Recent reports of fighting in Somalia,
where the president has just extended his term of office without elections,
has once again cast international attention on the country's political troubles.
For decades, Somalia, more than any other country in the world,
came to be regarded as the very model of a failed state.
So, how did Somalia collapse? And why is it again mired in chaos?
[MUSIC]
Hello and welcome. If you're new to the channel, my name is James Ker-Lindsay and here I take an
informed look at international relations, conflicts and the origins of countries.
It's generally accepted that to become a state a territory needs to meet four criteria:
defined geographical boundaries, a settled population,
governance and the ability to enter into relations with other states.
But what happens when a state loses the ability to govern itself?
Rather than disappear, it becomes what's known as a 'failed state'.
Failed states are a fascinating and tragic phenomenon of international relations.
At a fundamental level, a failed state is a humanitarian issue.
Countries that don't have central government can't provide for their citizens,
even at the most basic level; such as providing health care, education and policing.
However, failed states are also destabilising to the wider international system.
They can become havens for criminals and terrorist groups and lead to large-scale refugee outflows.
If there's one country that stands out above all others
as the preeminent example of a failed state in the modern world, it's Somalia.
For the past 30 years, it's been a source of instability in the Horn of Africa,
a vitally important strategic area.
As well as having experienced a brutal civil war and mass starvation,
it's become a haven for Islamist militias and pirates operating off its coast.
In this sense, it perfectly encapsulates the dangers that emerge when countries collapse.
So, how did Somalia become a failed state?
Somalia lies on the Horn of Africa.
At 250,000 square miles - or 640,000 square kilometres - this makes it
the 43rd largest of the 193 members of the United Nations; a little smaller than France.
While Somalia is still recognized internationally within its 1960 borders, since 1991 the northern
region of Somaliland has existed as a separate de facto state, the Republic of Somaliland.
I've covered Somaliland in several other videos and
so I won't go into a lot of detail about it here.
Somalia's population is thought to be in the region of around 15 and a half million.
Interestingly, it's considered to be one of the most homogenous countries in Africa.
Ethnic Somalis make up over 85 percent of the population.
Instead, the main point of difference is centred on clans, which, while providing
important ties of kinship in society, can also become a source of conflict and discrimination.
The most prominent of these clans are the Hawiye in the south central part of the country,
the Isaaq in the north, and the Darod,
stretching an arc from southern border with Kenya up to the northern region of Puntland.
Somalia has a long and fascinating history.
Almost 5,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians wrote about the Land of Punt to their south .
Then, given its proximity to the Arabian Peninsula, it became one of the first regions
to embrace islam in the 7th century, and to this day 90 percent of the population are Muslim.
However, for our purposes the story really begins in the last quarter of the 19th century
with the European colonial expansion into Africa.
In the 1880s, Britain, France and Italy all moved into the Horn of Africa.
Dividing it up into three parts, they would remain in control until after
the Second World War and the start of the process of decolonisation.
On 26 June 1960, British Somaliland became independent as the State of Somaliland.
Then, just days later, on 1 July 1960,
the Italian administered Trust Territory of Somaliland became independent.
At this point, the two officially merged to form the Somali Republic.
Interestingly, and as an aside, French Somaliland wouldn't join the union.
Instead, it became independent as the Republic of Djibouti
almost two decades later, on 27 June 1977.
The first problems emerged soon after independence.
For a start, the two parts of the country had rather
different administrative and political legacies.
In 1961, a new constitution was passed and effectively downgraded Somaliland
making an autonomous province of the Republic, thus sowing the seeds of northern discontent.
Meanwhile, divisions soon opened up between the clans.
However, the most significant development came at the end of the decade.
On 15 October 1969, the second president of the republic,
Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, was assassinated.
Days later, the military launched a coup, installing the commander of the army,
General Mohamed Siad Barre, as the new head of state.
This heralded a fundamental transformation of the country,
which was now renamed the Somali Democratic Republic.
Adopting a Marxist-Leninist ideology, and aligning with the Soviet Union, the new
regime abolished the constitution, dissolved the parliament, and banned political parties.
It also sought to break the power of the clans.
In addition, it began to pursue an overtly nationalist agenda.
In July 1977, Barre ordered the invasion of neighbouring Ethiopia in an attempt
to capture the predominantly Somali inhabited Ogaden region.
Ceded by italy at the end of the 19th century, the area was seen by Somalis as a
constituent part of Greater Somalia - alongside Djibouti and Somali-inhabited areas of Kenya.
The conflict, known as the Ogaden War, ended in disaster for Somalia,
which suffered a heavy military defeat.
At the same time, it led to a break with Moscow, which was
furious at the Somali attack on Ethiopia, another Soviet ally.
But while Barre himself now moved to ally with the United States,
the conflict sowed the seeds at the end of his rule.
Although an attempted coup after the war failed,
over the course of the next decade resistance to the regime grew.
