US Losing Interest in Military Bases in Somalia (LA Times, 1985)
In the early 1980s, Somalia pitched itself as a possible host for a US base in Berbera, but after a careful assessment, the Americans weren’t so keen.
I usually refrain from focusing on current affairs in search of historical parallels for this blog, but this time I couldn’t resist. According to the Financial Times, the US is engaged in exploratory talks with Somaliland over a potential basing agreement in Berbera, in exchange for recognition of Somaliland’s independence from Somalia. This report emerged within the broader context of the Donald Trump seeking partners to assist in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza’s Palestinian inhabitants, and the contacts it has made with African countries it believes might host them. So far they’ve received quite firm rejections.
Trump doesn’t care much for history, but it isn’t lost on me that he is reviving a fine European imperial tradition with these two moves: unilaterally altering the borders of other countries (with little consideration for the inhabitants there) and engaging in ethnic cleansing for commercial or other reasons.
Here is a snippet from the Financial Times report on Berbera, in which the paper cites unnamed US officials who have said that both sides are at the “beginning of a conversation” on the matter, though the relocation of Palestinians was not the most pressing issue. I highly doubt Somaliland will support, let alone sign up for such an absurd plan.
The parallel I’m returning to here is Somalia’s attempt to court the United States in the early 1980s, when Siad Barre, then president, extended an offer to Jimmy Carter—and later, to Ronald Reagan—to establish a base at Berbera.
Context
During the Ogaden War in 1977, Barre had a bitter falling out with the Soviet Union, after it refused a request from Mogadishu to halt arms transfers to Ethiopia during the conflict. A junta, a few years earlier, had overthrown the imperial regime of Emperor Haile Selassie, executing most of his senior officials before declaring Marxist-Leninism as the state ideology.
Additional detail:
The emperor, 82 at the time, was detained for a year and was then “strangled in his bed most cruelly” by the junta in 1975, according to an Ethiopian court in case that was heard twenty year later. Teshome Gabre-Mariam Bokan, a lawyer representing the former royal family said: "We suspected there was evidence for this all along, but we needed to hear it in court." An American soldier, writing for War on the Rocks described the Russian backing of both sides as “Marxist-on-Marxist” violence. Barre didn’t see that as sufficient reason for Moscow to maintain relations with Addis Ababa, not when its ties with Somalia had begun in the 1960s and were elevated to a higher level with a treaty in 1974. Barre wanted loyalty; the Kremlin wanted to spread the revolution.
Sometimes a meme can help us understand a problem better: Somalia is the woman in the blue top, and Ethiopia is the one in red. Somalia was pissed. The Soviet Union is the man with wandering eyes.
Overnight, Barre suddenly ordered all Soviet officials to leave Somalia, voided the treaty with USSR, and a Halgan editorial, the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party’s offical magazine, declared that the Kremlin was attempting to mould Ethiopia’s new Marxist junta into a “client state.” The spontaneous rallies in support of the move—mass rallies were usually organised at the government’s behest—reportedly led Barre to conclude that it was only he who was keeping the Soviets in Somalia, as everyone in the country apparently hated them the whole time. One Soviet writer, Georgiy Ivanchenko, who visited Somalia didn’t see it that way, noting: “They saw us as messengers of heaven”.
Now, back to the Americans…
Though Jimmy Carter, who lost the 1980 election to Reagan, instructed his secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, and national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to “move in every possible way to get Somalia to be our friend,” the US never truly trusted Barre. His government was hostile to the US for much of the 1970s and all indications suggest that despite his defeat to Ethiopia, he didn’t feel the score was settled. Washington suspected that Barre didn’t want US assistance to maintain deterrence, as Carter didn’t support the invasion of Ethiopia, but rather to potentially launch a new round of hostilities. There was little evidence that Barre had changed any of his beliefs, whether regarding socialism or Somali nationalism. Barre had a zero-sum Cold War realpolitik view of US engagement in the Horn of Africa and believed that, because the Kremlin was developing military ties with Ethiopia, he was entitled to US arms but only received light defensive arms and humanitarian aid. Somalia’s former prime minister, Abdirashid Shermarke, had made the same mistake in the 1960s with the US, but at least he had the USSR to turn to. Barre, however, had burnt that bridge, with nowhere left to look.
But that didn’t stop him trying to persuade the US that he was a reliable partner, and I suppose one of the ways he could go about that was by offering a naval base to Reagan. The idea first started with the Carter administration, which offered military aid in exchange for access to the base. Siad Barre visited the US in 1982 to push things along when Reagan arrived, offering the US prime strategic real estate in an attempt to lock in the relationship and use the proceeds to crush both his domestic and foreign opponents. A report by United Press International (UPI) quoted Osman Sultan Ali, editor of the Horn of Africa journal, who could clearly see Barre’s play and warned the US against helping “another unpopular dictator for strategic expediency”. “The quest for American support and the offer of a military base are reminiscent of the general’s past attempts to maintain an authoritarian regime with Soviet assistance”, Ali said in a press release. Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, a respected Somali Fanon scholar and psychiatrist similarly issued a warning against supporting Barre in the New York Times ahead of the visit. (You can find more on his work here).
The LA Times put together a thorough report three years later, as the US was still mulling the naval base offer but was beginning to lose interest. I think it offers great insight into how the US was thinking about its relationship with its Somali counterparts, and how the rationale employed then might still be operative today. One US diplomat speaking to the LA Times said a port in Berbera was “more a convenience than a necessity” as the US had better bases in more reliable countries in Oman and Kenya. The diplomat also described the relationship as a “marriage of convenience only”, indicating that the US had specific interests which were being met, but wasn’t thinking more broadly about what would be good for Somalia. “The logic is simply it is better to have a pro-Western Somalia than a pro-Soviet one,” added the diplomat.
