CHAPTER 2: The National Security Calculation of Ethiopia and Somalia
Located in the northeast corner of Africa are two of the continent’s poorest countries, Ethiopia and Somalia, which until recently possessed two of sub-Sahara Africa’s largest and best-equipped military forces. Ethiopia’s armed forces, which throughout the 1960s and into the mid-1970s stood at 40,000-45,000 army, navy, and air force personnel, fielded 250,000-300,000 soldiers before its collapse in the spring of 1991 before the advancing forces of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). Somalia almost doubled the size of its standing military forces from 16,000 to 31,000 between 1967 and 1976—reaching a peak of 54,000 during the latter half of the 1970s—and, until the fall of Siad Barre in January 1991 maintained some 45,000 military personnel. How these two impoverished African countries were able to create and maintain military forces of this size and scope can be explained by their (1) devoting inordinate amounts of internal resources to the military, (2) emphasizing the importation of sophisticated weapons over other goods, and (3) accepting great-power arms patronage.
Despite a per capita GNP of less than $200 for Ethiopia and approximately $300 for Somalia, the governments of these two countries diverted a significant portion of government revenues from improving their health and educational systems to building and maintaining their armed forces. Since the latter half of the 1960s Addis Ababa incurred one of the highest military expenditures/central government expenditures (ME/CGE) ratios in the world. Over the past decade and a half, military spending has typically accounted for one-fourth, and as much as one-third of Ethiopian central’ government expenditures. Mogadishu’s defense expenditures were of approximately the same magnitude, ranging between 13.3 and 27.5 percent of the national budget during the period 1967-1984. The priority given to military spending as reflected in government spending highlighted the importance attached by the political and military elites in Addis Ababa and Mogadishu to security concerns.
Further evidence of the predominant role security issues have played in the Horn of Africa is provided by the arms imports/total imports (AI/TI) ratio. During a decade-long period (1977-1986) Ethiopian arms imports, which before 1975 generally were less than one-tenth the total value of nonmilitary imports, totaled 50 percent or more in nine of those years, and on five occasions exceeded their value. Somalia’s arms imports, which never surpassed one-seventh the value of nonmilitary imports before 1972, subsequently increased and ranged between 25 and 47 percent of their value. Between 1977 and 1986, Somali arms imports varied between 26.8 and 98.4 percent of the level of nonmilitary imports, exceeding 49 percent in six of those years.
Finally, the military buildup in these two countries was dependent upon the compliance, and to a considerable extent financial underwriting, of outside powers. Addis Ababa imported well over $10 billion worth of arms since the end of the Second World War. The vast majority of these arms transfers (more than 95 percent) have arrived since 1977 from the Soviet Union. Following independence in 1960, Somalia began to acquire, from a variety of sources, weapons calculated to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion, about 90 percent of which have been provided since the mid-1970s. The great tragedy of-this situation is that this military buildup, aided and abetted by outside powers, occurred in an area of the world in which hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of famine and starvation, and millions more have been forced to become political refugees.
While the human tragedy in the Horn of Africa is not the central focus of this study, one reason more has not been done to alleviate this incredible suffering is that Ethiopia’s and Somalia’s obsessive pursuit of their national objectives and the desire of beleaguered regimes to maintain themselves in power required them to maintain substantial military forces. To achieve their goals, Addis Ababa and Mogadishu looked to outside powers for support. Over the past four decades both the United States and the Soviet Union, in particular, played great-power arms patron, owing to their capability and willingness (though reluctant at times) to provide vast quantities of sophisticated military hardware of all types (jet fighters, tanks, naval vessels, etcetera) and on financial terms (grant aid, loans, barter arrangements) that other suppliers could not match. This latter attribute was especially important for the economically weak states in the Horn of Africa. In attempting to secure the best possible political and economic terms to go with these arms transfers, however, Addis Ababa and Mogadishu resorted to manipulation and even the extreme threat of defection to have their way. Their willingness and ability to influence the arms transfer policies of foreign suppliers, most particularly the United States, has been framed and constrained by (1) threats arising from the Horn’s unresolved nationalities question, (2) their perceived arms requirements and need to attract political-military support from outside parties, and (3) the internal nature of the political systems of the Horn countries in which national survival has been equated with the personal political survival of a leader.
THE NATIONALITIES QUESTION AND SECURITY DILEMMAS
The security equation for both Ethiopia and Somalia has revolved around the thorny nationalities question, which has torn apart the Horn of Africa for the past thirty years. Two diametrically opposed interpretations of the Horn’s political history are posited by these two governments. Addis Ababa contends that Ethiopia is a sovereign national entity that by escaping the nineteenth-century “scramble for Africa” preserved its national independence and, therefore, was entitled to move into the power vacuums left by the retreating European colonial powers. Consequently, the Ethiopian central government has maintained that it has the right to do whatever is necessary to preserve its unity. Leaders in Mogadishu, along with various subnational ethnic groups inside Ethiopia, claim that the Ethiopian state is a modern-day African imperialist entity that should be dismantled. Because of Addis Ababa’s refusal to negotiate the terms of this dismemberment peacefully, they claim the right to seek national self-determination by military force or subversion. In short, the struggles and violence in the Horn of Africa today are the result of apparently irreconcilable objectives between the Ethiopian center and its periphery, which pits the right of self-preservation versus that of self-determination.
