The crisis of Ethiopia that led to a war and a long lasting rivalry with Somalia, the fall of the Emperor Selassie, the creation of a military dictatorship in the Horn, the signing of a treaty with the Soviet Union and Ethiopia’s loss of Eretria all had counter links with the de-colonial process of Eastern Africa and a direct influence of European colonialism. Since the independence of Somalia in the summer of 1960, the newly founded republic had a new mission, a mission to recover and unify all the lands that they referred to as being a part of Greater Somalia. The Somali state sought to relieve the Ogaden from the grip of Ethiopia based on ethnic and cultural grounds, however, what the Somali irredentist called Western Somalia in fact went all the way to the shores of the river Awash, where in this periphery was two of the largest cities in Ethiopia at the time, Harar and Dire Dawa. The Somali claim for the region was based on cultural and ethnic grounds but were also very highly influenced by economic prospects for the expansion.
Accordingly, the region is known to be very rich in agricultural resources such as wheat, barley and coffee and it’s also home to a variety of the finest cattle in all of East Africa. The region is also the area where the substance of qaat is grown, a leafy stimulant that is bought and shipped very highly not just in East Africa but also parts of the Middle East and Asia. The plan to achieve a Greater Somalia was put into motion within the first years after its independence, as the nation had stirred up political instability in Ethiopia going as far as starting a military insurgence that led to armed conflict in the Empire in the year 1964, dubbed the Ethiopian-Somali Border War. This was their first phase of procuring back their lands. As perpetuate anti-Ethiopian propaganda was being emanated from Mogadishu, which mirrored the political ideologies being taken by leading Somali politicians. All in the effort to put the country into political instability, so it would be much easier for Somali troops to march in unchallenged.
The capital also harboured Ethiopian dissident groups and advocated in their struggles with the Empire, they even publicly sympathised with the causes of freedom fighters from Ethiopia and Tigray. Whose challenging of the sovereignty of the Ethiopian state on its northern marches was just as pivotal and compelling as the challenge of Somalia in the southeast (Yihun, 2014, 677).
It wasn’t until the year 1969 when countless African leaders rose to power through coup d’états’ that held and led sensationalist anti-Ethiopian regimes, as “governments of Nimeiry, Gadaffi and Barre would each harness their resources against the interests of Ethiopia in the coming years, but it was the Somali threat that seemed the most immediate” (Yihun, 2014, 678). As under the rule of General Siad Barre the Somali efforts on the Ogaden stance become exceptionally clear and openly hostile. Attempts were made to cease conflict and the Organisation of African Unity tried to contain the state of Somalia under diplomatic frameworks, however, Barre was very critical of the OAU as it was an establishment created by the diplomats of Addis Ababa in lieu with the British colonial forces. Accordingly, it was a stance taken by Barre to show his fight against the colonial impacts that derived from Ethiopia. The Derg, the provincial military government of Socialist Ethiopia from the years 1974–87, tried to avoid conflict with the nation of Somalia as it was a very dangerous opponent to have in the battlefield with military and diplomatic support coming in from the Soviet Union.
Soviet/US involvement in East Africa
This then puts to question why both the US and the Soviets wanted to be party to the Ogaden wars. The Horn was prime real estate for Western superpowers due to its geographical location, its links to black sub-Saharan Africa and it being the gateway of the Indian Ocean that linked it to the Middle East, the Horn was seen as a station of great value. With US influence still prevailing over Ethiopia, Somalia was inclined to get itself a superpower to balance the playing field. Thus, it signed a friendship treaty with the USSR, this treaty signified the mutually exclusive agreement both Mogadishu and Moscow had. This agreement allowed for Somali President Siad Barre to develop valuable naval support facilities in the country due to his Soviet benefactors in the Kremlin, benefactors that supported the state of Somalia with grade-A military equipment in turn for Somali ally-ship in their fight against the capitalistic threat that was the US. However, by 1976 the US ties with Ethiopia were loosening, more directly in resource to the Derg’s “increasingly pro-Soviet, anti-imperialist stance of the country which combined with its repressive policies and large arms recruitment to fight the Eritrean secessionist movement made it difficult for the US government to justify its support for Ethiopia” (Weiss, 1980. 3). Therefore, as Washington’s influence and interest faded so did Moscow’s increase, at the same time when US diplomatic relations cancelled its military grant with Ethiopia the Soviet Union signed a hundred million dollar arms agreement in the winter of 1976. However, Soviet involvement with Ethiopia posed a threat to Soviet-Somali relations. As Somali interest lay solely in unifying all Somalis and the establishment of a Greater Somalia, which contradicted the newly found agreement of Ethiopia and the Soviet Union, as most Somalis did not consider the Ogaden to be a rightful part of Ethiopia.
