Ahmed Samatar on Somali politics after the 1980s
Samatar's Socialist Somalia critiqued and described a growing trend of 'internal militarism and external supplication' in 1980s post-war Somalia
The 1970s in Somalia burst onto the scene with all the fanfare of a thunderclap, as Siad Barre’s military regime promised domestic renewal in Somali politics, all while trumpeting a more defiantly anti-imperialist foreign policy, not just in Africa but across the global stage. Most accounts I’ve read, as well as interviews I conducted suggest that this newfangled approach, with all its self-assured swagger, struck a chord with the Somali populace. They wanted their own Gamal Abdel Nasser to lead them along the path to political redemption and Siad Barre emerged as the providential man. Infrastructure improved, government functions were standardised, a Somali script was introduced, and the military expanded both in size and prowess. This new Somalia aimed to enhance the lives of its citizens and seek redress for perceived and real grievances against former colonial powers.
As the country entered the 1980s however, two decades after its independence, the picture was very different. None of the promises were kept, Somalia’s foray into Ethiopia failed (badly) and the raison d’etre of the military regime and its legitimacy were increasingly being questioned, as the dividends of an authoritarian government grew as scarce. An authoritarian diet, without the side dish of ‘getting-things-done,’ leaves an unsavoury taste, even for the most ardent aficionado of dictatorship.
In the Somalia in the 1980s and Beyond chapter of Samatar’s seminal, but widely critiqued tome on Somali history published in 1988, he provides an account of Somalia’s descent into a grim dictatorship whose social contract, if we can call it that, offered repression for nothing, obedience with no pay out. Even the thin patina of security the regime offered was progressively eroded as an alphabet soup of Somali armed groups initiated an insurgency against the military regime in Mogadishu.
Samatar’s book, Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric & Reality, evaluates the claims the military regime made about its decisions and achievements, highlighting its successes and examining its failures with his typically pitiless and ruthless analytical style. He pulls no punches. In an important lesson he gleaned from researching his book Samatar writes:
To regain any measure of dignity and virtue, Africans will have to learn not only how to keep imperialism at bay, but, more immediately, to understand that there will be no cataclysmic event or promised millennium that will deliver liberation. Rather, the long and tortuous march begins with giving our individual and collective best to the present.
The choice, he continues, is ours: “to continue the ugly present and the deepening ‘bantustanization’ of Africa, or to step into a new history – a history of covenantal and transformational political activity.”
Below is a passage copied directly from the book.
Reference: Samatar, A. (1988). Socialist Somalia: Rhetoric & Reality. London: Zed Book. p152-154
By the mid-1980s, the nature of power in Somalia and the conduct of its international affairs could best be characterised as a deeper slippage into internal militarism and external supplication.
Domestically, this decade began with the re-entrenchment of military domination and a lack of real popular participation. For example, in January 1981, 85 new district and regional Party secretaries were appointed, all but seven of them from the military. Moreover, when the regime’s denial of democratic rights together with a unilateral and, in the eyes of many, unwise extension of port and land facilities to the US armed forces triggered disapproval, the leadership responded by declaring a state of national emergency. Simultaneously the old SRC was revived and more importantly the chemerical status of the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party was exposed. These tactics and the ailments of the political economy did not sit well with all in the ruling fraction of the Somali petite bourgeoisie. Old believers in the virtue and commitment of General Siyaad Barre’s leadership and in the original direction of the development strategy began to ask uncomfortable and downright heretical questions. They sensed the widening gulf between the rhetoric of the regime and realities. The showdown soon came. In June 1982, seven members of the Central Committee of the SRSP who had challenged the unbridled growth of personal rule and the drift towards socio-economic retrogression were arrested. The most prominent of this band of dissidents were General Ismail Abokor – Third Vice President of the Republic and President of the National Assembly; Cumer Carteh Qalib – a distinguished former foreign minister; Colonel Usman Jelle – senior member of the original SRC; General Umar Xaji Moxammad Aden – one of the two ideologues of the regime and Minister of Information and National Guidance and Higher Education. All seven men were accused of treason, and, at the time of writing, are still in detention without ever being tried.
President Siyaad Barre, to convince those still listening, put his show on the road. For the first time in years he travelled to Hargeysa and Borama. Accompanied by three senior colonels from the North, where government forces were under serious attack by insurgents, the President tried to explain his case and, in the process, diffuse growing hostility of Northerners to his regime. According to most commentators and witnesses, few Northerners were won over. Consequently, the visit was cut short. In the years since, the only development worthy of mention in Somali politics was a new ‘election’ for the National Assembly in December 1984. As many expected, and in line with the perversion of democratic participation already discussed, candidates of the ruling SRSP received more than 99.8% of the vote.
On the international front hostilities in the Horn have worsened, while, at the same time, Somalia’s status as an outpost of imperialism has grown. In mid-1982, the United States began airlifting military equipment and advisers, and since then has taken hold of the strategic Berbera port. Radar systems and a new quay have been installed along with a doubling of other facilities necessary for the roll-on, roll-off ships used by the US Rapid Deployment Forces. Somali integration into the American military network was consummated in the 1980s by joint military exercises (Operation Bright Star in 1985). The rewards for collaboration with the US and its allies, however, have not been all that remunerative, though sufficient to keep the regime agreeable. US security assistance to Somalia was $50 million in 1985, and $75 million in 1986, mostly used to purchase US-made military equipment. These disbursements make Somalia a member of the small group of exclusively pro-American black states in Africa. Other ‘core’ states have also contributed to the western effort to secure Somali realignment. Italian support, for example, is estimated at around 500 million lira in economic aid, and Italy is contributing more than another other donor to the $600 million earmarked for the ‘grand’ Bardhere dam on the Juba river – the biggest development scheme in Somali history.
Even if all these foreign activities could be said to fall within the parameters of ‘traditional diplomacy’, the regime’s alleged connection with South Africa disposes any last claim to progressive ideology. Undoubtedly, mounting economic problems, a highly circumscribed and arid political life, and unsavoury external relations are bound to deepen and entrench Somali underdevelopment by, as Guy Arnold writes, no other region on the African continent has succumbed as totally to neo-colonialism and big power competition as the Horn of Africa since 1977.
Somalia in the 1980s seems far from the ‘socialist’ and ‘non-aligned’ society still dear to the rhetoric of President Siyaad Barre and his military cronies. Instead it has become an economic ‘basket case’ and a political autocracy, with debilitating social consequences.