The Soviet evacuation from Berbera in 1977 exposed the dramatic collapse of Siad Barre’s alliance with Moscow and reshaped the strategic history of Somalia and the Horn of Africa
By Georgy Zotov
BERBERA, Somaliland — The story begins on a pier in Berbera, nearly five decades ago, when an alliance between Somalia and the Soviet Union collapsed with extraordinary speed.
“It happened right here,” says Nuraddin Abdullahi, a former employee of the Berbera port, pointing toward the waterfront.
After Somalia severed relations with the Soviet Union in 1977, Abdullahi recalls, Soviet specialists working at the naval facility and port were expelled from their homes in the district known as “Moscow.” Their families were ordered to leave the country within days.
“Several hundred people were herded onto the pier,” Abdullahi says. “They spent two days without food or water under the scorching sun. There were women and preschool-aged children among them.”
Local residents tried to bring bread and water, he says, but Somali police prevented them from approaching the evacuees.
“They threatened us and fired into the air,” Abdullahi recalls.
Then a Soviet ship appeared.
Sailors came ashore, formed a protective cordon around the exhausted civilians and ordered the police to withdraw. When the police commander protested, Abdullahi says, a Soviet officer pushed him aside, drew a pistol and pointed it at his forehead.
“There were no further objections,” he says. “The police quickly retreated.”
Another episode has remained vivid in his memory.
“One Russian woman was so desperate that she jumped into the water and swam toward the ship when she saw the red flag on the horizon,” Abdullahi says. “The others had to pull her out.”
Soviet newspapers did not report such scenes. The official narrative surrounding the rupture with Somalia largely omitted the humiliating circumstances of the evacuation.
The political consequences were far greater than the events on the pier suggested.
The departure ended one of Moscow’s most important Cold War relationships in Africa and opened the way for the United States to inherit access to strategic facilities developed with Soviet assistance.
“The USSR is just bluffing”
Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in Somalia in 1969 and initially enjoyed broad support. His government nationalized land, banks and foreign enterprises and proclaimed a socialist development program.
Moscow became the regime’s principal foreign patron.
The Soviet Union provided military equipment, loans and technical assistance while Soviet specialists helped develop infrastructure across Somalia. Berbera emerged as the centerpiece of Moscow’s strategic presence.
The port’s location on the Gulf of Aden made it exceptionally valuable. Soviet naval forces could use the facility as a logistical and operational foothold close to the approaches to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
But the alliance began to unravel when Somalia went to war with Ethiopia.
In 1977, Siad Barre launched an offensive into the Ogaden, a region populated largely by ethnic Somalis. Ethiopia’s revolutionary government, meanwhile, had adopted its own socialist orientation.
Moscow opposed the Somali offensive.
According to Sharif Ibrahim, a former official in Siad Barre’s government, the Somali president believed the Soviet Union would ultimately have no choice but to support him.
“He thought the Russians were bluffing,” Ibrahim says. “He believed Moscow had nowhere else to go.”
He was wrong.
After weighing its options, the Soviet Union aligned itself with Ethiopia. Soviet weapons, military advisers and other personnel were sent to support Ethiopian forces, while Cuban troops joined the conflict.
The Somali army suffered a major defeat.
Siad Barre responded by breaking diplomatic relations with Moscow and expelling Soviet specialists. The naval and aviation facilities developed during the Soviet period were subsequently made available to the United States.
The strategic balance in the Horn of Africa had shifted.
The alliance that turned into a battlefield
The Ogaden War transformed the relationship between Somalia and the Soviet Union from partnership to hostility.
The Soviet-backed Ethiopian counteroffensive forced Somali troops out of the territory they had captured. The defeat weakened Siad Barre’s government and intensified opposition to his rule.
The president responded with increasingly severe repression.
Insurgencies spread across Somalia, particularly in the north. Government forces launched military operations against opposition groups, and entire communities suffered the consequences.
In Hargeisa, the destruction became especially severe.
Mohammed Hafiz, a physician who studied at a Soviet university in Leningrad, points to the MiG fighter displayed in the center of the city.