Paradoxically, Ethiopia and Somalia represent two extreme case studies of how the ethnic makeup of a country can affect a government’s national interests and security objectives. In this era of fervent Third World nationalism, an ethnically diverse and religiously fragmented country such as Ethiopia will be politically and militarily sensitive not only to its external environment but also to events and forces operating within its borders. The culturally homogenous state of Somalia, on the other hand, has been destabilized by clan-based politics. Until the collapse of the Somali central government in January 1991, there did seem to prevail among these rival clans a consensus that a Somali state (in at least its present configuration, if not in an extended form) should survive. Thus, while both governments must be cognizant of external security threats to their national survival, Addis Ababa’s security calculation is further complicated by ethno-nationalist threats from within.
The net result of the geographic proximity and historical development of these two states has been three decades of intermittent war and insurgency in the Horn of Africa, with Ethiopia serving as the focal point for these conflicts. In Ethiopia’s northeast province of Eritrea the various factions of the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM)—the dominant faction now being the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF)-began waging a secessionist struggle against the Ethiopian central government in the early 1960s. In 1975 the Tigre Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), operating in Ethiopia’s Tigre Province, took up arms against Addis Ababa in order to depose the military government. The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), based in the Oromo-inhabited areas in the southern part of Ethiopia, which comprise approximately half of the country’s population, followed suit in 1976. At one point in the mid-1970s, ten of the country’s fourteen provinces were in armed revolt against the central government. While these insurgencies differed in terms of their political agendas, ideologies, and level of external support, they are all indigenous movements seeking to assert their own particular ethnic interests in opposition to the narrowly based Amharic ethnic minority that historically has dominated the Ethiopian political landscape. The question remains open, however, whether in the aftermath of their victory against the Ethiopian central government in May 1991 these ethnic-based movements will continue to cooperate, go their own separate ways, or find themselves in armed confrontation.
Somali opposition to the Ethiopian central government has been motivated also by a desire to throw off perceived political, economic, and cultural domination by the Amharas. But it differs from the other movements in the sense that a foreign government was directly involved in supporting the insurgency. The government of Somalia had identified itself intimately with the struggle being waged by the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) and for a time the Somali-Abo Liberation Front (SALF) in Ethiopia’s Somali-inhabited Ogaden Province. On at least three occasions—in 1964, 1980, and 1982—large-scale fighting broke out between Ethiopian and Somali military forces. Moreover, between June 1977 and March 1978 the two countries fought a full-blown war in which both sides suffered thousands of casualties, and the threat of a superpower clash loomed over the conflict.
Given these contradictory claims, both sides have been willing to use the military instrument of coercion to secure their interests. After the 1977-1978 Ogaden War, Ethiopia began to augment its primarily defensive response by providing support to insurgency movements seeking to oust the government of Siad Barre, including the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF) and the Somali National Movement (SNM), whose military successes in 1988-1989 placed Somalia in a state of civil war. Ethiopian military operations and occupation of areas inside Somalia during the 1980s clouded somewhat the traditional portrayal of Somalia as the aggressor and Ethiopia as the victim in this conflict. Nonetheless, the proxy war waged between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu throughout most of the 1980s demonstrated that neither side was immune from attack or subversion.
The international relationship between Ethiopia and Somalia for most of the past thirty years presented a classic example of the security dilemma at work. Each side assumed the worst about the other and reacted to every move (weapons acquisition) as though there were some ulterior motive. In the case of the Horn of Africa, however, such an assumption was probably correct in some instances and produced overreaction at other times. Despite the political rapprochement reached by Siad Barre and Colonel Mengistu in April 1988, which called upon both sides to cease support for insurgents operating inside the other country, the suspicions and antagonisms felt by each side toward the other still remain and may ultimately undermine this unstable peace. Except for the fact that in the spring of 1991 Somalia was in a virtual state of anarchy, after the collapse of the Ethiopian central government at the end of May the Somalis might have been tempted to strike and attempt to seize the Ogaden once again.
Thus, for both Ethiopia and Somalia the security threat has been very real and imminent. Moreover, it is a threat that can easily be manipulated by outside powers wishing to stir up trouble and exploit an opportunity. Although the official U.S. policy line over the years has been that the United States would not exploit the problems of the Horn, the possibility of undertaking such actions either overtly or covertly was raised within some of Washington’s policy-making circles following the termination of military relations between the United States and Ethiopia in 1977. Perhaps to a greater extent in the case of Ethiopia, which has been fending off numerous internal and external challenges for decades, arms suppliers have found particularly vulnerable and dependent client states in the Horn of Africa.
The primary national security interests of Ethiopia and Somalia have remained essentially unaltered through the years. Ethiopia’s foreign policy has been shaped by a desire to gain and maintain access to the Red Sea, while the prime directive for Mogadishu has been to liberate Somalia from foreign rule, or at a minimum obtain an improvement in the living situation of the Somali-speaking people in the Horn of Africa. In both instances, the path they chose for resolving their respective national security dilemmas required the importation of arms.
ETHIOPIA’S GEOPOLITICAL IMPERATIVE
The lands and peoples over which the struggles for self-determination are waged today in the Horn of Africa have been under Ethiopian control for about a century. Although Ethiopia’s political leaders trace the origins of the Ethiopian state back more than 2,000 years, the consolidation and centralization of the empire did not begin to occur until the middle of the nineteenth century under the rule of Theodore II and Yohannes IV. While the concept of a centralized nation-state had firmly taken hold in Europe by the eighteenth century, Ethiopia had regressed during the Era of the Princess (1769-1855) into-a feudal, a decentralized system in which local warlords and traditional nobility competed for supremacy. But it was during the reign of Menelik II (1889-1913), who claimed the emperor’s crown after the death of Yohannes IV in 1889 that the present configuration of the Ethiopian state began to take shape. From his Shoa base in the central highlands, Menelik consolidated the core of the Abyssinian Empire and moved into the surrounding areas. By 1906, through a combination of conquest and diplomacy, Menelik had added the Ogaden, Bale, Sidamo, Wollamo, Kaffa, and Illubador to the central core of the Ethiopian state. Emperor Haile Selassie completed the task after the Second World War when he gained control over Italy’s Red Sea colony of Eritrea.
