airliner in Kenya. Fighting between the ARPCT and the ICU broke out in February 2006. In May, warlord attacks on ICU militias in Mogadishu instigated some of the worst street fighting in the capital since Siad Barre’s government fell apart in 1991. The TFG appealed for foreign military assistance and the United States, Ethiopia, Italy, and Yemen complied, again violating the UN arms embargo. Eritrea, in turn, provided weapons to the ICU militias to counter the influence of Ethiopia, its regional nemesis. In early June, ICU militias seized control of Mogadishu and ousted the warlords who had controlled the capital for fifteen years.

Photo 4.3. Ethiopian troops participate in AMISOM patrol in Baidoa, Somalia, March 27, 2014. Photo by Abdi Dagane/AU UN IST.

By July 2006, ICU militias had gained ascendancy over most of southern and central Somalia, including the key ports and airfields. In Mogadishu, the courts began to rebuild basic government services, establishing committees on sanitation, reconstruction, education, and justice. They cracked down on criminals, armed youth, and warlord militias, bringing a semblance of security to the capital city. Mogadishu’s port and international airport, which had been closed for more than a decade, reopened. The ICU garnered immense popular support, even from secular Somalis who welcomed the implementation of Islamic law as way to stem crime and violence. François Lonseny Fall, at that time the UN special representative to Somalia, acknowledged that the ICU had “achieved great things in Mogadishu,” while other human rights groups claimed that with Islam as a unifying factor, the ICU had been more successful than any previous government in uniting and disarming Somali clans.¹⁸

The ICU victory was precisely the opposite of what the CIA had hoped for when it backed the warlord alliance. In fact, foreign meddling had triggered a backlash that strengthened radical factions. In June 2006, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a Salafi and former al-Itihaad leader, was appointed chair of the ICU consultative council, challenging the leadership of the executive council chair, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Sufi cleric. A Somali national army colonel under Siad Barre and onetime member of Aidid’s militia, Aweys had joined the al-Itihaad militia in the early 1990s and helped establish Islamic courts in Mogadishu at the end of that decade. Although Aweys hoped to implement Islamic law throughout Somalia, some analysts considered him to be a mitigating influence vis-à-vis extremists in al-Shabaab, the ICU’s youth militia, which aspired to establish an Islamic state beyond Somalia’s borders.

External support for the warlords and the TFG strengthened the position of radicals in the ICU. In early July 2006, Osama bin Laden called on Muslims worldwide to wage jihad in Somalia and warned that Muslim fighters would challenge all foreign troops, including UN and AU peacekeepers, if they intervened to support the TFG. Three weeks later, when ICU forces threatened the transitional government’s headquarters in Baidoa, hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers, supported by tanks and helicopters, arrived to protect the government’s position. In the weeks that followed, some 5,000 Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia, while more amassed on the border. ICU hardliners began to mobilize for confrontation with Ethiopia, appealing both to Somali irredentist claims and to religious sentiment against the predominantly Christian regime that sustained the warlords and propped up the TFG.

Although most Somalis did not support the jihadist agenda of the hardliners, and few wanted another war with Ethiopia—which still claimed one of the largest, most sophisticated armies in sub-Saharan Africa—the presence of Ethiopian troops in Baidoa and persistent Ethiopian incursions across Somalia’s borders rallied the population behind the radicals. Moderates in the ICU, who previously had discussed elections and power sharing, also began talking war. Departing from his earlier position, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys urged Somalis to prepare for jihad against Ethiopia. In late July and early August 2006, some forty senior government officials, including a number of cabinet ministers, abandoned the TFG. Some defected to the ICU, taking their own militias with them.

The fallout from foreign intervention rapidly transformed the Somali conflict into a regional conflagration. In October, the UN reported that ten nations were supplying arms to various Somali factions in violation of the UN embargo. Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Syria were supporting the ICU, while Ethiopia, Uganda, and Yemen were furnishing weapons to the TFG. In November, as ICU militias routed TFG forces in the north, President Yusuf appealed for further external assistance. The United States responded, pushing through a UN Security Council resolution on December 6, 2006, that described the Somali situation as “a threat to international peace and security in the region” and authorized the AU and IGAD to establish a military force to protect the TFG and to train its security forces.¹⁹ The resolution also created a loophole in the UN arms embargo that allowed the African peacekeeping forces—and implicitly, Ethiopian soldiers protecting the TFG—to be supplied with weapons, while continuing to deny arms to the ICU.

