Western offer to aid Somali army was "pretty punk", said US diplomat
Somalia requested Western assistance to build army and after looking at the package said, "we're off to Moscow"
John P. Blane was a career US diplomat who was tasked in the 1960s with establishing the US diplomatic mission in Somalia as Vice consul in 1956 before later working on the Somalia and Ethiopia desk and then having a stint “in the seventies, 1975, 76, 77, as Office Director for East Africa.” In an interview with the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) he recounted his early years in Somalia as Vice consul, the US’s concerns in the Horn of Africa and what kind of a relationship Washington sought with Mogadishu.
When Blane arrived, Somalia was still divided between Italy and the UK. Blane was posted in Mogadishu where he got to witness the final years of Somalia under the Italian administered UN trusteeship before it became independent. Once it became independent in 1960, the country didn’t have all its institutions intact, and crucially lacked an army. “Every self-respecting country had an army,” remarked Blane in the interview with ADST, but apparently not Somalia. It became a more pressing issue as the 1960s drew on.
The security concerns of Somalia’s elite were brought into sharp focus in 1964, when a border conflict erupted with Ethiopia. Abdirashid Shermarke was then prime minister and he reached out to his western partners to help Somalia build its army. The US obliged, said Blane, but was concerned about how that decision might impact its relationship with Ethiopia, which it valued more, especially in light of the fact that Somalia had territorial claims on Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden region.
In the end a decision was made to arm Somalia, advising the Ethiopian government that it was better their own western partners armed Somalia than a possibly hostile third country “because they are going to get it anyhow, and it might not be from someone so anxious to cooperate with Ethiopia.”
Blane told ADST: “We finally came forward with a little package. It was pretty punk.” The Somalis took one look a the package he said, and told him “we’re off to Moscow.” Abdirashid Shermarke took part in a 1965 oral history project on his relationship with John F. Kennedy who was the US president at the time in which he said the US offered Somalia “six jeeps mounted with six anti-tank guns. That’s all.” Shermarke was incensed and didn’t hold back his feelings. “I personally have considered this a variety of betrayal by a friendly nation,” he recalled, explaining that Somalia was closer to the US than Ethiopia on account of its democratic culture.
Below is the part of the interview were Blane addressed the issue. I will dedicate a later post to Shermarke’s interview with the JFK Presidential Library. The full interview can be found here.
Q: How were the relations between ourselves and the Somalis.
John P. Blane: We had very good relations with them and I think we cultivated good relations among a whole spectrum of politicians. With perhaps one exception. There was one outfit called the Great Somalia League. We were not about to talk to them, we would talk to them but not show too much sympathy for their particular aim which was to unite all of the five Somalilands. All of the Somalis wanted to have all five points of the star as one nation. But this one was militant about
it. They were prepared to go to war. And there were allegations that perhaps the Russians were messing around with them. But with the bulk of the politicians, we had quite good relations.
Q: Were you concerned with the "Soviet menace" at that point?
John P. Blane: Well, not all that much. They weren't there before independence. They did come in and open up an Embassy just after independence. I was only there a few months after independence so I didn't experience any effort on the part of the Soviets to penetrate people.
I suppose the very fact of our having opened the Consulate there, was designed to give ourselves a foot in the door and establish relations with the politicians before the Russians could come along and mess things up.
They did come along and mess things up. I was again involved in 1963-64 because by that time I was desk officer for both Ethiopia and Somalia. The Somalis had decided by then that they would have an army. They didn't have one before, they only had the police. So they decided to have an army. Every self-respecting country had an army. They came to us and the Italians and the British and said that they would like some arms for their army. We were looking over our shoulders at Kagnew Station and saying well, what you want on that list is just a little too much. I felt that it was inevitable that they were going to have an army and that it would be wise for us to have some influence and control over the way this thing developed by becoming involved with arms supplies, despite the emperor. I thought we should be able to go to the emperor and explain to him that it was in his interest to have countries that were friendly to him supplying the Somali army, because they are going to get it anyhow, and it might not be from someone so anxious to cooperate with Ethiopia. Not so willing to exert leverage to keep them from using that army against Ethiopia.
Well, that got really bogged down in our bureaucracy. We finally came forward with a little package. It was pretty punk. We got the British to kick in something, we got the Italians to kick in something, and the Somalis took one look at this package and said, "We're off to Moscow." And that is exactly what they did.
Q: I was a little bit involved with the Horn of Africa. I was hauled out of Saudi Arabia and made the INR officer for the Horn of Africa from '60 to '61. There was always a push and pull between Somalia and Ethiopia, but the chips always fell to Ethiopia. Kagnew Station was it, wasn't it?
John P. Blane: Kagnew Station was driving our policy. No doubt about it. Our AID program, for example. We would try and plead for more aid for Somalia but were told, "You can't get it because in the allocation for Africa, Ethiopia gets the major share ...."