The internal conflicts in Ethiopia largely reflect the split between the politically dominant Christian Amharic community located in the core and the predominantly Muslim groups that reside in the empire’s periphery. Political power has resided almost exclusively in the hands of the Amharas since the mid-nineteenth century. The May 1991 victory by the Tigre-dominated EPRDF, however, threatens Amhara’s dominance. Nonetheless, over time, the culturally united Christian community in the Ethiopian highlands developed a strong sense of identity-based upon its perception of itself as a “Christian island surrounded in a hostile Moslem sea.” Because of the political and cultural biases of the Ethiopian central government through the years, a firmly rooted ethnic-based (with a quasi-religious appeal) opposition to the central government has emerged in the Ethiopian periphery. Thus, a century-long foreign policy of territorial expansion lies at the root of Ethiopia’s internal problems today.
Addis Ababa has been willing to fight these debilitating internal and external wars for three decades because of its definition of Ethiopia’s geopolitical interests, conditioned by a history of foreign invasion and regional threats. Ethiopia’s sense of being a state under siege began to develop following the sixteenth-century invasion by Ahmad Gran and the Turks. The siege mentality was imprinted in the Ethiopian psyche as a result of various attempts by the Egyptians, British, and Italians to encroach upon Ethiopia during the nineteenth century and by Italy’s military occupation of Ethiopia between 1935 and 1941. In the post-World War II period, a reemergent Islamic threat under the guise of Arab nationalism reappeared and violently manifested itself in the 1960s in the Eritrean rebellion (though the Eritrean community is split between Muslims and Christians) and the Somali claim on the Ogaden Desert. A common thread linking these episodes has been the use of the East African coastline as the staging point for these hostile forces.
Given this history of foreign threats coming from various positions along the Red Sea, Ethiopia’s rulers have been haunted by the specter of the Red Sea coastline—Addis Ababa’s only link to the outside world—falling under the control of unfriendly powers. Ethiopian leaders, therefore, have come to view maintaining an outlet to the Red Sea as vital to the country’s national security. Holding such a position would prevent strangulation of the empire and facilitate the flow of arms into the country for national defense. These forward positions along the Red Sea also would serve as protective buffer zones, insulating the central core of the Ethiopian state from outsiders.
Since the end of the Second World War, Ethiopia’s security assessment has produced a rigid foreign (and domestic) policy guided by this geopolitical imperative. In terms of actual policy, it has meant the subjugation of those areas contiguous to Djibouti (which includes the Ogaden) that are transversed by the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, as well as first acquiring and then maintaining control over Eritrea’s Red Sea coastline. The federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1952 and Addis Ababa’s annexation of the area ten years later, coupled with Emperor Selassie’s ability to gain international recognition for the idea that Africa’s colonial borders should remain sacrosanct, were seen as critical diplomatic victories. Whether or not Ethiopia could survive as an independent actor without one or the other of these transit points that link the core of the empire with the Red Sea is a matter Addis Ababa has not been willing to consider, given the heterogeneous and fragmented nature of the state. If the central government were to grant some form of autonomy or independence to one region, so the thinking goes, other areas might expect and demand the same treatment. Concessions or compromise might be interpreted as a sign of weakness and produce a contagion or domino effect throughout the country. The ultimate result of such a perceived policy of appeasement would be the disintegration of the Ethiopian state.
National Security in Ethiopia and Somalia Addis Ababa’s regional security perspective, therefore, has been shaped by a strong sense of national survival in a hostile environment. A particularly interesting facet of Ethiopia’s geopolitical thinking is that it has transcended time and ideology. In the post-World War II era, the Ethiopian monarch Haile Selassie formulated and articulated this security perspective, and it was followed by his Marxist-Leninist military successors. One constant of Ethiopia’s external relationships has been the geopolitical imperative of maintaining unhindered access to the Red Sea. Thus it will be interesting to see in the aftermath of Mengistu’s fall whether the alliance between the TPLF (whose political agenda calls for a change in the government) and the EPLF (which has fought to secede from the Ethiopian state) will hold together.
THE GREATER SOMALILAND QUEST
While the contemporary conflicts in the Horn of Africa revolve around the internal policies of the Ethiopian government, it is the external policy of Somalia that has precipitated military confrontation between these two states. Mogadishu’s regional foreign policy has been shaped by the threat Ethiopia and other regional and external powers pose to its irredentist dream of reuniting all the Somali-speaking people of the Horn of Africa under one flag. Somali claims include parts of Westgate Mall siege in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2013. In recent weeks, they have carried out a spate of attacks in Kenya, the mini-state of Djibouti, as well as Ethiopia. Somalia’s hostility toward its larger and more populous African neighbor arises from the conviction that Ethiopia played, and continues to play, a pivotal role in erecting arbitrary political barriers that divide the Somali nation. Of course, this concern is now secondary, given the threat of fragmentation facing Somalia, and it has held greater attraction for the Somali clans of the south than for those in the north.
