The Politics Of The 1969 Somali Coup

STATE AND NATION

As is now glaringly obvious, most of the new African countries are states rather than nations, in the sense that they generally lack any uniform national culture to serve as an effective basis for a fully-fledged patriotism transcending their numerous internal tribal divisions.

At a popular level, African politics have become virtually synonymous with `tribalism’, and the same circumstances underlie the vogue which the euphemistic if more comprehensive term ‘pluralism’ currently enjoys in erudite circles. It is easy to exaggerate and over-simplify, but there is little doubt that most African states have witnessed an intensification of their internal tribal and other divisions since independence. Against this background, the Somali Republic appears at first sight as a striking anomaly.

For, in contrast with her neighbors, she owes her very existence to the sense of common identity and destiny which the Somalis display as a people and which, if sharpened by colonization, was certainly not created by it.

This sense of community is anchored in the possession of a broadly homogeneous and largely pastoral culture, a common language, and a fervent and deep-rooted devotion to Islam which reached their shores over a thousand years ago. These attributes in Somali eyes distinguish them clearly from other neighboring ethnic groups in northeast Africa. Thus self-determination has always meant Somali-determina­tion; hence, as I have argued previously, the only form of pan­-Africanism that has ever enjoyed much support follows the principle that charity begins at home, and is limited in scope to the surrounding Somali areas.’

On the basis of this traditional cultural unity, in 1960 the former British Somaliland Protectorate and U.N. Trust Territory of Somalia (administered by Italy) joined together as the northern and southern regions of the Somali Republic. The formation of this new state left many Somalis outside the fold and still under foreign rule, as part of eastern Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and French Somaliland—known since 1967 as the ‘French Territory of the Afars and Isas¹.

The Republic was thus from the outset incomplete, and this encouraged its leaders to embark on a process of expansion which is the precise opposite of that pursued in other new African states. The abiding preoccupation of most African statesmen is with internal `nation-building’, with the foundation and development of an integrative national culture which will transform their politically independent states into culturally dis­tinctive nations.

For the Somali Republic, however, the problem is very different. In its truncated circumstances, the aim was from the first to expand the state so that it fully comprehended the nation: nationhood had already been achieved and awaited its political fulfillment in a single all-em­bracing Somali state.

This desire to continue and bring to fruition a process which received international sanction with the formation of the Republic seems perfectly natural in Somali eyes; but it was, of course, the basis of the ‘Somali Dispute’, with Ethiopia, Kenya, and France. This aim was pursued with varying degrees of militancy, if with little success, by successive Somali Governments in the period from independence until 1967, for these countries were as reluctant to cede territory and subjects as the Republic was anxious to acquire them.¹

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