Colonial legacies and brief democracy
A collection of centralized and relatively independent city-states, each with their own distinct formal government structures, emerged throughout Somalia centuries before the arrival of the first colonialists. Two dominant power-centers emerged in the fourteenth century: the Adal Sultanate and the Ajuuraan State, each wielding significant influence and strong political control over large swaths of East Africa. These city-states represented important instances where pastoral societies created and effectively operated large centralized government structures to primarily facilitate expansive trade networks and taxation bases (Cassanelli 1982 and Samatar 1988). While first organized along with traditional Islamic principles, the structures emerging out of Somalia soon began relying upon social and ethnic traditions to help shape and form government structures. The Ajuuraan State relied on the agriculture of the Lower Shabelle basin to collect taxes for the government and to exploit and strengthen trade routes throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. While these government institutions did not encapsulate a significant proportion of Somalis in the region, the early city-states did nonetheless underscore the presence of formalized and structured government institutions flourishing within an agricultural and pastoral context.
From 1884 until 1960 Somaliland was a small but important part of the British Empire. To procure cattle for their colony in the Gulf of Aden (present-day Yemen), Britain entered into treaties of protection with northern coastal Somali clans along the Red Sea. The government-mandated a minimalist intervention strategy, choosing to do little more than ensure the region’s peace and stability. Given the nomadic lifestyle of the northern Somalis, the British were unable to centralize power within the region. Instead of imposing radical socio-political changes in the region, the British adapted their policies to best suit the conditions on the ground. The administration supported secular law, Sharia law, and traditional Somali law; this flexibility enabled the northern Somali pastoralists to use their own methods to resolve challenges and conflicts.
Instead of implanting large batches of European administrators to oversee Somaliland, the British instead incorporated local clan chiefs into the formal institutions as akils, who were expected to serve as conduits between British administrators and local Somalis. While Somalis largely continued to conduct themselves according to traditional cultural practices and structures, the colonial administration did facilitate the spread of formal governance structures across British Somaliland. Further underscoring the British lack of interest in developing Somaliland as a fully-fledged colony, the administration’s entire 1947 budget for Somaliland was GBP 213,139, the approximate equivalent of GBP 6,480,000 today (Library of Congress 1992).5
The Italians implemented more intense and stringent mechanisms in south-central Somalia in hopes of developing a fully-fledged colony. Their motivation for developing the region was three-fold: “to ‘relieve population pressure at home’, to ‘offer the civilizing Roman mission’ and to increase Italian prestige through overseas colonization” (Library of Congress 1992). Colonial appointments and taxation policies simultaneously minimized clan elders’ power and expropriated their lands (Samatar 1988). Further, the Italians developed large-scale agricultural projects, highlighted by banana and sugarcane plantations, to develop a fully-fledged commercial economy. From 1923 forward, the Italians, now led by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, imposed the kolonya system “in which the most fertile land was forcibly confiscated without compensation, with agriculturalists and villagers conscripted as farm workers” (Walls 2011:98). The rapid transition from subsistence to export farming contributed to severe food shortages during World War Two and unintentionally severed traditional trade links between south-central Somalia and other regions (Samatar 1989 and Walls 2011).
Introducing Western governance systems into Somalia centralized power created an elite minority of western-educated Somalis while placing disproportionate importance on urban areas, unbalancing property rights and xeer agreements between different clan units, and inherently weakening the traditional socio-cultural mechanisms founded on widespread participation and consensus (Logan 2002). This fundamental disconnection between the formalized government structure and Somali culture, values, and traditions has become the undercurrent that continues to propel Somalia’s crisis. Further, the Italians relied heavily on tying the Somali concept of Soomaaliweyn6 into its colonial state-building aspirations to generate support for its rapidly expanding enterprises. During the late 1940s the British government, temporarily controlling both British and Italian Somaliland following Italy’s defeat in World War Two, introduced political parties and allowed Somalis to gain more influence over their governance, marking the beginning of the region’s transition to democracy. British Somaliland declared its independence on 26 June 1960, with Italian Somaliland following on 1 July. Both legislatures held a joint session in Mogadishu that day to officially unite as the Republic of Somalia, and each legislature enacted a separate Act of Union to unite the two states into one ‘Somali Republic’ (Republic of Somaliland 1960).7
The new republic faced significant challenges from the onset. Clan interests and patronage quickly infiltrated the political sphere as the fluidity of parties and candidates underscored the relative importance and eventual dominance of clan identity in Somali politics.8 The Somali Youth League (SYL), a political party created in 1943, played an important role in the country’s independence and quickly came to represent southern Somali interests. While there was initial enthusiasm for the unitary republic, political developments quickly drove a stake into the coalition of northern and southern politicians. The President, Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Minister of the Interior were all southern officials, as well as 90 of the 123 seats within the National Assembly; Mohamed Ibrahim Egal, Somaliland’s most senior politician, was appointed as Minister of Defense (Walls 2011). The independence government struggled to generate any tax revenue from its fledgling economy and was highly dependent on foreign aid for survival.
Mogadishu quickly became the region’s epicenter, facilitated by a southern Somali dominance over the political realm.9 In addition, southern Somalis held fast to Soomaaliweyn, and along with it a unified and powerful Somali state; northern Somalis initially supported the concept of a Greater Somalia (evidenced by their willingness to unite with Italian Somaliland at the onset of independence), though soon became weary of its counterpart’s disproportionate influence within all domains of Somali life. Further, part of this contrast is explained by the relative density of the Issaq clan within Somaliland; unlike in south-central Somalia, where the Hawiye are spread across vast swaths of land, the Issaq are confined within a select region of Somalia, thus rendering the concept of a united country less important to those northern Somalis. After examining this motivating concept, one comes to understand why politicians in south-central Somalia sought to centralize power within Mogadishu and then extend outwards to all parts of the region.
In 1963, citizens from Somaliland found themselves dismayed by the government and pressured Egal into choosing between the political coalition and his northern support base. Egal quickly resigned, leading to the collapse of the coalition government. During the first session of the National Assembly after the 1964 elections, 21 of the 53 non-SYL members immediately crossed the isle to join the SYL to create a more powerful political coalition. Former British Somaliland and its predominantly Issaq population were subsequently pushed to the periphery as the Hawiye and Darod politicians of southern Somalia mobilized development projects for their kin at the expense of the rest of the nation. Despite the appointment of Egal to the post of Prime Minister in 1967, the former British region was largely incapable of exerting any influence over national politics.
During the 1969 elections, 1,002 people, representing 62 different political parties, stood for 123 National Assembly seats; after the SYL won 73 seats, all but one of the non-SYL politicians crossed over, effectively creating a dominating single-party state.10
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