For centuries the Somali people who inhabited “Greater Somaliland” were able to move about freely in search of grazing land and freshwater, since no political boundaries existed that would hamper the seasonal migration patterns of these nomadic people. This situation changed abruptly when in the latter half of the nineteenth century four expanding empires—the British, French, Italian, and Ethiopian—dismembered what had been Greater Somaliland. But Menelik’s conquest of the Ogaden in 1887 was not formally recognized by the other colonial powers until ten years later, following Ethiopia’s stunning victory over the Italians at the battle of Adowa in 1896. London then decided it was time to come to terms with the Ethiopian emperor: in 1897 the British government concluded an agreement with Emperor Menelik II that gave Ethiopia jurisdiction over a large part of the Ogaden, as well as the Haud and Reserved areas, two rich grazing lands located in the northeastern part of the Ogaden. Although the agreement guaranteed Somali grazing rights in these areas, modern-day Somali nationalists have challenged the legality of Great Britain ceding Somali areas to Ethiopia at this time and do not recognize Addis Ababa’s claim to the Ogaden based upon the 1897 Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty.
By the beginning of the First World War, all of Somaliland had been brought under the administrative control of the three European powers and Ethiopia. Great Britain occupied the area around Berbera and along the Gulf of Aden, as well as the Somali-inhabited Northern Frontier District (NFD) of FIFA World Cup, Mohamed is hoping to celebrate different nationalities in Edmonton. So far teams include players from Somaliland, Jamaica, Fiji, Kenya. Italy’s rule extended from the Gulf of Aden coastline west of Berbera to the regions south of Mogadishu that bordered the N F D. France bounded British Somaliland in the northeast in the Territories of the Afars and Issacs (Djibouti). Ethiopia controlled the dagger-shaped interior between British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. This foreign occupation of Somaliland met fierce resistance, the most famous and celebrated episode of which involved British forces, who fought a nightmarish war against the Dervish forces of Mullah Mohamed ibn Abdullah Hassan for more than two decades (1899-1920). Although the British managed to restore relative peace after the mullah’s death in 1920, Somali resentment continued to grow because of continued foreign domination and the occasional harassment Somali nomads were subjected to during their seasonal migrations across the “international borders” dividing their traditional grazing grounds.
The process and outcome of the decolonization of Africa in the postwar period would be bittersweet for the Somalis. During the Second World War, all of the Somali areas had fallen under British military control. But in September 1948 the British had transferred control over the Ogaden back to Ethiopia under the terms of wartime agreements reached with Emperor Haile Selassie in 1942 and 1944. A year later the United Nations decided that beginning in 1950 Great Britain and Italy would administer separate ten-year trusteeships over their prewar Somali territories. Then in 1954 London agreed to return the Hand and Reserved areas to Ethiopia. Britain’s decision to allow Kenya to retain the NFD, that became Kenya’s northeastern province upon independence in 1963, completed the postwar division of the Somali people. Independence and the subsequent merger of Italian and British Somalilands in 1960 would not be enough to make the Somalis forget just how close they were to reunification. Today, Somalia’s citizens are constantly reminded of the pan-Somali quest by the five-pointed star on the Somali national flag on which each of the five points represent one of the “lost Somali territories”—the Ogaden and Hand in Ethiopia, Kenya’s northeast province, Djibouti (former French Somaliland), British Somaliland, and Italian Somaliland.
AN INVITATION TO GREAT-POWER INTERVENTION
The influence of patrons in the Horn of Africa has also been the result of their ability to affect the internal and external balance of power. Balance-of-power relationships have been seen as crucial to the resolution of security problems raised by the nationalities question. Arms transfers have played a central role in meeting these internal and external security threats. Uninterrupted access to large quantities of high-quality weapons, preferably with minimum political restrictions, was considered a sine qua non for the attainment of Ethiopia’s and Somalia’s security objectives. For this reason, outside powers, particularly the superpowers, have been welcomed intruders in the Horn.
An invitation by local powers to outsiders to intervene on their behalf, directly or indirectly, has a long tradition in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia looked to the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, the British and French in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the Americans and the Soviets in the post-World War II era for assistance and protection in the form of weapons or military forces. Though newer to this game, Somalia also has learned the importance of maintaining a military linkage with a great-power benefactor, starting first with the Soviet Union from 1963 to 1977, and since 1980 with the United States. Addis Ababa and Mogadishu, therefore, have both consciously sought to globalize their regional dispute in order to secure weapons. A Somali proverb neatly captures the security perspective of both Somalia and Ethiopia: “Either be a mountain or lean on one.” Both countries, nevertheless, would also discover the dangers of becoming overly reliant upon a single great-power supplier.
ETHIOPIA: GLOBAL DEPENDENCE AND REGIONAL ISOLATION
Ethiopia’s military relations with foreign powers have been conditioned by its primarily defensive posture in the Horn. Because of the persistent internal and external threats to the country’s territorial integrity, Ethiopian leaders have preferred to maintain a stable arms connection with a single power. The superpowers have been quite cognizant of this preference. Ethiopian threats to defect from one superpower to the other, though somewhat effective as a source of leverage, have often been dismissed by Ethiopia’s arms patrons. The precarious security situation the country finds itself in, as well as the short-term dangers Addis Ababa would be exposed to in making the logistical change from one military system to another, weakens Ethiopia’s hand in its arms dealings. Consequently, since 1953 Ethiopia’s external arms relationships have fallen into two periods, twenty-five years of American military patronage, succeeded in 1977 by Soviet sponsorship, which in 1991 would come to an end.
After levering the British military presence out of Ethiopia in the early 1950s Emperor Haile Selassie placed his country’s security needs in the hands of the United States. Although Washington did not hold a complete arms monopoly, an overwhelming majority of the weapons acquired by Addis Ababa were provided by the Americans. Even during the latter phases of the U.S.-Ethiopia military relationship, when Addis Ababa was experiencing trouble in purchasing arms and felt it was not receiving adequate military assistance from Washington, the United States still accounted for over 70 percent ($135 million out of $190 million) of the arms imported by Ethiopia. The U.S. military connection was even more invaluable in that until 1976 almost all of these weapons were acquired by Ethiopia on a grant basis via the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP). In real terms, Washington supplemented an estimated $562 million spent by the Ethiopian government on military purchases between 1967 and 1976 with an additional $100 million worth of MAP and IMETP funds. Though the levels of U.S. aid pale in comparison with what the Soviet Union has provided to Ethiopia in recent years, such aid nonetheless allowed Addis Ababa to make purchases and accomplish objectives it otherwise would have had to forego.