US military officials were also apparently deeply disappointed with the state of the Somali army after a joint military exercise, which suggested that Somalia wouldn’t be the greatest security partner. One military official said: “To make Berbera a workable base and Somalia, for that matter, a workable staging area, the US would have to man it themselves; they cannot depend on the Somalis”.
I also spoke to a former Israeli spy a few months ago who visited Somalia in the mid-1980s. While he didn’t reveal the purpose of his trip, he was granted a tour of Somalia by the government and went to Berbera after he heard a lot of hype about how strategic it was. I asked what he thought when he arrived there and he was also disappointed. He said it was a very small town and the port was barely developed. “There was nothing strategic really”, he said, except the geography.
Today, of course, the calculation is somewhat different. Ansar Allah (aka the Houthis) have implemented a blockade of the Red Sea for ships linked to Israel in solidarity with Gaza, and after the US’s deadly strikes on Yemen, they have now vowed to strike back at the US’s warships. Somaliland has inserted itself into this conversation, seeking an agreement with the US similar to the base-for-recognition deal Muse Bihi struck with Abiy Ahmed last year. The swirling rumours suggest the US isn’t happy with the Chinese naval presence in Djibouti, where they operate their largest African base, Camp Lemonnier, and want to stay in the neighbourhood, but not there.
The offer is theoretically a good one for Hargeisa, as it would be a significant step towards its long-coveted objective of international recognition. But, as with all bases, they serve a security purpose, and if enhancing US security comes at the expense of your own, there are important questions about whether it is worth the risk. The Houthis have demonstrated they can reach Israel with their rockets and drones, a formidable military power with a US security guarantee. I doubt Somaliland would be able to fend off the new rulers of Sanaa, should they view Hargeisa’s decision to facilitate another US presence on the Red Sea as hostile to themselves.
Below is the full report from the LA Times dated 17 March, 1985.
There is not quite a “For Sale” sign on the port and concrete airstrip at Berbera. But there are signs that Washington has lost interest in Somalia and the military facility that guards the chokepoint between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
The Somali government still boasts of the strategic importance of Berbera as a great naval and air facility, inherited by the United States after the Soviet Union left in 1980. Moscow is now allied with neighboring Marxist-led Ethiopia.
At one time, U.S. diplomats talked of great plans for turning the 15th-Century Arab town into anything from a major fleet refueling stop to the headquarters of the Central Command, or, as it used to be known, the Rapid Deployment Force.
The force was set up under the Jimmy Carter Administration to act as an American deterrent in the event of a threat to the Persian Gulf oil fields.
Berbera once was considered a major part of U.S. military strategy in the event of war in the Middle East.
$600 Million in Aid
For that reason, the government believes, the United States has been kind to Somalia as an ally--supplying $600 million in aid over the past seven years in the Horn of Africa country.
But the Somali boasts of Berbera’s strategic importance now ring hollow. The Americans have stopped talking. The Central Command set up headquarters in Florida and took with it the enthusisam for developing the town.
With only a few minor improvements--mostly on the civilian and not the military side--the “stragetic” airstrip and port of Berbera have been left pretty much as they were found after the departure of the Soviets.
A $100-million commitment made by the United States to improve Berbera when the 10-year access agreement was signed in 1980 has never been fulfilled. It probably never will be.
“Berbera is more a convenience than a necessity for the United States now. There are better facilities in Oman and in Mombasa, Kenya,” one diplomat said. “It is a marriage of convenience only, but you won’t see any great U.S. military buildup in Berbera.
‘More Reliable Places’
“The decision is that it is not really a viable or reliable part of Middle East strategy. The U.S. is more established in more reliable places.”
There are various reasons behind this apparent loss of interest--the inefficiency of the Somali army, its poor record of maintainence and discipline, a festering guerrilla war in the north that threatens to topple the regime of President Siad Barre, Barre’s poor human rights record and the welcoming of the United States in more built-up and easily defended areas.
America’s other allies in the region, including Kenya and moderate Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, also pressured the United States into cutting back its military commitment to Somalia, which has a reputation as an aggressor encouraging a secessionist movement in northern Kenya.
Somalia also started the 1977-78 war with Ethiopia over the contested Ogaden region.
Diplomats believe the tide changed after joint Somali-U.S. military exercises in 1983. The exercises, Eastern Wind 83, failed dismally.
“The Somali army did not perform up to any standard,” one diplomat said.
Somali Army Inefficient
The inefficiency of the Somali armed forces is legendary among foreign military men.
Last month, Somalia shot down one of its own nine functioning aircraft and last year accidently fired on two U.S. F-15 fighters during a mapping exercise near Mogadishu.
U.S. military officials in Somalia have grown disgusted with the performance of the Somali army and its inability to keep anything working.
“To make Berbera a workable base and Somalia, for that matter, a workable staging area, the U.S. would have to man it themselves; they cannot depend on the Somalis,” the officer said.
The United States now considers military facilities in Oman, the island of Diego Garcia and in Kenya as more important and more efficient in the event of war in the Persian Gulf region.
Diplomats now say the whole reason for a U.S. presence in Somalia is as a counterbalance to the Soviet presence in Ethiopia.
“The logic is simply it is better to have a pro-Western Somalia than a pro-Soviet one,” the diplomat said.
The amount of U.S. interest in Somalia, and in Berbera in particular, is typified by the lack of a large permanent U.S. military presence there.