On December 14, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer referred to ICU leaders as “extremists to the core” who were “controlled by al-Qaeda.”²⁰ Ethiopia took this high-level US condemnation as a green light for a full-scale invasion. Six days later, as ICU militias attempted to capture Baidoa, Ethiopian warplanes buttressed by thousands of Ethiopian and TFG soldiers struck back, decimating the poorly armed ICU militias. On December 24, 2006, after months of military buildup, some 8,000 Ethiopian troops, supported by tanks and attack helicopters, advanced on Mogadishu, bombing Somalia’s two main airports along the way. The UN Security Council was silent. Its failure to condemn the Ethiopian invasion confirmed Somali views that the international body was not a neutral broker of peace, but a partisan force that had sanctioned foreign intervention to bolster a client regime that had virtually no internal support.

While the UN tacitly condoned the Ethiopian offensive, the United States actively supported it. The State Department referred to the invasion as a legitimate response to aggression by Somali Muslim extremists. Convinced that the al-Qaeda militants who had planned the 1998 and 2002 attacks in Kenya and Tanzania were hiding in southern Somalia under ICU protection, US intelligence officials were determined to root them out. The Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), a Djibouti-based counterterrorism entity comprising nearly 2,000 US military and civilian personnel, provided satellite photos and other intelligence to the Ethiopian army to help it locate ICU fighters. Planes piloted by US Special Operations Forces took off from bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya and joined Ethiopian aircraft in bombing ICU strongholds. As the invasion progressed, US Special Operations Forces, functioning from a secret airfield in Ethiopia, entered Somalia alongside the Ethiopian army, purportedly to track down the al-Qaeda suspects.²¹ US ground troops helped Ethiopian soldiers gather evidence, while the US Navy patrolled the Somali coast and intercepted ships to search for al-Qaeda operatives. Fearing massive bloodshed and the destruction of Mogadishu, business and clan leaders urged the ICU to disband and to abandon the capital without resistance. The ICU militias complied and retreated toward the Kenyan border, pursued by intelligence and security forces from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and the United States. In a rendition program run by Ethiopia, the United States, and the TFG, militants were rounded up and deported to secret detention facilities in Ethiopia. On January 8, 2007, TFG President Yusuf entered the capital for the first time since taking office in 2004.

The joint Ethiopian-US operation resulted in an increase, rather than a decrease, in chaos and violence. Within weeks of the foreign invasion, a homegrown insurgency had begun, rallying al-Shabaab and other ICU militias, clans that had been marginalized by the TFG, and a wide range of groups that benefited from anarchy, including warlord militias, hired gunmen, arms and drug traffickers, smugglers, and profiteers. The Somali insurgents were joined by fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arabian Peninsula who responded to the call to wage jihad against Ethiopia. Warlord and clan militias set up roadblocks and shook down residents. Banditry and extortion, which had been suppressed by the ICU, returned with a vengeance. Using weapons left over from the Cold War, including AK-47 assault rifles, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades, insurgents attacked TFG and Ethiopian troops, government buildings, and infrastructure. Employing techniques developed by Iraqi resisters after the 2003 US invasion, they discharged landmines, suicide bombs, and improvised explosive devices, and they targeted TFG officials for assassination. In mid-January 2007, the TFG parliament declared a state of emergency and granted the president broad powers to enforce security.

Foreign involvement assumed a new dimension in February, when the UN Security Council authorized the establishment of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which was slated to deploy 8,000 African peacekeepers of diverse nationalities to replace the Ethiopian soldiers shoring up the TFG. Funded by the UN and the EU, the AU force appeared to many Somalis as yet another case of unwanted foreign intrusion. The fact that most of the troops came from the predominantly Christian countries of Uganda and Burundi augmented public hostility. Moreover, the AU force was slow to arrive—only 2,600 soldiers were in place by August 2008. As a result, Ethiopian soldiers would remain on Somali soil until early 2009.