As a result of the problems the new Ethiopian military government began to have with Washington after the overthrow of Haile Selassie in 1974, Ethiopia did experiment briefly with cross-bloc diversification. Between 1974 and 1978 its military government concluded arms transactions with the United States, the Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Italy, and the People’s Republic of China. Still, Moscow would account for over 80 percent of the $1.6 billion worth of arms supplied to Ethiopia during this period. But by the end of 1978, the Russians had acquired a virtual monopoly over arms transfers to Ethiopia. American officials estimate that between 1977 and 1990 the Soviet Union provided $11 billion worth of arms to Ethiopia. Over the past four decades, Addis Ababa acquired more than 95 percent of its weaponry from Moscow.
Except for (the former) South Yemen, Ethiopia has been estranged politically from the Arab-Islamic states rimming the Red Sea. This isolation has forced Ethiopia to maintain a great-power security connection since the oil-rich Arab states of the Middle East have eschewed developing close ties with Addis Ababa. Among the Red Sea’s regional actors, only Israel, itself dependent upon U.S. military and economic assistance, has cooperated in security matters with Ethiopia. But by the end of 1989, with the Soviet Union announcing its intention to disengage militarily from Ethiopia, Israel emerged as an important source of arms. Until the massive airlift (Operation Solomon) in May 1991 that brought the remaining 14,000 Ethiopian Jews (Falashas) to Israel, the Mengistu government had used the Falashas as a lever to acquire arms from Israel.
Addis Ababa’s diversification options, therefore, have been constrained by economic and political realities. The need for a generous donor willing to assume a long-term security responsibility narrowed the field to the United States and the Soviet Union. Ethiopia’s response to these circumstances was to globalize the conflict in the Horn in order to draw in great power: a game that has now come to an end. The cost of this tactic, however, was that Addis Ababa had to be careful not to alienate its global patron; else it risked being left to face its opponents alone.
SOMALIA: PLAYING THE ISLAMIC CARD
In contrast to Ethiopia, Somalia has demonstrated much more flexibility in its dealings with foreign powers than Ethiopia. This is attributable in part to fate, but also to necessity. Mogadishu’s fortunate fate is the Islamic bond it shares with oil-rich states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran under the shah, Iraq, as well as the Arab military giant of the Red Sea, Egypt. These governments have rewarded Mogadishu for its stances on global and regional issues, and in some instances have used their influence with the United States on Somalia’s behalf.
The Americans, as well as the Soviets, however, have viewed a security relationship with Somalia as an invitation to trouble. Because of the Ogaden issue and the perception that Ethiopia is the strategic prize to be won in the Horn of Africa, both Washington and Moscow preferred Addis Ababa to Mogadishu. So while Somali leaders have sought out a superpower security connection, they realize that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union consciously would take any action or support Somalia in such a way that would permanently burn their bridges to Addis Ababa. In recognition of this post-Ethiopian revolution political reality, Mogadishu has been forced to pursue over the past fifteen years a varied and somewhat complex (some would say opportunistic) arms acquisition policy.
Mogadishu’s external military relations with the East and West blocs have been characterized by sharp shifts since independence. In the early 1960s several Western countries—Italy, Great Britain, France, and West Germany as well as the United States—assumed responsibility for providing a relatively small amount of military aid (approximately $3 million) to Somalia, and for training and equipping the Somali police force. But after rejecting what the Somalis felt was an inadequate military aid package offered by the West, Mogadishu concluded an arms agreement with Moscow in 1963 valued at $30 million. Then in 1967, the Somali government looked back to the Western bloc for aid, frustrated by Moscow’s decision to reduce arms supplies. There was emerging, further, a Somali political leadership willing to seek peaceful accommodation with Ethiopia. Following the 1969 military coup d’état in Mogadishu, however, the new Somali government ended this brief interlude with the West and came to rely almost exclusively upon Soviet arms transfers over the next seven years. Between 1967 and 1976 Mogadishu imported $185 million worth of arms, of which $181 million arrived from the Soviet Union. When diplomatic relations between Mogadishu and Moscow began to deteriorate in the spring of 1977 as a result of increasing Soviet arms transfers to Ethiopia, Somalia again turned to the West for arms. Although Mogadishu actively sought out, and finally concluded a security assistance agreement with Washington in 1980, since that time Somalia has continued to deal with diverse arms suppliers.
Somalia’s seven-year exclusive military relationship with the Soviet Union in retrospect seems to be more of an aberration than an SOP guideline for Mogadishu’s arms transfer policy toward the superpowers. Moscow’s willingness to support Mogadishu during this period in such a bold manner can be attributed to the absence of any opportunity in Ethiopia for the Soviet Union until after the 1974 revolution. Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Soviet diplomats made numerous overtures to Ethiopian officials to throw out the Americans and replace them with Russian advisers and military assistance. When presented with the opportunity, Moscow exploited it to the hilt with little regard for its Somali arms client.
The manner in which Washington and Mogadishu entered into their arms-for-access arrangement in August 1980 also suggests that if given a choice, the Americans would do the same and opt for Ethiopia over Somalia. The U.S. government limited the size and scope of security assistance for Somalia to “defensive arms.” Moreover, Washington encouraged Mogadishu to acquire weapons from other friendly Western and Middle Eastern sources. Obviously, the United States did not wish to bear the full responsibility, or sole blame, for Somali actions in the Ogaden. Therefore, during the first half of the 1980s, the United States only supplied about 20 percent of the weapons acquired by Mogadishu.
