This is how the somali situation took the present shape

Somalia has been a victim of itself for many centuries because it was divided into tribes who fought over water and pasture. In the medevial ages betwen 1000 to 1500 AD Somalia has been in war with Ethiopia during the conquest of Imam Ahmed Garan commonly known as Ahmed Gurey. In the years between 1880's to 1921 the dervish war erupted between the British who controlled North of Somalia (what is now known as Somali-Land, breaking away after the military regime was overthrown in 1991) and Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, nicknamed by the British as the MAD MULLAH . In those same years the Italians were spreading their wings in South and central Somalia, finding resistance from local administrations in the Northeastern cape and communities residing along the two rivers of Shabelle and Jiubba which start from the Ethiopian highlands and run down to the south till they mix with the Indian Ocean near Brava and Kismayo towns respectively). In the modern era when it managed to liberate itself from the European colonialists, Somalia became a victim of its neighbours who suspected it of harbouring expansionist ideology in the region. Somalis were divided into five regions by the British and the Italians ands the French who colonized it. Two of them, Tshe north and the South, merged when they attained their independence in 1960 while the other three were still missing. The Somali rulers in the sixties have made it clear in their documents that the Somali Republic will spare no effort to seek unity of all Somalis under the banner of greater Somalia in the Horn of Africa region.

This has evoked trouble in the minds of the neighbours (Kenya and Ethiopia) who occupied two of the three missing Somali regions. The third region was Djibouti which was being colonized by the French until they achieved their independence in 27 June 1977. So we were seen as a "problem child" so long as we aspire to achieve our objectives of greater Somalia. Nonetheless there were understandings and memos signed between Somalia and its neighbours to ease the tension but always the embers of suspicion were burning under the ash of the diplomacy fire. Looking for the missing lands has earned us enemies and hastened our disintegration as a nation-state. We were all like soldiers in a military camp as all the nation was put in a state of alertness to go and fight for the motherland and liberate the somalis in those territories. Enormous amount of our money has been spent on military build up thus leaving social sector depleted and without sufficient resources to cover the increasing demands of the public for education, health, water and sanitation etc. In some cases it happened that money paid by donors and allocated for the social service diverted to the military.


The demise of the Somali republic was strongly facilitated by the system of governance adopted by the administration that ruled this nation. In the first nine years of independence the country was ruled by civilian administrators who mismanaged the resources and destroyed the nation with nepotism and corruption. A group of military officials took over in 1969 and put the country under dictatorship which eventually led to a disastrous civil war. Both the civilian and military governments have had head-on collision with the Ethiopians over the Somali territory which the British had secretly given to the Ethiopians in 1897. In both engagements the two nations lost people and property worth of millions of US dollars. In the first war with Ethiopia which took place in 1964, The Ethiopian troops outnumbered the Somalis by ten fold yet the Somalis managed to contain the advancing forces of Ethiopia. African Union Nations, (formerly known as Organization of African Unity) intervened to settle the dispute and the two forces retreated to their original defense lines with due respect to the colonial boundaries. So they went back to where they started. What a loss to both sides!


Somalia hasn’t signed the OAU border treaty which states that African boundaries be observed the way they were demarcated by the colonialists. We insisted that Somalis living under the foreign administrations be given a chance to determine their destiny in an internationally-monitored referendum. Only then the Somalis were able to know their position as regards to the recognition of these colonial boundaries. But that did not happen. Referendum has not been conducted. So the political difference over the missing lands persisted.

The second war with the Ethiopians took place in 1977 at the peak of the military rule in Somalia. Then the Somali military President Mohamed Siad Barre changed partners after he picked a row with the Russians. They wanted him to stop the war but he wanted to proceed onwards as he had the upper hand in the war. In their futile attempt to convince Somalis, the Russians said “Both you and Mengistu Haile Mariam are communist satellites who receive large defense and technical inputs from the Soviet Union. So why fight? The Russians even proposed a federal system between the Ethiopians, Somalia and South Yemen (which was then an independent communist state). That did not work. Then the Russians supplied billions worth of weapons to the Ethiopians to disrupt the military balance between the two warring states. Somalia was then defeated in the war and pulled out its forces in 1978.

On the Ethiopian side the war did not stop. They supplied arms to Somali opposition forces who wanted to topple Siad Barre’s regime. And the factions started raids and skirmishes against the government bases until they chased Barre away in 1990. Somalia has then fallen into a power vacuum which led to total disintegration of the country. Clans are controlling pieces of land and are attacking other clans to dominate them or confiscate their resources. And until now, over 15 years, we are still in chaos.

The recently-established Transitional Federal Government is not strong enough to stabilize the country due to the enormous firepower possessed by the people. The main victims are the unarmed civilians, the minority groups, the children and women who are day in day out killed in cross –shootings or apparently abused, tortured and slaughtered.

Due to its porous border, makeshift seaports and airports, Somalia has been considered as a terrorist safe-heaven by international community who accuse Somalis of supporting religious goups who practice extreme version of the Islamic faith. The recent war in Mogadishu has taken place between a group of armed ministers in the Transitional Federal Government and islamic clerics who run the Islamic Sharia courts. The former group claims to be hunting Al-Qaeda operatives in Mogadishu while the other argues that they have nothing to do with terrorism and shall defend themselves if rivals attack them.

In view of the changing world and the fact that the cold war is over, we have to take a pragmatic approach to this historic syndrome by deeply analyzing the root causes of the problem and trying to find a viable solution which is more appropriate and quite relevant to the current order of the world. We know that use of force is no solution to the Horn problem or to solve Somalia’s territorial claims but our neighbors think that security and safety of their nation and people could not be guaranteed while having a strong Somalia in their backyard.

If this long-standing territorial dispute between the Ethiopians and Somalia is not solved the region will ever remain volatile and underdeveloped. There will always be wars, disease, malnutrition, displacement and destitution. How can we end this historic mistrust between Somalia and its neighbors? If we can work out of a formula that can bring peace to this region we shall save our future generations from being enemies to each other or wasting their energy on how to plot each other

END