The Politics Of The 1969 Somali Coup

PARTY POLITICS BEFORE THE COUP

These were the general political conditions with which party politics and the bureaucratic government had to come to terms if they were to relate meaningfully to social and political realities. Immediately prior to independence and the union of the two ex-colonies to form the Republic, there were four main political parties.

In the south (the Italian sphere) the Somali Youth League, originally founded in 1943 during the British Military Administration of Somalia (1941-50), held a secure monopoly of power and represented a loose consortium of all the main clan groups. Its chief rival was the Digil Mirifie party (H.D.M.S.) catering for the separatist interests of the Digil and Rahanweyn clans and with no following outside that area.

While the S.Y.L. also had at this time adherents in the north (British Somaliland), the principal parties there were the Somaliland National League (with a tradition going back to 1935) and the more recently formed United Somali Party. The former rep­resented the Isaq clan which had dominated the life of the British Protectorate since its inception. The latter catered for the interests of the Dir clans of the west and the Darod of the east.

Although far apart geographically and scarcely interacting at all, these two clans had at least one thing in common—joint antagonism towards the Isaq. They thus acted on the well-tried Somali political maxim that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend. When amalgamating the ex-British and ex-Italian territories, the Republic was proclaimed on s July x g6o, the two existing legislatures combined to form a single National Assembly at Mogadishu with 123 seats: 33 for the north, and 90 for the south.

The southern assembly president, Adan Abdulle Osman, a Hawiye politician of great esteem and experience, was elected provisional President of the Republic and confirmed in office by a referendum held a year later. Dr. Abdirashid Ali Shirmarke, a prominent member of the Darod leadership of the S.Y.L. who had recently returned from a course in political science in Rome, was appointed Prime Minister and formed a coalition cabinet containing S.Y.L., S.N.L., and U.S.P. members. The new Government included four northern (‘ex-British’) ministers, two of whom were Darod and two Isaaq.

At this time it will be evident that the identity of the northern region as a whole was reflected in the existence of the two northern parties, neither of which had any direct support in the south. At the same time, the separate interests of the main northern clans, the Isag on the one hand and the Dir and Darod on the other were faithfully mirrored in their two distinct parties. In the south, apart from the H.D.M.S., comparable particularistic clan interests were catered for within the omnibus S.Y.L. — see Table 1.

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