Because of Ethiopia’s perceived geopolitical predominance in the Horn of Africa and the fact that within the Africa policy context Addis Ababa is viewed as being on the “right” side of the Ethiopian-Somali conflict, Somalia has looked to its Islamic-Arab connections in the Red Sea region to guarantee that it would have access to military hardware and supplies. The Islamic card that Somalia has played, however, does not reveal itself so vividly in the arms transfer statistics compiled in the West. Since the end of the 1977-1978 Ogaden War, Mogadishu has acquired arms from the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, and most notably Italy, as well as from other sources. But when one considers, for example, that Somalia’s total government military expenditures during the late 1970s and through the mid-1980s averaged about $120 million per year, it becomes difficult to imagine how Mogadishu could shoulder the noncapital investment and recurring manpower burden of fielding an armed force that varied in size from 43,000 to 54,000 soldiers and still be able to purchase weapons from Western suppliers. American security assistance, which totaled almost $300 million between 1980 and 1986, of which approximately $240 million came in the form of grant aid—MAP, IMETP, and ESF (Economic Support Funds)—certainly provided some important financial relief. The financial support provided by Saudi Arabia, and the willingness of Egypt and the shah of Iran to provide excess defense articles from their military inventories, also was significant. Then, at the end of the 1980s, Libya began to supply arms to Somalia, partially filling the vacuum left by the United States.
The perceived “offensive” nature of Somalia’s foreign policy objectives in the Horn of Africa has made the task of maintaining a stable and assured arms connection with the global powers a rather tenuous proposition. Although Mogadishu also participated in globalizing the Ethiopia-Somalia conflict, the Somali cause would be better served, it would seem if the Horn were removed from the superpower agenda. By keeping the conflict limited to interested powers in the Red Sea region or the Middle East, who possess a more direct stake in the outcome of this conflict, the regional balance of external forces favors Mogadishu.
But like its regional rival, Somalia’s policy is also subject to constraints. Because the risk of alienating or losing its superpower arms supplier was so high, arms diversification became a necessity. Consequently, Somalia must also maintain friendly relations with fellow Islamic countries who will help underwrite a Somali military buildup. To ensure this support, Mogadishu will be a follower, not a leader of political change in the region, particularly as it pertains to relations between the primary Red Sea powers (Egypt and Saudi Arabia) and the superpowers.
THE “RULER’S IMPERATIVE” AND FOREIGN RELATIONS
In the Horn of Africa, personalities and elite group ideologies rather than institutions have tended to dominate and determine foreign policy. Except for Somalia during the 1960s, when there existed constitutional checks within the Somali political system and perhaps in democratic Ethiopia expected to emerge in the 1990s, domestic politics, as well as the external relations of Addis Ababa and Mogadishu, have been framed by a “ruler’s imperative” in which the leader’s primary objectives have not been to improve the living conditions of the people over which they rule, but simply to keep themselves in power. Such leaders adopt a Machiavellian view of politics in which the survival of the state is seen as an extension of their personal political fortunes. Hence they have a direct stake in the creation, maintenance, and manipulation of a particular political system that provides an ideological justification for subordinating social forces as well as the institutions and power of the state to their control. Given the symbiotic link between the rulers and the political system constructed to legitimize their political authority, prudence and survival would preclude alignment with foreign powers who might attempt to disrupt or subvert their basis of power.
The impact of the ruler-dominated political systems of Ethiopia and Somalia on supplier-recipient relations through the end of the 1980s has been short-term stability and long-term uncertainty in their respective arms partnerships. Leaders in both countries have been quite willing to take or threaten actions that cause tensions; they have destabilized or disrupted an arms relationship in order to secure state objectives and preserve their own power. For Ethiopia, the formation of a great-power arms connection has revolved around the issue of system maintenance, first of the Ethiopian monarchy, then of the Ethiopian revolution. Somalia’s arms relationships with the superpowers and other suppliers have been framed by the clan politics of the Somali state. In both cases, the personal and ideological considerations of political elites have affected the interactions of these two states with their respective great-power arms patrons.
ETHIOPIA: THE PRESERVATION OF MONARCHY AND REVOLUTION
Addis Ababa’s perception of the desirability of maintaining an arms connection with foreign powers has been shaped by Ethiopia’s political history. Two periods stand out for analysis: (I) the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie that began in 1931 and ended in September 1974; and, the bloody and tumultuous transition period that ultimately resulted in the emergence of the strongman Col. Mengistu Haile-Mariam in February 1977. In both cases, the internal political power and authority of these two leaders had an ideological basis. Consequently, they sought to align Ethiopia politically and militarily with the superpower who would be most supportive of, or present the lesser threat to, what they hoped to achieve internally. So, despite their belief in starkly contrasting ideologies, both shared a common objective: to maintain a particular political system that would ensure their own survival.
Haile Selassie established a constitutional monarchy in Ethiopia on July 16, 1931, a few months after his coronation as emperor. Selassie based his rule upon a dynastic family line that he traced back to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. In Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia political parties did not exist. The bicameral Parliament that he created, in the revised constitution of 1955, had essentially no teeth to perform a checks and balances function, and the emperor could essentially rule by decree. Selassie not only elected the prime minister and appointed the members of the Senate, but under Article 30 of the 1955 Revised Constitution, the emperor controlled the supreme direction of the empire’s foreign affairs, with the exception that certain treaties and international agreements needed to be approved by a majority vote of both chambers of Parliament before becoming legally effective. But because the Ethiopian Senate was chosen by Selassie from among the nobility, the hierarchy of the Ethiopian Orthodox church, and other prominent dignitaries, and because the Chamber of Deputies was a very diffuse body as a result of the prohibition against political parties, the emperor held all effective power in his hands.