Sway was supposed to come in the form of the Cuban President Fidel Castro who had similar rapport with the Somali government, as he backed a Marxist federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea and a confederation that linked Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and North and South Yemen together. This proposition was shot down quickly by General Barre as he found this notion non-convincing. The Cuban government advised Barre to back down from any confrontation with Ethiopia and Mengistu, an ultimatum that was supported by the Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny who urged “patience” on the Somalia leader (Weiss, 1980, 5). Contrariwise, the Somalis were very unwilling to pass upon a chance to rectify the disillusionment that was brought with western intervention previously, as they were unwilling to pass up the historic prospect of unifying the Ogaden with the rest of Somalia. Expressing their view, Siad Barre asked rhetorically:
“But who can guarantee us that once his regime is consolidated and his army strengthened (by Soviets), Mengistu will consent to negotiate the territorial conflict between us so as to find a solution that complies with the wishes of the Somali people in the Ogaden” (Weiss, 1980, 6)
Thus, Somalia expanded its search for support past the Soviet-oriented conservative Middle Eastern countries and more towards the West. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a strong supporter of the dismissal of the Soviets in East Africa, and so where their Western allies the US. The US was very much compliant with the Somali cause as it would result in the further disenchantment of the Communist agenda and restore a semblance of a balance of power in the Horn. The Ethio-Somali war or the Ogaden War, was waged between these two faltering nations in the summer of 1977 and it lasted for 8 months and 2 days concluding on March 15, 1978.
The colonial fragmentation of East Africa and the addition of a European capitalistic modernity into a subaltern society by colonial powers is what perpetuated this disparity between these two nations, who had a differing outlook on what democracy is. It was this leading interference that shook the core and the paradigm of clan politics, most specifically in Somalia, by trying to replace it with the European system that they deemed to be more moderate than the archaic ways of these countries. As, Post-Colonial theorist Cristina Rojas (2016, 2), explains how the project of capitalist and colonial modernity singularly arrogates for itself “the right to be ‘the’ world by subjecting all other worlds to its own terms, or worse to non-existence”. It was this implementation of the European modernity into East Africa that enabled the Ogaden war to manifest, as those colonial powers had the self-right of being enablers as they gave themselves the legitimate rights to improvement and the rights to destroy those who do not fit into their mould. This was the first phase of the destruction of the Somali society, as it strayed too far away from the ideologies set up by their colonial captors.
The failure of US-Somali allegiance, and the clearer Soviet-Cuban support enabled Megistu to crush the Somali army and humiliate Siad Barre, which in turn would send over half a million refugees and guerrilla fighters back over to Somalia. Many of them carrying over the next wave of modern weapons in a rising tide that would unleash a strong discontent with the failures of the President and a dissent in the governing’s of Barres increasingly brutal and discriminatory regime (Clark, 1992, 111). Disillusioned by the impending failure of the government, the Somali people would soon try to look towards differing political systems one that gave them the representation each clan needed, such as a multi-party state.
This dissent would then turn into an attempted coup against the Barre regime and with this came the establishment of the Somali National Movement (SNM) amongst the northern Isaaq clan, a clan that was subjugated under the political leadership of the current government. By the year 1988 Barres loosening grip on Somalia was paralleled by Megistu’s struggle to keep the upper hand in a series of revolts and civil clashes in the country. For Siad Barre, the sight of the problems to his governance lay up in the north with the Isaaq people and his retribution was to devastate their regional capital Hargeisa, in turn killing thousands of Isaaqs in his escapade to crush the SNM. Instrumentalists would accordingly see this proposal of governance as the setting of the colonial legacy, as it left Somalia in an insubstantial state thus making clans compete for resources, power and political influence. This can be seen through the Barre government as it was very much reliant on the use of hard power in all aspects of governance, which in turn, enabled repression and discrimination becoming institutionalised by the state.
Clark, J., 1992. Debacle in Somalia. Foreign Affairs, [online] 72(1), p.109. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045500?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.
Rojas, C., 2016. Contesting the Colonial Logics of the International: Toward a Relational Politics for the Pluriverse. International Political Sociology, [online] 10(4), pp.369–382. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309957315_Contesting_the_Colonial_Logics_of_the_International_Toward_a_Relational_Politics_for_the_Pluriverse.
Weiss, K., 1980. THE SOVIET INVOLVEMENTi IN THE OGADEN WAR. Professional Paper, [online] 269. Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/93cb/6e0fb0c18cdad089a2de1fb8174fef18dca0.pdf.
Yihun, B., 2014. Ethiopian foreign policy and the Ogaden War: the shift from “containment” to “destabilization,” 1977–1991. Journal of Eastern African Studies, [online] 8(4), pp.677–691. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280171630_Ethiopian_foreign_policy_and_the_Ogaden_War_the_shift_from_containment_to_destabilization_1977-1991.