In March 2007, the Ethiopian military launched an offensive on Mogadishu to capture key locations from insurgents who had held parts of the capital since the ICU’s departure in January. Assisted by TFG police, Ethiopian soldiers cracked down on Hawiye neighborhoods and closed ports and airfields belonging to Hawiye businessmen, charging that the clan was supporting the insurgency. Widespread arrests, assaults, looting, and rape—perpetrated both by Ethiopian soldiers and by TFG police who were trained and paid by the UN Development Programme—intensified popular support for the insurgency.

The ensuing two-month-long battle for Mogadishu precipitated the most destructive fighting in a decade and a half. By the end of April, some 1,300 Mogadishu residents had been killed, and more than 400,000 had fled their homes. Human rights organizations accused participants on all sides of war crimes. They charged that Ethiopian forces had engaged in widespread and indiscriminate bombing of densely populated areas as well as the collective punishment of civilians, including mass arrests and summary executions. They also claimed that the Ethiopian military had intentionally shelled hospitals, pillaged medical equipment, and blocked the flow of humanitarian assistance, and that Ethiopian and TFG soldiers had raped, plundered, and killed with impunity. Human rights groups asserted that insurgents had also engaged in assassinations and summary executions and that they had demonstrated disregard for civilian lives by mounting attacks from densely populated neighborhoods, which then bore the brunt of Ethiopian and TFG retaliation.

Violence continued to escalate throughout 2007. Badly weakened by infighting and defections, the TFG was on the verge of collapse. By January 2008, al-Shabaab, other ICU militias, and their allies had recovered much of the territory they had lost a year earlier. Al-Shabaab garnered some civilian support, especially in southern Somalia, where it established a semblance of law and order and a justice system that followed years of abuse by warlord militias and government police. In March 2008, the US State Department designated al-Shabaab a “foreign terrorist organization.”²² Critics warned that the label could enhance al-Shabaab’s popularity and at the same time render negotiations with the organization nearly impossible. Matters were further complicated in May, when a targeted US missile strike killed Aden Hashi Farah Ayro, al-Shabaab top’s leader, who had fought in the Soviet-Afghan War. Prior to Ayro’s killing, al-Shabaab had focused its attacks on Ethiopian and TFG soldiers. However, US actions redirected al-Shabaab’s attention to the West. Declaring war on all foreigners, al-Shabaab began to target Western aid workers, journalists, and Somalis working with foreign organizations. As a result, a number of externally based organizations withdrew their personnel, and humanitarian operations were dramatically curtailed.

By mid-2008, insurgent forces controlled most of southern and central Somalia as well as most of Mogadishu. The TFG-Ethiopian alliance held only a few blocks of the capital, including the port, airport, and presidential palace. The support base for extremists was much larger and more radical than it had been before the Ethiopian invasion, and terrorist threats were far more serious. Even Western diplomats recognized that Islamists had to be included in negotiations for any future government that had a chance of success. In June, moderates in the TFG and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS), an opposition coalition composed of both Islamist and secular groups, met in Djibouti to negotiate terms for peace. Al-Shabaab, which controlled much of southern Somalia, opposed collaboration with the secular parties and refused to participate.

The ensuing Djibouti Agreement, backed by the UN, the AU, the EU, and the United States, resulted in a number of changes on the ground. In January 2009, the Somali parliament was enlarged to include moderate Islamists, representatives of citizens’ groups, and Somalis from the diaspora. The parliament elected a new president, selecting Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, an ARS leader and Sufi moderate who had led the ICU executive council before the foreign invasion. By the end of the month, Ethiopia had withdrawn its troops from Somalia. In April the new parliament voted to make Islamic law the basis of the Somali legal system. The insurgents’ rallying points were severely weakened. The foreign occupier had withdrawn, an Islamist had been elected president, and Islamic law was being implemented throughout the country. A number of Muslim factions that had opposed the TFG agreed to lay down arms. Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama’a (Followers of the Prophetic Way and Consensus), an alliance of Sufi militias backed by local clans, agreed to resist al-Shabaab and to back the Sheikh Sharif government. However, other factions persisted. In February 2009, an alliance of Muslim insurgent organizations that had rejected the Djibouti Agreement established Hizbul Islam (Islamic Party) under the leadership of Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, erstwhile ICU consultative council leader, onetime Sheikh Sharif ally, and subsequent ally of al-Shabaab. In May, Hizbul Islam and al-Shabaab conducted a joint operation against TFG forces in Mogadishu, where AMISOM forces saved the government from destruction.