Haile Selassie based his rule upon a coalition with, and cooptation of the Ethiopian nobility, the Ethiopian Coptic Church, and the military. The conservative nature of the monarchy made the emperor particularly sensitive to, and fearful of progressive and radical forces. Despite his frequent flirtatious with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, such an external coupling would not only have been an ideological mismatch but could have proved disruptive internally. Thus, because the democratic countries in the West seemed to present less of an ideological threat to his rule, coupled with Haile Selassie’s special personal affinity for the United States, a security relationship with Washington was a safer path to follow than one that would put Ethiopia in the grip of radical forces.
After seizing power in a bloody shoot-out in February 1977, Colonel Mengistu’s internal political-ideological objective was to transform Ethiopia into a Marxist-Leninist state. The Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), also known as the Dergue, which assumed control in September 1974, had begun to drift to the left in 1975 in order to legitimize itself ideologically among civilian forces, particularly the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary party (EPRP). In April 1976 the PMAC proclaimed a National Democratic Revolutionary Program and declared Ethiopia to be a People’s Republic. Still, there were factions within the Dergue who favored a more moderate course, including continued friendship and alignment with the United States. The execution of a number of these moderates and finally Mengistu’s ascension to power, not only sealed the continued radical direction of the revolution but also established Washington as a threat to the revolutionary government.
Until his ouster in May 1991, Mengistu held supreme power in Ethiopia. He was chief of state, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia (WPE)—the sole political party and most powerful institution in the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE). For this pre-perestroika, pre-glasnost Soviet-styled political system, relations with a power (the United States) known for conducting destabilization campaigns against left-wing governments in the Third World were to be treated with great caution. However, beginning in 1989 Mengistu sought to improve relations with Washington and had renounced Marxism-Leninism, though not his authoritarian methods. Two years later the United States pressured Mengistu to leave Ethiopia in order to avoid a bloodbath in Addis Ababa. A democratic Ethiopia might now look to rekindle a security relationship with Washington.
The common theme that linked the Ethiopian monarchy’s external policy toward foreign powers with the policy of Mengistu was the search for an arms patron who would not subvert the political system. Although personal power and ideology have been the principal determinants in shaping Ethiopia’s foreign relations, the Ethiopian military has exerted considerable, though congruous, influence on Ethiopia’s foreign relations under both Selassie and Mengistu. The Ethiopian military perspective has been that in order to fulfill its primary defense mission in the periphery of the state, the government must have access to a steady supply of arms. Nonetheless, the military was subordinated or coopted politically, first by the emperor, then by Mengistu, and probably by his successors.
SOMALIA: CLAN POLITICS
Although domestic politics in post-independence Somalia also breaks down into two periods—that of parliamentarism in the 1960s and authoritarianism from 1969 onward (and one might add a third beginning in 1990-1991—anarchy)—the lines of political cleavage within the state as well as the conditioning ideology of Somali leaders have remained unchanged. Even after constitutionalism gave way to Somali-styled African socialism backed by Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, the Somali people have remained divided along clan lines. This is likely to continue as the three rebel groups who opposed Siad Barre and other parties attempt to shape post-Siad Somalia.
Somalia’s irredentist foreign policy objective concerning the reunification of the Somali peoples of the Horn had apparently been one of the few things the various clans generally agreed upon through the years. An axiom of Somali domestic politics was that no leader could renounce the Somali nationalist claim, on the Ogaden particularly, and hope to survive politically. This political fact of life, which has proved so disruptive in the Horn, is a product and function of Somali clan politics— though it seems to hold a greater potency for the Somali clans of the south than for those in the north. Consequently, internal clan politics and kinship ties go a long way in explaining Somalia’s relationships with the superpowers.
Although the Somali Constitution of 1960 established Somalia as an Islamic state, taking into account the Sunni Islamic religious background shared by the Somali people, this document could not eliminate or subterfuge the kinship ties that segment Somalia’s population. More than 98 percent of the population is divided into two main clan families. There is the numerically predominant and primarily pastoralist-nomadic Samaale clan of the north, which is composed of four subclans—the Dir, Hawiye, Isaaq, and Daarood—and further subdivides into numerous offshoots. The most important of these offshoots are the Ogaden, Mareehan, and Majeerteen clans, all of whom are linked by a common Daarood root. Less important in this study is the minority and predominantly agricultural Saab clan, found in the south; it is composed of two subclans—the Digil, and Rahanwayn.
At the risk of oversimplifying very complex inter- and intraclan relationships, suffice it to say that since independence Somalia’s top-ranking political leaders have belonged to the pastoralist Samaale clans. Somalia’s first president, Abdullah Osman, was of the Hawiye clan. Ali Shermaarke, who served as Osman’s prime minister for several years and was elected president in 1967, and whose assassination in October 1969 provided the spark for a military coup d’état, was a Majeerteen. Haji Hassen, who replaced Shermaarke in 1964, was also a Majeerteen, but of a different subclan. Muhammad Egal, who served as Shermaarke’s prime minister, was from the Isaaq clan. Siad Barre was a Mareehan. Today, all the Somali clans, particularly the Hawiye, Darood, Ogaden, Isaaq, and Mareehan, are competing to fill the power vacuum created by Siad Barre’s abdication.