This resulted in harsh reprisals, including mass killings in Somaliland where Isaaq
opposition to the regime was particularly strong.
In the face of these atrocities,
support for the Barre regime began to collapse, internally and internationally.
In January 1991, Barre was finally overthrown by a collection of rebel forces and fled the country.
However, rather than ushering a new period of stability and prosperity,
the situation quickly spiralled out of control.
While Somaliland seized the opportunity to break away, declaring independence on 18 May 1991.
The rest of the country descended into civil war as clan factionalism grew
and various warlords began to exert control.
The most notorious of these was a former general, Mohamed Farah Aidid,
who had led one of the key opposition groups that overthrew Barre.
As the fighting spread, and with it banditry and looting,
the humanitarian situation in Somalia became ever more desperate.
With over 300,000 dead, and over a million more lives at risk,
in April 1992 the UN set up a humanitarian assistance mission, UNOSOM.
However its efforts were hampered by the situation on the ground, which in
turn led to the creation of a US-led military operation, UNITAF, to secure the situation.
Things would go horribly wrong when,
on 3 October 1993, US special forces attempted to arrest a couple of Aideed's commanders.
During the operation, two helicopters were shot down - leading to a huge firefight between US
forces and Somali militias that left hundreds dead.
The incident, which was later made into the 2001 film 'Black Hawk Down', saw pictures of
the bodies of dead US pilots dragged through the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu,.
Sparking outrage back in the United States, US forces pulled out of Somalia in March 1994.
The following year, the United Nations also withdrew - leaving Somalia to its anarchy.
As the country entered the new millennium it faced huge challenges.
Attempts to try to create some sort of a functioning central administration faltered
as several transitional governments proved unable
to exert their control beyond small parts of the country.
Meanwhile, Somalia began to face new problems.
First of all, Islamic extremist groups began to assert themselves.
The most prominent of these was the Islamic Courts Union.
Taking on the warlords, it gained control over large parts of the country, including Mogadishu.
However, it was overthrown when Ethiopia, supported by the transitional federal government,
invaded Somalia in December 2006.
And although Ethiopia pulled out in 2009, the Islamist threat
soon re-emerged again in the form of Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of Al-Qaeda,
which took control of large parts of the country, including the capital.
The second major challenge was the emergence of piracy.
Following the collapse of the Somali navy,
international fishing ships began to operate around the country's coasts.
In an attempt to counter this, local communities began to arm themselves to fight them off.
Spotting the opportunity to exploit shipping passing through the region,
these armed groups eventually began raiding cargo vessels.
Ultimately it was this twin threat of islamic terrorism and piracy
that also seems to finally push the international community to act.
In 2007, the UN Security Council authorised the creation of an African Union mission, AMISOM.
With wider international support, Al-Shabaab was eventually forced from Mogadishu in late 2011.
Meanwhile, in 2008, the UN Security Council authorised the use of force to fight off the
pirates, which saw a dramatic decline in the number of attacks in the years that followed.
At the same time, and with wider international support,
the country moved towards establishing a government.
In 2012, a new federal constitution was put in place.
The following year, a number of western countries began to reopen their embassies in Somalia.
At the same time, and despite huge problems in terms of the business
environment and endemic corruption, foreign investment began to grow.
All this gave rise for hope, especially following the election of a new president in early 2017.
The peaceful transfer of power to a dual US-Somali citizen, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, also known
as Farmajo, was widely welcomed at the time as further evidence that the situation was improving.
However, it's this progress that's now at risk.
Following the failure to hold planned elections in February 2021 due to a dispute over the voting
process, Farmajo extended his presidential term and those of lawmakers by two years.
It was this move, which was heavily criticised by the United States and the European Union, and has
angered opposition forces within Somalia, that sparked the outbreak of fighting in Mogadishu.
Meanwhile, the broader security situation remains tense.
Al-Shabaab continues to operate in large parts of the country.
It's for these reasons that international concern about Somalia is growing once again.
Over the past three decades, Somalia has come to exemplify the concept of a failed state.
Following the fall of the Barre regime, in 1991, the country descended into chaos as
clan factionalism and the emergence of warlords made it wholly ungovernable.
As a result, and despite an early attempt by the international community to stabilise the
situation, it's experienced the full range of problems associated with the collapse
of a functioning central administration: starvation, disease, conflict, secession,
external invasion, criminality, terrorism, large-scale migration and refugee outflows.
All this said, today Somalia is regarded as a 'fragile state' - or
a 'rebuilding state' as some would put it - rather than the wholly failed one.
But the situation remains precarious.
Only Yemen, which is in the midst of a brutal civil war,
and faces many of the problems we saw in Somalia in the 1990s,
is ranked lower on the list of fragile states put together by the US Fund for Peace think tank.
And while the country may have shown signs of improvement, recent developments
show that it continues to teeter on the edge of a return to conflict and chaos.
I hope you found that useful. If so, here are some more videos that you might find interesting.
Thanks so much for watching and see you in the next video.