Despite the reforms mandated by the Djibouti Agreement, the TFG remained weak and unpopular. It was corrupt, unrepresentative of the popular majority, and beholden to outsiders. Determined to retain a monopoly on power and resources, it refused to engage with local political and military forces that might threaten its position. It failed to build state institutions and relied on foreign backers to uphold its power. In the northwest (Somaliland) and the northeast (Puntland), autonomous regional governments exercised de facto authority without Mogadishu’s approval or support. Some TFG-allied militias, including Ahlu Sunnah Wal Jama’a, joined Ethiopian soldiers in targeting civilians and were roundly condemned by human rights organizations.

Although the departure of Ethiopian troops was widely applauded inside Somalia, the AMISOM force also generated intense hostility, even among those who opposed al-Shabaab. AMISOM’s heavy shelling of urban neighborhoods, like the Ethiopian attacks, had resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths. Many Somalis also chafed at the presence of thousands of troops from neighboring countries where the regimes in power were dominated by Christians and where Muslims faced repression and discrimination. Al-Shabaab played on these sentiments and characterized AMISOM as a Christian invading force. Nor was AMISOM particularly effective. Al-Shabaab retained a strong presence in Somalia, and on AMISOM’s watch it expanded its operations into neighboring countries. In July 2010, al-Shabaab engaged in its first cross-border operation, setting off coordinated bombs in Kampala, Uganda, that killed seventy-six people in retaliation for Uganda’s central role in AMISOM. Although AMISOM expelled al-Shabaab from Mogadishu in August 2011, the insurgent organization continued to control most of the country’s southern and central regions.

Al-Shabaab’s tenacity sparked a new episode of foreign military intervention in 2011. In October, some 2,000 Kenyan troops, followed by hundreds of Ethiopian troops in November, crossed Somalia’s southern border to attack al-Shabaab and establish a buffer between the two countries. The civilian death toll provoked animosity toward the Kenyan government, and al-Shabaab vowed to retaliate. Although Kenya claimed to be acting at the invitation of the TFG, the UN Security Council had tasked AMISOM with peacekeeping in Somalia. No other foreign entity was authorized to intervene militarily in Somali affairs. Nonetheless, the UN Security Council condoned Nairobi’s unilateral action, and in July 2012 AMISOM formally assumed authority over the Kenyan occupation force, giving it a veneer of legitimacy. Responding to the escalated international response and hoping to boost its image and fighting capacity, al-Shabaab formally merged with al-Qaeda in February 2012.

The year 2012 marked the end of the eight-year transitional government, but not an end to the Somali crisis. The new political dispensation—complete with constitution, parliament, and president—was once again the product of outside forces. It was mediated by the UN, backed by the international community, and disavowed by large segments of Somali civil society, which had had little input into the process. The new president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, was a moderate Islamist with links to the Islamic Courts Union and Somalia’s Muslim Brotherhood. He was also an educator and longtime civil society activist who had worked with the UN in various capacities. However, his ability to effect change was limited, and foreign troops continued to battle al-Shabaab on Somali soil.

In late September, Kenyan AMISOM soldiers, assisted by Somali government troops and militias, weakened al-Shabaab’s economic base when they gained control of the strategic southern port of Kismayo. A key transit point for foreign fighters, weapons, and supplies entering Somalia, and for the export of sugar, livestock, charcoal, and khat, the port hosted an illegal trade that generated hundreds of millions of dollars a year for al-Shabaab and its collaborators in the local Somali administration, as well as for the Kenya Defence Forces and Kenyan government. Although Somalia and Kenya officially sought an end to the turmoil, the enormous profits engendered by a lawless society served as an incentive for many to continue the conflict.