The political domination of the Somali political scene in the postindependence period by Samaale clans explains much about the conflict in the Ogaden, and generally Mogadishu’s quest to reunite all of the Somali-speaking peoples of the Horn under one flag. It has been the nomadic Somali herders living in and adjacent to the Ogaden region—dependent upon free and unencumbered migration for their survival—who have been most victimized by the artificial territorial borders erected in the Horn. The bonds of kinship between Somalia’s political leaders and the Somali nomads subject to foreign domination have made this nationalist struggle an intense and politically charged issue throughout the post-independence history of Somalia. When the government of President Shermaarke and Prime Minister Egal seemed to be backing away from the Ogaden issue and striking a deal with Ethiopia by tacitly renouncing Mogadishu’s irredentist claim on the region, Shermaarke was assassinated, and a new and perceptually more nationalistic military-led government took control. Siad Barre’s April 1988 tactical agreement with Colonel Mengistu regarding the Ogaden alienated members of the Ogaden clan in particular and produced even greater opposition to his rule. But with Somalia now in chaos and on the verge of partition, the Ogaden issue does not currently figure quite so prominently on Somalia’s national agenda.
Although the ideology of Somali reunification has acted, for the most part, as a cohesive force within the Somali political system, it is an issue that varies in strength from clan to clan. A distinguishing characteristic of such a segmented system is the propensity for structural instability caused by interclan rivalries. The dominant clans during the civilian parliamentary era of the 1960s were the Hawiye, Isaaq, and Majeerteen clans, of which both presidents and their three prime ministers were members. Siad Barre came to rely upon what has been referred to as the “MOD connection”: the Mareehan, Ogaden, and Dulbahante clans, which all belong to the root Daarood clan. This fragile alliance, however, began to disintegrate after the April 1988 Somali-Ethiopian deal over the Ogaden and as a result of the increased fighting in the northern part of the country against the SNM. Following the overthrow of Siad Barre in January 1991 by the Hawiye-based United Somali Congress (USC), one of the clan-based groups that were in rebellion in 1990, along with the Ogaden-based Somali Patriotic Movement (SPM) and the Isaaq-based Somali National Movement (SNM), it remains to be seen whether political stability and democracy will return to Somalia, or whether Somalia will remain whole.
Thus, domestic politics in Somalia have been shaped by these various clans seeking advantage for themselves by attempting to dominate the political and economic structures of the Somali state and by forging temporary alliances with other clans. With regard to foreign affairs, Mogadishu’s choice of its external political-military partners has been guided by a personal but, more important, clanwide necessity to maintain the system.
The ideology of reunification, which is a function of the interplay of Somali clan politics and kinship ties has been a determining force in Mogadishu’s relations with its great-power arms patron. But the intensity of clan rivalry within Somalia has not only destabilized the state but also diminished the chances for building stable foreign relations. In contrast to the perspective of Ethiopia’s leaders, Mogadishu’s bottom-line political-military assessment of the desirability of forging and maintaining an arms link with particular foreign powers was influenced more by the opportunity of convenience in the pursuit of Somali reunification than by the ideological orientation of a particular supplier.
DEPENDENCE AND INFLUENCE IN THE HORN OF AFRICA
The bargaining positions, if not the tactics, of Ethiopia and Somalia vis-a-vis the United States have been conditioned by quite different forces. Ethiopia’s military relationship with the United States was affected by Addis Ababa’s (1) perception of high-level threats to its territorial integrity and desire to maintain access to the Red Sea, (2) dependence upon great-power patronage, and (3) belief that some level of ideological compatibility should exist between itself and its arms patron to avoid inviting in a disruptive foreign influence. Somalia’s military dealings with Washington have been determined by (1) Mogadishu’s long-term commitment to Somali reunification and the threat posed by foreign powers to the achievement of that objective, (2) its ability to exploit its Islamic ties throughout the Middle East, but need to counterbalance Ethiopia’s superpower connection with one of its own, and (3) the constraints imposed by Somali clan politics.
Ethiopia’s primarily defensive posture and the perceived offensive nature of Somalia’s foreign objectives in the Horn have produced several important distinctions in how Addis Ababa and Mogadishu have viewed the role of foreign powers. Ethiopia has sought to promote stability in its arms relationships with the great powers because of its perpetual sense of encirclement by hostile forces. Addis Ababa’s fear of territorial disintegration or becoming landlocked and isolated has created a need for outside military support, which consequently has rendered Ethiopia extremely vulnerable to foreign influence and manipulation. While Somalia has reduced its dependence on any one state by nurturing multiple regional ties, the Somalis nonetheless recognize that the superpowers could tilt the balance of forces dramatically in the Horn. Thus, Mogadishu’s security calculation has been profoundly affected by what the superpowers do in Ethiopia.
Although the governments of Ethiopia and Somalia used the threat of defection to force their respective superpower arms suppliers to act, the results were not all that impressive. Until the change of regime in Addis Ababa in 1974, Ethiopian threats to turn to the Soviets for arms carried little weight in Washington. Somalia’s willingness to defect from one side to the other was a somewhat hollow threat since both superpowers would prefer, if given a choice, to be entrenched in Ethiopia. Threats of defection must not only be plausible, but also coupled with perceived threats to U.S. geopolitical, bureaucratic, or domestic political interests in order to produce leverage.
In their dealings with the United States, the governments of Ethiopia and Somalia have been the primary instigators of arms transfer policy conflicts, owing to the predominantly military nature of their internal and external interests. The political elite have imported arms into the Horn to ensure their own survival. Moreover, because of the important role that arms transfers play in their respective security calculations, the top-ranking Ethiopian and Somali political elite devote greater attention and energy to these issues than do their American counterparts. Thus, they sought to allow time and persistent pressure in the form of manipulation and threats to break down American resistance to their arms demands.
