Somalia

B

Health and Welfare

Hospital and clinic services in Somalia are severely strained by Somalia’s civil war. Although international relief ended a famine crisis in the early 1990s, primary health care remained an urgent need in the countryside. Only 29 percent (2004) of the population has access to a safe water supply, and only 26 percent to adequate sanitation. The average life expectancy at birth in 2007 was 49 years; the infant mortality rate was 113 deaths per 1,000 live births.

C

Defense

Until the early 1990s military service of 18 months was compulsory for men between the ages of 18 and 40. In 1990 the army had a force of some 60,000; the navy, 1,200; and the air force, 2,500. Since the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991, there have been no national armed forces, although the clans maintained separate armies.

VI

History

The history of the region now included in Somalia dates from antiquity, when the land was known to the ancient Egyptians as Punt. From the 2nd to the 7th century ad parts of the area belonged to the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum. Arab tribes in the 7th century settled along the coast of the Gulf of Aden and established the sultanate of Adal, which centered on the port of Zeila. The Somali people began slowly to migrate into this region from Yemen in the 9th century. The sultanate disintegrated during the 16th century into small independent states, many of which were ruled by Somali chiefs. Zeila became a dependency of Yemen, and was then captured by the Ottoman Empire.

A

European Colonization

The first European power in the region was Britain. In order to protect British trade routes and provide safe anchorage for ships, Britain took possession of Aden (now in the Republic of Yemen) on the Arabian coast in 1839. Subsequently, about 1875, Egypt, disregarding Turkish claims, occupied some of the towns on the Somali coast and part of the adjacent interior. When the Egyptian troops left the area in 1882 to help stem the revolt of Muhammad Ahmad (known as the Mahdi) in the Sudan, Britain occupied the territory in order to safeguard the route to India through the Suez Canal, which had been opened in 1869. In 1887 a British protectorate, known as British Somaliland, was proclaimed. The protectorate, initially a dependency of Aden, was placed under the administration of the British Foreign Office in 1898 and of the Colonial Office in 1905.

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Italian interest in the Somali coast developed in the late 19th century. By the terms of the treaties with native Somali sultans, and conventions with the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, and Zanzibar, Italy acquired a foothold along the Indian Ocean coast.

British control of the interior of the protectorate was challenged by native revolts between 1899 and 1910. In 1910 the British abandoned the interior and withdrew to the coastal regions. They finally subdued the rebels in 1920. During this period Italy extended control over the area inland from the Indian Ocean coast by the Treaty of London in 1915 and by various postwar agreements. In 1936 Italy merged Italian Somaliland, Eritrea, and the newly conquered Ethiopia into the colonial state of Italian East Africa. After the Italian entrance into World War II (1939-1945) on the side of Germany in 1940, Italian troops invaded British Somaliland and succeeded in expelling the British. The United Kingdom reconquered its protectorate in 1941.

By the terms of the Italian peace treaty adopted in 1947, Italy was forced to renounce title to the possessions in Africa, and responsibility for disposition of these colonies was allocated to the so-called Big Four (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR). In 1948 the Big Four, having failed to reach an agreement on disposition, referred the matter to the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN). A plan granting independence to Italian Somaliland after ten years as a UN trust territory under Italian administration was approved by the General Assembly in November 1949. On April 1, 1950, after Italy had accepted the terms of a UN trusteeship agreement, the British military government was replaced by a provisional Italian administration. The territory was named Somalia.

B

Independence

On July 1, 1960, by agreement with the UN Trusteeship Council, Somalia was granted independence. It merged thereupon with the former British protectorate, to which the United Kingdom, by prearrangement, had given independence on June 26. The first president, Aden Abdullah Osman Daar, elected in 1960, was defeated for reelection in 1967 by the former premier Abdi Rashid Ali Shermarke. On October 15, 1969, Shermarke was assassinated, and days later a military group, led by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, seized power. In 1970 Barre declared Somalia a socialist state, and in the following years most of the modern economy of the country was nationalized. A drought in 1974 and 1975 caused widespread starvation.

In mid-1977 ethnic Somalis in the adjacent Ogadēn region of Ethiopia initiated open warfare aimed at ending Ethiopian control of the area. The rebels were armed by Somalia, which also contributed troops to the effort. The Somalis captured most of the Ogadēn by late 1977, but Ethiopia, aided by Cuba and the USSR, reasserted control over the region in early 1978, as Somalia’s army suffered heavy losses. Subsequent fighting in the Ogadēn precipitated a flood of refugees into Somalia; the number of homeless in 1981 was estimated at close to 2 million. The United States gave both humanitarian and military aid and was in return granted use of the naval facilities at Berbera, previously a Soviet base.

Opposition to Barre’s rule began to coalesce in 1981 after Barre chose members of his own Marehan clan for government positions while excluding members of the Mijertyn and Isaq clans. Insurgent groups from those clans initiated clashes with government troops beginning in 1982. A peace accord ended hostilities with Ethiopia in 1988, but the civil war intensified, despite Barre’s attempts to placate insurgents by proposing a multiparty government. By 1989 only Mogadishu and portions of Hargeysa and Berbera were firmly in government control. In 1990 the clans opposing Barre formed a united front to fight the war. Barre was forced to flee the capital in January 1991, and was eventually accepted for asylum in Lagos, Nigeria, where he died of a heart attack in 1995.