By 2012 al-Shabaab was diminished, but not defeated. As it lost territory and revenues, the organization changed tactics, focusing increasingly on unprotected soft targets, including government offices, schools, hotels, and restaurants. As it was ousted from towns and cities and pushed to Somalia’s southern border, al-Shabaab targeted rural populations in Kenya’s North Eastern Province. Distrusted and neglected by the Nairobi government, the predominantly Somali population of this area was especially vulnerable. While these killings provoked little international response, world attention was captured by al-Shabaab’s September 2013 attack on an exclusive Nairobi shopping mall that claimed the lives of sixty-seven people, including many foreign nationals. AMISOM forces, led by Kenyan soldiers, responded with an aerial offensive that killed some 300 al-Shabaab militants. In 2014, AMISOM forces were bolstered with more than 4,000 Ethiopian troops. Critics warned that the reengagement of the Ethiopian military would serve as a rallying cry for al-Shabaab.

Meanwhile, the United States escalated its low-intensity war against al-Shabaab operatives, deploying both private contractors and US Special Operations Forces, who trained and advised African partners, participated in raids, and interrogated prisoners. During 2014–16, US attacks killed Ahmed Abdi Godane, al-Shabaab’s leader since Ayro’s death in 2008; the organization’s intelligence chief; the official who purportedly planned the 2013 Nairobi mall attack; and some 150 militants in an al-Shabaab training camp. However, middle-level commanders quickly replaced assassinated leaders, and the insurgents continued to attack AMISOM and Somali troops, government officials, and civilians. The defection of a high-level al-Shabaab commander to the Islamic State in October 2015 and the formation of two new organizations, the Islamic State in Somalia and the Islamic State in Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, resulted in even more brutality on the ground. Meanwhile, AMISOM forces were weakened. In 2016, the EU reduced its funding. The AU announced that AMISOM would begin to withdraw in 2018 after transferring authority to the Somali national army, which remained corrupt and ineffective. US covert operations in Somalia escalated in 2017, and the number of Special Operations troops on the ground peaked at nearly 500. At the year’s end it was clear that the external response to instability had transformed the conflict, but it had not brought peace.

Conclusion

Recent conflicts in Somalia have deep historical roots. Their causes are complex, including both internal and external factors. Justifications for intervention have been equally complicated: they have varied from actor to actor and changed over time. Spurred initially by regional instability and the responsibility to protect, foreign powers were increasingly galvanized by the war on terror. The results were mixed. Although the immediate humanitarian crisis—widespread starvation—was to some extent averted, the long-term effects were largely negative. Foreign intervention provoked a terrorist insurgency that consumed civilian lives and increased regional instability. Externally brokered peace initiatives failed to end the conflict. Large segments of Somali civil society were not invited to the bargaining table, grassroots peace-building and nation-building efforts were ignored, and the interests of outsiders and Somali elites prevailed over those of ordinary Somali citizens. As a result, the ensuing agreements garnered little internal support, and a succession of weak Somali governments failed to provide services and security to citizens. Similar practices marked the course of foreign intervention in Sudan and South Sudan, to the west of Somalia, which is the subject of chapter 5.

Suggested Reading

For overviews of Somali history and society, three surveys are especially recommended. Lee V. Cassanelli’s pathbreaking work, The Shaping of Somali Society: Reconstructing the History of a Pastoral People, 1600–1900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), explores the precolonial foundations of modern Somali society. I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Somali: Nation and State in the Horn of Africa, 4th ed. (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002), is regarded as a seminal study of Somali politics and society from ancient times through the early 1990s. However, Lewis’s characterization of Somali political identity as one largely based on clans and their segments—rather than one that embraces a fluid assortment of genealogical, language, religious, cultural, and economic factors—has been challenged by more recent scholarship. See, for instance, Abdi I. Samatar, “Debating Somali Identity in a British Tribunal: The Case of the BBC Somali Service,” Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies 10 (2010), article 8. Finally, David D. Laitin and Said S. Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), considers the precolonial and colonial periods and focuses especially on events since independence.