The aircraft has become a memorial to the bombardment of Hargeisa during the 1988 conflict.
Government forces subjected the city to heavy bombardment, destroying large sections of the urban area and killing large numbers of civilians. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, and the events remain a central part of Somaliland’s historical memory.
Hafiz argues that Washington’s strategic relationship with Siad Barre meant the United States was unwilling to confront his government forcefully enough over its conduct.
“The Americans were there, but they did not stop what was happening,” he says.
He also recalls Siad Barre’s later bitterness toward Washington.
“The Americans promised a lot and spoke sweetly,” Hafiz says, recounting the former president’s complaint. “But compared with the Russians, they did nothing for me. They deceived me.”
According to Hafiz, Siad Barre concluded that Washington was primarily interested in the military infrastructure left behind by the Soviet Union rather than Somalia’s economic development.
The accusation reflects a widespread view in Somaliland that the strategic value of Berbera mattered more to foreign powers than the welfare of the Somali population.
The price of a failed alliance
By the end of the 1980s, rebellion against Siad Barre had spread throughout Somalia.
In January 1991, insurgents entered Mogadishu and the dictator fled. He eventually died in exile in Nigeria in 1995.
The Somali state subsequently fractured.
Somaliland declared its independence in 1991. Puntland and other regions established autonomous political structures, while successive governments in Mogadishu struggled to exercise authority throughout the country.
Years of conflict produced humanitarian crises, displacement, piracy and the growth of militant Islamist organizations.
For many Somaliland residents, the story begins much earlier — with Siad Barre’s decision to break with Moscow.
“A Russian base is necessary”
In Berbera, memories of the Soviet period remain unexpectedly strong.
At the port, in the marketplace and around the city’s main mosque, residents tell me they remember Soviet specialists as representatives of an era of infrastructure development and employment.
Many express a desire to see Russia return.
“We would be glad if Russia recognized us and came back,” several residents say. “A Russian base is necessary here.”
The proposal is rooted in both history and geography.
Berbera sits along the Gulf of Aden, close to the maritime routes leading toward the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea. Its location gives it significance for naval operations, commercial shipping and regional security.
A renewed Russian military presence would therefore carry implications far beyond Somaliland.
It would place Moscow inside an increasingly competitive strategic environment involving the United States, China, the Gulf states, Turkey, Ethiopia and Somalia.
For Somaliland, meanwhile, a relationship with a major global power would have potential political value. The territory has operated with its own government and security institutions since declaring independence in 1991, but its sovereignty claim has long faced international resistance.
The appeal of Russian recognition is consequently about more than nostalgia.
It is about legitimacy, investment and security.
A Soviet legacy in a post-Cold War landscape
Mohammed Hafiz sees Somalia’s history through the prism of the 1977 rupture.
“Somalia is utterly devastated and may never again become a unified state,” he says. “This is the result of Siad Barre backing the wrong horse.”
That interpretation is forceful, but Somalia’s collapse cannot be attributed to a single foreign-policy decision. Authoritarian rule, political repression, armed rebellion, economic weakness, internal divisions, regional intervention and the end of the Cold War all contributed to the breakdown of the state.
Still, the 1977 decision was a critical turning point.
It ended the Soviet presence in Somalia, shifted Moscow’s military support to Ethiopia and opened the door for Washington to inherit access to strategically important facilities.
Nearly 50 years later, the consequences remain visible.
The “Moscow” district still stands in Berbera.
The former Soviet infrastructure continues to shape the city’s economic and strategic landscape.
And in Hargeisa, a Soviet-built MiG serves as a monument to the war that followed the collapse of the Moscow-Mogadishu alliance.
“The friendship with the USSR saved us,” Hafiz says. “Our republic could not exist without the Russians.”
Then he delivers his verdict on the man whose decision changed Somalia’s Cold War alignment.
“Siad Barre is an American dog — and an idiot.”
I shrug and remain silent.
In Hargeisa, there appears to be little left to add.