The early independence period is examined in two significant studies. Abdi I. Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats: Somalia’s Aden A. Osman and Abdirazak H. Hussen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), focuses on the democratic political organizations that led the struggle for independence, the leaders who shaped the first democratically elected governments, and their opponents who were engaged in sectarian and patronage networks. Hannah Whittaker, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Kenya: A Social History of the Shifta Conflict, c. 1963–1968 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), explores the dynamics of a secessionist war in northern Kenya, a region heavily populated by ethnic Somalis, where government counterinsurgency tactics alienated the Somali minority and exacerbated tensions between the Kenyan and Somali states.

Other historical studies explore the emergence of social and economic hierarchies in Somali society. Abdi I. Samatar, The State and Rural Transformation in Northern Somalia, 1884–1986 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), investigates class formation and economic history in modern Somalia. Catherine Lowe Besteman, Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), examines the historical development of hierarchies based on race, class, status, region, language, and occupation and the implications of these hierarchies after the breakdown of Somalia’s central government. Three recommended works provide insight into the origins of the Somali Bantu as an ethnic group and the violence perpetrated against its members after the central government failed: Mohamed Eno, The Bantu-Jareer Somalis: Unearthing Apartheid in the Horn of Africa (London: Adonis and Abbey, 2008); Catherine Besteman, Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); and Ken Menkhaus, “The Question of Ethnicity in Somali Studies: The Case of Somali Bantu Identity,” in Milk and Peace, Drought and War: Somali Culture, Society and Politics, ed. Markus V. Hoehne and Virginia Luling (London: Hurst, 2010), 87–104.

A number of studies focus on Somalia during the Cold War. Laitin and Samatar, Somalia: Nation in Search of a State (mentioned previously), and Ahmed I. Samatar, Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric and Reality (London: Zed Books, 1988), examine Somalia under the Siad Barre regime. Jeffrey A. Lefebvre, Arms for the Horn: U.S. Security Policy in Ethiopia and Somalia, 1953–1991 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), uses declassified government documents and interviews to examine US relations with Somalia and Ethiopia over four decades, focusing especially on the massive influx of weaponry and its societal impact. Marina Ottaway, Soviet and American Influence in the Horn of Africa (New York: Praeger, 1982), focuses on the role of the Soviet Union and the United States in both countries. Louise Woodroofe, “Buried in the Sands of the Ogaden”: The United States, the Horn of Africa, and the Demise of Détente (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2013), and Nancy Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), provide important new insights into Cold War dynamics in the Horn and US and Soviet involvement in the Ogaden war. For a brief overview of foreign intervention in the Horn during the Cold War, see Elizabeth Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), chap. 6.

Several works that examine Somalia since the dissolution of the Siad Barre regime focus on the origins of conflict and difference in Somali society. Grounded in sources that reveal grassroots perspectives, Lidwien Kapteijns, Clan Cleansing in Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy of 1991 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), shows how Siad Barre promoted conflict and competition among clans in order to establish and protect his neopatrimonial state, and how the political elites, warlords, and rebels who succeeded him used similar strategies of clan mobilization and clan cleansing to obtain and maintain power. Afyare Abdi Elmi, Understanding the Somalia Conflagration: Identity, Islam and Peacebuilding (London: Pluto Press, 2010), takes a different view, arguing that clan identity is deeply rooted, rather than a tool manipulated by elites, and that it must be considered if a political settlement is to endure. Contributors to Catherine Besteman and Lee V. Cassanelli, eds., The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), investigate contests over land and resources as stimuli for violent conflict. Besteman, Unraveling Somalia (mentioned previously), examines the ways in which war and violence have disproportionately affected rural southerners. M. J. Fox, The Roots of Somali Political Culture (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2015), analyzes the source of divergent political cultures in Somalia, Somaliland, and Puntland. Mark Bradbury, Becoming Somaliland (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), explores political developments in the autonomous northern region that declared itself an independent state in 1991.